a new jersey congressman is pushing a new bill to curb government surveillance if passed it would repeal the patriot act among other changes to protect american civil liberties we'll have the man himself all of the show to discuss his new bill and last night the house of representatives forced a vote on the amash amendment to limit n.s.a. surveillance although the legislation failed the vote was much closer than expected so is congress ready to act when it comes to curbing the ever growing surveillance state and the bradley manning trial interest closer to its end today the prosecution and defense made their final arguments after the judge refused to dismiss the charges against bradley manning an update on this case up ahead.

it's thursday july twenty fifth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you are watching our t.v. well earlier this week we told you about new jersey congressman rush holt crafting a new legislation that would get rid of the patriot act as well as the two thousand and eight foreign intelligence surveillance amendment today he introduced that bill to the house h.r. resolution two eight one eight otherwise known as the surveillance state repeal act here's an outline of a few things that this bill does it repeals the patriot act in the face amendments act it prohibits the government from mandating that electronic device or other software manufacturers build in so-called back doors and it increases the term of judges on the foreign intelligence surveillance court from seven to ten years so does this bill stand a chance. well the man who introduced that piece of legislation says that it is not

rocket science and he would know along with being a congressman he's also a rocket scientist new jersey representative rush holt joined me earlier today to discuss his proposed bill and i started off by asking him why he specifically wants to eliminate the fi sungmin act of two thousand and eight the science amendment was something that was passed in two thousand and eighty to make legal the illegal activities that were already under way in the intelligence community and i think it has also been used as the basis for the the n.s.a. and the intelligence community to continue to do things that are out of bounds and so. i think they're probably fact i'm sure there are some changes that need to be made to the original size as well but this would

repeal the patriot act which has been the source of a number of problems excesses. in law enforcement and intelligence and if i said amendments and as you point out it reduce several other things so should we take this to mean that you agree that the original fice a bill or parts of it that have a place in american society today post nine eleven. well the final bill was set up to deal with. catching spies and and protecting this country from people who would do us harm and there's no question it's a dangerous world there are some things that must be done to protect us to enforce the law and but the way it's being done these days it has turned americans into suspects first and citizens second now answer your question is

well is there a chance that this could pass you know as recently as yesterday more than two hundred members of congress out of four hundred thirty five so nearly a majority a large minority voted to cut the spending for the national security agency domestic surveillance so yes there there is a strong interest in congress and around the country to have the debate that we have not had for decades now congressman you have been in congress since one nine hundred ninety nine you voted for house resolution three one six two better known as the patriot act on october twenty fourth two thousand and one now in the year since you have voted against it four times between two thousand and five and two thousand and six what changed your mind why act against it now. well you you've

done your homework there when the patriot act was passed you'll recall that date was just a couple of weeks after the attacks on the world trade center and on the pentagon we were then still sifting out information about the hijackers about these terrorists they had spent time in florida and they had boarded planes in maine and they had. there were indications that there might be terrorist cells all over this country nobody knew. it turns out that that was. exaggerated fear. but this was a time of great fear. passing the patriot act as one of my great regrets in my time in congress. but it's understandable i think how that came about it was pretty clear quickly that. there were not terrorists

cells scattered all over the united states and it was equally clear that we didn't need. national security letters and sneak and peek. techniques where the f.b.i. and law enforcement come into your house without without a warrant and leave no you know leave nothing behind here and that they can't just pursue a person on a hunch without having to get probable cup proof probable cause before a judge there and all sorts of things that the patriot act and by some that meant x. x. allow that shouldn't continue now congressman how much this you know about the n.s.a. surveillance and the fight the courts before the squad here is that happened in the guardian just about a month ago as a result of edward snowden's leaks did you. you know how deep they really went for

you part of that cell of congress that was informed about all of this i was on the intelligence committee for a number of years. and you can see the letter that i wrote to the director of the n.s.a. in two thousand and. visit to the n.s.a. where i asked him to. show to me that or give me the evidence so that i can tell my constituents that the american government does not. on americans and he gave me a very deceptive reefing a couple of days later the new york times james rice and the new york times came out with. an explosive exposé about the n.s.a. spying i wrote a list during a letter i wrote the head of the n.s.a. a blistering letter. choosing him not just deceiving me and

individual but withholding from congress the necessary information for congress to be able to do its oversight so obviously a lot of different things have come in and you are you are learning as much as we are with piece by piece coming out one other thing that i did want to bring up is that the bill proposes extending terms of judges on the foreign intelligence surveillance court as i had mentioned and we have seen one article after another commenting on how laughable this court is considering the fact that the fica court has never once turned down a government request so my question to you is why is it important to extend their terms and is this court a legitimate court. well i don't believe it's true that they have never turned down a request nevertheless it is a fair criticism that they are a rubber stamp court. and because they operate in secret and essentially make law as as as courts do by setting up a you know

a series of decisions. it's really unfortunate that this happens in secret. and is essentially allowing the intelligence folks to do whatever it is they want. a longer term you know one of the objections that the court. members that the judges on this court. one of the problems that they point to is that this is such a complicated material and so technically complicated that unless they've served on the court for a longer period of time they don't really mastered the material this is a really i would argue a an important but. secondary. modification we need to make in the court we need to make other modifications in the court to make sure that it really functions that. there is an adversarial. situation

created in each case so that it isn't just a rubber stamp. so that the two sides will argue pro and con we have to make sure that what comes before the court. is. you know is subject to review elsewhere in an expeditious way so there are a number of other changes that need to be made to despise the court that this bill does not yet make and other words more and more oversight we have thirty seconds left but can you put quickly tell me what would you like to see done to efforts now in. you know i clearly broke the law as it is part of what my legislation does is change the prism blower protection so that people who work in the intelligence community have whistleblower protection just like employees in other parts of the federal government and we particularly need it there because so

much of that work is done in secret and less a little blower comes forward there's no way that either the public or congress can know what's going on and conduct oversight so if there had been good whistleblower protection. not be in this situation that he is now thank you so much for weighing in on this u.s. congressman rush holt he is a senate candidate he's also a rocket scientist and the man who beat the watson computer on jeopardy thank you meanwhile late last night the g.o.p. controlled house came within twelve votes of foreign bulk collection of american business records the march conyers amendment would have defunded section two fifteen of the patriot act that's the part of the bill that allows for the wide scale collection of americans telecommunications banking and other business records this is the closest we have ever come to saying action on this law since its

passage after september eleventh and although i failed civil liberties advocates are celebrating the closeness of the vote and the bipartisan coalition that came together to fight for it all political commentator sam sachs has more we're here to answer one question for the people we represent. do we oppose the suspicion this collection of every american's phone records when you have the chance to stand up for americans privacy did you please support the monster amendment and oppose the n.s.a.'s blanket surveillance of our constituents let us get back to the big politics of protecting america and moving america forward soundly reject this amendment the responsible thing to do is so some contrition let's pass this amendment let's make sure that we can have a practical approach that show that protecting our liberties and securities are consistent and critical for the united states of america i urge a yes vote let us not deal in false narrative let us deal in facts that will keep

the american people say after the debate was over in the votes taken the a mosh amendment was defeated but you'd be hard pressed to find another vote total that looks like this in the end one hundred eleven democrats joined with eighty three republicans to support the amendment both parties split in half progressives is joining with the tea party leadership breaking from their members today capitol hill is still trying to make sense of last night's vote that nearly defunded the n.s.a.'s mass surveillance of american citizens and when that vote we saw political leaders from both parties from speaker of the house john boehner minority leader nancy pelosi defied by their own members and today they have to be wondering have edward snowden's leaks about the n.s.a. put their own power here on topical hill at risk the people who want to stand by the status quo of the n.s.a. program have to pay attention to the fact that a bipartisan group of members of congress nearly overturned nearly passed

a bill to bring it all to a stop just seven republicans or seven democrats switched their vote wednesday night the n.s.a. would be scrambling today and although the amendment went down these new political coalitions formed in the vote could be a force moving forward in a congress that's now seen its approval ratings reach historical. lows they may offer some ray of hope you know in what has been a pretty dysfunctional congress maybe on this issue of privacy and constitutional rights we might be able to come together and put some things together that will benefit the american people members who narrowly lost last night aren't giving up shortly after the vote congressman rush holt introduce the surveillance state repeal act which repeal the patriot act in the amendments act two laws that underpin the n.s.a.'s mass dragnet on american citizens so it's clear this issue isn't going away any time soon this was a victory i think we should count as one and i think that i am nothing but

encouraged by the numbers i don't think any of the people who voted for this are ready to stop trying to stand for privacy for americans yes there will be more bills there will be more votes and i believe we're going to win now despite the defeat of the a mosh amendment on wednesday night efforts continue to undo the n.s.a.'s mass surveillance state and we've learned that edward snowden's leaks haven't just shaken up the n.s.a. but they are traditional political coalitions here on the hill and they build new coalitions that were unheard of just a few months ago now what these new coalitions can achieve over the next few months remains to be seen but establishment power here on the hill and down the street at the white house and in our intelligence agencies they should be taking no. in washington. army judge denise lynn heard closing arguments today in the case against wiki leak or bradley manning the twenty five year old army private first class faces twenty one charges for leaking some seven hundred thousand military and

diplomatic cables to the world the most serious charge many faces is aiding the enemy which could result in them life sentence the prosecution spent its final moments trying to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that manning leaked those documents knowing that they could end up in the hands of al qaeda or other terrorist organizations meanwhile defense lawyer david coombs is expected to portray manning as well meaning but naive for the latest from fort meade i was joined earlier by our two correspondent liz wahl and i asked her how the prosecution's closing arguments played out today. closing arguments from the prosecution today started this morning and went late into the evening today the prosecution tried to raise doubt on manning's character saying that at the time that he leaked hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy website wiki leaks that he was seeking fame and notoriety one of the first things that the prosecution said today was quote the only human he cared

about was himself the prosecution also cited several times that manning signed this nondisclosure agreement and by violating it he violated the trust of his fellow soldiers over there and iraq there is also a good amount of time spent talking about this relationship between julian of sonder wiki leaks founder julian assange and manning the theory that the prosecution is presenting is that the to work together to get as many secrets on to the internet as possible now the government reiterated that manning aided the enemy the most serious charge that manning faces by putting this interim information on the internet for everybody to see including the enemy including al qaeda al qaeda a fairly. it's and that he did so knowing that lee because citing his job at the time that he was an intelligence analyst so because he was an intelligence analyst in the prosecution's view he should have known exactly what he was doing today due to the nature of his job he deals with classified information on a daily basis so they say he should have known full well what he was doing and the

consequences of his actions of course the defense is going to paint a much different picture of manning they're going to paint him as a whistleblower who is just trying to get the truth out there and reveal government wrongdoing and sparked this national debate we're going to hear the defense's closing arguments tomorrow magen and i understand we've been waiting to hear the judge's ruling on the charges of stealing government information what was the is the result of that liz. manning faces twenty one charges some of those charges are these theft of government property charges the defense tried to get these charges dismissed saying that he didn't steal this information that this is information that he had access to at the time with the security clearance that he had the government however says that manning stole the information transferred it to his personal laptop his personal macbook computer and they were trying they've been trying to prove that the documents amounted to

a valuable over a one thousand dollars despite the defense trying to get these charges dismissed the judge did rule today that or ruled against dismissing these charges so all of these charges still sad as of today and i heard that security was tight today liz can you describe it for us. yeah security was a ramped up several notches to say the least i've been covering this trial almost every day that it's been going on and today and it has been very noticeably very strict there were armed guards armed uniformed guards patrolling the media center kind of hovering over reporters shoulders a kind of puzzled some reporters there. some of them got a tap on the shoulder saying that they better close the browser or whatever it is that they were looking at they also we it's pretty routine that we get our car searched today though they searched they did body searches and and they basically entered. spilled the contents of my of my belongings of my bag onto

a table so it was really a law they were keeping a close eye on everybody we're not sure why there was high and security today but it was definitely something that we noticed so liz a when can we expect a final verdict obviously the prosecution presented its final arguments today when can we expect that final verdict. the final verdict what we're going to hear the defense's closing argument tomorrow the final verdict there is no exact date separate that were supposed to get twenty four hours notice the press is opposed to get twenty four hours notice but it's unclear exactly when that day will be after that the judge the judge alone will deliver the verdict in this case and after that there's going to be the sentencing phase of the trial again are to correspondent lives while working hard for us in fort meade maryland she's been there since early this morning and she will continue to go there to give us the very latest while the mainstream media focuses on new york city mayoral candidate

anthony weiner's controversy is the current new york city mayor michael bloomberg is dealing with one of his own and tuesday mayor bloomberg veto two bills that were passed by the new york city council they would have provided oversight for the city's contentious stop and frisk program the first bill would create an n.y.p.d. inspector general to oversee the department and the all-star would allow citizens to sue the city for racial profiling by police officers now the family of trayvon martin is quickly becoming the face of that debate over racial profiling trayvon father tracy testified on capitol hill yesterday before the newly created congressional caucus on black men and boys take a look. it sparks the conversation in every household over the dinner table and a conversation is what can we do and spare what can we do it is mean what can we do it is his father's what can we do it is meant to allow us to. stop this bridge

from happening to your child. and i think that's where the conversation begins and you know what he is not the only one that feels that way and the joint statement new york city council members jermaine williams and brad landy are said quote the community safety act will help us make new york a place where everyone can walk the streets without fear of violence or discriminatory policing we look forward to overturning mayor bloomberg view and making this legislation law now the two beers the bills appear to have enough support in the city council to override mayor bloomberg veto both measures were passed with a two thirds majority in the fifty one member council which amounts to the votes needed to make these bills veto proof bloomberg the only hope is to get some of those talents and councillors who overage an aliyah voted for the bill to in fact change their minds for his part mayor bloomberg argued that the inspector general

bill would create an official position that would rival the police commissioner on law enforcement policy and that the second bill would lead to an avalanche of lawsuits against the city. well since the focus daiichi nuclear power plant disaster concerns over the safety of our nuclear power energy have grown even in the u.s. there are power plants that worry americans for more on that the residents laurie harnessed. the tokyo electric power company just admitted that ever since the twenty eleven earthquake radioactive water from fukushima nuclear site has been steadily leaking

into the ocean as terrifying as that is many people in the u.s. will just try it off because japan is far enough away to thousand like another world but the truth is we should take heed because it does affect us and because we could be facing our own fukushima level nuclear disaster here in our own world in the not too distant future recently about eighty gallons of radioactive water from the palisades nuclear power plant were accidentally released into lake michigan officials weren't worried though because apparently the area's two nuclear power plants routinely discharge radioactive material into the air and into the lake. according to a nuclear regulatory commission official quote they would like to recycle as much as possible of the radioactive water but there is business needs and that's just part of the operating cycle. he also maintains that the regular dumping of radioactive water is quickly diluted in the lake of rock from the anti-nuclear

group b. arms nuclear argues that diluted as a solution to radioactive pollution only guarantees a chronic exposure to tritium a known cause of cancer birth defects and genetic damage to all those who rely on the lake for drinking water and just this week an x. supervisor at the indian point nuclear power. a plant in new york with charged with fabricating fuel tests he's admitted to bogus results lying to enter a scene investigators about dangerous fuel contaminant levels to prevent the facility from being shut down in washington the n.r.c. has just begun an investigation into a problem with the cooling system at the columbia generating station which hasn't been properly maintained at the watts bar nuclear plant in tennessee regulatory audits imperative to safety were just gotten done for forty years because of

bureaucratic paper shuffling. keeping very aging nuclear power plants faith is not only increasingly difficult it's also increasingly costly as plants often go over late institutes by millions of dollars yes nuclear energy is carbon free and that aspect is great but our aging plants face more and more ridiculous lee dangerous issues and considering the fact that our government is mired in greed bureaucracy and swelled idiocy isn't it time we seriously reconsider heading up the nuclear option hat before we face our old the massive fukushima level disaster in our old little american world to tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter the rest of.

our well who doesn't like free stuff come on people i know you do it and i do it too any time you see one of those fish bowls telling you to put your business card in for a chance to want a free lunch new stuff or two or maybe even a small stack in oprah i certainly learned how to use giveaways as a way to boost t.v. ratings in the past. there everyone gets a car well one pakistani t.v. show might be taking a page out of oprah's playbook but instead of giving away a car or two or many get this they were giving away babies knowing you didn't mishear me babies let me give you a moment to let that sink in now according to the telegraph

a pakistani prime time t.v. show gave away to abandon infants in an apparent visit to boost ratings during the holy month of ramadan the host amir like caught hussein actually has so far presented the infants to two childless couples on the t.v. program on some on in an episode broadcast last week one baby was then handed over to a cousin and a wife by mohamed rosemont cipa who runs the country's chief welfare association now we don't know if the couple's one who won the babies were actually vetted in any way we don't know where the babies come from or whether the show was planning on giving away any more proponents of this plan say that it gives child children a better chance to have the life that they would not have had otherwise since these babies were in fact abandoned and heck at least winning a baby on a game show is better than eighteenth century author and jonathan swift's modest proposal of eating our children that was a metaphor of course but still we can't help to wonder how low american stations

will be willing to go to earn the ratings of their own. and that's going to do it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america i met the lopez have a wonderful night's. he is best known for his role in c s i and his close friendship with the president actor and political activist hill harper is here to talk politics and his new role in covert affairs on the usa network also joining us conservative radio talk show host and apprentice contestant maybe beam plus an inside look at washington's international spy museum all next on politicking with larry king's.

mission. couldn't take three years for charges three commitments three. three stooges free. download free book loaded video for your media projects free media don carty dot com. iraq. prime.