more stem teachers so all our teachers are prepared for jobs of tomorrow. now is the time to make sure businesses offer men and women the flexibility to be good employees and good parents. i want to commend the ceos who are with us here today. they are creating exactly the kind of innovator workplaces that help our working americans thrive and they're committed to pay equity. when you have a chance to talk to joe, say thank you. ceos who are out there, if you want a first-class company that is tapping into the talents and resources of all your employees, make sure that you're putting in place system so that they all feel like they're being treated fairly and equally. it's a simple principle and it's

a powerful one. and now is the time to make sure that we are putting in place a minimum wage that you can live on. because 60% of those making the minimum wage are women. we do all this, and this will be part of our broader agenda to create good jobs and to strengthen middle class security, to keep rebuilding an economy that works for everybody, that gives every american the chance to get ahead, no matter who you are or what you look like, what your last name is, who you love. that's what i'm going to keep on fighting for. that's what you're going to keep on fighting for. and we have all of you and your predecessors to thank for the incredible progress this country has made in eliminating the barriers and injustices that might keep our daughters from enjoying the same rights, same chances and same freedoms as our sons. i'm proud of you. thank you very much.

>> that was president obama speaking about equal pay in the east room of the white house. it is monday, june 10th and this is "now." opposition to the government's sweeping surveillance program now has a public face. 29-year-old edward snowden who left his job as a civilian contractor at the nsa three weeks ago after just three months on the job. he fled to hong kong and spoke on the record about why he felt the need to reveal his trove of classified information and in the process spark a global debate over national security. >> the months ahead, the years ahead, it is only going to get worse. a new leader will be elected. they'll flip the switch, say that because of the crisis, because of the dangers that we face in the world, you know,

some new and unpredicted threat, we need more authority, we need more power and there will be nothing the people can do at that point to oppose it and it will you turnkey tyranny. >> his leaks have dramatically increased scrutiny over the scope and breadth of america's national security program. "the washington post" writes the prison program in particular shows how fundamentally it has shifted away from individual suspicion in favor of systematic mass collection techniques. in an interview with nbc news, director of national intelligence, james clapper, disputed that the u.s. government is engaged in a massive spying operation targeting its own citizens. >> the notion that we're trolling through everyone's e-mails and voyeuristically reading them or listening to everyone's phone calls is, on its face, absurd. we couldn't do it even if we wanted to, and i assure you, we don't want to. >> whether or not american citizens are being unjustly surveilled, there is no question that the country's security

complex has grown exponentially to accommodate for the unprecedented and ever expanding amount of data that it now collects and keeps. >> what do we do with all of the other records? nothing. >> you keep it though. >> of course you do. because i mean, you get the cell phone with that number six months from now, you want to know the history of that number. >> just where is all this data being stored? here, at a new $2 billion data center in bluff it will dale, utah. a sprawling complex with four 25,000-square foot halls of servers and its own power substation that will cost $40 million a year to operate. the existence and details of the plant were reported in an article last year in "wired" magazine in which the author wrote, "the potential amount of information that could be housed in bluffdale is truly staggering. with snowden's daily drops of

classified information, the country is learning inje inin i how staggering the amount of information is. also joining us from washington, james banford, author of "the shadow factory, the ultra secret nsa from 911 to the eevs dropping on america." james, thanks for joining us. the article you wrote a year ago was incredibly -- the foresight there we're only really truly grasping i think today. i want to talk first about edward snowden and what you think of the role he's playing. there is a huge debate whether he is patriot or criminal. do you think he has credibility as a whistle-blower? >> oh, he has tremendous credibility as a whistle-blower. there's no doubt that he worked at nsa and he was actually at

the nsa major operation in hawaii and the documents are as authentic as you can get. so there is no question about his authenticity. in terms of his motivation, i think he's pretty much explained his motivation and it is not to make money. it is not for anything that's positive. it is basically everything's negative about it, for him. the only thing positive is he's hoping to alert the american public to something that a lot of people within the intelligence community know but they can't say. i interview people at nsa -- or former nsa people last year for my article in "wired" on the big data center, and these are senior officials, people that have been there for 40 years almost. people that were the civilian equivalent of generals. they were saying almost exactly the same thing. difference was they didn't have

documents to put on the front page of a newspaper, but they were basically saying the same thing. and i quoted them by name in my "wired" article. >> james, one of the things that surprised me was how -- the fact that snowden was contracted out, that he had been at booz allen hamilton for just three months. he'd worked for dell but he wasn't part of the infrastructure, he wasn't government employee. politico yesterday brings to the fore his being a tess to close classified documents does expose leaks in the sort of massive counterterrorism national security complex that we've developed. "snowden was 1 of hundreds of thousands of private sector workers supporting the intelligence community, defense department and other vital agencies. it is a population so huge that no one, including the leaders of the pentagon and the intelligence community, knows exactly how big it is. sunday's revelation could make government leaders rethink the access now given to private sector companies that are

inextricably tied to the functions of the intelligence and defense agencies." were you surprised at all given your reporting thus far? >> not at all. i've written a great deal about all that, the problems with all this contracting. it is really amazing. these are companies, some big companies like saic and booz allen and thousands of little companies nobody's ever heard of, ma, pa, beltway bandit type companies. they all are outsourced by nsa to do things like eavesdropping. these are people in little companies nobody's heard of with earphones on their head eavesdropping on communications. you can see ads in newspapers, in sort of technical papers, advertising for people with clearances that are able to do this work. the signals intelligence work. eavesdropping communications and so forth. this is a massive operation within the industrial intelligence industrial complex.

>> i want to open this up to our panel in new york here. richard, let's talk about edward snowden. i think it is shocking that you have ads for intelligence analysts in the tech papers, and that a guy that really -- i mean is one of thousands, if not tens of thousands of these analysts who are, as james says, sitting in rooms with their headphones on eavesdropping on conversations, whether foreign or domestic, is -- i don't think that speaks well of the u.s. government and its intelligence gathering operations, although there is a raging debate right now over whether or not snowden is a good guy or a bad guy. i'd love to know what you think on this monday as we have now had four days of drops. >> i think he's courageous, for sure. as a journalist, you want to see these kinds of secrets exposed. honestly. now, the national security agency certainly doesn't want to. the obama administration and previous and future administrations will hate that

this ever could happen. but in the interest of public debate, i think it's incredibly brave and courageous. now, is -- are his motives pure? i have no idea. in many cases it is irrelevant. what is right is to have this policy debate, because frankly, you have members of congress who are acting in incredibly hypocritical ways, saying we didn't know anything about this. they only just voted to reauthorize the very things they say they knew nothing about. where is congress in this. where is the secret court? does it have any teeth? the fisa cover turt. we have to look at ourselves. if we're going to have a zero tolerance approach to terrorism, we need to connect the dots and how are there intelligence failures, in is where we end up. we've got to understand how we got here and what this man has done actually helps us. >> josh, in terms of snowden, this is all happening against the backdrop of bradley manning and wikileaks.

there the government is actually trying to prove something that i think they'd have an easier time doing with the case of snowden, which is this guy thought he was doing something in the public interest and that there was a specific sort of moral wrestling that he did before he released these documents and that he is very much thinking about the kind of country he wants us to be, these are sort of ideological concerns that he had. i think it is harding to make that case with bradley manning. i also thought going out ahead of this, insofar as he's not done with the classified data dump yet, and saying who he is and making that video with "the guardian" is going to be instrumental in terms of what ultimately happens to him. >> i think he is driving the narrative. what will protect snowden is not the law but public opinion. if there is a sense the leaks he did are in the public interest, it will make it more difficult for the government to prosecute him or at least punish him harshly. i think there is a big substantive difference between his leaks and brady manning's leaks.

he's clearly picked some important pieces of information he thinks is important for the public to know. it is not about specific operations or relationship, it is about broad intelligence practices of the u.s. government that really are properly the subject after public debate. we ought to be discussing whether the government should do this kind of surveillance. i think the government's had a lot of trouble trying to explain why it was problematic for national security for people to know they're, for example, collecting these phone records. i think the case for his leak is a lot stronger than the case for manning's leak. that's why i they he's had to come out and make that clear. he is going to depend on people feeling that he he's on stronger ground than manning is. >> in addition to the size and scope of our national security apparatus, it's brought to the fore the checks in fisa courts themselves, in 2012, got 1,789 government applications.

40 of those were modified by the court. one was withdrawn by the government. zero were denied. you look at that record. you think is this court really anything more than a rubber stamp? >> in the whole history of the court, it's -- >> it's absurd. what happens is, for example, if the government goes in and they want to move forward on one of these things before they've been having this data mining, and now they want to move ahead. they have some kind of suspicion an they go before the fisa court. who make the alternate argument that they should not be allowed to go forward? as far as i know, no one. though we're never positive because all of this stuff is secret. to me, the big question is, the government keeps telling us everything they're doing is legal. maybe that's the case. we frankly don't know whether it is constitutional because they haven't permitted any real constitutional challenge to this thing going forward. a judge once told me democracy dies behind closed doors. what happens -- what we should

be thinking about is not so much whether this is legal -- though obviously that's important -- we should be thinking about whether this is the right thing to do. is it proportional. is there some reason for the government to be moving ahead to do this and that's why it is so good that this conversation is out there in the open right now. >> james, i want to let you get in there. i know you had something to say about the fisa courts. >> the fisa courts, really interesting. it was formed in 1978 and the entire history of the fisa court, it's only turned the government down once. very few people realize that there's another court above the fisa court called the fisa -- foreign intelligence surveillance court of appeals. it is sort of the maytag repair man of the judiciary. in its entire history since 1978 it's only heard one case. that case favored the government. now if the government -- if it had gone against the government, the government would have still had a third bite at the apple.

they could have gone directly to the supreme court to appeal it. the odds of actually the government being turned down on a fisa -- what they call a fisa court order is infinitesimally small. not only that, when you fisa court was formed, it at least had some teeth. if they wanted to eavesdrop on james bamford, the government would have to make some kind of an argument for why. after the revelations of the bush warrantless wiretapping and the creation of the foreign intelligence amendments act, the court was watered down a great deal. so now instead of going in there with a specific person, they can go in there with this general warrant saying we want to -- we ant all of the records of all the people in the united states, even local calls that don't even make the billing records. if you call your grandmother

next door or something. so that's an enormous leap from where they've created the idea of this court in the first place. an because the court is so secret, nobody knows any of this stuff. that's one of the reasons why the first document that was leaked was this court order from thefy is a court showing the broad -- how broadly this is applied. >> maggie, do you think the american public is going to keep this issue alive? the media has kept it alive. but there is anecdotally this idea that you tell americans, look, we're going to have to check your phones and facebook accounts to make sure you're safe. are you cool with it? the american public says, yeah, we're cool with it. then if you dig deeper and hear about the fisa courts and the extent to which we are contracting private companies to do the work of surveillance, i mean i think that there are some legitimate concerns that the american people would actually have a real debate to be had.

>> there is definitely a real debate to be had. real threads of this could stay alive in the terms of public interest. i don't think the public has tended to be that engaged on issues like this. look at bradley manning. what were the huge policy changes that came after that? basically the public loses interest. we all move on and it dies. this one might be different -- >> maybe it might be different because it is domestic surveillance. saying that your communications over facebook with your friend in ireland are being monitored an your verizon phone records. >> the answer always has been we're doing this legally. i don't ever think it is great to assume that. as long as people say i take my government at its word, then it sort of disappears. >> this is where the press has a role though. as we go forward, this thing is so vast that you know there are going to be abuses. there are abuses i'm sure going on even as we speak. eventually some of those abuses are going to make their way into the public sphere and that may be the point at which the public starts to stand up and say, oh,

no, this has gone too far. >> but it's been different -- it's been very different in england. i just came back from london and it's interesting. before all this broke over here, there was a debate in england over the same thing. it was whether or not the government should have access to the externals, the meta data of the telephone calls and internet records and so forth. access -- and whether or not the isp should be forced to hold these record for a year. the difference was in england, this was all proposed as a bill through parliament. and there was actually public debate on that and it was turned down the first time it was proposed. >> unlike here, where it is actually already happening. >> it happens behind closed door like in east germany and cold war. >> james bamford, thank you so much for joining us and, more fundamentally, your reporting on this. i encourage everybody to check out the book, "the shadow

factory, the ultra secret nsa from 9/11 to the eavesdropping on america." james bamford, thanks for your time. after the break, famous democrat once said you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. republicans are taking the advice to heart. we will talk political position is and national security next on "now." with the spark miles card from capital one, bjorn earns unlimited rewards for his small business.

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♪ [ roars ] ♪ [ roars ] ♪ [ roars ] ♪ [ male announcer ] universal studios summer of survival. ♪ the political debate over the government's spying program has made for some strange bedfellows. politico described the return of the libertarians, reporting nothing brings the left and right together quite like government. ing. on is under the democratic and republican chairs of the house

and senate committees made it clear -- >> taking a very sensitive classified program that targets foreign persons on foreign lands and putting just enough out there to be dangerous is dangerous to us, it is dangerous to our national security, and it violates the oath of which that person took. i absolutely think they should be prosecuted. >> you, too, senator feinstein? >> i do. >> but the bipartisanship did not signal an end to political football. rand paul, for example, found a way to make his civil liberties argument seamlessly dovetail with a broader political attack. >> i think it really makes people distrust their government even more when they see the irs used to go after political opponents. >> house majority leader eric cantore exemplified the bind while retaining his hard line anti-terror bona fides. >> the imperative here is to maintain our national security

and also safeguarding our civil liberties. >> did the obama administration go further than the bush administration had gone in its surveillance? >> well, we again, charlie, these are questions we don't know the answers to. >> how do you not know the answer? i mean you're one of the top ranking republicans on capitol hill. i mean you have access and oversight and you don't know the answers? >> i haven't talked to this individual. i have not been briefed on what this individual -- >> but you know what -- >> spicy in the morning time! josh barrow, how do you grade eric cantor's performance there. >> not very good. it's actually remarkable that -- the split on capitol hill where you see some saying we knew this all along and others raising their hands saying, i don't know about this. if you're a member of congress and this isn't in your portfolio, you just may not be briefed on something that you in fact did have access to information about. but they're also only briefing some people on capitol hill about these programs. i think it brings us back to why we need that for a robust political debate. even though people are scoring

political points here, i think it is still productive that people are talking about the issue and through the noise i think we are getting a signal of whether programs like this -- >> i'm all for the debate, richard. however, i do think it is a difficult position for certain republicans, right? because -- >> just slightly. >> there was you hue and cry last summer about leaks, prosecuting leaks, our national security has been compromised. now post-stand with rand, civil liberties are sort of a la -- they're chic right now in the republican party and it makes eric cantor's job trickier. >> you could put it like that. they are exhibiting what they used -- republicans used to call a pre-9/11 mindset. this idea we'll fuss around about civil liberties and what the lawyers are think was supposed to be what democrats were doing before 9/11 and why we got into trouble and what we needed to do was connect the dots and make sure everything got scooped up and that's exactly what happened. the last segment, james bamford

said, in britain they manage to debate this stuff. you know what? the house, controlled by people like eric cantor, just had a chance to debate this thing and reauthorize the fisa amendments -- and so did the senate, and they voted overwhelmingly to do so. if they wanted to debate it or investigate it, they could and many people knew about it. they could claim now, for all they want, that they didn't have the chance but that's the difference in a democracy. congress could have said we are not going to reauthorize this, we want this change to happen. they chose not to. >> let's be clear, the democrats reauthorized it, too. >> completely true. >> now, maggie, i've been quoting politico so much, i feel like i shouldn't say this -- as glen writes, in an irony now being savored by his critics, obama administration officials are now relying on republicans to defend him against charges from the liberals and libertarian right he's recklessly prioritized national security over personal lent. >> the argument that

neoconservatives make and foreign policy and national security hawks make, they all say this is all terrible, they all sound like senator obama until they become president. then they realize it is a scary world out there. i think the both that the democratic senate and republican house reauthorized this is very important. this is splitting -- not splitting along ideological lines. are you seeing the libertarian coalition and also the hawk coalition. there is a sort of able defining gap there as well. are you seeing older senator, older congress members saying we need more security, we need to keep the nation safe. are you seeing younger, more lifl liberties minded people saying no, that's not a good idea. i don't think there is much after difference in what you are seeing in the arguments now between here around the bush years. the differencecy think right after 9/11 nobody wanted to be seen as speaking against national security. you are seeing some of that here. the problem is this is taking place in the shadow of the boston bombing. that was a massive security

failure so you do start to wonder how much good -- the examples will be cited if we stop this terrorist attack, we stopped this. but there are going to be invariably moments when things did not get stopped. >> the difference is that this is happening under a democratic president. right? it was one thing when the left was angry at george w. bush and now it is -- we have a democrat in office, one who is a constitutional law professor. is there this is something a lot of us were concerned about in 2001. when you start eroding civil liberties, the question becomes how do you then stop that encroachment. that's another discussion that we ought to be having now. we need to come to some kind of agreement in the united states as to what civil liberties means in 2013, 2014 and what kind of civil liberties do americans really want. we don't really have an answer to that. >> nor do we know what imminent threat actually means in the post-9/11. we have to take a short break. coming up, former south african president nelson mandela

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[ male announcer ] home insurance that saves you money for not having a claim? that's allstate home insurance with claim free rewards. talk to an allstate agent... [ doorbell rings ] and let the good life in. former south african president nelson mandela was admitted into a johannesburg hospital early saturday morning for treatment of a lung infection. the last update from the south african government described the 94-year-old in serious, but stable, condition. nbc's keer summons is live in johannesburg with the latest. >> reporter: good afternoon, alex. today we've seen winnie mandela, his former wife, with him for the 27 years he was in prison, visiting the hospital in pretoria where we believe he is being treated. we've also seen vehicles come and go with we believe inside family members. a statement was released saying

his condition is unchanged, he's still serious. that's the first file that they've described his condition that way. president is calling on people here to pray for him. >> nbc's keir simmons, thanks for the update. after the break, president obama and the president of china roll up their sleeves for a casual, yet awkward, teta tet in california. tim pawlenty joins us live in studio next. it starts with little things. tiny changes in the brain.

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obama played hardball confronting his chinese counterpart on cyber theft and espionage reportingly citing specific evidence that those violations had originated within china. underscoring this is the fact that -- underscoring this is the fact that china remains the second-largest trading partner to the u.s. and holds approximately $1.2 trillion in

american debt. but the presidential scolding came at, shall we say, an awkward time. on the same day that the two leaders met, "the guardian" posted this 18-page presidential policy directive which calls on the nsa to draw up a target list for american cyber attacks. the document was leaked to the gardi i gardian by a former nsa contractor. this identifies where the nsa lifted 97 billion pieces of intelligence from computer servers just this past march, mainly from sources in iran, pakistan, jordan and egypt. as to the weekend's timing, "the new york times'" maureen dowd summed it up -- certainly it was tricky for our big brother to chide xi about china's cyber hacking in america. joining us, tim pawlenty. a lot to talk about. >> you bet. >> the first is, do you think

the u.s. and specifically the u.s. and president obama has credibility to go after china on cyber attacks in this climate? >> absolutely. the difference is you have one country, namely china, stealing corporate secrets and intellectual property. we have another country, the united states, ostensibly trying to flush out terrorists and identify people who would do great harm from a terror standpoint. those are apples and oranges and to say they are the same is misleading. >> the piece of this whole edward snowden leak, we haven't really gotten to the relationship between the nsa and the businesses, including facebook, yahoo! been apple, microsoft that it either worked with or went sort of through a back door route to access the servers of. i read -- i think there is a statement from mark zuckerberg on friday. he said facebook is not, and has never been, a part of any program to give the u.s. or any other government direct access to our servers. and if we did, we would fight it aggressively. we haven't even heard of this

before yesterday. that does not sound like a cooperative partnership. certainly the lawyers vetted that statement. but what are the implications there? >> there is a number of implications to this whole scandal. if you're going to have a program like this, there is going to be some risk. here are some features that are helpful, he have been dent in this program. number one, congressional notice. number two, court supervision. three, beyond getting a ing ti marriage lev neric information, you have to understand the need for our country to preempt and stop terrorism. there's going to be some risk but if you look at those elements i just described, those are reasonable elements. additional interesting point here is what was a 29-year-old doing who's reportedly a high school drop-out who failed his military entrance example doing with this kind of access to the

nation's secrets at this level? that is an interesting question. as to facebook and the vendors, they're saying no direct access to our servers. but obviously there was access at another level of generic information. >> it sounds like you are okay with the safeguards that the president outlined on friday which was congressional oversight, all three branches of government having buy-in on this. >> if you're going to have a program like this, those elements were evident here. that doesn't necessarily make everybody comfortable about the privacy and sip liberty issues, but again if you're going to have a program like that, those elements were present in this program and i think they are good elements. >> richard, to what extent is this just a new normal and this is something we need to accept, both this is the age of terror and this is the age of unprecedented surveillance? >> i also think it is an age where we are actually pretty comfortable in this country giving up personal information to lots of people. if i described a secret code that google put on every device you carry that knows exactly

where are you at any given time and you don't know how long they're going to keep this code and you don't know how they're going to use it, but they will keep it and track it against you wherever are you, you'd say that's terrible. and if i told that you was a cookie, you'd say, who doesn't like a cookie? there is a way -- >> i would say that. >> there is a way you describe this and how it is used -- clearly it is different when we talk about terrorism and government. but when campaigns get together and they compile massive amounts of information about individual voters, about your voting record, about going to your door, asking you questions, and compiling against all sorts of commercial databases, everyone says how can every party do this? every campaign needs to do more of this? we are very comfortable with that. we are also saying, as a country, certainly through our elected officials we want them to take action against suspected terrorists. not just actual terrorists about suspected terrorists. this is how we end up. we've got a culture where we're very free with our personal information and privacy questions and we've got a certain amount of national security threats. you put the two together, you

end up with this kind of story. >> josh, i think it is really interesting that snowden chose to go to hong kong, to a place where -- the chinese government, while hong kong maintains a certain amount of independence, the chinese government absolutely has control over hong kong. if you ask hong kong residents, they have seen a decline in personal freedoms since the chinese officially took over. i think snowden seems to think that shout chinese government may be less inclined to cooperate with the u.s. in terms of extradition? it seems like a strange destination to choose. "the new yorker" brings us a really having model. "it is doubtful that beijing sees a net advantage in holding on to snowden as a bargaining chip. neither side likes exogenous ingredients and complex diplomacy. when the persecuted blind lawyer sought refuge at the u.s. embassy in beijing in 2012, it caused nearly as much agitation among american officials as it did among their chinese

counterparts. we all remember hillary clinton having to deal with this very thorny issue. >> i don't think we should assume snowden has a brilliant strategy that drove him to hong kong. i think it is a very strange choice. obviously the chinese are not the closest ally of the united states and in certain cases they can be difficult but they're difficult when it is in their interest to be difficult. i see no particular reason why they'd want to pick a fight with the united states over this. i think if the u.s. wants him extradited from hong kong, they'll get him extradited which hong kong. part of my wonders if he's even concerned of guesting caught. if he's banking on he did it in the public interest, why did he even leave the country at all? >> i would be curious as to what you think of the way snowden's handled himself. we know who he is. we know what his argument is. >> he wants to try to present

himself as somebody who's a savior of civil liberties. when he was negotiating with the "washington post," he wanted to embed a certain insignia in the article to a "foreign embassy" could know it was him so he could seek protection, presumably from a foreign embassy. if his motives were to help his country, to help civil liberties, what was his first instinct to hide in a foreign embassy and try to perhaps be enabled by, protected by or maybe even assist a foreign concern. i don't have a lot of time or patience for this person. he seems amateurish. he should have been flushed out of the system a long time ago. again i think you could ask the question, should these companies be doing what they're doing from their perspective. but he seems like an amateur who should have been flushed out of the system a long time ago. probably never have gotten into the system to begin with with. >> the very fact that he was in the system though, is that an indication that the surveillance has become too vast in this country, and if it hasn't gotten too vast, where does it stop? >> well, that's a very good question. so we're striking the balance

between privacy and security. >> or trying to. >> it is an inflection point in trying to find the precise, exact perfect point on that continuum is hard. but obviously there is a tension between security and privacy and that's what this whole debate is all about. i would say as a minimum, when you have the national security agency giving the nations -- or access to the nation's most sensitive program and information to somebody with these characteristics, a high school drop-out, fails his military entrance example, seems to be amateurish in his approach and thinking, that sends up red flags about the management of the program, at a minimum. >> this is obviously an ongoing debate. we have to take a short break but coming you up, the senate shows new signs of progress on immigration. but like most things on capitol hill these days, what's good for the upper chamber isn't necessarily good for john boehner's wheelbarrow full of frogs. we will will continue our conversation with governor pawlenty just ahead. i've been taking a multivitamin for years. centrum silver.

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the next few days, america will take an important step towards fixing our broken immigration system. the bill before the senate isn't perfect. it's a compromise. nobody will get everything they want. not democrats, not republicans, not me. but it is a bill that's largely consistent with the principles i repeatedly laid out for common sense immigration reform. so there's no reason that congress can't work together to send a bill to my desk by the end of the summer. >> that was president obama delivering his weekly address this weekend urging congress to send him an immigration bill. governor pawlenty, a little update on where this immigration bill stands. kelly ayotte came out in support of the bill, first person outside of the gang of eight. jeff sessions against it. down in the raucous caucus of the house, the house republicans

passed a resolution blocking president obama's executive order on dreamers and john boehner apparently now has a plan which i think strikes fear in the hearts of many whenever john boehner has a plan. i asked you in the break if you were bullish or bearish on the prospects of immigration reform. >> mildly bullish, is the answer. i think you'll see the senate pass a bill in some form. it may not be exactly what is on the table now but i think the consensus an sentiment and support levels are there in the senate to pass the bill. the more pressing question is what happens in the house. i can't predict that. though directionally, there is consensus in the country for some type of immigration reform. as the president said in the clip that you played, if everybody is prepared maybe to take a half a loaf instead after full loaf, they could probably get something done. if everybody says i need a full loaf -- >> i don't know about loaf sharing, maggie. the question is also boehner. politico, you guys have documented. last week there was a story about boehner being in a weaker portion than ever following the

bush tax cuts and that he feels like he has a lot of ground to make up within his own party. this is going to once again come down to the question of his leadership. >> i think it is way too early, there's a lot of jujitsu that goes on -- >> kabuki. >> kabuki. sorry. that like to present a certain face. that doesn't necessarily correlate to what's going to ultimately happen but do i have a hard time seeing this pass in the house the way things stand now. doesn't mean it won't, but i know there are huge issues between what the senate is looking at in terms of this bill and what the house wants to see and what's going to be ultimately picked apart and worked over. we'll see what happens. >> how bad if for republican party if immigration reform falls apart in the house? >> it can't get much worse. i think in the last presidential cycle they got in the twenties. >> this was the long-term issue for the party. >> it is. but don't confuse just the immigration legislation as a proxy for hispanic and latino

support for republicans. it is not a monolith. public safety, housing, jobs, health care -- the economy -- immigration is fifth or sixth on the list. so it really gets waved around as kind of this shiny object in the political discussions. it is not as severe as i think your question suggested. >> josh, you wrote about why you are, were, don't know what tense you want to use -- were once a conservative. >> i was a libertarian. >> but you made the argument that republicans need to have a substantive shift on policy. >> right. particularly on economic policy. i think the governor's right that immigration is not the republicans' chief problem with latinos. the republicans' chief problem with latinos is their economic agenda. when you ask people about their preferences in terms of a larger government providing more services or a smaller government providing fewer services, lat nose tend to favor a larger government. minority groups have been

unimpressed with the republican message on jobs. romney did bad not only with latinos but also asians. that said, defeating an imgrigs bill will not help republicans. >> former governor tim pawlenty, thanks for your time. final thoughts from our panel after the break. hey hun, remember you only need a few sheets. hmph! [ female announcer ] charmin ultra soft is so soft you'll have to remind your family they can use less. ♪ charmin ultra soft is made with extra cushions that are soft and more absorbent. plus you can use four times less. hope you saved some for me. mhmm! you and the kids. we all go. why not enjoy the go with charmin ultra soft. ♪ wonder if i gave an oreo to my dad ♪ ♪ before he made me go off to bed ♪ ♪ could we stay up? ♪ tell jokes 'til we got hiccups? ♪

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right now on "andrea mitchell reports," he says is the source of the leaks. a 29-year-old government contractor turns the intelligence world inside out. edward snowden's mother dodged cameras this morning in maryland as the hunt continues for her son who claims to be hiding in hong kong. this is someone who, for whatever reason, has chosen to violate a sacred trust for this country. the damage that these revelations incur are huge. >> my exclusive extended interview with national intelligence director james clapper ahead. ripple effect. british foreign secretary william haig cancels a trip to washington today to defend his government's intelligence cooperation with the u.s. before parliament. >> it has been suggested that we use our partnership with the united states to get around uk law o