in the streets of caracas to mourn the death of venezuela's president hugo chavez coming up we'll take you to venezuela for the latest on what's next for the latin american country. u.s. senator rand paul has value can speak until he couldn't speak no more on the senate floor has been going strong for the past four months four hours to determine filibusters on the cia nominee john brennan and protect americans from potential drone strikes on u.s. soil. plus there's a threat to our national defense that's closer than you'd think the military is struggling with out of shape recruits as the ranks of eligible soldiers continue to thin coming up we'll get the skinny on the efforts to drop those pounds. as of wednesday march sixth five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching our t.v. . well begin today with the death of venezuela leader hugo chavez he died yesterday

at the age of fifty eight after losing his battle to cancer today thousands of supporters flooded the streets of caracas chavez's remains were taken from the military hospital to the floor today to you in a military academy and that is where his body will lie for lie in state for three days by his president nicolas maduro will serve as interim president and under venice well as law an election will be held in thirty days now the big question what happens next for the country r.t. spanish correspondent maria maria started stina tells us the latest from caracas venezuela is now grieving the loss of its charismatic leader sawzall few but charles supporters have taken to the streets across the country and the seven day mourning period has been declared the president of venezuela died on tuesday afternoon nearly two years after being diagnosed with cancer fighting back two years why is president nicolas maduro announced the news describing his debts as

intensely painful and the history of tragedy for the country when as well as mildred teves life on state television to pledge their loyalty to honduras who chavis named as he used successor one of the world's best known socialist leaders and a storage group to call the united states has undergone surgery four times and had a number of sessions of kenya to be in the cuban capital have an despite his ailing house chavez was reelected in october last year to forced term however he was not able to attend his you know gratian ceremony casting doubt on the succession of power new elections in israel and now have to take place within so two days. those are two spanish correspondent various stars chavez's funeral is scheduled for this friday meantime it's very likely shove his successor vice president nicolas maduro could face off against opposition leader and recapitulates who chavez defeated in

last october that presidential election well chavez was both charismatic and controversial and while he had strong critics see also had passion of followers among them political hip hop group rebel diaz the bronx based group they are also brothers use their music to spread their political message take a listen to part of one of their songs in titled make it a zero. good job. down the. road throwing. the duo would join me earlier to talk about how their music was inspired by chavez and what the leader's death means for his followers i asked what chavez's death means to them. we like to say that chavez lives in the spirit of the bolivarian revolution and he is alive and well the president of south bronx as he has supported the community decided bronson so many

poor people all wide and inspired us with his courage to stand up against imperialism and the forces of imperialism and for us we def that it's a huge loss for all of latin america well you know the warrior spirit in us and that we will continue to support the bolivarian revolution and that we will continue to speak out against realism now i know that you hear music is inspired by chavez can you can you tell us about how how he's inspired some of your your songs were originally from cheating and you know we had some of the you ending was unfortunately toppled by a cia sponsored aku and what followed was a dictatorship. but for the eyes of a child it is in in due time of the born again revolution and been

a spell out for us as the twenty first century i did it for us it was the idea of reclaiming power for the people and using the resources of latin america for the people of latin america as opposed to corporations that continue to see exploit. the revolution in venice when i've been a profound inspiration and beyond that they have supported the work that we do in the bronx directly we've never had a push or obama visit the south bronx but we had charges in south bronx in two thousand and five where he pledged to give discounted heating oil to the poor communities in the poorest congressional district in the united states which is what we live in in the bronx in new york and beyond that he started a social development runs through. but there always there when it's when i understand city or go here in the united states to support organizations in the south bronx that we're doing work that reflected the values of the program

revolution so for us users of both their favorites are inspirational but as well are a concrete support for the work that we were doing to stop wrongs now people like yourselves and people in the bronx like you had mentioned chavez does have a very strong passionate following but he also was a controversial figure his critics are quick to point out problems under his rule for example this skyrocketing crime rate the currency there has been devalued and restricting freedom of the press despite these glaring problems he still has a very devoted following why i think that also you have to also understand that. the revolution is a process and in fourteen years you're not going up you know say turn around five hundred years of oppression and i think that more than anything we have to understand if the main green camps media is not a key role in portraying him. in

a negative fashion you feel that in venezuela more than any western hemisphere country that there is democracy fully living you know when you look at the literacy rates when you look at education money going towards education and i'm going towards we are like we have here in this country in venice when i but is going to sit it's going to have the threat of being hit by a drone strikes you know i mean so i think that it's also important to look at the angle which is being portrayed and i think that for us we come from a perspective that that if you're on the side of poor people you are a side of. now the big question is what's going to happen next what's going to happen in venice well and now that their longtime leader has passed away do you think that whoever replaces him will be able to carry on his legacy well you know. you know we've got the privilege of being in business when i and sharing with people in business when i and folks that work in culture are revolutionary cultural and minutes and with our conversations with them it's really been you know idea

that the revolution was not shot it is the revolution is the people is the people that make up the the concept of. the local councils the area that's what makes up the rubble and what's what has occurred in the last fourteen years has been a cultural shift the shift where these ideas of individual ism are thrown out the window an idea of collective success of building a collective successful society within minutes well that's the culture that's been promoted and so for us what we are are hopeful that that the young people in business well i will step up and carry this process forward we understand this process is being carried forward in the context of continued attacks by the united states by the cia and the young people are conscious of and they realize that and we support them that their movements be radicalizing the forward at this point the loss of jobs as a patient as year of out is lives in all of us and in many of the people in

venezuela and i think there will be invigorated to take the streets and really you know she does revolution alive ok thanks guys appreciate you coming on the show and sharing with us your music and how he has inspired the work that you do that was going salo and rodriguez a red rigo the name their band members of the hip hop group rebel diaz. still ahead here on our key u.s. senator rand paul is on a speaking marathon on the senate floor he's determined to filibuster cia nominee john brennan and protect americans from potential drone strikes on u.s. soil we'll have the complete story for you after the break. pretty down in the field that while we won't find it here if you're looking for relevant stories you need respect to some tough questions dowry. topping the mountain scene story doesn't make it news. no. question.

a lot of potentially deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit starting in a few hours from new york to maine we have team coverage of. what we're watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston properly or today it was very sticky you can see it start to become much more powdery down the line there's still a lot of snow out here a good place for snowball fight. piece and it is kind of pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout much of it might still be slightly driving license of emergency vehicles are exceptions. well the drone program is coming under more scrutiny now after

a statement from attorney general eric holder here is senator rand paul on the floor of the senate where he's been speaking for hours in an attempt to filibuster ca nominee john brennan senators ted cruz mike lee ron wyden and marco rubio she's sexy saxby sham believe they are among those that also joined him on the floor senator paul has repeatedly asked officials can the government conduct drone strikes on americans on u.s. soil here is holder's response to the senator quote i suppose to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate for the president to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the united states for example the president could conceivably have no choice but to authorize the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland in the circumstances of a catastrophic attack while this answer has raised many more questions earlier i

was joined by mike reason of reason like ray because of reason magazine i asked him if he finds holder's position on drone strikes toward american citizens to be troubling. we don't actually know what he's ruling out or not ruling out i think if you want to look at the exchange that was sort of put the finest point on this it was when ted cruz senator ted cruz asked holder could you kill somebody on u.s. soil who did not pose an imminent threat because if you think back to early february and we saw that white paper from the department of justice about when targeted killing could be used there was a real imminence how soon violence could happen from a potential terrorist was not very well defined so crew said if it's not defined if we do if this person is just talking can you kill them holder's answer was i don't think that would be appropriate but what cruz was asking and what rand paul is asking is is it constitutional you know pro questions of appropriateness have more to do with your behavior at a party you know then whether or not you can use

a drone or a sniper or something else to kill somebody on american soil without due process speaking of course he did grill attorney general holder today let's take a listen to this exchange. if a u.s. citizen on u.s. soil is not posing an immediate threat to life or bodily harm does the constitution allow a drone to kill that service i would not think that that would be an appropriate use of any kind of lethal force we would deal with that in the way that we typically deal with a situation like that ok is this so what do you make of the holder's response there you know it's unclear yeah what we haven't seen him do yeah and if you continue watching that exchange somebody i think maybe dianne feinstein senator feinstein who's also on the judiciary committee tries to interpret for cruz and she kind of asshole or he's not asking if you think it's appropriate he's asking if you think it's constitutional or not can you just answer yes or no and holder says i thought my answer was clear it's no he doesn't actually say the words it would be unconstitutional so it's sort of difficult to say whether or not the white house

actually feels this way the examples the holder gave such as the attack on pearl harbor nine eleven that's also sort of confusing because you know there's no reason to think that and we are all a walk he was killed because he was plotting a new nine eleven you know and he was an american citizen so we don't this white house hasn't actually use that standard for any of their targeted killings interesting as you had mentioned this is raising some constitutional questions and senator rand paul is raising them today on the floor he's kind of keeping up the of this talking marathon and it does have to filibuster want to bring up this clip of something he said today if we're fighting a war in afghanistan which we have been and that there are soldiers around the bend that are a threat to our soldiers. there is no due process at that point but that's not what we're arguing about we're arguing about targeted strikes a people not involved in combat that's my concern. so you know we here in the

us we obviously pride ourselves on the right to due process. but what can this imply about citizens constitutional rights to a trial well i think twelve years in what we're looking at is people are sort of they've lost whatever support they had or affection they had for treating all types of potential terrorists as if they were enemy combatants former bush administration officials have made the argument that people who think we should have due process for targeted killing are basically saying this is a war on terror you know you don't use due process and more due process is for criminal justice issues but i think after we saw you know the killing of a sixteen year old american in yemen people are suddenly they've woken up to this idea that actually you know there is a place for criminal justice in the crew criminal justice protections provided by the constitution in combat in terrorism so i think that's sort of the shift we're saying just calling everything a war on terror calling everybody who might possibly dislike united states an enemy

combatant it doesn't fly anymore. but when holder says that these attacks are on likely and hopefully will never be used and we are just talking about very extreme circumstances to prevent a catastrophe from happening something like proper or nine eleven do you admit that there he has some kind of a justification there when he says that the yeah i mean it's interesting because we're not just talking right about the d.o.j. responding to those potential threats using drones they're talking about the targeted killing white paper doesn't specify whether or not it's truman's i mean presumably if you can kill some without due process and you're in you argue that this has that there are no constitutional protections afforded a terrorist then something like cruel and unusual punishment come into it so really what's going on here we get caught. up in the drone issue but it's they are going to hold or is making as if a threat is imminent the government can use whatever means it wants to to kill a potential terrorist and you know i mean if we knew nine eleven was happening all

over again i mean tricky are we do we know that's going to happen tomorrow do we know it's going to happen a week from now do we know it's going to happen a month from now because you know a month out do you need to kill him or can you rustam you know and i think that's what it really comes down to and even in domestic law enforcement cases we see cases where police officers lot of times they're at the wrong decision but sometimes they don't they have to make the decision can we arrest or do we have to use lethal force so you know that's a question the holder should be able to answer if it's on domestic soil i think that's what is troubling a lot of people when it comes to holder's answer is that it kind of leaves leaves a very open and it still raises a lot more questions in terms of the specifics that you bring up like thank you so much for coming on that was my great to see is the associate editor at reason magazine thank you and i was surprising new threats from members of the military we're not talking about a threat from a foreign enemy about one they're battling right here at home as obesity plagues americans turns out members of the military are no exception these days military

recruits are struggling with their weight thinning the ranks of eligible soldiers are to correspondent megan lopez has more. genota bar. they don't call it special for nothing it's not a morning workout routine for the faint hearted two men a push of where mount is to go to failure on the a group of young men gathered early in the morning with one mission in mind to join the u.s. military all star when the big hands on the sixty and go but as they swim and strain and sweat this group of recruits is already on a battlefield of sorts fighting one of america's biggest national security threat obesity it's absolutely a security issue i know we've you know terrorist of killed several thousand. in the past decade you know ourselves you know just from heart disease. obesity

diabetes will kill in the hundreds of thousands since our nation began soldiers of sacrifice everything in order to protect the country that they love today they need to think about adopting healthier lifestyles in order to better serve their community today seventy five percent of men and women between the ages of seventeen and twenty four are not qualified to join and up to twenty five percent who are more than half cannot pass a physical training test the fitness tests are very easy the minimum standards are . almost laughable obesity is such a huge problem for the military that it costs the defense department some one point one billion dollars annually in medical care former navy seals to smith is working to change that which is heroes of tomorrow initiative a program that is meant to get recruits military ready and that's no easy task. a lot of these kids have no athletic ability at all or i should say no athletic history at all you know they have athletic ability they just never been passed to

use it and where there is a problem people are sure to look for shortcuts the so-called tape test is actually leading some recruits to consider extreme measures like liposuction. in fact one center in north carolina boasts that forty percent of its clients are overweight military personnel but it looks like the military isn't going to change its standards anytime soon if anything the tests are going to become more stringent and more focused on real combat scenarios let him know it's not ninety always because they are getting really strict now with the push ups pushing recruits to their physical limits could drain the well of military prospects even more in the fine for america's national security the more pressing war might be waged right here at home only this one is a combat against calories people need to understand that fitness one day will be the difference between them living or die their lives depend on their fitness level what about the reporting in washington meghan lopez r.t.

. for more on the obesity problem plaguing the military i was joined earlier by our correspondent megan lopez who explained why it is that obesity has become a problem for the military. well liz it's really a compilation of the problems that we're facing in american society today we have seen obesity become a huge problem where thirty percent of americans are obese these days now what i want to say is that six hundred twenty five soldiers last year alone were actually discharged from the military that's increased fifteen fold since two thousand and seven and really it does reflect the population we have people eating about thirty percent more calories annually in the u.s. they're also eating about fifteen pounds more of sugar annually right so yes it's a problem and society as a whole and it looks like members of the military are not exempt from this problem could this actually pose a national security risk well that is what three hundred generals are actually

saying it was that in a letter that was sent to the pentagon and around the u.s. from three hundred joint chiefs of staff retired admirals etc saying that it is so big of a problem that it is actually our number one security threat no longer do we need to worry about the enemies outside we need to worry about the enemies which then was really our own awaits so we spent about one billion dollars annually on medical costs for military personnel alone that's what the pentagon estimates and just to give you an example of one of the real big problems that people are facing there is something called for moral neck stress injury that is something that military personnel actually face pretty commonly it's about hundreds of soldiers each year and this surgery to fix that problem can cost anywhere between one hundred and three hundred thousand dollars just for that surgery alone so so it is a huge problem not only to our military readiness but also to our economic budget when it comes to the military. when i ask you about the kind of testing that they have to go through in order to join the military are they an accurate measure of

whether or not they are in fact ready for the military well as there's two different types of tests the first one is called an enduring test that's a fitness test so really that is. one minute of push ups two minutes of sit ups in a mile run and people call that easy by any standards you heard stu smith say that in my story so bad one mile right in ten minutes none the less so you can practically walk that if you rock at a brisk pace now the second one is the more controversial one that's the one that's called the health test and what it's called inside the military is actually the tape test what they do is they measure the neck and also the mid section for wit and if you don't pass and with your body and weight kind of standards they also proportion in the measurements of your neck in your mid line and actually you can get kicked out of military for that no matter how fit you are no matter if you are the fastest runner of the best of the pushups you can be in trouble just for the size of your waist in your in your neck interesting so clearly

a problem what are military members doing to keep that weight off while there's been a lot of things there's a bunch of different programs that the military is investing in they're spending spending hundreds of millions of dollars to try to get the soldiers back in shape and something that's a little bit less known and some that i mentioned in my story earlier is that some people are actually looking at extreme methods i spoke to one soldier who is currently in the u.s. military and has done some really extreme things to get himself back in shape they include diuretics fasting and he considered life action. they include liquid diets sitting in sauna for hours there's just so many things that he's doing interesting you had mentioned liposuction some of these other methods in a way you could kind of be viewed as an easy way out i mean is this kind of a generational phenomenon are people becoming too lazy to work out i mean what about working out and eating right you know the old fashioned leg that is certainly what the military hopes for with their fueling soldiers initiative and other things

that they're doing but right now it just seems like people are yes not really wanting to work out you know liposuction i spoke to a center in north carolina that was really close to fort bragg they said that forty percent of their clients are actually military personnel that are over. and coming in there too to lose some weight quickly the problem with that is that if there are some types of medical complications it does cause swelling for two to three months but liz just to go back to something i mentioned earlier there's so many critics of these programs that the standards that the military has for its people and one of the big criticisms is that these tests are too easy on the other spectrum they're saying that the health test doesn't measure the right things and finally you're hearing a lot of saying that the face of war is changing that we're really switching into cyber technology into drones so we don't need our soldiers necessarily to be in shape so much as intelligent and capable in their own jobs interesting report there maggie thank you that was our correspondent megan lopez. now to the presidential

powers of pardon power president obama apparently rarely uses friday president obama pardon seventeen people but even with this in mind his administration has pardoned fewer people than any other president in recent history r.t. correspondent margaret howell has the story. one question is president obama less merciful than his predecessors after we enter and obama has the power presidential pardons but he rarely uses it even last week seventeen pardons paled in comparison to the thousands of applications he's received since taking office obama has pardoned one in fifty people who apply while george bush's pardon about one in thirty three bill clinton pardoned one in eight pardons are important because they attempt to fix the errors the justice system makes and restore one's ability to things like credit housing good employment on the federal books alone there are four hundred sixty six laws and six hundred ninety nine regulations that make balance lives more difficult pardons help people move on from their mistakes

and avoid these laws and regulations so why hasn't obama taken advantage of this power skeptics say obama's standing pardon record reflect this administration's does. or to avoid controversy in political risk so he does when he does pardon obama does so for seemingly minor offenses in many cases crimes that were committed decades ago and all nonviolent offenders meanwhile the innocence project estimates that anywhere between two point three and five percent of all people in prison or an offense with more than one million people behind bars in the usa equal more than fifty thousand people jailed with wrongful convictions this presidential pardon is an opportunity to write some of those wrongs the obama seems more interested in trivial cases but doesn't mean that this president is afraid to play judge and jury though don't forget about his clandestine program which has included the

assassination of u.s. citizens from the skies without any due process or transparency so it makes you wonder why this president is so much more interested in pardoning turkeys than u.s. citizens reaching out for help in washington d.c. margaret how r.t. . and now to the t.s.a. where a new policy will take effect sue if you're a frequent flyer chances are you waited in line at the airport while the t.s.a. confiscates everything from your body lotion to your nail clippers well some of that is about to change the t.s.a. is now allowing passengers to carry on some of the items that have been banned in the past among them small knives that's right as long as your knife is less than sex six centimeters long you'll be able to bring them on board for the first time since two thousand and one razor blades and box cutters are still not allowed also ok to bring on board sports equipment like golf clubs hockey sticks and ski poles

even though you're free to bring along your pool stick don't you dare bring your shampoo liquids more than three ounces are still a big no no well the new rules are set to take effect april twenty fifth the idea is to make us rules more in line with international standards though the logic of allowing small knives but not body lotion is puzzling for sub we are going to leave it off there but for more of the stories we covered you can always check out our you tube channel because we post everything right there in full you tube dot com slash r.t. america also check out our web site r t. o s a our producers are posting things there that we don't always have time to get to on the air and you can always follow me on twitter at liz wall breaking the set is coming up in a half hour speech.