>> that was so cool. in november of 1968 the city of los angeles had a cultural crisis and we think of 1968 generally as sort of one big cultural crisis in the united states, but in mid-november 1968, los angeles had a very, very specific cultural problem. they lost their frank sinatra. >> and in los angeles frank sinatra announced the smog and polluted air was hurting his singing voice so he was leaving town. he said he'd had it with hollywood and los angeles, that the smog was so bad he had to see his throat doctor three times a week and so he was selling his house and moving out into the desert to palm springs. sinatra will be 53 next month and he said, "my nose and throat are affected by the smog. i haven't got too many years of singing left. i've got to take care of myself. i'm leaving."

>> that was the "nbc nightly news" november 14th, 1968. and if the smog is killing you, it's one thing if you're frank sinatra and you can decamp to your desert oasis in palm spring, it's a whole other thing all together if you are the entire population of the eastern seaboard of the united states. if the smog is killing you, where do you go? look at this graphic in this next news report. this is so amazing. it's from july 1970. check out the visuals. >> air pollution lay over the eastern seaboard today for the sixth straight day, kept there by hot, humid weather. in new york, mayor lindsey put into effect the first stage of a pollution emergency. the sanitation department was ordered to cut incineration by 20%. hospitals and public housing projects were told to stop burning garbage. lindsey warned new yorkers that if things get worse he'll keep private cars out of some areas

of the city. >> as part of lbj's great society legislation in the 1960s, 1963, congress had first passed the clean air act. it was the first major anti-pollution legislation in the country. but by the late 1960s, early 1970s, air pollution was so bad it created a whole new class of emergency in this country. you just heard in that news report. we were having pollution emergencies in the si cities by 1970. the clean air act was first passed in 1963, expanded in 1967, but then in 1970 it was significantly amended to try to take a real bite out of that terrible, terrible air pollution that we were having in part by saying this cars wouldn't be allowed to pollute as much as they were polluting at the time. lee iacocca at that point, the executive vice president of the ford motor company in 1970, and when this was all being debated

he told congress that year the clean air act of 1970 in his words would, quote, prevent the continued production of automobiles in the united states. he said the clean air act of 1970 is a threat to the entire american economy and to every person in america. the american automobile manufacturers association told the senate that year that bill would simply end the production of cars in the united states. manufacturers, quote, would be forced to shut down. frankly it's a miracle that there were still american cars by then anyway since four years earlier in 1966 when congress had passed a seat belt law, henry ford ii of, yes, that ford motor company, henry ford ii told congress in 1966 that if they enacted this new seat belt law, quote, we he'll have to close down. needless to say the seat belt law passed and ford did not have to close down. they didn't have to close down because of the seat bells, didn't have to close down because they had to put in

catalytic converters and eventually meet mileage standards. and the clean air act of 1970 did help in terms of terrible air pollution. by the 1980s, though, there were new worries, new worries about a hole in the ozone layer that was being created by a very specific group of chemicals that were then in wide use. even if that was a scary idea, the ozone layer still was way up there, right? way up there somewhere. you couldn't see it. and even though we were worried about that, we had a much more earthbound concern about something called acid rain. >> when we talk about the environment, one of the most serious problems is acid rain. everyone has heard of it. many may not fully understand it. so al roker is going to show us a specific example of what it does. >> thanks, gary. that's right. in upstate new york, one area has been identified as a particularly tragic example of the effects of acid rain. in adirondacks, it's more than a vague environmental catchphrase. this lake nestled in the moose

river plain of new york's adirondack park. it looks beautiful and serene, picture postcard perfect. however, indian lake is dead. indian lake is not an isolated example. over a quarter of the 2,700 lakes and ponds in the adirondack park, a preserve as big as vermont, are so acidic they can no longer support fish life. they, too, are dying. it isn't just the lakes that are being killed by acid rain. it's the forests as well. >> that was the national treasure that is al roker doing that report on the "today" show in 1988. that was july of 1988. and at that time, the other thing going on in the country was, of course, that the 1988 presidential election was in full swing bp that was the year the republican candidate was vice president george h.w. bush, the democratic candidate was michael dukakis before we got the rule about politicians

wearing headgear. george h.w. bush of course won the 1988 presidential election in pretty much a landslide but as part of his campaign for the presidency he promised to do something act the terrible problem we were having with the ozone layer and dead lakes and acid rain and all the rest of it. after he was elected as president, he made good on his campaign promise and he proposed amending the clean air act once more. i mean, they knew what the problem was. with the ozone layer, they knew what was causing it to go away, which chemicals had to be eliminated in order to stop making that problem worse and start fixing it. on acid rain, they knew they needed to get rid of sulfur die i don't care side and nitrogen oxide. they needed to summon the will and the way to get rid of those things. and just like every other time there had been some advance against pollution, there were critics who said don't do it, we desperately need to keep doing this pollution.

if you try to get rid of this pollution, the world will end. in the case of a kang mon at the time, he said the world might not end if you got rid of this pollution because if you believe in protecting the environment, you then obviously do not believe god and therefore heaven will be prevented from solving our problems for us. >> for we americans to understand the political clout and influence of the environmental party, we have to understand its theology. and the environmental party in american politics today essentially believes that what you see in this world is all there is and all that ever will be. as an institution or a force, it does not believe in a hereafter. >> and the hereafter will help, maybe. the congressman arguing that efforts to stop pollution are effectively inherently godless. obviously the next line of

attack, obviously they're communist. >> the irony of it is that when the eastern bloc countries, the soviet union and communist countries in eastern europe are moving away from centralized planning, this very act that we're about to take up on the floor, the clean air act amendments, moouchs america in the direction precisely where the communist system wants to lead. >> this could seriously threaten our nation's economic expansion. >> the bill that's before this senate, the so-called clean air act of 1990, in my opinion will be able to -- will be able to put this country in a regulatory recession all on its own right because of the lack of productivity, the lack of

competitiveness that we will generate and find from our american economy. >> that was 1990. during the debate over what george h.w. bush said he want dodd with the clean air act. despite those predictions that the sky would fall and god would have his revenge, the george h.w. bush administration passed the amendment to the clean air act and it took those giant and ultimately effective steps towards stopping acid rain and repairing the hole in the to ozone layer. and we didn't become a communist country. they said the sky would fall. quite the opposite. the ozone layer got better. in 1963 and then in 1967 and in 1970 and 1972 and 1977 up through 1990, that debate and beyond, we have over and over and over again made progress on these issues. we've had bipartisan votes and bipartisan support for attacking pollution as we have run into pollution problems and the science has been conclusive about how to fix those problems. and, yes, there have been little chicken littles all along the

way saying it would be the end of the world if we tried to stop this current round of pollution. but the chicken littles have been wrong all along. so they make their arguments. but those arguments time and again get proven to be wrong. today in washington, the epa administrator gina mccarthy cited that long history of how people argue against fixing pollution problems when she announced major new limits on emissions from power plants. >> in the '60s, when smog choked our cities, critics cried wolf and said epa action would put the brakes on the auto production. and they were wrong. instead, our air got cleaner and our kids got healthier and we sold more cars. in the 1990s, critics cried wolf and said fighting acid rain would make electricity go up and our lights go out. they said industry would, and i quote, die a quiet death. well, they were wrong again. industry is alive and well. our lights are still on, and we have dramatically reduced acid

rain. so time and time, when science pointed to health risks, special interests cried wolf to protect their own agenda, not the agenda of the american people, and time after time we followed the science, we protected the american people and the doomsday predictions never came true. >> since the clean air act was first passed in 1963 there's been a long history of bipartisan support in congress, bipartisan votes in congress to handle pollution issues. but today's limits, the announced limits today on pollution from power plants, these ones today were not subject to a vote in congress. the epa announced these changes today under their own authority as an agency. in a 2007 ruling the supreme court held that the clean air act was unambiguous, that as a law the clean air act requires the government to act to keep the air clean. and when there are pollutants in

the air that represent a danger to human life and human health, the government has a statutory legal responsibility to act to limit that pollution. and in 2007 the supreme court of the united states ruled that that unequivocally and unambiguously included the kind of green house gases that come from tailpipe emissions and that come from power plants. one of my favorite stories to ever emerge out of the george w. bush administration, one of the stories about that presidency that seems so crazy you think it's apocryphal but no, it really happened, i'm not kidding, one of my favorite george w. bush administration stories was the story of how that administration reacted to that supreme court ruling in 2007. the supreme court rules that epa has to regulate air pollution and that the epa has to, they're required by law to determine whether or not green house gases are air pollution. if so, the epa has to regulate them. the epa under george w. bush, they did what the court asked. you got to. it's the supreme court.

right? they did what the supreme court asked, said, okay, fine, yes, we acknowledge as the epa, green house gases are air pollution, we're in charge of regulating air pollution and so yes, we do have to regulate them, they were ordered to come up with a finding on that issue, they came up with a finding on that issue. and then they e-mailed that finding to the white house and the george w. bush white house refused to open the e-mail. literally they said they wouldn't click on it. so technically they were never required to act because they never heard what the epa decided on this issue because they literally decided that they would not open the e-mail that contained the finding. thus they had not been notified of the funding, thus no requirement to act. tah-dah! what's the opposite of like father, like son? does that have an opposite? if it has an idiom? well, under the obama administration they apparently open their e-mail, they

recalibrated the spam filter or whatever and the epa, as it is legally required to do so by statute and rulings of the supreme court, the epa has issued these new standards. the two biggest contributes to green house gases, the two biggest contributors are vehicles, tailpipe emission, and power plants. the obama administration has now acted aggressively on both of those two sources of pollution. and as usual, as is the case of every previous advance in this field in our nation over the last 50 years, critics are now saying that we need actually to keep all this pollution, we can't get rid of this pollution. the efforts to get rid of the pollution will destroy the american economy. senator mitch mcconnell put out a statement today calling these new rules a dager in the heart of the middle class. critics have always made arguments like this about trying to control pollution. it's this odd form of hysteria that is totally predictable. you can set your watch to it. how have those critics been defeated in the past at

junctures like this? will president obama and the epa be able to defeat them this time too? stay with us. this one goes out to all the congestion sufferers who feel like there's a brick on their face. who are so congested, it feels like the walls are closing in. ♪ who are so stuffed up, they feel like they're under water. try zyrtec-d® to powerfully clear your blocked nose and relieve your other allergy symptoms... so you can breathe easier all day. zyrtec-d®. find it at the pharmacy counter.

what was once lush red spruce, now there are strands of dead red spruce skeletons of trees that were once high peaks. the legacy that we will pass

along to our children if we don't act soon to control the emissions that cause acid rain will be one of selfish indifference towards generations to come. >> that was from nbc's the "today" show in 1988. we did act to control the emissions that cause acid rain. critics at the time said the sky would fall as a result. the sky is still there. today the obama administration announced new plans to control emissions from power plants, and the same sky-is-falling critics are making the same arguments all over again. joining us now tonight i'm happy to say is william riley, the epa administrator you can see standing with the president -- the epa administrator under george h.w. bush who helped write those acid rain regulations in the ninth. thanks for being with us. pleasure to have you here. >> pleasure to be here and to listen to your history. brought back a lot of memories of environmental victories. >> thanks. i'm glad it sounds that way to

you because it implies i didn't screw anything up, but i guess i should ask you about whether in hindsight, now looking back at it, i feel like the objections that were made, the sky is falling stuff, specifically about the economy, it all seems so disproven and so clearly wrong in terms of the implications of those arguments of your critics at the time, did it feel that way at the time or was it a harder fight than it looks like in hindsight? >> they were all hard fights. there were always critics and there were always economic arguments. one interesting facet of virtually every one of those stamp utilities that you mention is the epa itself overestimated the cost of accommodating those rules including the acid rain tight where will the electric energy predicted it would cost, epa's number was $600 to $700, it came in under $200. now, that was a consequence of ingenuity, innovation, all of this things that characterize

america at its best and it's a statute that worked and acid rain was put under control. >> do you think that the argument from the administration right now are sound, that ingenuity can be driven by system-wide controls like this, that this will not only take carbon out of the atmosphere, which is a thing we need to do, but that it will increase both energy efficiency and ingenuity and ultimately create jobs as america essentially e vovms to respond to the new reality of a controlled carbon future? do you think the administration is right about that? >> i think the united states is in a much better position to take this move now than at any time in the recent past. we have in many parts of the country an excess of electricity. we haven't yet gotten back to where we were in 2005. in most states we have renewable -- minimum renewable energy requirements in 36 states. we have efficiency capabilities. we have the smart grid, we have a lot more technology for

controlling the use of energy in our homes and we have, as you mentioned the automobile fuel efficiency standards which will take us -- i think they're expected to reduce by about 2.25 million barrels a day when they're fully implemented. so a lot is happening. and we all have cheap natural gas. that has been responsible already for making a good deal of progress and reducing the green house gases and it will benefit significantly from this statute, this regulation. >> when you look back at the way that george h.w. bush administration handled its critics, these people who said this would be too costly, there was no reason -- it would cost jobs and the whole thing. when you look back at the way they handled critics and the way the obama administration has to sell these new rules, a public comment period for a year, has the political environment changed in washington so much it's impossible to draw lessons from your earlier experience, or did you go through things that should inform the political fight now? >> the politics changed,

obviously. we had an enthusiastic republican president in the white house. though we had critics and skeptics, the budget director predicted it would bring on a recession to pass the clean air act amendments of 1991. we had a very energetic and effective majority leader in the senate who had been not so patiently waiting for acid rain controls as a senator from maine for at least 15 years. and we eventually got a vote of 88 in the senate out of 100 in favor of the amendments. now, it took two years almost to get there, and there were certainly a lot of skirmishes along the way. we had very strong support from western republican senators and congressmen for the acid rain title and the clean air act. so i don't see the same situation today. it's a different politics, a different view of problems. we had a major regional problem in acid rain. climate change affects the whole world. that's obviously going to be a much larger challenge to

address. but we've started and in a very significant historic way. >> do you foresee any resurgence in conservation-minded republicanism, the sort of scientific denialism that is underlaid so much of the environmental politics and the republican party recently? seems to me to not be a long-term sustainable stance. too many smart people involved in politics to let that be the party's permanent stance. do you think that's going to turn around in the republican party? >> i tend to agree with that. one thing that i look back on is a significant change in 1988 from the reagan emphases and priorities on the environment to president george h.w. bush's priorities. the country really got it in the summer of '88. it was an era, a time of warming, of significant ozone alerts in many of the -- ground-level ozone pollution in many cities of the country. we had medical waste washing up on the beaches of new jersey and long island. we had an unusual attention to

both upper atmospheric ozone depletion and climate. my view the that moment will come again. the country will again get concerned about some aspect or other of climate change. one of the big things that's different now from then is when we looked at climate change then, we largely depended on computers, and we had the national academy of scientists and the community saying you have a problem here, you have to address it. but we didn't have the evidence we have now. last week in norway in the arctic i saw retreating glaciers, fjords that no longer freeze this time of year. that's happening all over the arctic, and there are many manifestations of the spring and summer coming earlier to the farm country. people are getting the fact that there is change, and i think the next question is well, are we causing it? apparently most of the country is not yet sure of that. but i think they'll come to be and i think they'll demand action. >> william riley, former epa administrator under the george h.w. bush administration. thanks for being with us

tonight. i really appreciate your time. >> thank you for having me. >> all right. much more ahead. stay with us.

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the entire class, let me reassure you in these final hours at west point as commander in chief i hereby absolve all cadets who are on restriction for minor conduct offenses. [ applause ] let me just add that nobody ever did that for me when i was in school. >> that is one of the great side benefits of having the commander in chief give your commencement address. if you're graduating from one of the military academies one of the things the president can do as commander in chief is issue a blanket pardon to your class, restore all of your demerritts or whatever else might have been pending against you for minor

conduct offenses. when president obama spoke at the west point commencement last week he also shouted out some notable members of the class of 2014 at west point including a star basketball player who he shouted out by name, also a graduating west point cadet this year who's on a rhodes scholar to study at oxford, the academy's first all-female command team, shouted them out by name. he did not mention in his speech another historic first for the class of 2014. this year at west point for the first time ever one of the granl walts of the u.s. military academy was from the nation of qatar. here's the proud coverage in the gulf times newspaper. the graduating cadet with his family, i believe, as well as his royal highness the father emir sheikh hamad ben khalifa al fani. the monarch who was the emir of qatar until last year he passed to his son. but the father is still a powerful figure in that tiny nation and personally attended the graduation at west point to

mark the occasion of the fist cadet from his country to graduate from the u.s. military academy. qatar and the united states have a very long and close and complex set of military ties. the u.s. military divides the world into different commands, right, afrikaans, for example, the african command. centcom is central command, which kovrs the middle east and huge swaths of asia. centcom has been the command in charge of the iraq and afghanistan wars. centcom's overseas headquarters are in qatar. when the united states tried to start a process of peace talks with the taliban to find a political ending to the afghanistan war, it was qatar that agreed not only to host the talks but to set up embassies and diplomatic facilities for all sides involved. so much controversy. and now we know that on the sidelines of the west point graduation ceremony, yes, the father emir of qatar was there to mark this young man's proud graduation, and what that means for his nation and the ties between our nations.

but he had also been there talking to president obama about something very intrepid that was about to happen within the next 48 hours. so that west point graduation ceremony was on wednesday of last week. right? on friday morning, diplomats from the nation of qatar appeared in cuba, basically in the waiting room at the prison at guantanamo. the diplomats from qatar got to guantanamo on friday secretly. there was no announcement anywhere. then saturday they got the signal essentially they were cleared to go ahead, and those qatari diplomats rereceived these guys, these five prisoners. they're all afghans. the qatari diplomats picked them up at guantanamo and flew them on a u.s. air force c-17 globe force master back to qatar. three of these five guys had been at guantanamo literally since the first day the prison opened in january 2002. the other two got there a few months later. they've all been there more than a decade but now they're in qatar and the emir and presumably his father have given

the united states direct assurances that those five men will not be allowed to leave that country for at least a year. they will not be allowed to go back to afghanistan. they will have to stay in qatar. since at least 2011, on and off negotiations have been happening about whether or not a prisoner swap might be possible, about whether or not the united states might consider releasing those five guys from the taliban in exchange for america's one remaining prisoner of war from either the iraq war or the afghanistan war. those secret negotiations have been on again, off again for at least three years, but this weekend it finally happened. and america's prisoner of war from afghanistan, army sergeant bowe bergdahl, was handled over to u.s. special forces in afghanistan at 10:30 a.m. eastern time on saturday. and before 2:00 p.m. eastern time that c-17 with the qatari diplomats and the five prisoners had taken off from guantanamo. >> this morning i called bob and jany bergdahl and told them that after nearly five years in captivity their son bowe is

coming home. he wasn't forgotten by his community in idaho or the military, which rallied to support the bergdahls through thick and thin, and we wasn't forgotten by his country because the united states of america does not ever leave our men and women in uniform behind. >> since the surprise and joy at that shock announcement on saturday, president obama's republican critics in washington have been trying to figure out how to make the return of a u.s. prisoner of war into bad news. slate.com today posted this tweet from republican spinmeister frank luntz warning republicans they're kind of starting to look like monsters about this. he says, pro tip -- attacking the actions that led to the release of sergeant bowe bergdahl is a surefire way to lose in 2014. that was the way frank luntz responded to news about republicans attacking the deal that got bergdahl freed. despite that advice, republicans

have been very critical of that deal. john mccain called it in his words disturbing. the house intelligence committee chairman, who is soon resigning from congress in order to become a right-wing talk radio host, mike rodgers, he called the deal dangerous. the house armed services committee chair says he wants hearings into the bergdahl release. senator lindsey graham wants hearings as well. apparently the republican reaction to the freeing of america's last prisoner of war from iraq or afghanistan is that his being released is a scandal. against that backdrop of inevitable partisan outrage, though, there is an interesting substantive question about what the president did in order to get bowe bergdahl freed. and frankly whether or not the president could do the same sort of thing to empty guantanamo out. before this it did not seem like the president had the power to everyone ty guantanamo. does what just happened here mean he has more power than rewe previously understood? exact lay year ago president

obama renewed his call to shut down guantanamo. he then apointed two new envoys, one at the state department, one at the pentagon, to start the work or restart the work of trying to close guantanamo. he literally reopened the office of closing guantanamo that had been shut down during his first term because they weren't getting anywhere against congressional resistance. since the president renewed his commitment and renewed the effort to close guantanamo, there has been a small trickle of prisoners who have been sent home or more frequently to third countries. when congress sent president obama a defense bill at the end of last year, that bill actually did relax some of the restrictions that congress had placed on transferring prisoners out of guantanamo. but when the president signed the bill, he also tried to give himself more room to maneuver in terms of the releasing people from that facility. it was the day after christmas, this past year, december 26th, 2013, president obama issued a signing statement about the defense bill from last year, and

in the signing statement he thanked congress for giving him additional flexibility to transfer detainees abroad, but he noted that the bill, in his words, still does not e eliminate all of the unwarranted limitations on foreign transfers. the president said, "the executive branch must have the flexibility to act swiftly in conducting negotiations with foreign country ises regarding the circumstances of detainee transfers." precluding apparently some very last-minute negotiations on the sidelines of the west point graduation this year with the father of the emir of qatar. the president says he had the authority to do that, to send those five prisoners home to secure the release of that american p.o.w. republicans now say the president didn't have that authority and he should not have made that deal to get bowe bergdahl released. on the question of who can do what, who is right, did the president have the legal right to do that? and if the president did have

that legal right, and he acted legally when he let those guys five guys out of guantanamo this weekend, couldn't the president do that for any number of prisoners also at guantanamo? if the administration could negotiate a place for them to go no matter what congress said? joining us is wells dixon, senior staff attorney at the center for constitutional rights and remits several guantanamo prisoners. thanks for being here. >> thanks for being here. >> how about that last question? does the deal that president obama made here -- if he could do that once, could he do that for other prisoners at the facility? >> absolutely. this transfer that occurred was an unqualified success both for sergeant bergdahl but also in terms of the president's everies to close the prison. what it shows is that the president can take bold steps in order to transfer detainees. by only criticism of the president is he hasn't done this sooner because as you mentioned in the run-up, the president asked congress to change the law to relax some of the

restrictions on his ability to transfer detainees and congress did that. and so it's clear that he has the authority do it. what's not clear is whether he has the political fortitude to continue to do that. the transfer this weekend is encouraging. but remains to be seen what happens from here on out. >> i'm not a lawyer and i'm not an expert on these matters, but what i understand the law to be on these issues given the law that the president signed and then put out the signing statement after christmas is that he does have to give congress 30 days' notice before he transfers anybody out of guantanamo. obviously in a very specific sense he did not do that here, but the administration says that's okay, we believe we gave enough generic notice and besides, essentially, exigent circumstances. >> yeah. you know, i think it's an open question whether this law actually prevented or would have prevented the president from transferring these men absent prior notice. i think it's an open question

whether the law even applies to a situation like this. there's nothing in the statute itself that would suggest that it was intended to limit the president's authority to act in situation involving exigent circumstances or whatever significant foreign relations consequences. so i think he was perhaps well within his authority to do that. but -- and i think you see hints of that or suggestions of that in the signing statement and as well in some of the veto threats that have been issued by the white house in connection with a coming legislation to renew potentially those restrictions. >> so just to be clear, though, you're not saying that the signing statement give ls the president authority to do this even though the law says otherwise. >> the signing statement is essentially a press release but it is important because it does provide a window into what the president's thinking, into some of the legal issues and some of the areas of potential conflict among the different branches of

government. but as i said at the outside, i don't know that this law, the notification requirement was ever meant to apply in a situation like the prisoner transfer and exchange that occurred recently. >> congress certainly means for it to apply against emptying out guantanamo and closing the prison. that's why they inserted that language, is that they want the president to be constrained by law for being able to do what he wants to do, which is send prisoners back to their home countries or third countries whenever it can be safely arranged. they clearly want to stop him from doing that. you're saying he should ignore congress and that law in doing so. >> what i'm saying is they may want to frustrate his ability to close the prison for political reasons, but i don't think that there is an effort on the part of congress to actually prevent a prisoner exchange. i mean, what would the republicans do? would they have left sergeant bergdahl in afghanistan in the hands of the taliban? >> but there aren't any more bowe bergdahls in captivity now

so there won't be another exchange. i think it will be fascinating to see whether or not the administration tries to extrapolate from that case to say, you know what congress, we eno you're upset, we're going to send people to third countries anyway. at this point they have not articulated a rationale to do that. seems to me like they're halfway to that layup, though, if they want to do it. >> tt has more than enough authority already to simply provide notice and transfer these individuals. there are 149 men who remain at guantanamo today. 78 of them have been approved for transfer. and by approved for transfer i mean every agency with a stake in guantanamo -- cia, defense department, et cetera -- they've decided unanimously these people can be released without -- without presenting significant threat to the united states. so the president could transfer those individuals. as i said, my only criticism is he hasn't done it sooner. >> in terms of this law, give the notice and watch congress --

>> just provide the notice. >> thanks for helping me understand this. i appreciate it. >> thank you. >> right back. stay with us.

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♪ behold, i am now going to use the word "beyonce" in a sentence. ahem. last year when beyonce dropped a

new album out of nowhere, beyonce's legions of fans were shocked. they were happily shocked. there was no advance warning the album was coming. no promotional releases, no teasers. nothing. just one cold december morning it unexpectedly dropped on itunes and that was that. and one of the ways we can document real-time reactions in the world now is we can map mentions of specific words on social media. so this is the twitter map of the news about beyonce's new record spreading online. that record generated something like 1.2 million independent tweets in 24 hours. and as the day progressed some areas started tweeting about it more, others less. others stopped tweeting about it altogether. looking at a map like, this if beyonce's new album was running for president you can see where its base voters would live and

where it wouldn't get any votes. there's a similar map for when the l.a. clippers owner donald sterling was banned for life from the nba. not maybe as big a splash as the new beyonce record, but still you can see it unfold. lots of tweets at first in some areas and then less in others. in the sliver of news that people care about that is not sports or music, it's illustrative to look at the scandal and upset over the va and wait times for veterans trying to get in to see a doctor. now, in the big picture this story and this scandal is years old. the inspector general at that agency's been doing reports on this problem for almost a decade. but when allegations caught fire, specifically about the phoenix va and waiting lists there, and then those allegations grew into a national story, there's this timeline from topsy showing it unfold on twitter. mentions per day of veterans, veterans' health, and the former va secretary eric shinseki. the timeline here starts a month ago on may 3rd. if you look at the orange line, that's veterans. you see that interest builds and then peaks on monday may 25th. that makes sense because that was memorial day. a lot of news outlets used memorial day as their hook for covering the ongoing veterans scandal. it also didn't hurt that the top

republican on the senate veteran affairs committee, richard burr of north carolina, he chose the occasion of memorial day to launch a broadside open letter attack on america's veterans' organizations. so memorial day was a peak for people talking about veterans. the second most popular day was friday, which is also the day that the search term shinseki peaked because friday was the day that eric shinseki, the head of the va, he resigned because of the scandal. and then after eric shinseki resigns, with the, kersplat. look at the end of the timeline. interest dropped in everything. veterans, veterans' health, shinseki. maybe you can just chalk that up to the weekend maybe. well, look at today. today was monday. interest went up a little bit. but not really by much. and nothing in comparison to where it was. are we going back to the old normal of not really talking about this problem? because the problem isn't fixed. eric shinseki is gone now. he resigned on friday. but the problem that everyone

was so upset by is not fixed by him leaving. that problem is still just as there today as it was last week. now that the va secretary is gone, are the political gods satisfied with that human sacrifice and now all the energy is gone for fixing the problem that had upset everyone so much? if all that expressed outrage, all that expressed concern was sincere and it wasn't just an opportunity for politicians to grandstand and call for scalps, if washington really does want to fix the problem instead of just scoring points on that problem, we will soon now because the house is out this week but the senate is working this week and the senate veterans' affairs committee chairman, senator bernie sanders this week is going to be reintroducing a new version of his legislation that the republicans filibustered in february. the bill would expand access to care. it allows the va to lease 27 new health facilities in 18 states that need them. it authorized emergency funding to hire new health professionals. it offers incentives for more doctors to come work at the va

to spend part of their careers here. it has a version of the house republican proposal to make it easier to fire employees at the va when they do things wrong, but it also has more protection for whistleblowers. it has a provision that republicans like that will let vets who can't get timely appointments at the va to go elsewhere for care but have the va pick up the bill. we've learned that the senate veterans committee is scheduled to discuss the bill on thursday, with the hope of getting a vote for the overall bill sometime maybe next week. harry reid said on the senate floor today that every united states senator should vote for the veterans bill and said any republican who's criticizing the va's care but is also voting against funding the va in his words is engaged in doublespeak. washington gets very excited to get a scalp whenever there's a scandal. but in this case the head of the agency resigning still leaves the scandal entirely in place. until it gets fixed. the senate's going to have a chance to put its money where its mouth is on this one, starting on thursday. that is going to be a big day in washington.

we'll be right back.

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including the fact that a preferred risk policy starts as low as $129 a year. for an agent, call the number that appears on your screen. some breaking news just in from san francisco. the story of ryan kelly chamberlain broke this weekend. law enforcement officials said they had raided mr. chamberlain's apartment in san francisco. they said they found explosives in the apartment but they didn't find him. the fbi responded by putting out essentially a national apb for the man. he's a pr professional and a political operative. the fbi started a nationwide manhunt after they could not find him this weekend. they described him as armed and dangerous. the man later posted an online suicide note but the nationwide hunt for him continued. tonight within the last few minutes it's been reported that ryan kelly has been found, ryan kelly chamberlain, excuse me, has been found and arrested. still in san francisco and obviously alive.

again, breaking news. the fbi manhunt for ryan kelly chamberlain in san francisco as of at least a few minutes ago is apparently over. we'll let you know more as we learn more.over. we'll let you know more as we learn more. "first look" is up next. good tuesday morning, everybody. right now on "first look," prisoner swap. new details surround the efforts to secure sergeant bowe bergdahl's release from the taliban had many in the military very upset. pressure cooker. president obama arrives in poland as he tries to rally leaders to turn up the heat on russia. tiananmen square. years ago it shook the world. good morning. thanks for joining us. more questions following the release of bowe bergdahl as part of a prisoner of war exchange. after being held