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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Supreme Court Examines Same-Sex Marriage; Viagra Turns 15; Viagra for Women?; Desperate Marlins Turn to Groupon

Aired March 27, 2013 - 16:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Click, print, shoot. I'm Jake Tapper. And this is THE LEAD.

The National Lead: How close are we to technology that would let you download and print out a firearm? It's already here. We will talk to the man behind it, one of "Wired" magazine's 15 most dangerous people in the world. And he is a 25-year-old law student.

Also in national news, a massive landslide sucks up one home and threatens 17 others. Evacuations continue and the danger is not over yet.

And our Money Lead, cue up the Marvin Gaye. Send the kids to grandma and grandpa's, as the ultimate performance-enhancing drug turns 15 today, but where is the Viagra for women?

The National Lead: Two years after a senseless rampage in Tucson, we're learning new details this afternoon about what really happened the day Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot. Gunman Jared Loughner robbed six people of their lives and left a dozen more bleeding in a Tucson parking lot.

Giffords was shot in the head and miraculously survived. Now a new release of previously sealed documents sheds new light on what was going on in Loughner's mind.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER (voice-over): The most haunting thing about the killer's face, that smile. We will never know exactly what Jared Loughner was thinking, but today the Pima County, Arizona, Sheriff's Department released almost 3,000 pages of documents from their investigation.

And they paint the picture of a man who long ago lost touch with reality. Loughner's parents told police he dabbled in cocaine and marijuana and that he once owned a shotgun. But upon advice of school administrators, after he was kicked out of community college for an inflammatory video he posted online, they took that gun from him and hid it, along with an antique gun, in the trunk of their car.

His mother said her son never got the mental health evaluation the school recommended when they expelled him, but she acknowledged his behavior was -- quote -- "not normal." "Sometimes, you would hear him in his room, like, having conversations. And sometimes he would look like he was having a conversation with someone right there, be talking to someone. I don't know how to explain it."

Loughner's father said he was becoming difficult to talk to in the months before the shooting. One friend who worked at the store where Loughner bought the Glock he used in the shooting told authorities, "He would say he could dream and then control what he was doing while he was dreaming."

Another friend got this voice-mail message from Loughner the night before the shootings. "Hey, it's -- this is Jared. I had some very good times. And peace out. Later."

We're also learning more about the chaos and acts of heroism that day after Loughner pulled the trigger. Congresswoman Gabby Giffords' intern Daniel Hernandez who helped tend to his boss after she was shot in the head said in an interview: "She couldn't open her eyes. I tried to get any responses from her. It looked like her left side was the only side that was still mobile. She couldn't speak. It was mumbled. She was squeezing my hand."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: The Tucson tragedy followed by others in Aurora, Colorado and, of course, Newtown, Connecticut have spurred efforts to control who can go into a store and buy a gun and what kind of gun they can buy. But maybe none of that will matter much longer.

My next guest is spearheading technology that could soon allow you to easily make any kind of gun you want from the comfort of your own home with the simplicity of hitting print on your computer.

He's been named one of "Wired" magazine's 15 most dangerous people in the world. Cody Wilson joins me from New York.

Cody, you're only 25 years old. You're already one of the most dangerous people in the world, apparently, and you're the subject of a new documentary called "Print, Fire, Shoot." Why do people think you're so terrifying?

CODY WILSON, MANAGING DIRECTOR, DEFENSE DISTRIBUTED: I think the fear terrorism is plain in what we're doing.

I understand why people might be terrified. We're using the banality of these machines that otherwise were used to create innocuous objects to create something that has deadly import, and the problem is this technology might become so diffuse one day that anyone might be suspect or any latent criminality could be expressed by anyone who wants to print a gun. I understand.

TAPPER: But you're doing this with what is called a 3-D printer. Explain for our viewers is this something that really anyone would be able to do?

WILSON: Well, the assumption is one day the technology will become more ubiquitous and widespread (INAUDIBLE) some materials will be developed in a better place than they are now.

So, yes, if you were to have one in your home and you had the gun file, you could just click print and have the gun.

TAPPER: Are you not concerned at all that sharing this technology with everyone, with children, with the mentally unbalanced, exactly -- are you not concerned this is exactly what this country does not need right now? Will you feel responsible at all if someone uses this to kill an innocent person?

WILSON: I mean, we will see how I feel in the eventuality that that happens. I'm willing to hold out some judgment. I don't know how I will feel.

But I do believe in equality of access, equality of production. I think this is something worth doing. And I don't think that we can collectively make a decision to withhold things from people before they do anything wrong.

TAPPER: There is something like 250 million guns in America. Is there any sort of legislation that you think could prevent people from getting a gun, especially with this technology coming down the pike?

WILSON: Sure.

Any kind of legislation might prevent people at the margin, but I'm interested in exploding any regime at all, moving the fight from the physical to the feasible, if you will. When guns become digitalized, what would have you to do to stop people from getting this? Invade their civil liberties, step on their Internet. These are intolerable.

TAPPER: I can't imagine that gun manufacturers are excited about this idea. Have you heard from any of them about this?

WILSON: I haven't.

The technology really isn't in a place that the media runs with it and suggests that it is. It's still in its infancy, so I don't see a direct competition or even an analogy between what we're doing and what a standard gun like a Glock or a Sig Sauer might be or might look like.

They're not equivalent.

TAPPER: You say it's in its infancy. When will people be able to do this?

WILSON: Oh, well, to have a printable gun, it is my intention to have that done by the end of this month. We're at the end of March now, so it is my intention to have it done by the end of April.

TAPPER: Cody Wilson, thank you very much.

WILSON: Thank you.

TAPPER: Now to a frightening story on the West Coast, a whole neighborhood block in danger of falling off a cliff. Incredible video off a massive landslide in Coupeville, Washington, on an island northwest of Seattle. Look at these seaside houses. They would be the envy of any homeowner if it weren't for the yawning chasm that is eating at their backyards.

I'm joined on the phone right now by Ed Hartin, the chief for the local island fire and rescue.

Chief, has anyone been hurt yet?

ED HARTIN, CENTRAL WHIDBEY ISLAND FIRE CHIEF: No, there have been no injuries in the slide since this morning.

TAPPER: What about the homes? Have any been destroyed? How many homes exactly are in danger?

HARTIN: Well, there is one home that was severely damaged and pushed off its foundation by the slide.

We have two homes that are significantly threatened above the slide and we have evacuated 34 homes that are in danger either down below the area of the landslide or up above where the slide keeps sloughing or the bluff keeps sloughing off.

TAPPER: You have evacuated 34 homes. How many people is that?

HARTIN: Well, there were 12 from the area down below the slide and then we're still in the process of determining the exact count of the number of individuals in the 17 homes above the slide.

TAPPER: And lastly, do you have any idea what could have caused this?

HARTIN: Well, this is an area that has unstable soil, and slides have occurred in it, in this area before. But we don't have any specific information at this point as to what precipitated this event.

TAPPER: All right, Chief Ed Hartin, thank you so much.

A majority of Americans are comfortable with same-sex marriage and now the Supreme Court seems skeptical on the constitutionality of DOMA. DOMA is the federal law that defines marriage as between a man and woman.

The Obama administration decided not to even defend the law in front of the Supreme Court, a decision that seemed to frustrate Chief Justice John Roberts today.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

JOHN ROBERTS, CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE U.S. SUPREME COURT: I don't see why he doesn't have the courage of his convictions and execute not only the statute, but do it consistent with his view of the Constitution, rather than saying, oh, we will wait until the Supreme Court tells us we have no choice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Let's now get to the big takeaways from today's hearing with somebody who was inside taking it all in.

Emily Bazelon is the senior editor for Slate.

Emily, thanks so much for joining us.

Did it surprise you that Chief Justice Roberts went after the administration so strongly?

EMILY BAZELON, SLATE: I think Chief Justice Roberts is frustrated that the administration has on the one hand refused to defend the constitutionality of DOMA and on the other hand won't give Edie Windsor back her $360,000 in estate taxes.

This is money the she would not owe had she been married to a man because she lives in New York, which recognizes same-sex marriages as legal.

TAPPER: I want to play another -- speaking of Edith Windsor, I want to play another exchange between Justice Roberts and Windsor's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan. Let's play that right now.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

ROBERTS: You don't doubt that the lobby supporting the enactment of same-sex marriage laws in different states is politically powerful, do you?

ROBERTA KAPLAN, ATTORNEY: With respect to that category, that categorization of the term for purposes of heightened scrutiny, I would, Your Honor. I don't...

ROBERTS: Really?

KAPLAN: Yes.

ROBERTS: As far as I can tell, political figures are falling over themselves to endorse your side of the case.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

TAPPER: What do you make of that, Chief Justice Roberts suggesting that the same-sex lobby, the Human Rights Campaign and other gay rights organizations, is so powerful? It's a remarkable exchange.

BAZELON: Right.

What's going on here underlying that exchange is this fight over the standard the Supreme Court and other courts should use for judging discrimination cases on the basis of sexual orientation. If gay people are a super powerful political lobby, then the court doesn't have to worry about them very much.

But if we think of them as a group that suffered historical, serious discrimination, then they deserve what is called heightened scrutiny which means of course take a closer look at laws that treat them differently. TAPPER: Is he almost suggesting that the discrimination against gays and lesbians doesn't matter because right now they have powerful allies and a powerful lobby?

BAZELON: Exactly. It's over. Why do they need the court? They can just turn to the ballot box.

TAPPER: Interesting.

What else surprised you about today's hearing? What about the lawyer who was defending this law that defines marriage as between one man and one woman?

BAZELON: Right.

Paul Clement was speaking on behalf of House Republicans who want to defend DOMA. What surprised me was how weak and tepid his defense was. He basically made a whole argument about the importance of uniformity, that the federal government for purposes of giving out benefits has to treat gay couples the same in New York and Oklahoma and North Carolina, rather than making any argument about why the government should be able to exclude gay couples.

TAPPER: You weren't impressed with the strength of his argument or with the passion that he seemed to express?

BAZELON: Well, what really matters is Justice Kennedy, and Kennedy said early on this isn't really about uniformity. So it seemed as if there wasn't a peg to hold Kennedy to have him vote to uphold DOMA.

TAPPER: Any prediction?

BAZELON: I think DOMA is going down, this part of the law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. I just did not count five votes to uphold it.

TAPPER: Emily Bazelon from Slate, thanks so much for being here.

BAZELON: Thanks for having me.

TAPPER: That little blue pill turns 15 years old today, but so far the closest thing we have to Viagra for women is "Fifty Shades of Grey."

Why has it taken so long? Our money lead is next.

Plus, long after their nightmare, they want compensation. Americans held captive during the Iran hostage crisis hope that the movie "Argo" helps their fight, and in fact right now the Senate is listening.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: It's time for our "Money Lead". Men have been thanking Viagra since 1998, but what about women?

CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen reports on an often underlooked gender gap.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(MUSIC)

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For 15 years, Viagra has been a champion for its creator Pfizer. The little blue pill earned $2 billion last year.

AD NARRATOR: This is the age of taking action. Viagra.

COHEN: That got a rise out of the competition. Now there is a whole sub genre of Viagra copycat drugs. It's been so successful the movie "Love and Other Drugs" immortalized the Viagra salesman.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Men without a useful erection in years. Minimum side effects, long-term safety. This isn't the pill. This is a revolution.

COHEN: So, if sex drugs for men are so profitable, why isn't anyone selling them to women? That's what '90s sex icon Samantha Jones of "Sex in the City" wanted to know.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What would happen if I tried one of these?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think they've established that it works for women.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's no harm in trying, is there, doctor?

COHEN: In real life, women did try Viagra, in clinical trials in the early 2000s. But it didn't work very well. That didn't stop other pharmaceutical companies from chasing chemical romance.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You just rub it into your arm, and that's the dose for 24 hours.

COHEN: A glob of testosterone was supposed to give a dose of desire, but studies show LibiGel didn't really get libidos going. The company that made it never even brought it to the FDA.

Another drug, Flibanserin, did make it to the FDA which rejected it, saying it had too many side effects and really didn't turn women on anyhow.

That left pharmaceutical companies asking, why are women so hard to please? After all, Viagra worked for Samantha.

But Samantha, of course, is a fictional character. Real women are different.

SHERYL KINGSBERG, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST, CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIV.: The most common sexual problem for women is low desire and that's very complicated because really desire is in our brains.

COHEN: That's why the Stanford researcher is delving into the female brain, to see what makes it tick.

DR. LEAH MILLHEISER, FEMALE SEXUAL MEDICINE PROGRAM, STANFORD UNIV.: You can see here, this is a difference between women with low libido in the blue and the yellow is women with normal libido.

COHEN: Which may mean that for women, the cure for low libido is more likely to be found in their brains than in a bottle.

Elizabeth Cohen, CNN, reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: The manufacturers of those desire drugs Elizabeth just mentioned are not giving up. They're doing more testing on their drugs in hopes of getting the FDA to sign off. But in the meantime, what should women with this problem be doing?

Let's turn to Dr. Wendy Walsh, CNN human behavior expert and author of the "30-Day Love Detox."

Dr. Walsh, thanks for being with us.

So, as Elizabeth --

DR WENDY WALSH, CNN HUMAN BEHAVIOR EXPERT: Hi.

TAPPER: So, as Elizabeth's piece talked about, is what needs to be addressed with women more mental than physical?

WALSH: Absolutely. Research shows women's sexuality is very different than men's sexuality. Men is more about basic plumbing. Get some blood flow there.

For women, you have to address desire. Sometimes, women's sexuality is about a desire to be desired or they have sex because they want a companion. Great evidence of this is when women will break up from a relationship. They don't replace their boyfriend with pornography like a guy might do. We're just very different.

TAPPER: But there surely are women who have physical, sexual dysfunction problems, not just mental ones.

WALSH: Well, absolutely. And, of course, those can be addressed through a sex therapist.

But, you know, I really question the idea of why we call a lack of desire or lowered desire than men a problem necessarily. Are we again trying to medicate womanhood? Remember, just because something doesn't match the male model doesn't mean that there is something wrong with it, necessarily.

TAPPER: So, do you think there has not been enough done in the medical industry to address this problem for women?

WALSH: Well, I will say that in general the medical industry has been criticized for being very male-centric and addressing male problems before women -- before female problems, of course. And maybe there is a little bit of that going on here.

But I also think, you know, it is very politically incorrect to say, but it's pretty well-established that men want sex more than women want sex in general. I mean, obviously there are specific examples of couples where women have a higher desire. And so, what are we really trying to do here -- make women's sexuality mirror men's so we can make men happy?

TAPPER: All right. So, lastly, your suggestion seems to be if there was a woman who is having a problem with sexual dysfunction, it's probably in her mind and she should see a therapist?

WALSH: It's a bit of both. It could be -- there are certainly physiological conditions that could be addressed and any therapist that's registered with AASECT, the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists would be a great place to start.

But, also, you know, if you just want to -- if you guys out there just want us to raise our sexual desire, just load the dish washer. OK? That turns women on.

TAPPER: All right. Dr. Wendy Walsh, CNN human behavior expert. Thanks for your time.

WALSH: Thanks.

TAPPER: And in other money news, if you even think you're about to tweet something that could get you fired, don't. But if you just can't help yourself, there is a new app that will warn you if you've crossed a line. It's called FireMe.

According to the new scientist, the app uses an algorithm, one of those math spells, to look for tale tell words and phrases in your tweets that indicate you may have over shared about your job. So, let's say you tweeted out, "I wonder how many times I'll say I hate my job today," like this person whose handle we blurred -- we won't rat you out here at THE LEAD -- the FireMe app in that instance will pick up on those words -- hate and job -- send you an alert and maybe you can delete it before your boss finds out.

Here is a little quiz for you: what's cheaper -- taking the kids to a movie or a night at the ballpark? Well, if it's opening day in Miami, it's the baseball game that's cheaper.

We'll tell you about the Marlins' not so subtle gimmick to fill the stands. That's our "Sports Lead" and that's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Time for "The Sports Lead". Everyone is tied for first on opening day. Even the most hopeless teams usually sell out.

So, this is even embarrassing by Miami Marlins standards. The team, with a one-year-old taxpayer-funded stadium, is selling opening day seats for half price on Groupon. But wait, there's more. You also get a magnetic schedule for the fridge. Now, don't all crash the server at once, people.

Now, this isn't the first time this has happened but this is for opening day. The NBA's Washington Wizards have also thrown a lot of empty seats up on Groupon in the past we should mention.

# tag you're it. Come up with the next deal to help the lowly Marlins, those poor fish. Here's one: free root canal with each Marlins ticket because it can't get any more painful. Tweet your ideas to @TheLeadCNN. Use the #marlinsfail.

In other sports news, Baylor's women's basketball team got not one but two W's in their last home game of the tournament. George W. Bush did a meet and greet with the players right before tip off against Florida State. Even though Baylor is his home team, the former president didn't play favorites. He also paid a visit to the Lady Noles' locker room.

That turns out to be their most memorable moment of the night, of course. Baylor won the game by nearly 40 points and advanced to the sweet 16.

News flash: Sarah Palin is still relevant. That's the message of a new political ad from Sarah PAC. We will ask our political panelists in the green room what they think about Alaska's most famous former governor. That's coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

"The World Lead": Best picture winner "Argo" was about the ones who escaped the Iranian hostage crisis. But now, the movie could help write another happy ending for the 52 Americans who were not as lucky.

Also in world news, is Netflix freezing up on you today? Is it taking forever to sign into your e-mail? It might have something to do with what's being called the biggest cyber attack in history.