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the president will board air force one back from the g-8 and stop in germany. this morning he declared to americans and europeans alike that our work is not yet done. a half century after jfk's famous speech to the once divided city. >> i had the privilege to address this city as senator. today i'm proud to return as president of the united states. as free peoples we stated our convictions long ago. as americans, we believe that all men are created equal. complacency is not the character of great nations. today's threats are not as stark as they were half a century ago but the struggle for freedom and

security and human dignity, that struggle goes on for we are not only citizens of america or germany, we are also citizens of the world. our fates and fortunes are linked like never before. we must reject the lie that those who live in distant places don't yearn for freedom and self-determination just like we do. >> the president's words were meant to inspire thousands gathered there but standing in front of a powerful symbol of the cold war, he also had a specific call both to our friends and our enemies. >> he with ensure the security of america and our allies and maintain a strong and credible strate strategic deterrent. reject the nuclear weaponization that north korea and iran may be seeking. these are steps we can take to create a world of peace with justice. >> president obama will be back in washington tonight but nbc's

kristen welker beat him there. >> nice. >> you're there right there before the president. >> reporter: absolutely. i travel fast. >> what can you tell us about the trip and where the president's priorities go from here? >> reporter: look, there was huge symbolism behind president obama's remarks this morning. not only was he speaking at the brandenburg gate, symbol of the cold war, german reunification as you point out, this was also his second visit to germany. the last time was back in 2008. he was then of course a candidate very different optics between these two trips back in 2008 you recall more than 200,000 people greeted him. he was really greeted as somewhat of a rock star back then. different today. he is a president who has a record that can be criticized and that has been to some extent in germany for his failure to close guantanamo bay and over recent revelations of the nsa

program monitoring americans phone records and internet records. we should also point out today's event was organized by the german government. it was at their invitation. a smaller crowd in large part due to that. about 4,500 people. the white house trumpeted as the headline of this speech. the fact that he's calling on new talks between the u.s. and russia to cutdown on nuclear arms arsenal. i think the other big headline that came out of the speech today was that he defended his administration's nsa program. he talked about the need to balance fighting terrorists with individual liberties. he also defended it more directly during a news conference with chancellor angela merkel earlier today. so i think that's one of the big headlines that did come out of the speech. you heard him call for closing down guantanamo bay once again. this is going to be a busy couple of days for president obama as you pointed out. he's about to head back to the white house and back to the

united states but he's only here for a few days. he's going to take off next wednesday to africa. this is going to be his most extended visit yet to africa meant to strengthen ties between the two regions. a lot of headlines will come out of that trip as well as we continue to monitor it. >> kristen welker at the white house, thank you. joining us now, in light of the recent nsa revelations a group of protesters rallied in front of obama's visit with signs that read, yes, we scan. amusing translation. all of your data is belong to us. there it is. i like that. when the nsa story broke, angela merkel said she wanted to raise the issue with obama. how did this nsa moment change

president obama's plans and sort of color the trip? >> right. you're absolutely correct that civil libertarians are clever even in germany. exactly. this is a key issue for germans. i think if there was any place where he had to say something about the nsa surveillance program in europe, this was the place to do it. it was reported that he talked to angela merkel about it as well. what's really going to matter is what happens at home when he comes back tonight and over the next several days when he leaves for africa and what congress is going to say if there are going to be anymore questions that folks really want to bring to the president especially jay carney at the podium about this program. >> protests aside, isn't berlin germany probably one of the more friendly places for the president to have this conversation and to deal with the issue of nsa? >> yes. i would say compared to a lot of countries in the world,

absolutely. compared to the rest of europe, yeah. i would say probably better than a couple other countries. most importantly is the president's friendship with angela merkel. this has developed over the course of his presidency. she was initially skeptical about him. they bonded over last couple of years and surprisingly to a lot of germans. >> it used to be we would have g-8 and get something substantive out of it. a trade agreement. now it seems like a photo-op. is it less substantive and why so? >> i think this is certainly one of the least productive g-8 meetings we've seen in a couple of years. obviously the trade agreements didn't really go very far and i know there are some issues european leaders wanted to bring up along the trade agreements that didn't get hashed out. part of this is because the economy and europe and america is still staggering in a lot of ways and when leaders like this are dealing with staggering economy at home, it's really hard to bring these issues to an

international setting. >> let's look at it one other international setting with is immigration reform at home. speaker boehner will set a clear line saying he'll do the majority. the majority rule which for a lot of us means the house republicans are going to have the final word on immigration reform. do you think from your political analysis down there in d.c. that this is real and that this is a true line that's being drawn or is this a desire by him to exert leverage now while the senate is moving so he could get something he could move through the caucus. >> think he's drawing the line in the sand right now saying if the senate doesn't put in very big effort on border security, huge issue for house republicans and many senate republicans, conservative senate republicans, this won't stand a chance in my caucus. boehner has to do this because he's violated the guideline that says you can't bring something to the floor for a vote that a majority of the caucus support.

he's violated this rule before. he has to say now i'm not going to do it because if he were to say otherwise or hint he would bring an immigration bill to the floor without his full caucus support, he would be in big trouble with them. >> a rule looking more like a habit and he wants to hold the line there. thanks for giving us your time today. >> absolutely. >> next up, the issue that's dominated the president's talks with world leaders this week. syria. congressman peter welsh just back from a trip to the region and will give us a take on whether the u.s. should get involved or how involved. that's all next as "the cycle" rolls on this wednesday. [ male announcer ] this is kevin. to prove to you that aleve is the better choice for him, he's agreed to give it up. that's today? [ male announcer ] we'll be with him all day

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new clashes inside syria. explosions rocked an area south of damascus. the civil war has cost more than 93,000 lives. at the g-8 world leaders failed to come to an agreement about how to handle this growing international crisis. now that's frustrating to the other nations as evidenced by this icy back and forth between president obama and russian president vladimir putin. secretary of state john kerry will be on capitol hill tomorrow morning to give the house intelligence committee a private briefing on assad's use of chemical weapons. our next guest says the worst thing we can do is to americanize the situation and we should have learned that lesson in iraq and afghanistan. joining us now is congressman peter welch, democrat from vermont who sits in the house

oversight committee and congressman, i want to start with a quote from a conversation between president clinton and senator mccain that said some people say, okay, see what a big mess it is. stay out. i think that's a big mistake. i agree with you, he says to senator mccain, about this. sometimes it's just best to get caught trying as long as you don't overcommit like as long as you don't make an improvedent commitment. what's your view of that? >> it doesn't tell us what would be the positive outcome of military involvement. here's the dilemma. every fiber of your being, it's a sea of heartache and suffering. we look for some definitive measure which gets translated into military action. the fact that we've got a desire to help doesn't mean we've got a practical way where we can stop a civil war or find a way to shoot our way to a solution.

the hazards of action in escalation of our role on a military level i think far outweigh the benefits and would have a likelihood of making it appear that this is an american effort to once again intervene in the middle east. >> congressman, i agree with that point. if your constituents said why should the syrian conflict matter to us, what impact would it have on us, what would you say to them? >> it doesn't directly. there's a humanitarian concern that motivates a lot of people. so when senator mccain or senator graham say we have to help, you have to understand where they are coming from. from a strategic interest, it's obviously in our american interest to have as much stability in the middle east as possible. and the debate is whether military action would provide stability as some of the proponents suggest or it would actually create additional instability. i think we've seen with our efforts in iraq and afghanistan

that there is an enormous counterreaction to military effort. we can't micromanage an outcome. that's sad to say and hard to say because you want to help. but does it mean that we have a military option? that would be extraordinarily expensive. should that be done on the say so of the president without congressional involvement where it will involve a big expenditure and it's crossing a line into use of war powers. congress has to step up and get involved in this debate more than it has been. >> we've seen that in libya where many people felt it was a relatively successful operation in the end but components of a

modern military war campaign except for authorization of force. we talked about drones as a human rights issue. let's talk about this as separation of power issue where pakistan and yemen are being attacked without authorization of force. why do you think congress has had a hard time stepping up and playing a role here even if ultimately it might be authorizing force as you're saying the congress should have some role in that process. >> it absolutely should. essentially given that authority to the president. a lot of this happened after 9/11 when there was an enormous desire to go after the terrorists. the authorization that congress gave at that time is now being used for a very broad blanket use of military force in every part of the world. it's time in my view for us to revisit that. terrorism is a real challenge. the right of self-defense is real. and when the enemy is dispersed and decentralized, it's not a situation where declaration of

war is neat and clean. on the other hand, we've got to pull back and make certain we don't just have a blank check to where we make powers of any president. >> congressman, it seems to me like we've split the baby in syria. we have all of bush's rhetoric and none of the foreign policy behind it. the hawks who said we should have gone in a year ago to avoid this very escalation, we should have gone in a year ago to cut down on the civilian deaths, we're now over 90,000. we should have gone in a year a a ago. we should have gone in a year ago to avoid getting chemical weapons and guns in al qaeda's hands. that's already happened. and then you have the doves saying this isn't our fight. let's stay out of it. now the united states is planning to take in thousands of syrian refugees. we've given almost a billion in aid to syria so we're not doing anything to stop the conflict

but taking the bulk of the responsibility for the consequences. how does this make any sense? >> i can't argue with you. i don't think it does make sense. it reflects the lack of clarity. something develops over in syria. they have a terrible government. assad is a brutal man. but it is a civil war because there are many within syria that support him. often times for their own survival reasons because they're on the winning side of the economy. but he has support there. and there is a real civil war that is resulting in the loss of these lives. the humanitarian impulse can we help? if we apply that just across the board, why don't we go into the congo? there are places all around the world where if we could stop it, we should. but that doesn't mean we can. and, you know, we have seen -- this is the thing where restraint is required. i admired the president. there's enormous pressure from arm chair generalliy generals a

all they need is give the word to commander in chief and the issue will be resolved. it's not the case. it takes restraint on the part of the president to get us in a situation where we don't have an end game. >> congressman peter welsh thank you. new questions to what really happened to downed flight twa 800. what should we believe? plus decisions by america's leading doctors group that could affect how you get care. that's all ahead on "the cycle." n i upgraded your smart phone. ♪ right. but the most important feature of all is... the capital one purchase eraser. i can redeem the double miles i earned with my venture card to erase recent travel purchases. and with a few clicks, this mission never happened. uh, what's this button do? [ electricity zaps ] ♪ you requested backup?

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welcome back. the national transportation safety board is pushing back on claims the new documentary about the 1996 crash of twa flight 800. the flight crashed in the atlantic ocean shortly after takeoff from kennedy airport. there was a four-year investigation that found the

crash was a result of an explosion ignited by a short circuit in the center of the fuel tank. the producers of a yet to be released film claim that a form err former retired ntsb investigators say the findings were falsified. the ntsb to this day calls their painstaking investigation into the crash a model of forensic work. tom costello covers aviation for us and is looking into these claims. how credible are these new allegations? >> you know, i think that's a really outstanding issue and here's why. the ntsb investigator that you mentioned that's making claims it could have been a missile, he was a highway ntsb investigator called in to assist on this massive investigation of twa 800. he was not a veteran aviation

investigator. it involved the ntsb, fbi, ntf, cia, everybody was in on this. and immediately there were many witness claims, people thought they saw what looked like a missile headed toward what they thought was an airplane. this plane was 12 miles over the atlantic ocean. how good is visibility? that's number one. number two, there's scientific data to suggest that in fact what people saw was after the plane exploded, there was an initial thrust in which the plane kept climbing for a few seconds before the whole thing went down because of course you have engines on the wings and the propulsion continued. the bottom line is the ntsb and fbi and explosive experts found no evidence whatsoever of an explosion from the outside in. all of the evidence suggested an

explosion from the inside of the center fuel tank out so now you have got this documentary, this film which is going to be on cable channel is going to revisit the conspiracy notions and suggest either a huge coverup involving hundreds of people or a botched investigation involving creme dela creme of investigative agencies in the world and there's only one former ntsb investigators making these claims on the record. he was a highway investigator pulled in. there is concern here. >> in addition to hank hughes who you are talking about and you spoke to, there were other professionals in on this investigation who have suggested that the reports have been in inaccurate. >> hold on a second. twa investigator called in to be party to the investigation. not hands on with the ntsb. individual that worked for forensic department, chief

medical examiner. not an expert on explosives. rocky miller, with the flight attendants union. jim spear with the airlines pilots association. these guys were not the hands-on thick in the middle of this investigation. >> i understand, tom. my point is that usually when you get these conspiracy theories the skeptics are out there. they have knowledge and skill base in this area. >> i'm not calling these individuals kooks because there are many people that believe that there was some suggestion of a missile bringing down this plane. when they looked at the radar data, they found no evidence of a plane. there was some suggestion that this was a navy ship that shot down the plane by mistake. there's been no suggestion since then in 17 years that the navy was involved in anything of the sort or there was a coverup. there are individuals who believe this. there are individuals who have all sorts of scientific beliefs on a range of subjects.

what you look at is the evidence. >> clearly you're not buying it. >> i'm one that doesn't like to pass judgment like that. i'm saying that the initial theory that was probably caused by an explosion in the center fuel tank, thus far seems to be the argument that carries the day. >> all right. tom costello, thank you. we'll keep an eye on that. important crash that obviously affected a lot of people. we are going to turn to other stories leading the wednesday news cycle. the federal reserve announced it will keep doing what it's been doing to ensure interest rates remain at record lows. fed chair ben bernanke says he believes the economy is improving meaning that could all change. stocks are reacting pretty badly to that last part. the fed buys $85 billion worth of bonds every month to help stimulate our markets.

now, they call it the magic city for a reason. more than 16 million people watched what some are calling an impossible end to game six. jonathan capehart was there. heat versus spurs. miami came back from 13 points down to force overtime. king james after struggling for the first three quarters finished with a triple-double including a game high 32 points and the heat week squeaked by t spurs. the third republican senator to publicly back marriage equality. pretty interesting. she argues we need more commitment to marriage in america and not less. she joins the gop colleagues. a lot of change coming there. now we'll move to a significant move by the american medical association. for the first time the nation's largest physician organization has now voted officially to classify obesity as a disease.

that decision now is not legally binding but it does have major implications and could lead to changes in the treatment and insurance coverage in conditions related to obesity from heart disease to diabetes to even cancer. now the move is not without controversy and for a controversy of spin proportions we come to the spin table. i'm not a scientists and i'm not not a doctor. my contribution here -- >> yet. >> yet is a careful way to phrase it. my contribution looking at this was looking over something by a doctor who put together some of the materials that led to this change. and in the background section of this sort of report, there are a couple of interesting points about the tension here. on the pro side of labeling obesity a disease is the idea -- i'm reading from the doctor -- excess body fat resulting from genetic behavioral and environmental factors impairs bodily functions and has genetic ingredients. that makes sense. that's why some people can

workout a lot and still be overweight and then more to do with how they were born and genetic material than their activities. i think that's an important point. another point they raised in favor of doing this was a pragmatic argument where proponents say that neither provider reimbursement nor research into effective treatments for obesity will be adequate until it's considered a disease. that struck me as an instrumental or political argument rather than a medical one although they are clear and transparent about it. the last point i want to read is on the negative side of saying are we sure that this is a disease? the doctor writes concerns exist about labeling a ithird of americans as ill. at a certain point, this may be good for insurance coverage. this may be instrumentally good as i mentioned. the notion that a third or half of the country has a disease immediately gives you pause not as a medical expert but just as

common sense. are we all diseased now? >> one thing to keep in mind, this isn't something that's come out of the blue. when i first got into newspapers in 1983, we wrote this editorial with the headline eat your way to civil rights because the federal government was trying to make it possible for some people who were considered obese to be protected from discrimination under the americans with disabilities act. that's actually 20 years ago this year that that happened. the fact that the most influential powerful medical association is now saying that this should be considered a disease to your point is going to have huge policy implications. it depends on your perspective positive or negative. we have american affordable care act about to hit. insurance companies -- >> whether or not it's positive or a disease or a condition, a

gigantic portion of america is overweight. a large portion of america is obese and part of the reason for that is prevalence of messages we get about eating unhealthy foods. and even eating late at night. these sorts of things. and part of the battle around that is happening at nickelodeon pressured to stop advertising junk food messages to our children. part of the reason why they say no, we're not stopping opposed to disney channel which did agree to stop is a large portion of their advertising budget comes from food products. we do a lot of wellness programming so we shouldn't have to stop. the thing is that nickelodeon out of all of the channels has a special relationship with parents. there's a special trust that we have that we know that our kids are probably going to get quality programming from nickelodeon.

they need to be serving us 24 hours a day not just in between commercials but in the commercials as well. >> i hope later we get your perspective on this. i know your a big nick at night fan. that's one piece of it. up next, a fascinating look inside a divide within the black community over civil rights and a big issue of our time, marriage equality. have a good night. here you go. you, too. i'm going to dream about that steak. i'm going to dream about that tiramisu.

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small businesses get up earlier and stay later. and to help all that hard work pay off, membership brings out millions of us on small business saturday and every day to make shopping small huge. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. >> for me personally, it's important for me to go ahead and confirm that same-sex couples should be able to get married. >> when the president announced his support for marriage equality, support for it in the black community jolted upward but just as america remains divided about gay rights, so do black folk. you can hear this sort of discussion in homes all over the country. >> it's not okay. the bible doesn't change. it stays the same. the world may change but i'm not willing to change with the world.

>> let me ask you a question. in the bible there are so many things that we can say. divorce is reprehensible in the bible. women should be seen and not heard. black people are supposed to be slaves. all of that is in the bible. >> i cannot take god out of my equation. i cannot. >> i'm telling you to take it out of your equation. >> i'm not taking it out of my conversation because god do not make lesbian. >> that's from a fascinating new documentary called "the new black" that follows the work of activists to get approval for maryland's marriage equality law. in november of 2012, maryland became the first state to affirm marriage equality at the ballot box but nationwide of course the fight continues. let's welcome the filmmakers of "the new black." it has the new york premiere

tonight and tomorrow before heading to d.c. and san francisco during this pride month. a limited release is planned for later this year. i wish that she had asked her auntie there does god make mistakes because if god makes lesbians he's made a mistake clearly. one of the things that we see in this film and in this discussion in the black community is the issue that some people feel like the discussion of gay rights or giving gay rights its play is somehow a loss as if it's a zero sum game as if civil rights or black rights loses something. black people lose something in the discussion of gay rights and we see that sort of discussion all the time, don't we? >> yeah. i think that one thing that we need to do is just put down our rulers and definitely stop measuring whose struggle is bigger than whose. discrimination is discrimination no matter who you look at it. when you deny a group of people the opportunity to get the status that we as this country,

we pretty much use that as the foundation of what families are like and when you deny them that, you yourself become the oppressor. >> i'm going to see you on saturday at hrc. i want to ask you, in all of your conversations, is there an appreciation for the gay roots of the traditional civil rights movement and by that i mean i don't know if a lot of people realize or know that the architect of the march on washington, a key adviser to dr. martin luther king was a gay man relatively for the time openly gay man. anyone have an appreciation for that link? >> there are some people i found who are aware of the role of bayard rustin in our struggle but we forget history and really understand it. though some people are aware of it, it's not something that is a real foundation of our knowledge of civil rights.

>> bill maxwell writes about this a lot. he talks about the influence of pop culture. folks like tracy morgan who in his comedy routine talked about stabbing his son if he ever talked to him in a gay voice. kobe bryant has had public gay slurs come out. how influential do you think popular black cultural leaders have been in creating this kind of narrative? >> well, certainly we've seen homophobic comments from folks in the black community and folks in other communities, not just the black communities, but what i actually think is really interesting in the moment that we're in is that now they've all had to issue apologies and now kobe bryant has come out, you know, in support of jason collins and now we have other cultural leaders wanda sikes, who are coming out. it's a moment that we haven't really seen before. >> how does different histories of these relatively minority

cultures fit into the struggle? it's fair to say that america has long been fascinated by but also afraid of aspects of its understanding of the black experience whereas for a lot of our history the presence of gay americans while here and you can find them jonathan just gave one example and there are many others. there was more of a denial and idea that gay americans either don't exist or aren't around or aren't many of them. does that historical context in terms of the majority's relationship with different cultures are different minority groups have any relationship to what you're finding in the movie? >> i think that for african-americans we have a freedom struggle obviously. but there are other groups that have freedom struggles too. women, immigrants, latinos, asian americans, and lgbt folks are part of that freedom struggle as well. i think what the film really tries to show by following characters and activists in the

film that is an intersection between race and sexuality. we're in this moment where we are able to talk about it in our families like that discussion that you saw and we have other scenes in different communities where you actually see folks, black folks, grappling with the fact that lbgt folks are in our communities and our families. >> let's hope more people use the bible to find tolerance and not defend bigotry. thank you for this film. up next, we're getting down and dirty in the guest spot. it's a good cause. i want peacocks. peacocks? walking the grounds. in tuscany. [ man ] her parents didn't expect her dreams to be so ambitious. italy? oh, that's not good. [ man ] by exploring their options, they learned that instead of going to italy, they could use a home equity loan to renovate their yard and have a beautiful wedding right here while possibly increasing the value of their home. you and roger could get married in our backyard. it's robert, dad.

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>> jim's primary mission is to monitor the bats in living conditions to ensure that the population is not being threatened by outside forces. several times a year jim must venture into the cave to inspect the roost and chart any variations in temperature. >> as descended into the darkness, i found myself ankle deep in dried bat droppings. are we walking in sand? >> no. >> holy [ bleep ]. >> mike rose's latest mission is to help skilled workers in the u.s. get their hands dirty. there are 3 million jobs unfilled each year because of the lack of skilled workers. and that has led him to launch a

resource center aimed at trading workers for available jobs and helping people move toward careers in skilled trades and new technologies. in the guest spot today at the table, the man himself. welcome back to the show. when i was growing up north of boston, every day a bunch of kids would leave mostly boys to go off and they would take their classes in auto mechanics and welding. those programs have slowly disappeared. is there an effort to sort of fill those gaps? >> kind of. we want to all about eradicate student loans. the thing that pushed voe ee eel education out of schools is the same thing that pushed college enrollment. if elevated one form of education at the expense of

others. i call it the law of unintended consequences. if you look at what happened from the mid '70s up until today, college enrollments going up, college get goes up with it and now we're north of a trillion dollars. we have a skills gap. millions of jobs available that people don't seem to want. it's easy to get fooled. it's not a problem of a lack of training. there are training programs everywhere. they're not filled. we're not telling kids from the beginning that this whole category of jobs are worthwhile, viable and way more luke rcrati than you think. >> jobs that you do with your hands are less desirable and not as good as professional white collar jobs. when i was a kid, my mother told me under no circumstances are you to be diverted from the college track to the vocational track. >> it's natural to want something better for our kids. what's not natural is what

better means anymore. it just doesn't hold up. the worse advice i've ever seen was hanging on my guidance counselor's wall and in 1979 i went to see him and he said, look, look, four-year schools, this is where you want to go. i didn't know what i wanted to do and i didn't have any money. i was like, i want to go to a two-year school to figure it out. he said mike, take a look at this. we re-created this poster. he says take a look at this poster and look at these two guys and tell me which one you want to be. >> work smart, not hard. >> that's the caption. >> that is terrible. >> right. >> but look, here's the theory. go with me on this because i think there's something to it. it's more than a platitude or cliche. if you google work smart not hard right now, you'll find it's on backpacks. it's the title of best selling books. it's become a part of our know men clay tour, right? what if it's not just a bad

platitude? what if it's advice that we took? i think you could make a case that the skills gap and a trillion dollars of college debt and the fact that you've got a lot of graduates who can't find work and many, many more working in feels they didn't even study. when you look at that sort of parade of horribles, think you can make a case we took some bad advice. so in an attempt to correct it, uh-huh, wait, there's more. work smart and hard. >> nice. >> right? so i play the role of the graduate. we have a more aspirational figure here. it's a light-hearted way to try and say look, what if the advice we give our kids actually sticks and matters? >> it's great. speaking of advice, i picked up popular mechanics last month. it's the fatherhood issue in honor of father's day. it has all this great advice, things that dad pass down to their kids. you had a piece in there what your dad taught you, which was. >> everything. >> specifically? >> well, i mean really the first

work that i remember as a kid chopping wood. you know? we had dozens of acres heavily wooded behind our house. my grand dad and father and i, you would fill up the thermos with coffee. i was drinking coffee at 7. but you'd go back and take a tree and cut it up and we heated our home with a wood stove. so the lessons you learn with blisters and callouss and laughter last your life. henry ford said, chop your own wood, it will warm you twice. >> that's great. >> i wish i'd have said it actually. >> mike rowe, we appreciate you being here. good work on this program. we'll follow your success and hopefully touch back. >> get one of those posters and hang it in a high school. that's what we want to do. get it on a guidance counselor's office and start a different conversation. >> we'll try to get it up on our website so people can do that. up next, ari takes on the president over the government spying. stay tuned. we're here at the famous tapia bros. produce stand where we switched their fruits and veggies

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yesterday, we heard president obama's first sitdown interview since the nsa leaks. the president said he welcomes a debate on this issue and that's good because many of his defenses were debatable. let's start with his first point. >> point number one, if you're a u.s. person, then nsa is not listening to your phone calls and it's not targeting your e-mails unless it's getting a individualized court order. >> that is the best defense of any surveillance. individual judges oversee it. so the government can spy as much as it needs to but has to prove to a surveillance court that the goal is national

security. that's not how the online surveillance works. while the president is right about phone surveillance, in a single month, the p.r.i.s.m. program reviewed 3 billion pieces of intelligence from u.s. computers. think about that. potentially 35 billion pieces in a year. there aren't 35 billion court offereds or that. so it's technically true that the program doesn't target americans. the targets are foreign but that's pretty much beside the point. take a closer look at that secret court. this was the most revealing exchange i thought in the interview. >> should this be transparent in some way? >> it is transparent. that's why we set up the fisa court. >> no, you cannot invoke a secret court for transparency. the court is there to put a legal check on our permanent spying bureaucracy. it's not transparent. that's why it meets in secret. congress could change that a little bit. it could require the release of any opinions, for example, that expand spying powers. last year, legislation with that goal, however, only got 37 votes

in the senate. and finally, there was a question that just didn't get answered. >> has fisa court turned downy request? >> because, first of all, charlie the number of requests are surprisingly small. number one. number two, folks don't go with a query unless they've got a pretty good sus. ition. >> should this be transparent in some way? >> it is transparent. that's why we set up the fisa court. >> you see how that all works together? no more detail was offered about i obama or rose. let's add to the record today. last year the court didn't deny a single request. or the year before that or the year before that. in can the fa, since the court was created in 1978, it's approved 99.9% of all requests. i'd say that's pretty rubber stampy. now it's partly because of the huge and largely accidental factor that no one's talking about. every judge on the court was

appointed by this man. fisa court is the only federal bench whose members are appointed by the chief justice. congress had reasons for that approach but here's the practical effect we know today. this secret court now has one of the most monolithic right wing benches in american history. we could change that and reform surveillance laws to make the court more diverse or to make it more transparent in the nonorwellian sense of the word. that's difficult now because most of washington from the prove fitable industrial complex to politicians to never want to give up their own power would rather waste our time on false debates like whether spying serves national security. of course, it does. the real debate is how to regulate its tremendous power. let's give a rest to the argument that surveillance passcyists are calling for surrendering our information war. as another president said, we're not against all wars, just dumb

wars. we can fight this war i think in a much better way. let's get onto the harder questions. what kind of secret courts do we want and what kind do we deserve? that does it for us on "the cycle." martin, it's all you'res. >> it's wednesday, june 19th. while the president stands upon the world stage, it's right by right wing wednesday in washington. >> we can be a little more informal among friends. >> let's begin on the irs. >> it's basically started with one man and he so happened to be a conservative conservative republican. >> i an manager does not tell -- >> there has to be house cleaning at the irs. >> the pitcher knows to do it. >> critics say that republicans and you in particular. >> cherry picked a few facts. >> the whole transcript will be put out. >> what do we have to do to make women realize we don't hate them. >> another day in the life of