revealing to "the guardian" that the u.s. and uk spied on other world leaders at two similar summits in london in 2009. foreign officials reportedly had their computers monitors, phone calls intercepted and were targeted by setting up fab internet cafes to monitor visiting officials' communications. documents reveal during one conference communications were intercepted of dmitry medvedev as he called moscow. "new york" magazine wrote, it will likely have no effect on everyone's plans to spy on each other on monday but it might give protesters some new ideas for things to put on their signs. now in the past hour snowden has resurfaced and is currently taking questions in an online chat hosted by "the guardian" in which he has said, among other things, "the u.s. government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. truth is coming and it cannot be stopped." snowden's comments came after white house chief of staff dennis mcdonough on sunday

sought to explain the administration's data mining efforts which have roiled washington and led to an extensibilive debate about the proper scope and reach of the nsa. >> does the president feel that he is violated the privacy of any american? >> he does not. we have to find the right balance between protecting our privacy, which is the president saying i want every member of congress on whose authority we are running this program to understand it, to be briefed about it, and to be comfortable with it. >> mcdonough also said he expects the president to address the matter in the coming days. meanwhile, former vice president dick cheney had had some choice words for snowden and some particularly dire warnings about any attempt to curb executive power. >> i think he is a traitor.

i think he has committed crimes, in effect, by violating the agreements given the position he had. i think it is one of the worst occasions in my memory of someone with being a stoaccess classified information. the director of national surveillance said the two programs have helped deport k z dozens terrorist plots. while the nsa stores call data of millions of americans, in 2012 fewer than 300 of those phone calls were actually reviewed with those reviews requiring a court order. joining me today, rick hurtsberg of the new yorker. political editor for business insider and beardless man, josh barrow. ed pilkington and megan mccardell.

ed, this is your paper that's running this interesting twist on a leaker. essentially he's holding an online chat with glenn greenwald facilitating the chat. is ed greenwald with ed snowden? >> we're not discussing the locality of any of our reporters or of edward snowden himself. safe to say it is being done through a secure pipe and he's answering questions from our readers as well as our reporters. >> i had some questions, too. i wonder whether these are questions that you asked in vetting ed snowden before you ran the initial pieces. the one that keeps striking me is if -- he says that he was disgruntled going back before president obama's election. so he took this job at booz allen just in march of this year. did you ask him if he took the booz allen job with the intention of leaking classified data? did he have that intention when he took these jobs with the nsa? >> i wasn't party to those discussions. we had two reporters in a hotel

room with him for several days talking to him in detail about his past history until they were satisfied that he was who he said he he was, and that his story was legitimate. and the documents were authentic. so, yes, we went through careful research and study before we went in to this. we didn't go into it lightly. >> but that question still hasn't been asked. i want to ask you about this, rick. i think it is relevant to know whether someone was on the job and just happened to come across information that disturbed him and then decided to become a corporate whistle-blower, or someone who went into a position knowing he already opposed what this organization did for a living, went in there with the intention of gaining classified data to leak. isn't that relevant? >> it is certainly relevant to his fate and to whatever legal hassles he's going to have to go through. i don't think it is particularly relevant to our judgments about the information that he released. his motivations are one thing. what he revealed is another and

there is really no absolutely direct correlation or connection between the two. >> but aren't they in the sense that his motivation to his disseminate, to leak, this information has to do with ideological beliefs. right? so what he's leaking he believed to be criminal. i want to read a quote from one of the q&as from what he said. this is from edward snowden. "nsa likes to use domestic as a weasel word here for a number of reasons. reality is that due to the fisa amendments action and its 702 authorities, americans' communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant. even in the event of warranted intercept, it is important to understand that the intelligence community doesn't always deal with what you consider a real warrant like a police department would have to. the warrant is more of a template form that they fill out and send to reliable judge with a rubber stamp. josh, there have been people who have looked at what he had ward snowden has said, content of it,

said he got pretty much all of that wrong, that in fact meta data is not the content of communications, it is this number called that number. section 702, the fact that it is a law passed by congress, maybe he is speaking more out of ideology than fact. is that possible? >> sure. but i think edward snowden's job is not to evaluate this information for us. i agree, what's important is the content of the leaks. some of these leaks to do with prism and the wiretapping program have fueled the useful policy discussion in the united states and when the white house says, well, we want people to be briefed and we want this discussion, it is a discussion that wasn't happening until these leaks came. but i'm very confused about this leak that we got over the weekend about the russia spy, because what is the theory under which it is in the national interest to leak this information about specific u.s. operations, spying abroad on a government that is i think by any reasonable definition hostile. this is exactly what we want our intelligence agencies doing. i can't understand under what

theory it would be advancing americans' privacy interests or advising us that our government is doing something untoward to release this information. that is damaging to national security. i think it is damaging to edward snowden's case that his overall actions are in the national interest. but that said, even if he's a bad actor who did bad things who deserves to go to jail for a long time, there may be components of what he leaked that are in the national interests that they were leaked and we should be having the productive conversations about that information. >> let's talk a little bit about that. i want to bring you into this, megan. he started out talking about what's happening domestically between americans and their government. then he went off the field in a lot of ways and started talking about china, which i'm pretty sure is spying on us, too, and hacking into even corporate systems in the united states. then he's now gone off into this idea of we're spying on russia and making value judgments about the fact that these are innocent people, we're spying on them. hasn't he completely lost the plot of talking about americans and their government if he now

does appear to be acting against the u.s. national interest on behalf of russia and china? >> absolutely. with the original leaks, we got a little caught up in the kind of water gate template, the president is violating the law. the scandal is not doing something illegal. it's what's legal. right? that was something that a lot of people had known but sort of been widely understood by the american public. with this next set of leaks, no one is scandalized that we spy on russia and i'm a pretty hard-core civil libertarian. what i wrote about this when the news broke initially is that whistle blowers are weird people. if you look at people who do corporate whistle blowing or anything else, they're strange and they have a strange set of very rigid kind of moral -- this is wrong, this is right, and also an ability to be disloyal to an organization, which even if it's the right thing to do, is very hard for most people. and so what i think you're seeing here is that we had initially cast him as kind of

the movie hero coming forward, he was scandalized by this terrible thing. what's now coming out is that he's a little strange, and that his commitment is much more to the idea that no one should ever be spying on anything than to the idea that, you know, there are limits and those limits stop at american citizens who are now doing anything wrong. >> is there a little bit of megalomaniac. the saying the government cannot murder me to stop this. there does seem to be a little of a disassociative thing. there is a grandiose sort of nature to what he is saying that clouds the fundamental issue he thought he was supposedly getting out. right. >> i think so. to do what he's done, which is, in essence, to tear up his entire life, to leave the country thinking he'll never go back to america, you have to have a certain intense passion behind you to do something like that. but i do think it is important that we separate, as josh said, we separate the man from the

subject here. he had his own reasons for doing that. we as a public have to receive this information and draw from it what we think is important, which is nothing to do actually with him. >> how can we separate the subject from the man when he keeps coming back out and appearing to sort of cultivate a certain fame? he's now doing a -- i've never heard of this. i could not tell you who leaked the initial warrantless wiretapping story in 2005 to james ricin at "the new york times." this guy won't let him separate him from the story. he's making a video, now he's doing a chat. >> this is our job as the press. we need to focus less on him and more on the information. obviously we are going to have to talk about him. >> he's making us talk about him. he keeps coming back out and doing things. >> but we can also talk about the subject. i think this is very telling the way the white house has been talking about how they want the debate. i haven't seen a really good case about why these programs

needed to be secret. now the nsa is saying we only looked at 300 phone numbers. the program in broad terms prevented a large number of terrorist attacks. why aren't these things they could have told us initially? they don't have to tell us about specific operations that they thwarted. they don't have to tell us exactly whose phone number they looked at nap should obviously be secret. kind of broad information that fueled this policy debate are things that can be discussed publicly without undermining the government's ability to keep us safe from terrorist attacks. >> we did know in broad outline all of this. we've known it for many, many years, that the nsa has the capability of -- it started with satellite dishes and transatlantic cables. they can -- they've been getting this information essentially for many, many years. >> we've known about that but we hadn't known the thing where they're getting phone records of essentially every american cell phone subscriber consistently. >> i do want to read one thing. rick, you've written about this. you talked in your peace i think

it was called. scoops. you said critics have been hard put to put out any tangible harm that's been done to any particular citizen but that does not mean that no harm has been done. the harm is civic, harming trust and accountability that supports an open society and democratic policy. you are saying just the fact of doing it. isn't that the point you were just making that the federal government has been sweeping up data for a very long time. the government is constantly collecting data about us. the people who don't want any gun control keep fearing the government is going to collect data about them. we give proactively data to these phone companies and internet companies. you are saying the harm is civic. what's the civic harm if we know the government is collecting data? >> well, simply the reaction, enormous reaction that this has provoked. even though you can argue certainly that the reaction is overblown because so much of this information is already known and because, as you say,

the government is already got an immense amount of information through the irs, through all kinds of feelers that it has out that are routinely collecting information. nevertheless, as josh pointed out, the very existence of this kind of giant dragnet secret mumbo jumbo thing, it sort of pro vovokes fantasies, as well realistic thoughts. >> really. >> i've had many conversations with friends and tried to pin them down exactly how has this interfered with your freedom of speech or association. they don't -- >> they can't do it. >> nobody can do that. but they have this overall sense of a kind of paranoid big brother future. >> by the way, it is something that's a feature of ron paulism, this sort of creeping -- the state is this monster that is building this architecture of oppression. i appreciate that. thank you not guaardian's ed

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it's summer in ireland you but there is a chill in the air at the g-8 summit. president obama and russian president vladimir putin are headed for what could and pivotal and awkward confrontation when they meet just over an hour from now. one of the top tasks for the white house is to pressure putin to stop supporting syria's

bashar al assad, especially after announcing america would begin arming syrian rebels. but ahead of today's meeting the headline in the "irish times" reads -- putin warns west, do not arm syrian rebels who eat human organs! putin spoke in london yesterday making reference to a video of a syrian rebel allegedly eating the liver of a dead government soldier. joining us now from ireland is nbc news political director and chief white house correspondent and host "the daily rundown." is the white house now confident that it can get somewhere with putin, make progress on the syria issue particularly given the revelations in "the guardian" this morning about spying on members of the g-8? >> reporter: look, they're trying to put up a good front as if to say that there is an argument to be made. you hear administration officials say they believe that putin is a transactional guy at

the end of the day, he's not really driven by yideology and f they can make the case that it is rational to say, back off your support of assad. if there is a political conference that figures out how to settle syria, assad's regime will be at the table. you'll have your access to syria, you'll have your access to the mediterranean and you'll do so by playing a larger role, but playing the type of role that putin wants to play in the world, that he is still a super power. a little bit playing to his ego, a little bit playing to his sort of rational transactional self. they think maybe that's a way in. but if you look at what's going on on the ground, they acknowledge -- they don't quite know what the incentive is going to be for putin right now and given how things went yesterday with prime minister david cameron in london, as you just previewed, it doesn't look like anything meaningful is going to come out of it. the question is going to be, is there some other incentive that president obama offers him, is it a carrot, is it a stick

approach, number one. and what kind of pressure does the president able to exert if he, france, the uk, the u.s., be making a larger statement with the syrian opposition in a way that tries to separate putin and make him feel isolated. it all depends on what happened an hour from now and how this bilateral meeting goes. >> you talked about the transactional nature of putin. he sounds like he's four-square behind assad. what does the white house believe a potentialal carrot or stick could even be? if you said access to the mediterranean is on the table. his role in the world is on the table. is there a stick that they could even use to push putin away from bashar assad? >> reporter: well, that's what they're trying to basically tell him, hey, you risk having no access to syria, losing an ally and a regime because they're trying to make the case to him, that long-term assad is not going to be there, the entire regime may fall. if you don't want al qaeda in

charge, the more chaotic syria is, the more chaotic everything looks over the next six months to a year, the greater the likelihood that somebody that neither the united states, nor the russians want in power ends up in power in syria. and that's not good for his long-term place. that seems to be the best argument they are trying to make to him. but it didn't work six months ago when they made this argument and it doesn't sound like it is going to work today but we'll find out. >> nbc's chuck todd, thank you very much. and after the break, two months after toomey-manchin failed in the senate, the issue of gun safety has appeared to take a back seat but some reformers are just getting the ball rolling. we'll ask delaware attorney general bo biden about his latest efforts and his father's when he joins us next.

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[ static warbles ] six months and three days have passed since 26 school children, teachers and their principal were killed at sandy hook elementary. since then, more than 5,000 americans have been murdered by guns and yet the number of gun control bills passed on capitol hill remain stuck at zero. only gun reform taking place seems to be at the state level where six states have strengthened their gun laws since newtown. but last week the national gun control movement experienced something of a revival with families of newtown victims gathering for a moment of silence after traveling to capitol hill to meet with lawmakers. mayors against illegal guns launching a 100-day bus tour through 25 states. the white house moving forward on 23 executive actions aimed at strengthening background checks and reports of democrats in

congress renewing their push for gun reform legislation. tomorrow vice president joe biden is expected to host an event on guns at the white house. whether this will be enough momentum to break the political stalemate on firearms or match the intensity of the nra remains to be seen. joining me now, contributing editor for "rolling stone" and visiting scholar at new york university, eric bates. also joining us, delaware attorney general bo biden. mr. attorney general, thanks for being here. >> happy to be on. >> tell us about your gun reform efforts. what are you doing in the state of delaware? >> well, in our state, the general assembly and our governor have led an effort to pass universal background check legislation that was not only passed by both chambers of our general assembly by signed into law by our governor to led that fight which is a very good thing. we joined a number of other states to pushing that universal background check and our state, 5,000 convicted felons, those have been convicted of crimes of domestic violence, as well as other crimes have been stopped from illegally purchasing

weapons and more will be stopped as a result of the universal application. it is obviously something that congress thus far has failed on and something i hope they revisit this session. it is vital to this nation that it not just and patchwork of universal background checks that have been passed in certain states but it be universal applied to all 50 states. >> you talk about the idea of trying to apply universally to all 50 states. only seven states have taken this action. in some cases the nra is fighting the state's new rules, vowing to go in and fight those laws. the nra has not said they oppose your legislation. so far you have not had any movement in your state for the nra to oppose what you're doing. >> the nra fought us on the universal background check but we were able to overcome their opposition. what we've since pursued is a law that deals with mental health issues which are central to almost every mass shooting that's occurred in this nation over the past 20 years. the nra has not opposed us thus

far. the legislation says right now under the current law, for a person to be a prohibited person they have to be you a jute kaad mentally ill. states don't send that into the instant background check system. that's a problem. those states that could send something, they send very few of those records. we know also that behind every mass shooting -- almost everyone is someone with a mental health issue. in delaware i think we'll get it done in the state senate in signing the law that says if a health care professional has a patient who leaves their care and that mental health professional or health care professional believes the person is a risk to themselves or risk to others, that that health care professional has an affirmative due t duty to report to law enforcement. law enforcement has an affirmative duty to investigate.

we can say now this person is a prohibited person and they should be removed from their weapons. if their mental health issue is resolved they have a due process right under the constitution to apply for the restoration for their right to bear arms under the second amendment. the nra, though not necessarily endorsing it, said before our general assembly two weeks ago they don't oppose it. i think we'll get it done in the state senate either this week or next week. >> eric bates, you are new to the panel. this sounds like something that would be element, like the people could -- who could oppose the idea that somebody who's ajute kated dangerously mentally ill should not own a gun. i'm sure out there someone is opposition. >> sure. the nra on a host of common sense measures has been opposed all throughout and has continued to have very strong allies in congress going to bat for them. as anybody who's ever done grassroots organizing can tell you, it is tremendously difficult even when you have 90%

of the public on your side to get something like this through when you're outgunned that seriously as gun reform advocates are by the nra in terms of lobbying, in terms of contributions. it's hard to know what it is going to take when you have a member of congress gunned down in broad daylight, when you have a room full of school children gunned down in broad daylight. what would it take for some of these very common sense measures to happen and measures that this is a role that the state can play that's already proven. can you look at countries like the united kingdom and see that you don't get a rise in crime through this kind of measure, that you can really control it at the state level and still it doesn't happen. >> just to that point, we have data on this. there is a new public policy poll that shows that 51% of voters say they are less likely to support the re-election bid of one of their election officials if he or she voted against requiring background checks for all gun sales. we have plenty of data showing people overwhelmingly support the idea of background checks.

we now have mike bloomberg's money. he's asking donors withhold your money over these gun votes. can democrats run on this and win on this in 2014 given the public sentiment on guns? >> i honestly don't think so. there is an intensity mismatch. people when you poll them say, yeah, that's great. when you look at who goes to the voting booth and says i'm going to vote down anyone who votes against me, it is members of the nra and people who have lots of guns. they'll go to the voting booth and kick you out. santa barbara be suburban housewife in connecticut has lots of issues she votes on and somewhere, at best, that's number 15. polls aren't really the right way to get it. what is the actual political layout. right way, you think about gun owners, they are socializing constantly. they have an identity as gun owners. a million moms against guns, their primary identity is as

moms. all of that entails. you're constantly upping the intensity by socializing with other gun owners, going to the gun range. on the other side the intensity tends to fall off as soon as there isn't a very bright visible incident that happened a month ago. >> i want to bring back beau biden. is that true? is the sense in your state that the intensity is more on the side of people who want no restrictions on guns rather than in the wake of sandy hook on side of people who want gun safety. >> the latter. people understand common sense approaches in my state. at least from my perspective as the attorney general of the state. in fairness to the nra which they don't necessarily deserve fairness in the context of this debate. the nra is not the only entity that is responsible for the national instant criminal background check system not having a robust record of those who are mentally ill. on the other side of the table, to populate that system of the national instant criminal background check system

otherwise known as the nics, don't want a database of people adjudicated mentally ill. this efforts in delaware are bringing all those stake holders together to make sure we have a common sense approach. right now only 1.2% of the 2 million people stopped from possessing or actually purchasing a weapon legally are people who suffer from mental illness because the database doesn't contain anybody with the mental health issue that universally people would say is a person who should not possess a weapon. what we're doing in delaware which i think serves as a national model potentially is to say the standard should not just be people adjudicated mentally ill. right now very, very few people are involuntarily committed. to make the standard reach farther and say that if a person poses a risk to themselves or wers, that's the standard by which they go on a prohibited

persons list if the sfat senate acts next week, which i hope it will. then you capture different dragnet. how important is it that your father is keeping this issue alive on the national level. >> it is critical that the vice president continues this fight. president, mayor bloomberg, others. they understand. i don't speak for the administration or the mayor but they understand that the 1968 gun control act which created seven groups of people who were constitutionally prohibited from possessing weapons, convicted felons, people dishonorably discharged, people adjudicated mentally ill should not be able to possess a weapon. that started in 1963 with the assassination of john f. kennedy. it culminated when martin luther king was assassinated.

the brady law was passed in 1994 but that debate started in 1981 when ronald reagan was almost assassinated and a gentleman named jim brady, communication director, was put in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. these debates take time. they take continuous day in, day out hard effort that i know my father knows. i know the president. that's the reason why he hired my dad and i know that mayor bloomberg understands that. this is going to be a continuous effort to make sure that there is a common sense approach to protect citizens of our states and communities. >> well said. delaware attorney general beau biden, thank you. coming up -- the supreme court issues a key decision on voting. we'll discuss voter registration and citizenship when nbc's pete williams joins us just ahead.

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ask your rheumatologist if enbrel is right for you. [ doctor ] enbrel, the number one biologic medicine prescribed by rheumatologists. this morning the u.s. supreme court struck an arizona voter registration law. in a 7-2 decision the high court ruled the 2004 law requiring voters to show proof of citizenship when they register is unconstitutional. the ruling could impact other

states with similar voting laws like alabama, kansas and georgia. joining us now from the supreme court, nbc news justice correspondent pete williams. pete, thanks for being here. >> reporter: you bet. >> walk us through this ruling today. >> reporter: what the supreme court said is what arizona tried to do is preempted by federal law. that is to say, federal law is supreme on this question of how federal elections are conducted. it said that this arizona law runs contrary to a two-decade-old law called the motor voter law. it basically says that he can register to vote when you get your driver's license but you can also register by mail. you check "i swear i am a u.s. citizen," then you sign it at the bottom. arizona went further in 2004 by voter initiative prop 200. it required people to show documentary proof that they were citizens and what immigrant groups said -- arizona defended this law by saying it would help

to prevent voter fraud but groups representing immigrants said it was just an additional hurd that will they can to get over because they wouldn't be able to do so as easily by mail. they'd have to bring documentary proof if they don't have a passport, they'd have to bring their naturalization forms. strangely enough, there is another federal law that says you can't copy your naturalization form so they'd have to bring it in this person. for all those reasons the supreme court said arizona can't do this. it is an additional burden that the federal law does not require. now what the 7-2 majority said today, an opinion written by justice antonin scalia, if the american people feel strongly enough, they could try again. but for now arizona can't do this. other states that were following air a's lead can't. about a dozen or so states that were waiting for this decision to see if they, too, could do it, now they can't do it either. >> this is an interesting split. typically people think of sclal

antonin scalia and thomas being on the same side. >> it was just justice thomas and justice alito. they think the supreme court got it wrong. what the law says is that states must accept this federal form to be used in federal elections. arizona said, we accept it, but we just need more, just like the tsa accepts your driver's license to -- or the airlines accept your ticket to board a plane, but you also have to show some form of i.d. arizona was saying, we're just doing the same. we're accepting the form but we're asking for more. today the supreme court said no, that's not what "accept" means in the context of this law. it was actually an interpretation of federal law rather than a constitutional decision, but you're right, it was a somewhat unusual breakdown. not the usual 5-4 pattern. there will be time enough to see that. >> i want to bring the panel back in.

it is interesting because arizona produced evidence that between 2005 and 2007 they could only show 19 non-citizens who had registered to vote out 26.7 million registered voters. arizona actually rejected 31,000 applications to register to vote, 87% of which were hispanic. at the end of the day this was essentially a law that overburdened potentially hispanic voters. >> i think there isn't very much voter fraud and the reason is that it is a really inefficient way to try to change policy outcomes, trying to get a lot of people to spend their time going to casting fraudulent votes one by one is just not an effective way to affect change even if you were willing to break the law. i think these fights do really tend to be about trying to control voter turnout. republicans see it as advantageous to make it relatively more difficult to register and to vote. that's really what the fights are mainly about. when you talk with conservative republicans, they are convinced that voter fraud is a real problem. it is not that it is a pretext for them and they don't want to admit that it is a pretext,

but -- >> they think that's how obama got elected. rick, i wraant to ask you about the supreme court timetable. we'll have a whole bunch of decisions coming in in the final week of the calendar. is the supreme court kind of procrastinating or is it that these things are so complicated. >> this ruling is not based on a very high-minded kind of constitutional principle. it is based on the idea that federal law is superior to state law. it doesn't go into right to vote and what makes this country great and all that. seems they are deciding the ground on which this is tnarrow. this endless stream of 5-4 decisions is undermining the court itself. i mean i would be interested to know how much of a hand chief justice roberts had in this, because he has shown, as he did with the obama care decision, a

lot of concern for the reputation of the court and the legitimacy of the court. and a 7-2 decision is always more legitimate than a 5-4 decision. >> pete, i want to bring you back in and ask you specifically on that question that rick brings up. there does seem to be a design on the part of john roberts to have a reputation that firms up the court. what are the tea leaves you are reading as far as these other big decisions on doma, on prop 8 in california, decisions on the voting rights act. are these things probably going do break down more along the traditional lines of 5-4? >> i think that was a foregone conclusion on those cases. the decision today doesn't tell us anything about those. was always a statutory interpretation case, always a question of the reading of the federal law, what does it mean when it says the states must accept this form. it was always a very narrow legal issue in this case to start with. we'll have decisions again on thursday. we know next monday is a decision day.

undoubtedly they'll add another day next week. we have three, maybe four decision days left. we have 14 cases remaining. the biggies among them are the same-sex marriage cases, prop 8 in california, the federal doma, defense of marriage act, the voting rights act that you mentioned, thenal challenge to affirmative action and college admissions. >> best in the business, nbc's pete williams at the supreme court. thank you very much. after the break -- talk about a miss! miss utah boldly goes where, sadly, others have gone before. we'll talk pageants and equal pay next. [ man ] on december 17, 1903,

the wright brothers became the first in flight. [ goodall ] i think the most amazing thing is how like us these chimpanzees are. [ laughing ] [ woman ] can you hear me? and you hear your voice? oh, it's exciting! [ man ] touchdown confirmed. we're safe on mars. [ cheers and applause ] ♪ hi. [ baby fussing ] ♪ twenty-five thousand mornings, give or take, is all we humans get. we spend them on treadmills. we spend them in traffic. and if we get lucky, really lucky, it dawns on us to go spend them in a world where a simple sunrise can still be magic.

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miss connecticut may have won the crown last night but it was the third runner-up in the miss usa contest, miss utah, who stole the show when a question about female bread winners left hear little tongue tied.

>> and recent report shows that in 40% ever american families with children, women are the primary earners, yet they continue to earn less than men. what does this say about society? >> i think we can relate this back to education and how we are continuing to try to strive to figure out how to create jobs right now. that is the biggest problem. we need to try to figure out how to create education better so that we can solve this problem. thank you. >> first of all, can i just take a moment to stop to marvel at gangster she is at having become from real housewives of atlanta. okay. what's going on here with these pageants? first we have the maps lady. then we have this miss utah creating education better. is it time to just let it go,

give the whole pageant thing up? >> it is definitely not a public speaking pageant. if it were -- people on this panel would be front and center. but i feel really bad for this girl. you think about like probably her whole life has focused on getting to this moment and then to start just babbling uncontrollably, i think it is really sad. i don't really support beauty pageants per se, but i still want people to get what they want and she clearly kind of had her moment and this is the most famous she will probably ever be. >> these pageants are supposedly about education. but when someone gets up and talks about creating education better, does it say something about potentially our education system that this is the best -- this is the third most awesome woman apparently in america? >> what i'm reminded of when i see these is really the other format where this happens with political debates where somebody's asked a very serious question and then they give an answer that's designed not to

offend anybody and basically what they say is some variation of education blah blah blah creating jobs blah blah blah which is morals what she said. so i think that there's a format for this and i think miss teen usa that we saw earlier -- miss teen south carolina did the same thing. education was her go-to default answer on this and i think that's telling that we see that in politics as well. it is just the kind of panacea that we wrap over everything to answer it when it is really not an answer. >> that's a really good point. >> in all fairness, judging from that, when we have political debates among presidential candidates, there really should be a swimsuit competition. >> i completely concur! that's how we should choose our presidents. >> at least a talent competition. >> i like in general the politicians do usually lean a little less hard on the blah blah blah part. they do generally fill words in. >> oh, megan, everything they say is blah blah blah!

thank you very much. to rick, josh, megan and eric. alex will be back tomorrow. don't forget to watch alex tonight when she hosts "the last word" at 10:00 p.m. eastern right here on msnbc. here's a look at your business forecast forecast. we'll be dealing with afternoon thunderstorms, very typical nor time of year. as we go into our summertime season, the best chance of afternoon storms will be arkansas, areas of the southeast. we could even see a few storms around washington, d.c. much of the west coast looks calm. but still very hot in areas of the desert southwest. have a great day. when we made our commitment to the gulf, bp had two big goals:

help the gulf recover, and learn from what happened so we could be a better, safer energy company. i've been with bp for 24 years. i was part of the team that helped deliver on our commitments to the gulf - and i can tell you, safety is at the heart of everything we do. we've added cutting-edge safety equipment and technology, like a new deepwater well cap and a state-of-the-art monitoring center, where experts watch over all our drilling activity, twenty-four-seven. and we're sharing what we've learned, so we can all produce energy more safely. safety is a vital part of bp's commitment to america - and to the nearly 250,000 people who work with us here.

we invest more in the u.s. than anywhere else in the world. over fifty-five billion dollars here in the last five years - making bp america's largest energy investor. our commitment has never been stronger. [ male announcer ] moving object detection. ♪ blind spot warning. ♪ lane departure warning. safety, down to an art. the nissan altima with safety shield technologies. nissan. innovation that excites. ♪ nissan. innovation that excites. in parks across the country, families are coming together to play, stay active, and enjoy the outdoors.

and for the last four summers, coca-cola has asked america to choose its favorite park through our coca-cola parks contest. winning parks can receive a grant of up to $100,000. part of our goal to inspire more than three million people to rediscover the joy of being active this summer. see the difference all of us can make... together. right now on "andrea mitchen reports," standoff over syria. old cold war divisions resurface at the g-8 summit when president obama meets with russia's president vladimir putin this hour. after putin rejected obama's decision to arm the syrian rebels. earlier today in belfast, president obama alluded to that conflict as he spoke of agreements that ended the conflict in northern ireland. >> you set an example for those who seek a peace of their own. because beyond these shores right now in scattered corners of the world there are people

living in tconflict, religious conflicts, ethnic conflicts, tribal conflicts. and they know something better's out there. as the g-8 leaders met today, who's listening in? information from nsa leaker edward snowden reveals the british government spied on world leaders at two london summits in 2009, probably with u.s. help. and snowden strikes again, fighting back in a web chat today on "the guardian's" website. the nsa leaker says "these nakedly aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target." and he tells other potential leakers, "this country is worth dying for." what does the architect of even more extensive surveillance say about the leaker? >> i think he's a traitor. i think he has committed crimes, in effect, by