coming up on r t the white house ramps up pressure to strike syria today of one support from top republican congressional leaders still many others are not convinced it's the right thing to do a live report from capitol hill in just a moment. and eighteen t. and the d.n.a. are creating a big controversy bigger than the n.s.a. scandal in fact the telecommunications giant has been handing over troops of phone call data to the government more on this revelation coming up. and it's been months since the deadly fertilizer plant explosion in west texas but even with discoveries of the plants a lack of regulations five other facilities storing the same chemical that caused the deadly blast have turned away state fire marshal's more on this story in today's show.

hello there it's tuesday september third five pm here in washington d.c. i'm marinate and you're watching our to. will congress vote for military intervention in syria it's the question on hand on capitol hill where the secretary of state secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff they match to address the senate now we start our newscast today with the white house's attempts to sell a strike on syrian president bashar al assad's regime president obama announced on saturday that congress would convene after a long weekend to discuss the syrian matter today he met with key congressional heads in the white house cabinet room and had this to say. that i've had a chance to speak to many of you and congress as a whole is taking this issue with the soberness and seriousness that it deserves is

greatly appreciated and i think the negates the decision for us to present this issue to congress the top republican representative house speaker john boehner said today that he backed president barack obama's call for military action boehner said quote the use of chemical weapons is a barbarous act it's pretty clear to me that the united nations is unable to take action meanwhile in an exclusive interview with french newspaper le figaro syrian president bashar al assad challenge the u.s. to come up with quote a single piece of evidence that he used chemical weapons assad said the middle east is a powder keg and today the fuse is getting shorter whoever is doing the accusing must come up with proof we have challenge the united states and france to provide a single piece of proof obama and a law and haven't been able to do so even to their own people today top members of the cabinet testified before the senate foreign relations committee to make the

case for intervention in syria the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee senator bob menendez explained off camera to the secretary of state why he would vote in favor of intervention in syria this week in i was at a soccer tournament and i had a group of moms come up to me and say senator we we saw those pictures there horrific can't imagine. the devastation those parents must feel about their children but why us. why us and so i ask you would you tell them that we would be more secure or less secure. by the actions that are being considered for which the president has asked for the authorization of the use of force our chief political correspondent sam sachs was on the hill and i spoke to him earlier about this hearing and i first started by asking him what the main concerns of senators war and whether it's possible to gauge their support

well this is the first in a series of hearings this week related to military intervention in syria you know in the senate there's generally more support for this action than in the house and you could see that in the hearing today you saw both chairman of the senate foreign relations committee senator menendez and senator corker show support for the president's plan really on the committee you only have senator rand paul and senator joe manchin who showed some concerns about military intervention there but despite the support you know there are concerns that want to be raised to senator corker said why syria what is it about syria that if we don't. attack syria over using chemical weapons how does that harm our national security interests and secretary of state john kerry said this in his opening statement kind of in response to that. we know that assad would read our stepping away or our silence as an invitation to use those weapons with the beauty. and in creating

impunity we will be creating opportunity the opportunity for other dictators and or terrorists to pursue their own weapons of mass destruction including nuclear weapons so other words if we don't strike off this chemical weapons in my embolden future dictators or the word ayatollah was used to use similar weaponry now senator menendez on the on the committee was concerned about the scope of the authorization there was no specific mention to limiting boots on the ground u.s. boots on the ground he pressed senator kerry and kerry finally some has said look we're not going to do boots on the ground we can imagine a scenario in which syria just explodes but still we're going to do everything to not put boots on the ground. now sam what's the schedule over the next week or two and what's the timeframe here when will be held and how soon might we see a strike if we do see one. sure well today we have the senate hearing there's going to be a in the house there's going to be

a foreign services foreign relations committee hearing tomorrow and then they'll be a series of classified hearings for members where they can look at a lot of this evidence that was presented in some of the war plans that the administration has drawn up before congress isn't fully back in session until next week and will probably have even more hearings than some votes right off the bat next week congressional leaders have promised an early vote on this so you've heard secretary of defense in the military say look we can attack as soon as as soon as we're given the authorization so you can assume that once votes next week if something passes then you can see an attack right after that now here is the authorization which says in part quote the president is authorized to use the armed forces of the united states as determined to be necessary and appropriate now given that we know this now what are the chances that this war authorization ten passed congress. well resolution i mean the senate as i said is a likely place for its power. in the house it's not so sure it's in iran paul said

there was fifty fifty chance of passing if you look at a lot of the members of the house who have come forward and said that they don't support so you can see some crossover interesting between the emotion amendment vote from from a few weeks ago from last month but you also have some problems with republicans like peter king who generally support this sort of action in syria but are upset that the president is even going to congress to begin with and that he might vote no on that so the president has an uphill battle to get this to get this through the house if it doesn't pass the house if it passes the senate it doesn't pass the house you could say the president might even have some wiggle room there to to still strike on his own because nothing is going to be brought to the floor that it's going to fail leadership's going to make sure that the house is not going to vote down something so you can imagine a week from now two weeks from now nothing passing out of the house and the president saying look i tried to get congress on board with this they're still debating it it's paralyzed as you said the u.n. security council is paralyzed and then decided to go it alone on this action but that all remains to be seen. now sam like you just said the president has been

getting criticized for even going to congress with this and members of congress like senator john mccain and representative peter king argue that he has the power to act without congress so why even ask for congressional authorization to begin with what do you think about this. that's a good question and i think the fact that the u.k. had a vote on this and it was voted down just just last week francisco drawing a vote on this in the in the coming days i think optically it looks better for the present if you appeals to congress he said that we'd be stronger with congress' support behind this but i don't think he's made it he has not made it clear that he's not willing to go it alone if congress doesn't doesn't give their permission on this so i think it's just to give him some cover i mean this is any time you're going to engage in military strikes against another nation it could turn messy i think you want as many people behind him as possible especially since these other countries aren't exactly lining up behind it now either. that was our two political

commentators themselves. and in los angeles anti-war demonstrators took to the streets on saturday in protest of the proposed u.s. military strike in syria hundreds marched in downtown l.a. in a mostly peaceful demonstration argy correspondent ramon glinda was there covering the protest and brings us all the latest. here in los angeles a massive amount of people have taken to the streets to rally against u.s. intervention in syria earlier president obama said that he's going to wait for congress to give him approval to intervene militarily however that's not much comfort to the people here a lot of them still very skeptical about the evidence that the u.s. government has presented to show chemical weapon use in syria. of chemical. bomb and destruction is saying. that they confer. for medical use one of the

one hundred five i mean i say somebody who enters the united nations has there and they haven't even heard anything yet they cannot produce the evidence to justify the attacks they don't have the support of the international community to launch the attacks and they'd know they don't have the mastic support to launch the attack and so they're in a political crisis trying to figure out what to do not wait decisive for people to be in the streets people out on the war stand with syria i guess that they're going to show and there is no proof until now who did it because as you know or twenty years ago a single man did it and that took you in the subway the prospect of intervention in syria is especially troubling for syrian americans and other americans of middle eastern descent still have some dark memories of past american interventions that have been in a way. people and to fade them hard. time into my family. we always see you not stupid on the side of

a goodish and side design is the side of. the double value you believe in equality at stade you don't believe it to us and the middle east this rally was among several health throughout the u.s. and around the world in los angeles among galindo r.t. . and other news. now we knew the national security agency wasn't the only government agency keeping piles and piles of phone data on its subscribers but now thanks to some new documents obtained by peace activists we now know that the drug enforcement administration's hemisphere project has been keeping tabs on every call that goes through an eighteen to use which dating as far back as nine hundred eighty seven now that database goes even further than the n.s.a. records and unlike the n.s.a. eighteen to use data includes location information and fact telephone company employees are actually paid by the government to sit alongside and supply them with

data the american civil liberties union says the public private partnership of data gathering raises a fourth amendment concerns however the justice department says hemisphere merely streamlines the process of getting access to records maintained by the phone company now i was joined earlier by heidi but goshen executive director of the national lawyers guild and i start off by asking her if she could put this database into context. revelations of hemisphere or rather breathtaking given the scope of the records that a.t.t. is making accessible to a agents and by the fact that the government is actually paying eighteen thousand employees to sit next to police officers and agents in the system in their job. they're using administrative subpoenas which are not run by a judge a few years ago the justice department inspector general actually said that the f.b.i. has been abusing administrative subpoenas using them saying that they're necessary

in the war on terrorism but i think the trouble with this program is a the government is paying eighteen t. to do things that the government would not lawfully be able to access itself it's relying once again on private corporations to do its intelligence but there's no oversight to the process. now heidi in your legal opinion is this legal. i think that n.s.a. spying and hemisphere skirts the law and probably based on the depth of the program going back twenty six years being able to access our records of phone calls from two decades ago and doing it out without judicial warrant and oversight to me makes it very questionable legally given that the f.b.i. itself has said that the inspector general has said that it's misused i think that's cause for alarm now after the n.s.a. revelations one proposal on capitol hill was to actually have private companies

rather than government agencies store customer data how does the discovery of this hemisphere project kind of complicate that solution. well i think that we've seen such a close partnership between government agencies and private corporations and we've seen how the private industry has really burgeoned as the surveillance apparatus has increased the problem is that industry is not accountable to the strictures of the u.s. constitution and unreasonable searches and seizures and we don't want to give them carte blanche to hold our records and then possibly tamper with them but we also want to make sure that if they work with the government there's proper oversight transparency and protections so that really the government is accountable to the people and to the constitution. now reuters they came out with a report showing that the da was using american citizen american citizen data from

databases like this and then obscuring the trail of evidence during the trial of the trail of where they actually got that data does that conflict with a person's right to a free and fair trial most definitely using what we call secret evidence that it really amounts to and then creating the fiction of a narrative of how that information was gathered violates the right to a fair trial violates the right of the person involved to really confront the sources of how that information was gathered that's troubling and i think the revelations of this latest program raise the question if the deal is using him in a strait of subpoenas how many other government agencies are we know that they have been under the patriot act for years. to gather personal information access to medical records financial records i think we're seeing day by day more of the iceberg being exposed and i already everyone knows that cell phones they've just

become an integral part of our lives how can we as citizens protect our own privacy while using a cell phone. well if you're concerned about location privacy then if you have the kind of cell phone that you can remove the battery from some people do that they also have been said to be able to listen in so if you care about your privacy when you're having a talk at a cafe just take out that battery i think the lesson people are learning is that if you really want to keep something private you have to have an in person conversation not on cell phone not on computer and just be aware that virtually every transaction you make is being gathered collected sold to third parties and then accessed in the future which is troublesome. well thank you heidi that was how do you because an executive director of the national lawyers guild thank you for your input thank you. in the mid atlantic it's been quite

a grim scene along the coast this summer after dead dolphins started washing up on shore now especially here in virginia beach sand them out where the largest number of dolphins have made landfall now genetic tests point to a virus playing a major role in the massive dolphin they tell it is our to correspondent megan lopez has a full report. nine am and most beach goers are just waking up in the tourist town of virginia beach but the virginia stranding response team is already in action this is by far the most serious event that i've ever seen this group is responsible for stealing for coverage in the entire state of virginia and they've been working on the mystery of don't fins washing up on the shores of the atlantic we have one bottle nosed dolphin stranding that we just got a call for about ten minutes ago the responding to a call from a local resident we have no why where today as he left three packs a stretcher cart and genetics kid into

a trunk and heads out. a twenty minute drive takes them to a remote part of chick's beach and they are halfway on the shore but not far enough to escape the wrath of the waves. our first dead dolphin of the day it's a boy. it's a whole carcass immediately the group gets to work photographing the dolphin measuring its length counting teeth and assigning it a number this case probably older. older worn look see this don't thin is case number one two two two question given that there are definitely a villager it's a site that would sat in most beachgoers but for these researchers it's another opportunity to get to the bottom of these mysterious deaths are there some good information out there right as the team drags the dolphin back into the truck and loads it in another call comes in another dead dolphin reported the team heads off to find it all bands only east coast hundred dolphins have. and washing up on the

shore particularly here in virginia beach now experts simply don't know what is causing all these hundreds of dolphins to die but scientists say that dolphins in particular are a good measure of the health of the ocean so having all these carcasses washed up on shore certainly isn't a good day any time you see a marine mammal like a bottle is often in trouble that's concerning because they're there mammals just like you and i it's kind of devastating really to see it and certainly it's not a good sign for the ocean environment back at the lab another group begins an autopsy to find some possible answers to these mysterious deaths. that. scientists have been flying in from across the country to help the smell here is almost indescribable a mixture of fish and rotting flesh the smell sticks to your skin and clothing thanks to a thick blanket of humidity up to this point over two hundred ten dolphin carcasses have washed up on virginia's shores this summer four times the amount of previous

years but after months of tireless research ocean scientists think they may have finally discovered because we don't know all the factors we do know that this dolphin morbillivirus is the primary agent that seems to be causing this event but but there could be other complicating factors you know we know that these animals are exposed to a lot of different pollutants in the water they're stressed as a result of that whether that has any implications in this event or not it's way too early to tell but it is concerning it's the same disease that killed over seven hundred dolphins between one nine hundred eighty seven and one nine hundred eighty eight but the problem is that even with this diagnosis there's little scientists can do to stop the spread of the disease the bottom line is in something like this this is this is not only a wild animal population but it's a wild animal population that spends its entire life at sea and living under water it's impossible for us to actually do anything out there to really alleviate this so even. if it is the morbillivirus causing this all scientists can do is wait for

the dolphins to wash up on shore and they were expecting many more before this disease runs its course in virginia beach meghan lopez r.t. . you may remember this april explosion in west texas at a fertilizer factory. sure that. this blast which killed fifteen injured more than two hundred others and cause significant damage to the town of west has been blamed on the ammonium nitrate stored in the facility now these texas state fire marshal is trying to bring inspectors into other facilities throughout the state that handle the same chemical and five facilities have told the inspectors to stay away now as you can see from this map from greenpeace high risk chemical plants are located all over the country but no state has more than texas however because there is no state fire code the

state fire marshal cannot force its way into businesses or conduct unannounced inspections in the lone star state now at a state legislator here in state fire marshal chris connelly said that his office has completed sixty inspections but by facilities just won't let the inspectors in and neither has one of the railroad companies that transports the fertilizer chemicals now connelly declined to name the factory that won't let him into his navy factories that won't let him in he said quote in their defense they may have a very good reason the people who live close to and work in these factories might want to learn what that reason is though. and speaking of factor is are you interested in learning the latest on the workers' rights and struggles then ten tonight at seven pm for the special edition of the big picture called labor picture the entire show will focus on the state of labor in america so tune in for this very special post labor day programming. and landowners in north carolina may soon

be forced to sell energy companies the rights to the natural gas underneath their properties in a rally last week state officials approved a non-binding proposal or proponents argue it would protect local residents from being uncompensated for gas inadvertently extracted from their land however environmentalists argue that the fracking recommendations force property owners to sell the natural gas underneath their homes whether or not they really want to now earlier to raise the vix from the blue ridge environmental defense league joined me to discuss the tremendous pressure on homeowners to sell their property and i asked her to characterize the proposal for us i've been following this issue almost since its inception with the study group and. what was decided last winston essentially was to keep law that was a good influence in one thousand. it was designed invention no gas no oil development which is very different. today

and. designed because to do just like you just mentioned to protect landowners from. you know from their next door neighbor sucked in their resources out from under the ground and that doesn't happen in a tight situation. so there's some real question about whether we even need to change this law or not and what kind of happened now is that if your neighbors of the gas companies. and the government. that you're in a drilling unit and they need your piece of the so to speak. to make things more cost effective to prevent wastefulness as they say they can force you into selling your resource and as you mentioned you know whether you want to or not you know for whatever reason you don't want to do it whether you want to

wait until the price goes up whether you like to save that for your children or grandchildren or whether you just don't just don't have a moral reason for not doing so and this study group could have recommended that we repeal the statute and they did not do so. and they've just left the door wide open for you know for the oil and gas industry to come in and make people. you know sell their gas rather than want to or not now at this point this is just a nonbinding proposal it's not a law what steps need to be taken for this proposal to become law well my understanding is some pieces of it will go to the full mining and energy commission or incorporation into some of the rule sets that they're developing but the north carolina department of environment natural resources will be taking the recommendation to our legislature. and it's anybody's guess you know what will

happen at that point. another thing i want to point out is this this does two things besides you know establishing the ability for. property rights to it also gives the land man and the gas companies a big stick to approach people when they're considering whether they want to lease or not to say well you know you can either lease now or we can make it and so it's just patently unfair and. you know there's even folks who have leased their land to gas companies already who don't feel that it's right. to be for them to be able to tell their neighbors what to do so it's it's very sad it was a very very disturbing incision now the news and observer newspaper they said that this proposal has a very good chance of becoming law what do you personally think. like i said i

think all bets are off. i would think it would be my feeling that conservatives in particular property rights proponents and others would be very very concerned about this because you know in that domain also comes around comes along with the gas industry but this is just this is a little different because this is a private industry that is going to the government and using the might and blessing of the government to tell you know they they do remember but to to make you sell your resource whether you want to or not and you know you can't reimburse people for peace of mind and you're talking about folks as home in lake county in particular. even with the high recommended percentage you're still talking about the few controlling the many and it's just scary concerning our work pretty closely

with landowners in that area. now trying is a major argument for fracking is that it will generate jobs in north carolina what is your response to this. i feel like that that argument is overblown we have a small resource here we have a small fly. additionally a lot of the jobs are transients there are folks who come into town and they do what they're here to do their contract workers and when they're done they leave in so i don't feel i just from what i've read and what i understood and what i've studied i don't feel it's going to be a long lasting. if any economic development strategy for north carolina and it's going to have negative costs such as road damage infrastructure problems social services and so on that may not be considered so it's really hard to do think that it's going to be

a big moneymaker. that was furious from the blue ridge environmental defense league . we're over here still that desert for an hour or more on the story as a cover to go to youtube dot com slash r.t.m. america and you can check out our website our team dot com slash usa you can also follow me on twitter at aaron if i say back here at eight o'clock thanks for watching. i would rather as questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find by phil larry king now right here our team question.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.