Summary: Another day, another Republican in the race for president. This week it's Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey. Not long ago he was perceived as the GOP frontrunner. His slashing attacks on liberals, union members and journalists won him high marks in the Garden State, and many saw him as the party's strongest candidate to take on Hillary Clinton. But Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University, says that the combination of political fallout over the so-called "Bridgegate" scandal and the economic problems in the state budget have led to Christie getting a 30% job approval back home and falling national numbers in his bid for the nomination. Another northeast Republican governor who has a flair for the dramatic (and controversy) is Paul LePage of Maine. His outlandish behavior almost cost him a second term in last year's elections. Mal Leary of Maine Public Broadcasting says that his antics have only become more noticeable this year, with the governor battling with the legislature over the budget, his threatening reporters and lawmakers with execution -- a joke, LePage insists -- and other shenanigans that some member of the legislature are seriously talking about impeachment. We still have to sit back and take a breath after last week's whirlwind of decisions coming from the Supreme Court. Two in particular -- on the Affordable Care Act and same-sex marriage -- delighted liberals, upset conservatives and made history at the same time. Robert Barnes of the Washington Post offers a review. And in our "This Week in Political History" feature, we go back to June of 1971, when Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel committed one of the biggest instances of political disobedience of the day when he read excerpts from the Pentagon Papers, the top-secret and classified history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, with warts and lies and all. Sen. Gravel joins us to talk about what led him to take that fateful step. Photo via Flickr user Michael Vadon This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
