barnicle and burning it down. >> it's just as important to take care of your health and keep your family life in balance. >> barnicle? >> think about history. the anniversary of d-day and anniversary of robert f. kennedy's death. think about history. >> happy birthday to my little carlie. mike barnicle, if it's way too early, what time is it? >> ordinarily it's time for "morning joe" but now it's time for our old pal, chuck todd. chuck, take it away. another secret surprise. president obama going to be facing a new wave of concerns from folks over a report that the government regularly obtains cell phone records of millions of americans. the news comes just as nbc's own pete williams sits down for an exclusive interview with the embattled attorney general eric holder to hear what he had to say about those secret warrants to track reporters as well as the clamor of calls for him to step down.

and in the world of campaign politics, with just a couple weeks left until that massachusetts special election for john kerry's u.s. senate seat, toe to toe in a feisty debate touching on just about every issue you can think of. good morning from as usual a very busy washington. it's thursday, june 6th, 2013. this is "the daily rundown." i'm chuck todd. let me get to my first reads of the morning. remember sweeping domestic s surveillance programs that became controversial during the bush administration? they're controversial then and still going on. the nsa, national security agency, has been secretly collecting the phone records of millions of u.s. citizens randomly and in bulk regardless of whether there's been suspicion of wrongdoing. overnight "the guardian" in london reported on a classified court order it obtained that is giving the u.s. government broad access to verizon phone records.

every major government entity involved in this was radio silent overnight but this morning a senior administration official without confirming this specific report defended the practice. according to the order obtained by "the guardi iaiaguardian" in foreign intelligence surveillance court judge directed a verizon subsidiary to hand over call logs for all customer logs between the u.s. and overseas and all calls within the united states. the order is good for three months. this all begs the question, why are they doing this? >> one possibility is that there's actually a threat. you know, imminent threat that the united states faces in which the u.s. government feels compelled to expand broadly in almost unprecedented way the scope of their investigation. there's another possibility which is this is a rolling

consent decree. >> let me explain. in other words, a 3-month order that is renewed and renewed again. under the terms of this order, verizon is required "on an ongoing daily basis to hand over the following. comprehensive communications routing information including the location of the caller, the location of the recipient, calling card numbers and the time and duration of the call. the order does not tell verizon to provide any information about the content of the calls. this report only centers on verizon but possible and likely that similar orders were issued to other cell phone carriers. the fbi sought the sweeping order back in the day upped a controversial section of the patriot act. it's called section 215 nicknamed the library records provision which allows the government to require businesses to hand over records of any tangible things include books, records, papers, documents and other items. so that means another theory as

to what the government might be up to here is esensentially dat base building by getting records in the data base on a regular basis allows them to get quicker access. we love to eat.

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apologies there. we had a bizarre power hit. many people will have jokes having to do with this surveillance story that we're doing. let me pick up on where we're at here. there's been on this issue of broad powers of surveillance, plenty of senators that have

been hinting for months that the public would be shocked about this power. a few months ago they wrote to the attorney general saying the following. we believe most americans would be stunned to learn the details of these secret court opinions. as we see it, there's now a significant gap between what most americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. we're learning today. civil liberties groups immediately criticized the verizon order. the aclu issued this statement saying "the program could hardly be anymore alarming. untold number of people have been put under the constant surveillance of government agents." al gore said in digital area privacy must be a priority. some libertarian republicans have begun to weigh in as well.

>> i am for whatever it takes as long as it is restricted to the national security agency and doesn't get involved in looking for criminal behavior or other kinds of things. the problem you have is between the total failure of attorney general holder and his team and the irs scandal and all other things we're watching, why would anyone trust the government to keep its word? >> when reached via e-mail, verizon said the company is declining comment on the nsa story. the court order expressly bars verizon from disclosing the existence of the court order to the public. here's what a senior administration official did provide us this morning. it's a lengthy statement that defends the practice without confirming the specific story. "information of the sort described in the guardian article has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the united states." the official also pointed out this kind of order does not allow the government to listen

in on anyone's telephone calls and this official emphasizes that congress passed the act and is regularly briefed on how it is used. this is just more evidence that when it comes to certain issues, the obama administration is continuing or even broadening efforts that began during the bush administration whether the subject is domestic surveillance, drones or keeping secret documents about its treatment of terrorism detainees. this of course also comes in the same week supreme court ruled they can take dna evidence from people who are arrested before they have been found guilty to search for other crimes. bottom line is if you are in the business of trying to protect the rights to privacy, you have a very busy week and it's been a bad week for you. this new disclosure of sweeping domestic surveillance comes at a time when the obama justice department's aggressive prosecution of national security leakers is already under

scrutiny. eric holder will be on capitol hill to testify on the justice department's budget but of course there won't be questions about numbers. he'll have other questions. yesterday in an exclusive interview, holder told our own pete williams that he's not comfortable with how some of the leak investigations have progressed even though he approved some of the moves himself saying things have gotten out of whack. it was as close to an apology as holder could have given regarding the targeting of the press corps. in seeking the records of fox news reporter james rosen, the government called him an aider or abettor or co-conspirator and the law that required the search warrant should be changed. >> so that you never call a reporter who is simply doing his or her job in gathering news a criminal. that is not something i'm comfortable with. >> did you approve that search warrant application? >> i don't want to get into specifics, but i have approved, you know, matters that have used

those guidelines and i'm not completely happy with not completely comfortable with where those guidelines -- where these laws have placed us. >> in the interview, eric holder responded to critics saying he's willing to take in legitimate criticism, he's not going to be distracted by partisan attacks. >> large parts of the criticism that you get in washington, d.c. is partisan in nature. it's got you in nature. i'm 4 1/2 years into this job with thick skin so that stuff i don't really focus on. >> is your skin getting thicker? >> i'm probably in the guinness world record for thickest skin at this point. >> to be clear, you're not stepping down now? >> no. i have no intention of doing so now. >> pete williams joins me now. so, pete, before i get to the story about the surveillance because i know you have done this reporting on patriot act and these powers for years, just very quickly on eric holder. you have covered him for a long

time. you've known him for a long time. you asked those questions about whether he's going to -- about whether he's stepping down or not. did i seem embattled to you? does he seem as if he's beaten down or did he come across more defiant? >> neither actually. i would say he seems rather calm about this. i should make clear that we did this interview before the story about the nsa phone gathering became public. i think what his tone is that he's had some second thoughts about how these cases are handled based on his several meetings that he's had with news media executives, something he promised the president he would do and he believes that they have made good points, that the news media should get more of a chance to challenge these requests for records of phone calls and e-mails before the government gets them. there should be more of that than there is now and the second point about how the law should be changed so the government doesn't have to use the language in getting a search warrant to describe someone as a c

co-conspirator. he made clear that he never asked for the prosecution of a reporter. he says emphasis has always been on the government official who leaked the information. >> let's go back to the story about the national security agency and this broad subpoena for verizon cell phone records. all of us assume verizon is not the only cell phone carrier targeted here but the only one to receive a court order. explain how is this league? explain the part of the law that makes this legal. >> a couple things have to be said here. number one, we don't know all of this because this is highly classified document. and the government officials therefore can't go into much detail about it. you know, obviously this is unlike what the bush administration did in some ways because it is pursuant to a court order. they are getting an order from the foreign intelligence surveillance act court. secondly, members of congress have been briefed on this program. so what we have to assume here

is that what this order allows the nsa to do is every day update the data base it has basically of all of the calls made by people who are subscribers to this particular verizon. it can then hold and when it wants to then look for information about a specific number, it has that data there. it can then go exploit it rather than having to go ask the court to have verizon dump this huge mountain of data on the government at once. the point that intelligence community has made in the past is that they have no interest or time or manpower to just dive in and see what people are up to. it's only there in response to a specific need to get a number. i guess where the question comes in here is should the government then have to go get another search warrant from the court if it wants to check a specific phone number that it raids a house in london and find that

it's someone's cell phone and on that is a u.s. number that the nsa wants to check on or fbi or whoever is going to do it. you know, does it have to then go to court to get an order to exploit that number into the data base which it already has from another court order? and that's what we don't quite know how these pieces fit together yet. >> this goes to the whole campaign promises that candidate obama made which is about being more transparent in the tactics even while keeping some parts of this stuff classified, which i think as we know this is going to become an ongoing political football as well as a national security one. pete williams -- >> one other quick point here if i may. so, you know, it seems highly likely this will trigger a leak investigation, which we should point out that process, the intelligence agencies have to refer it to justice and they have to decide. there is no leak investigation on this yet. we're away head of that process. it seems likely given the sensitivity of this document there will be one. >> that's right.

and remember all branches of government were updated on this. judicial, congressional, legislative and congress and of course the obama administration. pete, thank you very much. finally, my final first read. this very long extended play version of it thanks to our technical difficulties, immigration. is support waning or not? we have evidence to indicate perhaps that it is. yesterday the republican senator who has been the key to getting conservatives to sign onto the bill, florida's marco rubio came out of a meeting with house conservatives with this warning. >> i can tell you that the bill is currently structured isn't going to pass in the house. i think it will struggle to pass in the senate. >> and it's not the first time this week that rubio has backed away from his own bill. on tuesday talking to conservative radio host, he said even he won't vote for the senate bill if it isn't amended to improve border security. >> if those amendments don't pass, will you yourself support

the bill that emerged from judiciary? >> if those amendments don't pass, we have a bill that won't become law and we're wasting our time. the answer is no. >> getting a bill through the house requires senate republican backers of reform to persuade enough republicans to the floor. house members did not sound convinced. >> i think it's very clear that the house will not take the senate bill. >> do you see it as being a vehicle for immigration reform? >> i don't. i think it will be the houseworking ihousework i its bill. >> i don't think there's any chance that comprehension immigration would pass. it may pass in the senate but i don't see it passing into law. i don't think republicans are going to support anything that is milk toast in the way of

border security. >> and late yesterday we learned that idaho congressman raul labrador dropped out of the talks. this is a drop from our april poll when 64% said they supported the pathway. a note of caution. the wording changed. in april we asked there's a proposal to create a pathway to citizenship that would allow fortune er fortune foreigners who have jobs. we excluded the words who have jobs and they think it's significant that they still supported even after language changed and when told proposed pathway to citizenship includes requirements to pay fines, back taxes and background check the percentage favoring it jumps to 65% including a majority of republicans. 58%. now, is all down 11 points from

where the number was two months ago. there was a language change. when we asked the basic question about whether folks would be upset or if immigration reform passes, the public was split right down the middle 47-47. majority of republicans said they would not be upset if it did not pass and more americans would be upset if they failed to pass background checks on gun sales rather than immigration. intensity matters. there's more intensity on the issue of guns than on immigrati immigration. 21% said they would be upset if congress doesn't pass the law. one more thing while washington haggles over the details, immigration policy is being made in states. colorado became the eighth state to grant driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

that follows a decision by florida governor rick scott on tuesday to veto a measure that would have allowed the same thing in florida. young immigrants living in the u.s. illegally. what's interesting there, he vetoed a bill that was passed with overwhelming republican support in both the state house and the state senate. we'll have even more new poll numbers for you tomorrow including what's going on with the issue on health care. up next, you know when they say. laws are like sausages. better to not see them being made. we're looking at why the legislative process is getting even messier these days. first, a look ahead at today's busy politics planner. the president is making some intentional news at a stop in north carolina today on his way out west for the two-day china summit talking at a school where he's expected to call for billions of dollars to bring

high-speed internet to schools and libraries across the country. the goal is to have 90% of students have access to high-speed internet within four years. they don't need congressional approval to do this. they'll have a tiny tax apparently via the fcc. like pennies a year for people that is going to pay for this. after that, he heads west. headlining several fundraisers in california before tomorrow's two-day summit with the chinese president beginning in southern california. you're watching "the daily rundown" only on msnbc. this is my favorite one. it's upside down. oh, sorry.

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sitting in committee ♪ ♪ but i know i'll be a law some day ♪ >> that's supposedly how it worked. remember? what's how we all learned it. the building of legislating is different. it's inefficient, broken and messy. staffers are powerful negotiators. lobbyists are everywhere and many legislators are more concerned about practice than policy. you can see it going on at the start of the year the immigration proposal seemed like a sure thing but factions began to dig in their heels and today the bill looks like it may be in some trouble. we'll see. this could be a rough patch. a case study of how congress really works in a new book called "act of congress" looks at the two-year effort to pass one of the most complicated pieces of legislation written in decades. the dodd-frank financial reform act. an unsettling look at how

complicated the process can be. i want to start when we dig into dodd-frank which was a great example. i remember covering this on the white house side of things and hearing from treasury staffers saying we're writing the basic legislation to begin this process because we don't think members of congress know what they're doing. >> it's true. they did. that's how we got the bill that we got. it's important to keep in mind this is what's going on since fdr. the president proposes and congress disposes. founders had the idea that congress would be the most powerful body and gave them the most power. it's explicit in article 1. we lived with this for a long time now. the presidents are the ones that

articulate policy goes and congress responds. >> is it that we don't have expertise or a level of sophistication on certain issues prevalent among members themselves? >> that's a huge part of it. i was shocked to discover how few experts there were. take any reveals in his memoir, 95% of the work, 95% of the nitty-gritty work of negotiating legislation is now done by the staff. that's true. the chief council to dodd's committee apart from dodd and frank i argue in the book the two most important people in the story of this bill. >> throw in the guys at

treasury. >> this is true. >> and so one of the problems that i thought about when it comes to congress and lack of expertise is that the seniority system actually seems to make it harder for maybe younger, more knowledgeable members of congress to be involved in the legislation. i think for instance a guy like mark warner and bob corker, two successful businessmen, they had a hard time to get involved. >> they found each other interestingly. they collaborated and worked hard and had limited impact on legislation. >> even though they had more expertise -- no offense to dodd and frank. they got to know this information and this level of detail for years. >> and dodd was very good. it's important to keep in mind those two guys made this

possible, i argue, because of the seniority system and not because of winning a popularity contest. you're right. i think that you talked earlier about the best and brightest not being in congress. we have a huge problem. we have a really lousy way of life for members of congress. you have to spend two or three days a week on the phone pleading with strangers to give you money. that's a demeaning act. who wants to do that? >> we've seen a memo go out that freshmen members are told if you're not spending four hours a day on the phone, you won't get re-elected. >> exactly. you have to travel home every weekend. you can't move your family to washington to be with you here. there's just all kinds of reasons why the best and brightest often are not attracted to this. >> you go through your book and read this book and i felt this myself covering this the last 20 years. you come away why should the

public be comfortable with this group of people writing laws? >> it reflects us. one of the things i realized is we don't get congress that's any better than we are. >> you sound like donald rumsfeld here. you go to congress with the one you elect and not the one you want. >> i think in absence of citizen involvement of citizen participation, of people paying attention and knowing what's going on, this is what we get. i think it's a big problem. congress is now an emotional response to a very divided electorate and people don't respond that way. they respond with feeling. that doesn't help us get important results. >> anyone that cares about congress cares about the legislative branch and congress needs to read it. thank you. pleasure to have you on. much more still to come here on "the daily rundown" including a fascinating sitdown that i had with congressman john dingell after more than 57 years on the

hill he's full of surprises. hear his unexpected thoughts on president obama and speaker boehner. a full interview will air tomorrow but some of the stuff i want to get to today. today's trivia question. whose record did congressman john dingell break to become the longest serving member of the house of representatives in u.s. history? the first person to tweet the correct answer to me will get the on-air shoutshout-out. the answer and more coming up after the break. ♪ [ grunts ] yowza! that's why i eat belvita at breakfast. it's made with delicious ingredients and carefully baked to release steady energy that lasts... we are golfing now, buddy! [ grunts ] ...all morning long. i got it! for the win! uno mas! getting closer! belvita breakfast biscuits -- steady energy to do what i do all morning long.

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developing now in our special two-hour show that we're wha packing into one hour, you're looking at the house oversight committee being held on the irs. treasury inspector general for tax administration russell george and acting irs commissioner danny werfel are testifying again. the whole happiness consultant business. this hearing comes after that new report from the inspector

general that found the irs spend $49 million on 225 employee conferences between 2010 and 2012. a time when the federal budget and everybody was arguing over things like sequestration. what were they thinking? also developing now, lawyers in the george zimmerman case are back in court today. a two-day hearing ahead of the trial itself which is set to begin next week. george zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder for the death of trayvon martin next february. he's pleaded not guilty. these are live pictures of the courtroom in sanford, florida. this is an evidentiary hearing. the defense is expected to ask the court to ban the prosecution from using a list of terms and phrases during the upcoming opening statements. included on the list are words like vigilante, profile, and want to be cop. the court will hear arguments on whether to hear scientific evidence and use an expert that says trayvon martin can be heard screaming on a 911 call placed

on the night of his death. we'll bring you news that develops out of it. george zimmerman has sued nbc universal for defamation. the company denies his alle allegations. presidential election is the super bowl of political polling. but for one of the well known brand names in the field, it was the culmination of months of mistakes causing them to fumble the ball on the biggest night of the year. in today's deep dive, we're looking at what happened to g gallup and the search after the agency predicted mitt romney would win the white house. the white house underestimated president obama's support and overrepresented republican voters. in the last poll before election day, gallup had romney up a single point among likely voters. obama was up by a point. all had the president either

tied or leading in their final survey. outside of rasmussen, a polling firm that has been widely accused of skewing conservative, gallup was the only other organization that predicted a romney victory. as you may recall, the president won by four points. 51-47. gallup's numbers were close on election day. the gap was wider in earlier polls. on october 28th, just a week before the election, gallup had romney up five. week before that, romney up seven. nbc news and "wall street journal" had the race either tied or obama up. gallup's editor in chief promised a top to bottom review to wording of ballot questions. joining me now, one of the great gentleman of washington. mr. newport, good morning to you. >> good to be with you.

>> you went through a thorough review. you have taken it on the chin. i've been among those that have been very publicly critical of what gallup was doing over the years. let's start with what you believe is the biggest problem you faced and that happened to be it appears number one on your list is this likely voter screen. >> i would even broaden that up and say likely voter process. how do we actually figure out who is going to turn out and vote. that's a moving target. that's changing. we're using a model that was developed decades ago. it's probably outdated. probably needs to be changed. and our analysis of where we were, we were three points romney leading among registered voters and model moved it down to our final estimate which was one-point for romney. that was too much. if we had just moved the numbers like the average of other polls, we would have been significantly more toward obama. that feeds to be looked at. we're going to use new jersey

and virginia as test caseworking with the university of michigan program and we're going to overall that and look from square one in today's environment how do you estimate who bill turn out. >> we're looking a the model in the same way. we were on the right side but not enough. we want to know why. one of the things that obama's pollster and he wrote very public memos criticizing you, i would hear from him and his contention on the likely voter is that younger voters who vote by mail, they are using levels of enthusiasm which we use or do you know where your polling place is which is among questions you use is just an outdated mechanism. do you think he's right? >> there may be some of that to it. we took some of that into account of course. if you are really young we don't ask if you voted before. early voting in old days when george gallup developed this, everyone went to the local precinct. there was no early vote. in oregon that's a stupid question because nobody knows where people vote. they all send it in by mail.

>> they say kitchen table. >> that's right. there are a lot of changes along those lines and we learned from the obama campaign how much they now focus on registration on one end and get out the vote on the other end and it may be responses are lukewarm. not sure i'm going to vote but they're contacted so much that they end up voting so asking people if they'll vote is not as appropriate as three decades ago. >> one other things you found here that i didn't know about this issue which was you had a regional -- you were off in your regions. eastern and western time zones were under represented. how did that happen? >> not regions because we control by regions. within regions our interviewing -- it shouldn't have happened. we control these things carefully but we were interviewing later in the evening. we thought that appropriate. it just ended up when we went back and examined it carefully we were more in the central than eastern within the south and midwest and on some nights more in the mountain than pacific time zones in the west and of course the big differences by

voting those areas. that's what we're fixing. that's california, washington and oregon opposed to utah. >> the thing that jumped out at me among the four is you don't do random digital dialing. there are two ways to poll. obama people only poll lists and lists of registered voters. >> we'll test that this fall. >> random digit dialing where you randomly digit ten numbers maybe by area code but you randomly dial it. you guys were going away from that over the last few years. do you regret that? >> yes. we made a change and we're going back to that. we made our change in april 2011 when he expanded our cell phones. we've led the industry in cell phones. with a lot of cell phones you are covering unlisted land line numbers because almost everybody that has an unlisted land line is reachable by cell phone. it made sense in hetheory.

outside consultants looked at that and said there are internal issues with that we weren't aware of and not the best decision and we're changing back now. >> one of my frustrations watching what you have done over the last few years is when you made the decision to get into the daily tracking business, if you don't like the daily track today, wake up tomorrow. did you feel pressure that you had these frankly irresponsible pollsters and some of these other ones that were stealing the thunder of the brand and did you rush -- do you think you rushed too quickly into the daily tracking poll game? >> that's a corporate question about where we want to position. frankly how do we best contribute to people who want to understand the race. there are pros and cons to it. we are interviewing every day for other purposes. we have the advantage of gallup of asking a ballot question every day and report it. there are downsides to that. no question about it. numbers do fluctuate day-to-day. >> could you have a great poll and 1 out of 20 you throw away.

>> you can control it but if you actually damp en it down and control it too much, the numbers flat line. obama people said numbers never move because they were highly controlling the sample. if you do that, it's not interesting to people to see no change. your damned if you do and damned if you don't. we'll in 2016 think about consequences of how we best report the numbers. >> you guys have been very forthcoming, transparent about your process and i appreciate that. thanks for coming up. >> pleasure to be here, chuck. >> just for the full disclosure i'm sure you're doing the tie comparison, we conducted that interview yesterday morning. our gaggle will be here next. wait until you hear what congressman john dingell has to say about president obama. first, the white house soup of the day. chicken tortilla. president leaves at noon today so it's for the staff that don't get to go to california.

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on friday michigan democrat john dingell would have served in the u.s. congress longer than any other member in history, house or senate. this week i sat down with him to talk about his career and what's changed over those 57 years. he's served with 11 presidents, by the way also 11 speakers of the house. but i wanted to bring you this little preview of our sitdown interview. here's what he had to say about the current president. >> in all fairness to this president, and i say that he's a good man and he's going to go down in history as a good president. i think he had the smallest rolodex ever when he hit town. he moved so fast he never had any chance to build scar tissue, to learn politics, to be hurt. you have to be hurt in this

business. so that you're tough and so that you'll learn because that's a very important learning device getting hurt. so he's had to kind of fight his way up fast without the experience. i don't think that he's had the kind of advisers that truman had or that roosevelt had or that johnson had. i don't think he's had the experience that those people had. he moved too fast. now, this hasn't taken away from him. this a good president and a good man. >> the dean of the democratic party in the house of representatives. the trivia. whose record did dingell break to become the longest serving member of the house? the answer is jamie whitten of mississippi. congratulations to today's

winner, james mills. dingell is breaking the record on robert bird. we'll be back. [ male announcer ] erica had a rough day. there was this and this. she got a parking ticket... ♪ and she forgot to pay her credit card bill on time. good thing she's got the citi simplicity card. it doesn't charge late fees or a penalty rate. ever. as in never ever. now about that parking ticket.

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if we were all the same, life would be boring. so get to know people who aren't like you. you'll appreciate what makes us different. the more you know. let's bring back the gaggle. msnbc contributor perry bacon jr. amy, chris. you guys got to speak fast. we've messed around, the technical difficulties have caused a scrunch of time. perry, john dingell's interesting critique of president obama. >> obama picks his insiders in his club as he appointed susan rice yesterday. not surprising. we've heard he's not experienced enough from a lot of people in washington for a long time. obama is ignoring this. he wants people around him who are familiar to him.

you've seen that with susan rice. >> amy, if he's going to do this, the thing that people did want him to do when they elected him in 2008 was to fix this town. >> that's part of the issue. you either decide you're going to fix this town because you're going to change it from the outside. the better way to fix it -- and the town will always win. let's just say it. the town always wins. the house wins and the town wins. if you're going to change the town, it's much easier to change it from the inside. so when you talk to folks around this town, they say it's not just that he didn't have relationships with congress, the decision to not hire lobbyists or anybody who had any hint of working within that bad, bad, tainted world, that's what the problem is. >> some of the best fbi agents are former criminals. >> you rob yourself of constitutional wisdom, people

who sort of know which levers to pull. look, the dingell thing that was most fascinating to me was right at the beginning, the smallest rolodex of anyone. that means this is a guy who doesn't know any of us. and the sort of unsaid part is doesn't really care to know. that to me is more problematic. he came in, he rolls up really fast. he didn't sort of reach out because i think he thought, to amy's point, we're going from the outside in. >> dingell is mr. health care. the health care bill did pass under barack obama. obama did actually get this done. he got the thing john dingell wanted done without the relationships. >> well, apparently they're playing the song a little early even though we have a little more time here. >> playing us out. >> shameless plugs. >> i'm making a shameless plug. we have our five keys to the election constantly updated throughout the cycle. you can find out what they are. >> very nice. >> cookpolitical.com. >> my dad just had surgery and has come out of it well, and i

think he's getting out of the hospital. dad, good for you. >> maybe he's watching. >> let's hope. >> well, he loves chuck todd. >> hosting the ed schultz show on saturday. check us out. >> very nice. these guys don't know the ship, but they're sticking around. we're going to do a special on massachusetts senate and that debate post-view. that's it for this edition of "the daily rundown." we're going to have much more of my interview with congressman john dingell. coming up next, chris jansing. bye-bye. i'm meteorologist bill karins with your business travel forecast. all eyes are focusing on the southeast. that's where tropical storm andrea will be making landfall later on tonight. it's a weak tropical system. not your typical eye or anything. just a lot of rain.

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coming up on the top of the hour. we're monitoring a news conference expected to start shortly on that deadly building collapse in philadelphia. at least six people were killed. a 61-year-old woman was pulled from the rubble alive last night. one of 14 people hurt in the collapse. we'll bring you any new information from this news conference as it comes in.

good morning. i'm chris jansing. the big story we're following is the blockbuster report about a secret government surveillance program. the headline in "the guardian" lays it all out. the national security agency is collecting phone records of millions of verizon customers. the phrase they use is "indiscriminately and in bulk." a secret foreign intelligence surveillance court ruled it was okay and gave the government the authority to get the records for three months. it is raising questions about privacy and the powers of the federal government post-9/11. the government is not listening to those phone calls but collecting what's called metadata. so it's phone numbers, the time of the call, the location, the duration, and any unique identifiers. >> what's unusual is the unlimited scope of it. the fact they're just taking it all. it's not targeted. >> in totality to have actually put together a worse narrative for a progressive president. >> t