chinese government over them hacking our politicians were it not for the revelations flooding the media this week about our own government mercilessly hacking us. "weekends with alex witt" starts now. flash flooding and torrential rains, the remnants of tropical storm andrea up and down the east coast. in minutes a live update. the truth about the u.s. government's snooping. what do they know and what are they looking for? a report that may open your eyes on the spying. two days away, the george zimmerman trial begins monday but a pretrial hearing is not over, it's on again today. what's the hangup? super power summit, a late night meeting between president obama and chinese leader one key topic stood out there. good morning, everyone. welcome to "weekends with alex witt." what's happening as we have

breaking news. nelson mandela is in the hospital this morning with what government officials are calling a serious lung infection. nbc's ana bell roberts has been monitoring the latest for us and is live in london. what more can you tell us? >> good morning, alex. it's a recurrence of the lung infection that has plagued nim recent months. he was being treated for this at home over the last couple of days but he took a turn for the worse in the middle of the night and doctors looking after him decided he needed to be transferred to the hospital immediately. he's in the hospital in pretoria. his condition is said to be serious, but stable. mandela is 94 years old. 95 next month. he was last in hospital just over a month ago. then he was treated for pneumonia. he stayed in the hospital for ten days. he is, of course, vulnerable to respiratory problems since the time that many years he spent in prison. he caught tb during that time. alex? >> all right.

thank you for that. very quickly, the government, i mean, they're being careful with the way they say this and they're being quite direct. they're saying he is in serious condition and they are reminding us that he's been in the hospital several times since december? >> that's right. it's unusual to hear the word "serious" used to describe nelson mandela's condition. there's a statement being issued by the anc. in it, they say nelson mandela and his family are in our thoughts and prayers and that they call upon people around the globe to do the same for their beloved statesman and equally statement from the opposition politicians in south africa saying that nelson mandela is the father of south africa and they're saddened by this news. back to you, alex. >> okay. anabell roberts, thank you for being a close eye on things there. also developing this morning, president obama has another key meeting with china's president in a matter of hours. it is part of a two-day summit

in rancho mirage, california. their first in-person meeting since president xi jinping took office in march. the tensions over cyber security highlighted the talks. china faces accusations of internet spying on american military and commercial secrets. >> some ways these are unchartered waters and you don't have the kinds of protocols that have governed military issues, for example, and arms issues, where nations have a lot of experience trying to negotiate what's acceptable and what's not. >> nbc's kristen welker is in palm springs, california, for us. with a very early good morning to you out there, what more is the president saying about this? >> well, it was interesting, alex, and good morning to you. president obama said at this point the two leaders had discussed the issue of cyber security at the 40,000 foot level. we can expect them to go back at it today and to dig a little bit deeper, but one of the key

points president obama made was the need for common rules and approaches for dealing with cyber attacks. now i don't expect that we're going to get a huge announcement out of this summit, but i think what president obama is aiming for is a recognition on the part of china's president that this is a big issue, something that the chinese government has been involved with as well. now president xi jinping a bit on the defense yesterday, he had noticed increased media reports in the lead up to his visit about cyber attacks and he made the point, look, china has been a victim of cyber attacks as well. president obama acknowledged this is a broader issue than just between the united states and china. here is more of what president obama had to say after meeting with president xi jinping. take a listen. >> when it comes to those cyber security issues like hacking or theft, those are not issues that are unique to the u.s./china relationship. those are issues of international concern. often times, it's nonstate actors who are engaging in these

issues as well. >> reporter: now the president was asked if the recent revelation about the united states surveillance program of phone and foreign internet records undercut his argument to china during these talks and he said he does not believe the two issues are parallel and we should say that president xi has invited president obama to come to china for a similar visit some time in the near future. >> we know the two of them will be meeting in about five hours or so from now -- no, actually -- yeah, about 9:00 a.m. local time there in los angeles. >> yes. >> thank you so much, kristen. also this morning, we are learning more about the secret government programs that gather data from phone companies and the internet. president obama is defending them as essential to stopping potential terror plots. but others say it's a big overreach. nbc justice correspondent pete williams joins us to break it all down. pete, good day. >> alex, from the president on down, federal officials presented a united front in the past 48 hours.

their message, we're not listening to your phone calls or reading your e-mails. >> reporter: in california, for a summit with the chinese leader, president obama defended the two programs that exploded into public view as necessary tradeoffs to defeat terrorists. >> you can't have 100% security and also then have 100% privacy and zero inconvenience. >> reporter: intelligence officials have now revealed more about how the two systems work. the program aimed at telephone records gathers logs of phone numbers dialed by u.s. phone customers and dumps them into an enormous data base main nands by the nsa. but james clapper says the government is prohibited from indiscriminately sifting through it. in other words, officials say no data mining. >> nobody is listening to your telephone calls. >> reporter: the data is checked he says only when there's a specific phone number or pattern of calls associated with foreign

terrorists. >> the only way to do that is if you have all the records in one place at that time. if you're looking for a need until a haystack, you need a haystack. >> reporter: the latest highly secret program to be revealed allows the nsa to be plugged into servers run by the biggest internet companies to monitor suspected terror communications. intelligence director clapper said it's intended to gather information about non-u.s. persons outside the united states. it cannot be used, he said, to target anyone located inside the u.s. unlike the telephone program which vacuums up data on virtually every call made in the u.s., the officials say the internet program taps into servers only to look at specific sites suspected of having a terrorism connection. but as shown in this power-point slide obtained by "the washington post" that can take many forms including e-mail, chats, videos and photos. while president obama and members of both parties say congress was fully breefrds on the programs, many are far from

convinced the government has the legal authority to gather up and store records of virtually every u.s. phone call. >> i would like to know how the president feels that my cell phone calls and your cell phone calls are relevant to an investigate sln. what investigation? what act or what threat? >> i welcome this debate. and i think it's healthy for our democracy. i think it's a sign of maturity. probably five years ago, six years ago, we might not have been having this debate. >> reporter: some members of congress concerned about these programs say they'll try to change the law to reign them in and civil liberties groups are talking about filing lawsuits. alex? >> justice correspondent pete williams thank you so much. in santa monica, four people are dead and five injured after an apparent domestic violence incident escalated. a man allegedly shot his father and brother before carjacking a woman and then forcing her to drive to a college as he shot at public busses, other cars as

well. he killed another driver on route to the college. and a woman on campus as she -- as he shot his way to the library. >> i don't know if he zoned out or focused, but he was -- seemed very calm. he wasn't running. he wasn't moving around quickly. he was standing there and looked like panning around to see who he could shoot. luckily he didn't like jolt really quick to shoot. he kind of panned over to me. while he did that i jumped out of the way. >> police confronted and fatally shot the suspect in the library. let's go to the weather. a rough start to the weekend in the northeast. the remnants of tropical storm andrea continue to move north. they are dumping rain on new england. but the heavy rain hit the east coast pretty hard. here's what it looked like in wrightsville beach, north carolina. and, of course, we saw plenty of rain right here in the new york area. nbc meteorologist dillon drier is here with all the details. good morning. >> good morning. yesterday in central park it was the second wettest june day on record. we picked up nearly 5 inches of

rain in central park, parts of north carolina picked up to 8 inches of rain and parts of florida more than a foot of rainfall out of this system. all tropical storm warnings have been discontinued now that this has become an extra tropical low. see the bulk of the rain is only up in the maine and parts of northern new england. this whole storm system is a fast mover, although it did dump a lot of rain in parts of the east coast. basically the whole i-95 corridor. you can see the heaviest of the rain is falling through central and southeastern maine, even southern new england is already starting to clear out right now, and it's going to turn into a pretty nice weekend. couple of showers back through roanoke and moving through north carolina and we also have our best chance of seeing some stronger isolated storms today back through south dakota into parts of iowa, especially later this afternoon. we are still dealing with some flood warnings, mostly because of the creeks out there across southern new england through rhode island into parts of connecticut. even still in new jersey, the streams, creeks, rivers could deal with flooding.

the residual flooding as this water seeps into the ground. temperatures in the 50s in the northern half of the country and 60s in the southern half, but it's going to turn into a hot one across texas. 90 in dallas, 91 san antonio. scattered showers and storms across the gulf coast states and pockets of rain into florida. 110 degrees today in phoenix and we are going to still see another hot day in california up around 100 degrees in parts of interior california. but as we go into sunday, it will start to cool off a little bit. in fact, san francisco will be back down to about 66 degrees and the northeast looks beautiful. temperatures should top out in the upper 70s and lower 80s. it gives us some time to dry out before more rain moves in on monday. >> you were doing so well before you put the last part in. time to dry out. oh, no, there we go. thank you so much. the u.s. government snooping on your phones and computers. did that stop any actual terror plots? details from one report with some answers next. my mother made the best toffee in the world. it's delicious. so now we've turned her toffee into a business.

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the second-degree murder trial of george zimmerman starts on monday. before that the judge is expected to make a critical decision today whether voice analysis from a 911 call the day of the shooting should be admissible at trial. that hearing, it's now on its third day, resumes in about two hours from now. nbc's ron mot is joining me from sanford, florida. what's the latest on all this? >> hey there, alex. the courtroom behind me pretty quiet at the moment. 9:30 eastern is when we're expected to get started with the third day in this hearing where judge nelson is going to make a decision about whether any expert testimony regarding that 911 call where those screams were heard will be allowed into court. today the defense is expected to bring three witnesses forward, three voice experts, presumably they're going to argue that 911

call forensically is of so little use it should not be allowed in court because there's so few clips in that call where you're not listening to the caller, the 911 caller, or the 911 dispatcher in the distance in that phone call, you can hear an altercation. some of the states witnesses were saying that they could make out words, they are saying that trayvon martin is saying certain things and george zimmer man is saying certain things. the defense is countering saying how do you know for certain when you don't have much of a sample there to listen to. so in addition to that, the judge also has some pending motions from the defense that she's not even heard yet. we don't know how long today's session will go, whether she'll even entertain going into tomorrow. she does seem adamant this trial will get under way with jury selection on monday, alex. >> yeah. we have heard various testimony from these audio experts. is anyone suggesting thus far that the voice on the tape could be george zimmerman's? i know nobody can give conclusive, 100% irrefutable

evidence because as you're saying the sample is so small. is anyone saying it might be george's? >> well, i think the defense is going to argue some of their witnesses will probably argue some of the screams, the distress sounds you hear in that call, were george zimmerman, but yesterday we had one of the state's probably key witnesses in terms of voice analysis dr. wright was on. he is saying that it's trayvon's voice saying i'm begging you and stop, right before the sound of the gunshot. now, of course, what was being questioned yesterday and also thursday and friday in this hearing is the science, the methods that they're using to determine if words can be even gleaned out of that are scientifically acceptable in the voice community. some -- at some points in the past couple of days, the defense has been trying to get some of these witnesses to sort of prove how can you make a conclusion about who's saying what when you don't have a whole lot of data there. so it's going to be interesting

to see what judge nelson decides, if she does decide today on the hearing and then we've got other pending motions as well. >> absolutely. it could be pretty darn important evidence. thank you so much, ron mott. george zimmerman has sued nbc universal for defamation. the company has strongly denied his allegations. let's go now to washington and more revelations about the secret government programs to collect massive amount of cell phone and computer data, sparked heated debate in the public and halls of congress. but senator dianne feinstein, chair of the intelligence committee defended the tactics saying, quote, there have been approximately 100 plots and also arrests made since 2009 by the fbi. i do not know to what extent method data was used or if it was used but i know this, that terrorists will come after us if they can and the only thing we have to can deter this is good intelligence. joining me now is alex boltton, congressional correspondent for the hill covering this story. alex, with a welcome to you, is there any information about

plots that were thwarted specifically by this prism program or the phone tapping program, and not just the overall patriot act? >> well, what law enforcement officials are pointing to is the case of naygy bulu zazi who was a coffee cart vendor who sent an e-mail to an address linked to senior al qaeda leaders asking about the recipe for a flour-based explosive. and that tripped off alarms and law enforcement officials pursued zazi and ultimately he pled guilty to plotting to bomb the new york subway system. when congress was debating an extension of the law, the fisa amendments act in december of last year, dianne feinstein went to the senate floor and said that the prism program had thwarted as many as eight

terrorist cases or terrorist plots and specifically what she talked about was a plot to bomb the federal reserve in new york and in that case, there was a -- someone on a student visa who had scouted the new york stock exchange and had settled on the federal reserve and ultimately was convicted. that was quansy nafis. >> what you're talking about right there, wasn't that secret information, taken to the floor and publicly put out there, right? >> well, she -- i mean, she said that the surveillance program helped stop this terrorist attack. she also mentioned a plot to bomb the capitol that was stopped. but she didn't get into the details of what sort of data was gleaned and that was -- that's the frustration of some law makers on the intelligence committee, ron wyden of oregon, a democrat, mark udall of colorado, they they knew the

details, they alluded to the secret program but because they never got in the details people didn't pay a lot of attention to it. we didn't know just how massive this surveillance was and how many -- in the case of prism, how many internet companies were involved. very popular ones such as google, for instance. >> yeah. i want to read from your article you wrote on the hill. congress has repeatedly voted to reauthorize language in the done patriot act granting intelligence agencies broad discretion to collect phone dale data but many lawmakers were not fully aware of the implications of their votes. so how loud is the clamor there on capitol hill? i mean those that are opposing what's happening, do they say we did not know? we weren't fully informed? or we didn't do our own research as to what was happening? >> well, the lawmakers who didn't know about the program say they were never briefed, but feinstein says they should have

known. had they come to the intelligence committee, had they asked for briefings, had they looked into it, they would have known. for instance, dick durbin, a democrat from illinois, one of the critics of the program, he asked for special briefing so he knew what was going on. feinstein is making the case that people who didn't know, it's because they didn't look into it. now, of course, the critics of the program, bernie sanders, an independent from vermont, says that the intelligence community and leaders of the intelligence panel are overstating just how much congress was briefed. they say that law makers outside the intelligence panel at least, had only sort of broad indications of what these programs were about. but didn't know that so many americans were being swept up in these data sweeps. >> yeah. okay. alex bolten, thank you for coming on and reporting this. i appreciate it. the government collecting phone calls and internet use, should national security trump individual privacy? talk to me on twitter, my handle @alexwitt.

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now to our three big money headlines. who's hiring? rates of change. and cellular differences. joining me "usa today" contributor regina lewis. with a good morning to you, i want to start with the job numbers for the month of may. tell us about that. >> well, good, not great. 175,000 jobs added. private sector really doing the heavy lifting there as the federal government continues to make cuts. couple of interesting data points. 25,000 of the jobs roughly were part time. now at first you think that can't be good, but economists like to see that because it heralds future hiring. a lot of the part-time jobs traditionally will turn into full-time jobs. and the average work week, 34.5 hours. that's another number they like to see go up because as an employer i'm going to try to get you closer to 40 before i add another head. >> okay. how about housing here?

the ultralow mortgage rates are they a thing of the past? >> it's looking that way. i mean most people, the general consensus, it will head up to about 5%. nobody knows when. we are seeing jumbo mortgage, those are the ones that -- a loan over 600,000 at comparable rates. so there is some tightening there. does it have an effect? this is interesting when there are significant spikes it suppresses loan applications by about 11% on a week over week basis. it does matter. interestingly, for people who are moving, it's less of a factor if you're moving after all you have to go somewhere and looks like the return of the mcmansion, the average home size is up, builders are saying they sell four bedroom homes over three bedroom homes all day long and, you know, if you look at other industries as well, we're buying suvs, big cars to park in the big driveways of big homes. >> what about the new pew research center about smart phones? >> what learned that the majority of u.s. adults now have smartphones. 56%.

this has socioeconomic ramifications especially for spanish-speaking americans because smartphones is the primary way many of them access the internet. think about things like registering your children for things, notified about recalls, banking. really significant there. android use has surpassed iphone use with one notable exception. if you make over $150,000 and are college educated, 49% of those folks are iphone users. so the challenge for apple becomes how do you get them to upgrade. there's rumors they're going to start a trade-in program because the value of iphone 4 and 4s is significant. they'll take them back and disperse them around the world and see if they can get u.s. americans to upgrade. >> sounds like a good plan. "usa today" contributor regina lewis. nbc nightly news anchor brian williams getting his be n gangster rap on compliments of jimmy fallen. >> a clip of nbc news anchor

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welcome back. president obama is defending the government's secret surveillance program saying congress has repeatedly authorized the collection of american's phone and u.s. internet use. he said friday the intelligence community is not listening in on phone conversations, only looking at phone numbers and duration of calls, listening to any conversation would require authorization from a federal judge. >> with respect to the internet and e-mails, this does not apply

to u.s. citizens and it does not apply to people living in the united states. an again, in this instance, not only is congress fully apprised of it, but what is also true is that the fisa court has to authorize it. >> joining me now, political reporter for "the washington post" erin blake and staff writer for "the hill." . a lot of lawmakers are defending these programs as well. what is the general take from capitol hill? >> well, i think it depends on which committees these members are sitting on. there are certainly people like senator dianne feinstein who you mentioned earlier who have been fully briefed and have known for years this is going on. but we talked with several members of congress just basic sort of back benchers who were surprised by many of these revelations this week and very unhappy because they can't go back to their constituents and say this is something i knew about. >> elise, can i ask you, those

people who are clamoring about this, do they have access to the intelligence information? i mean, can they get it so they know exactly what they have authorized to be done? >> well, i think in some cases they can and certainly we're going to see those requests build as news comes out about this, but we heard from several members who said i don't even know where i could get this because i don't sit on the intelligence committee and my party leaders aren't helping, my colleagues aren't helping because plane of them have been involved in classified briefings where they're not able to share information. so i think a lot of people on the hill are frustrated and we'll continue to hear about this next week. >> aaron, your latest piece titled "senate democrat lashes out at obama administration's surveillance tactics" recording to jeff merkley's appearance on msnbc on fri. listen to part of that. >> clearly the administration has not followed what the is -- an ordinary person would consider to be the standard of the law here and has not been

willing to release the opinion of the fisa court about how they're interpreting that language, despite repeated requests from congress to do so. >> how much, aaron, did congress as a whole know about these programs and do they have a beef with the handling of this situation? >> the short answer is we don't know really know what they knew because they're not authorized to share it with us until these programs are declassified. that's the case that senator merkley was trying to make, saying that the administration needs to take these fisa court decisions, put them out in front of the american people and let the american people decide whether or not what's being done is appropriate, is legal, is right. and he's one of, of course, several senate democrats, including his oregon colleague ron widen and mark udall from colorado, giving voice to these privacy concerns and creating a headache fors the administration because any time the criticism comes from members of both parties, even if it's just a few members really speaking out, it's going to be a big deal.

>> but, aaron, i read where this may force congress to pass laws to make these types of programs more transparent. done that undermine the effectiveness of these programs if potential terrorists will know what to avoid. >> it's such a balancing act and several members of the intelligence committee alluded to that fact yesterday, including sheldon whitehouse from rhode island, angus king from maine. it is a difficult situation where the members need to keep these programs somewhat confidential in order for them to be effective, at the same time they have a responsibility to the american people to explain and assure them that they're doing the right thing. so i think what we're going to see out of this is we're going to see further disclosure of these programs but maybe not exactly everything that's going on because quite frankly, they can't do that. >> i'm curious, to what extent do you think this is political nature, the extent of the outrage from some people in congress, just to apiece their constituents? what do you think they've been hearing from their people in their districts or states? >> we know liberals, people on

the left, as well as civil libertarians are up in arms about this. i would say actually as the news initially breaks we haven't seen it become a major political attack yet. now i will say that, you know, in the future, on, you know, the rand pauls of the world who are republicans who consider themselves civil libertarians they are going to attack the administration and rand paul already has. but, for example, on the house gop side, they put out their weekly address just yesterday and it turns out that it wasn't even about this. this would have been an opportunity for them to attack obama if they wanted to, and it wasn't about this. it was about the student loan fight. we'll have to see. >> okay. e good to see you guys. >> thank. in this week's office politics our newest host who showed disrupt debuts at 4:00 p.m. today, we sat down with many things starting with the

reaction f reaction from those. >> i think a lot of people don't realize that i've actually been in politics a long time. i started actually in 1992 at the convention right here in new york. i worked for bill clinton and the clinton campaign and the clinton white house, saw a lot, learned a lot, and that experience. worked at the new york city board of education as communications director. i've had to deal with communications and message and strategy and both in the private sector and the public sector, in addition to straight politics. so i hope that helps me be able to frame an argument and, you know, kind of make my case. >> well, you made your case pretty well, because when the former white house press secretary robert gibbs was leaving, your name was out there as among those who were being considered. >> yeah. >> how does one prepare for that job? >> it's so interesting you ask that. that was the question i asked, as i was trying to think about -- my mom kept saying, it would be like the west wing, so cool. no, mom, you don't understand,

it's a lot harder than that. you basically it's a lot of boards where you have people practice with you and throw questions at you and really try to knock you off your game. in some ways i would say being on television is good preparation for that. >> live tv works. >> absolutely. and when you kind of don't know what's coming at you, but yeah, it's a lot of prep and a lot of practice. >> well, jay carney got that job. he's had to answer tough questions recently. how much do you think that job is defined by trying to deflect the questions and give answers that you are prepared to do? >> yeah. you know, i think that's part of the challenge of that job is so much of it is really deflecting. you get to put out some information in terms of the schedule or in terms of, you know, here's what we're working on. you also kind of get to flush out ideas in terms of what the administration is talking about. but it has become -- it didn't used to be as much this way -- it really has become kind of a beat up on jay carney session.

>> congressman issa was calling jay carney a liar. >> i was really disappointed to hear him say that. there's no place for that. jay is out there to do a job. he's doing the best he can. this is the other thing i think people don't always understand is that when you're the press secretary and you're the public voice, you can't always say everything you want to say. you can't always, you know -- maybe there are things whether confidential or classified information or something is still unfolding so you don't want to get too far ahead of it. it's a really challenging job in terms of figuring out what you can say, what you need to say, so that people understand, and you sort of make your case, but then also recognizing there's so much going on behind the scenes that maybe you're just not able to talk about at that point. >> which brings to mind, of course, susan rice. and the news this week now that she is moving from the united nations to the nsa. >> i certainly think given that she had to withdraw her name for contention for secretary of state, i think there was always a feeling that she was raw, that

was just an injustice. she is -- i worked with her actually in the clinton administration when -- i worked on president clinton's trip to africa as a matter of fact and she was my national security person who i worked with. she's incredible. she's a dedicated public servant. she knows the issues very well. i think a lot of people felt like she deserves another opportunity and this i think is the perfect opportunity for her. i think she will serve the president well and i think it's also giving this president the opportunity to remind the republicans he still has a bit of power. >> more of your conversation at 12 noon when i ask karen about hillary clinton's possible run for the white house and don't forget to tune in after that, 4:00 p.m. eastern for the debut of "disrupt." residents along the east coast are cleaning up after remnants of the first named storm of the hurricane season left behind quite a wet mess. downgraded by the time it reached the new york area, post-tropical storm andrea still packed heavy rains and winds,

this caused flash flooding in areas like long island hit hard by hurricane sandy seven months ago. just a few miles north of new york city for us. what are the folks dealing with besides a pretty swollen river behind you? >> good morning to you, alex. a surging river. the water, the a rain has stopped but the flooding still a huge issue and the river really the main cause as this hurricane -- tropical storm i should say made its way north. the water still pours down is now making its way back here again in the rivers. this is the river. i'm going to step over and show you the river parkway. this is a major artery leading into the city and i am able to actually walk in the middle of it this morning because it remains this morning shut down. police making sure that several miles of this strip are not accessible by car because several inches of water remain this morning in some cases even over a foot. the concern, obviously, hydroplaning as we saw last night. this road we are told will

remain shut down into the later morning and even the early afternoon. of course the main concern again, that hydroplaning, the warning going out to drivers in this area to remain cautious while on the roads. alex? >> thanks you so, we see exactly why. thank you so much, jonathan. will this picture between the president and leader of china, banned in that country. i talked with the man who wrote the book on china next. my mother made the best toffee in the world. it's delicious. so now we've turned her toffee into a business.

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mommy's having a french fry. yes she is, yes she is. [ bop ] [ male announcer ] could've had a v8. 100% vegetable juice, with three of your daily vegetable servings in every little bottle. . president obama will hold another meeting with the chinese president chi jinping later this morning, part of a two-day summit in rancho mirage, california. big issues at stake including cyber security, threat from north korea and massive economic ties between the two countries. >> the united states seeks an international economy, international economic order, where nations are playing by the same rules, where trade is free and fair and where the united states and china work together to address issues like cyber

security and the protection of intellectual property. >> joining me is gordon chang author of "the coming collapse of china." with a welcome to you, we talk about this new chinese president who just took office in march. is this something we would expect? is this a welcome introduction between these two and can much substance be acan com plished here? >> it's unusual the two presidents are meeting so quickly in xi jinping's term. he became president of the party in november. that's still very fast. i don't think that we're really going to see very much in the way of frog greprogress and chi has some internal problems. faltering economy, the rise of the military, a political system that could be in disarray and so i don't think beijing can maintain good relations with the united states, at least over the long term. and also you got to remember, xi jinping is part of a collective system and there's no person in that system, even xi himself who can translate his personal views into policy.

right now the system i think is in distress and we're going to see evidence even more clearly as we go on. >> do you think there's evidence of that because of the alleged cyber spying? >> well, cyber spying is interesting. the peoples liberation army, we've been focusing on their spying, but the state security services, the state enterprises, communist party and individuals in china hack. a lot of different units do this. xi jinping probably doesn't control them all, but really the distress right now is in the political system. you know, "the new york times" and t"the wall street journal journal" say xi has consolidated control faster than american officials thought. there's some troubling signs in china that indicate that's not the case. >> isn't it in both countries' best interest, countries around the world, to figure out what the new rules are going forward with cyber spying sh. >> well, undoubtedly. because what china is doing is just completely unacceptable. you know, it's not just a question of the pentagon and defense contractors.

it's also plain vanilla corporates and the institutions of a free society, like the press, foundations, ngos, individuals, that's completely off the table and we've got to tell the chinese that can no longer apply. it's like $250 billion of ip intellectual property that we lose each year because of sib krooiber spying and another $120 billion because of crime. we have to do things now, not just in the future. >> those are extraordinary numbers you're throwing around. speaking of numbers, 24 years ago this week, the tee yen na men square protests, the chinese government is cracking down on social media, censorship, that kind of thing. what about this picture that we showed earlier? look, that is the real picture. look what happens here. these rubber ducks have been blocked on-line. i mean, this is called the tank man photo now. is there any chance that human rights will be addressed at this summit? where does that place on things? >> president obama will talk about it, but the chinese are going to be intransigent. xi jinping has really preceded

only six months over a really severe crackdown, even worse than before, and he has been reminding very troubling. that rubber duck picture is interesting because there was a big rubber duck in hong kong to to symbolize we're all in the same bathtub. the most authoritative press outlet in china ran a big story how rubber ducks were inappropriate and they railed against them. but you can see why because of the picture. >> appreciate your insights so much. remarkable thing happened at supreme court this week and it may never happen again, or will it? ♪ ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] for dad's first job as dad. nissan tests hundreds of child seats

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to the supreme court where more critical rulings are exp t expected monday and thursday. hot-button decisions that could influence dome ma. prop 8, or the voting right act.

supreme court reporter for "the new york times." before we talk about rulings next week, can we talk about what happened this week with justice scalia, court's most conservative judge siding with three liberal justices for the rights of criminal suspects when it comes to dna testing? can you explain that? >> this therm, over and over again, justice scalia, who is one of the most conservative members of the court, has stood up for fourth amendment rights. they this the government goes too far in searching people in the case decided monday it was about whether you can take dan from people arrested but not convicts of crimes. in other cases involving drug sniffing drugs and blood testing of people suspected of dui joined liberals in saying the government's gone too far. >> do you see that happening again, scalia joining rangers with tote sow mayer. >> he has a view of the constitution that sometimes puts him on the civil libertarians side. he does that in some first

amendment cases as well. >> the decision on the voting rights act, how do you see that playing out? its quite likely that the five justices join together to limit the voting rights act of 1965. there are members of the court who think by now with the re-election of a black president and high rates of black voter registration, maybe you don't need its central part anymore. >> moving on to another couple of cases we're expecting the high court to rule on, doma and california's prop 8 marriage equality measure, which one do you expect the justices to decide on first, and why? >> i think they'll come down the same day. i think you're more likely to get a big decision out of the defense of marriage act the federal law that says same-section couples married in states that allow same-sex marriage don't get federal benefits. i think there was some skepticism about whether that's a fair law or not. i think that law may well get struck down. prop 8 is a more complicated

case, could go a lot of different ways. >> adam, as you know, they've added another date this week, thursday, to meet and express the decisions. what do you read into that? >> by the end of the term they need those extra days. they've got 26 decisions left, only three weeks to issue them in. they don't like to issue more than four in a day. i think you're going to see additional days not just next week but following weeks as well. >> adam liptak, thank you. that is a wrap of this hour of "weekends with alex witt" join me for a two-hour edition at noon. next "up with steve kornacki." the remnants of tropical

storm andrea making their way out of the northeast. already it's going to turn into a nice day except for northern new england where the rain will still hang on. 82 degrees in washington, d.c. some isolated thunderstorms in minneapolis today. and those stay in the midwest tomorrow. chicago will see late day storms with highs sunday topping out in the mid-70s. we just didn't know that our plants did, too. then we started using miracle-gro liquafeed every two weeks. now our plants get the food they need while we water. so they're bigger, healthier, and more beautiful. guaranteed. when you feed your plants, everyone grows with miracle-gro. otherworldly things. but there are some things i've never seen before. this ge jet engine can understand 5,000 data samples per second. which is good for business. because planes use less fuel, spend less time on the ground and more time in the air. suddenly, faraway places don't seem so...far away. ♪

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back in the fall of 2010 that's when christie single-handedly pulled the plug on a huge transportation project, the construction of a badly needed rail tunnel to connect new jersey and new york city. he did it, he said, because costs were exploding out of control and the state was going to be on the hook for 70% of overruns. supporters of the tunnel including the obama administration plead with him to reconsider. but christie stood firm. the economy was weak, money was short, it was his job to make hard choices like this. here's the press release his office put out when he canceled the tunnel. christie administration enforces budget discipline, protects new jersey taxpayer dollars. this was a crucial moment for christie, the politician. a dramatic and defiant stand against big government spending at height of the tea party era. the exact move