captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> brown: the staff sergeant accused in the massacre of 16 afghan civilians had his first face-to-face meeting with his attorney today at fort leavenworth prison in kansas. good evening. i'm jeffrey brown. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight, we look at what's known about robert bales and assess some of the issues raised in the case. >> brown: then, ray suarez gets an update on the shooting of an unarmed black teenager in florida by a neighborhood watch leader. >> woodruff: is a child conceived after his father's death entitled to social security survivor benefits?

margaret warner talks to marcia coyle about that case, argued today at the supreme court. >> brown: hari sreenivasan looks at what's causing the early bloom of the cherry blossoms in the nation's capital. >> it's much warmer this year than what it has been in the previous years and the trees are simply reacting to the temperatures. >> woodruff: and we close with one group's radical solution for breaking the partisan gridlock in washington. >> people say to me, oh, you're supporting a third party. you might be supporting an independent. no. this is a bipartisan ticket. this would be the first bipartisan ticket in modern american history. a sdem karat and a republican running together. >> brown: that's all ahead on tonight's newshour. major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> bnsf railway. >> and by the bill and melinda gates foundation. dedicated to the idea that all people deserve the chance to

live a healthy, productive life. and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> brown: the american soldier accused of a massacre in afghanistan began laying out his defense today. he had initial meetings with his lawyer, even as military investigators continued their work. army staff sergeant robert bales's new temporary home is an isolated cell at the forth leavenworth military prison in kansas. the 38-year-old was flown there on friday from a u.s. facility in kuwait where he

was first brought' from his military base. the defense attorney john henry brown met with him today for the first time. yesterday he spoke about the challenges of the case. >> i couldn't imagine a more difficult case i don't think. i mean every challenge. i mean the case has political ramifications. it has legal ramifications. it has social ramifications. you know, you couldn't really imagine a bigger case. >> jeff: bales is suspected of murdering 16 afghan civilians in two small villages nine children and 11 from the same family. no formal charges have been filed yet. news reports quoted military officials as saying he'd been drinking, something he lawyer denied. michelle grew up with bales in norwood ohio where he played little league and captained his high school football team. >> it's like you're talking about two totally different people. every older woman on this street calls him "my bobby." not bobby bales. you don't know who bobby bales

is. it's my bobby. >> jeff: bales had deployed from washington state. current neighbors in lake taps say it's hard to reconcile the married father of two with his alleged actions in afghanistan. >> he was so kind to everybody. i mean he was the kind of person that as soon as you meet him, you know, you have a friend kind of. >> jeff: some pointed to bales' three tours in iraq before he was sent to afghanistan including being twice wounded. >> i can understand. i kind of sympathize for him because, i mean, if being gone, you know, like being sent over there four times, you know, i can understand he's probably quite wracked mentally. >> jeff: the bales' family was planning to move and just put their home on the market when the massacre happened. carol leonig is part of a team of "washington post" reporters digging into his background to build a portrait of robert bales. she joins us now. welcome. >> thank you, jeff. >> jeff: he grew up in norwood,

ohio, and joined the army at a relatively late age. 27. fill us in. what had he been doing? >> he was a stockbroker with his brother and also with another company, something they did together called spartina investments, a financial person, and joined the military and left it after the terrorist attacks. >> jeff: do we know what happened to the business and why he joined. >> there was indications there were problems with the business. we're still reporting on that at the moment. but it appears as though there were allegations that he been engaged in some wrongdoing there. that's still a little murky. there were also... there was a belief among many of the friends and family that he felt a calling to help after the terrorist attacks and to do something. after he had enlisted and done a whole tour is when he met his wife and they married. >> jeff: you have been talking to some of his friends from early deployments. what do they tell you? >> friday night when his name was released by the defense

department i talked to a captain chris alexander who, to my surprise, could not have been more glowing in describing staff sergeant bales. he said, "i would want a bales in every company i worked in." said he was a professional soldier, totally on guard at all times, interested in protecting his colleagues and men. did his job admirably. >> jeff: of course, the mental health issues have been raised to the fore. what do we know? what can we say? >> we know he was really... had been injured twice, fairly seriously. lost a piece of his foot in one. rolled over in iraq in his striker vehicle. he had a concussion that was described as a military as mild. he's treated for a brain injury. many people said, hey, you can go back to work after a concussion. we know he was really disappointed.... >> jeff: let me stop you there. do we know about what happened with the military in terms of what kind of vetting he got at

that point? >> we know generally what the military at this particular base does. we don't know from interviewing him or his wife what actually happened in his treatment file. but what generally happens is military service members are asked to self report. do you feel well? do you feel any voices in your head? do you feel comfortable to go back? so it's a self reporting screening process when you're redeploy. >> jeff: i interrupted you. you were about to say he was disappointed at going back. >> that's a little interesting conflict in the story. he and his wife both were very disappointed that he had lost a promotion because he had done a lot of sacrificing in the three previous tours.... >> jeff: let me stop you there. do we know why? >> we don't know why. i've talked to folks who worked around him in the 3-2 and didn't know him personally who said it was not a typical thing for somebody his age to get this kind of promotion. a lot of guys who were moving up on that trajectory moved

quickly and at the age of 27 could be promoted from staff sergeant. he was 38. so maybe age went against him. we don't know. certainly if his previous captain in iraq had been asked i think he would have said yes please promote him. forgive me. back to the store he a. we know he's been hurt twice pretty seriously. we know he's treated for this bryn injury. we know he and his wife are under the belief at least that they report to each other he won't be shipped out again and they're going to look for a calm deployment. they're thinking about relocating to hawaii. they're thinking about going to germany. they have sort of a wish list in their mind. all of a sudden he's back out to afghanistan. >> jeff: in the meantime growing financial problems including their house. >> they put their house up for sale not too long before the incident. it appears that they were trying, according to her description, they were trying to consolidate some debts and

trying to bring down their costs. and then she reports to the real estate agency the day after the shooting that they have a family emergency and she's not going to be selling. >> jeff: just briefly today there was this first meeting. it was just happening i think. do we know anything out of what came out of that. >> browne has given some elusions, his attorney, to his defense but he hasn't told us in great detail what they talked about. but the idea is that he's trying to figure out how to defend his client who, according to the military, walkd back on base after this shooting that was so grizzly and said i did it. so how do you scullment a case to defend this person? was he in a delirious state? was he dissociative. >> jeff: karol leonig of the "washington post" thanks so much. >> thank you, jeff. >> brown: now to some of the larger issues raised by this tragedy. we're joined by retired general peter chiarelli, former vice

chief of staff of the u.s. army, and deputy commander in iraq. and dr. jeffrey johns. he spent seven years as an air force psychiatrist, and is now in private practice. >> generally chiarelli i'll start with you. acknowledging you only know what we're all learning as we go here. but in a case like this, if it happened under your command, what questions would you want answered? what jumps out at you here? >> well, i know from working as hard as we have all been working for the last ten years to understand post traumatic stress, traumatic brain injury and other behavioral health issues that we just do not have good reliable diagnostic tools that we can use in every single instance to tell how a soldier has been affected either by a concussion or through some kind of a traumatic event. >> jeff: dr. johns, same question to you. what jumps out at you here having worked with and studied soldiers particularly those

serving in iraq and afghanistan? >> well, i can't comment specifically about the accused soldier but what i can say is there's a phenomenon known as berserk or going berserk that has been reported throughout all times in almost all wars. homer wrote about an episode about in which achilles went on a rampage and committed several atrocities following the death of his friend. while this is a rare ten onnom it has been reported. jonathan shea writes about his patients experiencing something similar in vietnam. it's a horrible event that can happen. it doesn't lend itself to scientific study very well. >> jeff: general, just to get more specific here. one issue clearly has been raised about the multiple deployments. what is known and what is not known about the impact of deployment deployments, multiple deployments on soldiers and marines? >> we really don't know a lot. i mean we know for sure that

we've got tens of thousands of soldiers who have gone on multiple deployments and not displayed any of this kind of behavior. we also know we have soldiers that find themselves in iraq and afghanistan within a year and some of our initial data indicates that they are more likely to attempt suicide than soldiers that have been with a unit for a long period of time integrated into that unit. so i think it would be wrong to jump to the idea that multiple deployments is necessarily the culprit here. i don't believe that we've got data that shows that conclusively. >> jeff: is it something that you would want to look more at though? i mean, try to fit it in to help us to understand this because there is so much talk about it. how do you think about it in terms of a case like this? >> i think you have to... every case is different. you can have a soldier that crosses into iraq and afghanistan for less than 24 hours and is part of a very traumatic event. sees either his good friend

killed or just a horrible, horribly vent where you can have a soldier that's been on multiple deployments and doesn't see something like that. you have individuals that are more resilient than other folks, individuals who find themselves in a bad situation and have the resiliency to make the most out of that situation and get stronger for it. we know that there are other people that have low resilience and they get into this kind of a situation or into a bad situation and they don't react in the same way. >> jeff: dr. johns, when you get to the question of p.t.s.d., or trau at i can brain injury and its impact, again what is important for us to know when you're trying to look at a case like this? how much do we really know and importantly how much do we know about how the military has responded in cases where it is found? >> well, we do know that once someone does from p.t.s.d., that a subsequent trauma makes

things worse. the same thing can be said for a brain injury. we know that these conditions can increase the risk of violent behavior. the majority of individuals with these commissions won't commit the violence. it does increase the risks above the baseline. my personal experience, there are many individuals suffering in the military who do feel trapped, who feel command pressure to redeploy even though they don't feel capable of doing so and fill barred by the medical process at fort lewis specifically it's been well written about that the medical board system denied people a correct diagnosis of p.t.s.d. that's something i personally witnessed. factors like that can unfortunately make a soldier feel trapped and perhaps more likely to do things they would later regret. >> jeff: general, i know this was hugey important to you over the last number of years. it's become more in the consciousness of the military certainly.

what's your sense of how well the army in particular does in dealing with it? >> well, i don't know of any other organization that screens their people before they go, when they're deployed and when they come back. if we had reliable screening tools, reliable diagnostics, we could go so much further. if you walk into a room with 100 people and you ask them if they have high blood pressure and none of them say they do and they have a blood pressure cuff you can tell pretty quickly who is telling you the truth and who has high blood pressure. they can't hide that. but the stigma associated with behavior health issues is not a stigma just shared by the military. it's shared by us all. that's really what we have to get at. we need to get at the stigma and eliminating the stigma and advancing the science to a cure that will help us to diagnose and cure people who have post traumatic stress and the effects of traumatic brain injuries. >> jeff: dr. johns, would you

agree with the notion first of all that the screenings are adequate but the diagnostics are not all there? how do you see it? >> no. the screenings are largely self report. there could be a lot of pressure placed on an individual not to be fully disclosing on such screenings so they are clearly inadequate. the science is going to be slow in developing. it's going to be a long time before we fully understand these issues. we do know how to take care of people. the military is not doing a good job of taking care of its own. still a lot of command pressure to force someone back into a deployment even if they don't feel ready. and there's pressure placed on the medical system to go along with that. that still hasn't changed. it needs to change if we're going to live up to our commitment to our servicemen and women. >> jeff: general, these are hard issues. there's a very high-profile situation. what's your sense of the military justice system's ability to cope with the kinds of issues we're talking about? >> well, i mean that's really

outside of the scope of what i'm here to talk about today. the military justice system will do the job that it has always done, a very, very fine job in handling these kinds of things. but again, i mean you're going to have a clash of the titans here. you're going to have people on both sides like dr. johns that say that the diagnostics are clearly adequate. you're going to have other people come in and say they're not. i just don't believe that the military today, if they could be given the diagnostics they needed, would not utilize those in a way that would help us all. but i'm telling they're just not available. >> jeff: all right. general peter chiarelli, dr. jeffrey johns, thank you both so much. snud still to come on the news hour, the teenager shot >> woodruff: still to come on the newshour, the teenager shot to death in a florida neighborhood; benefits for children conceived after their father died; the early blooms in washington; and the push for a bipartisan presidential ticket. but first, the other news of the day.

here's hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: the main focus of the republican president race today was on tomorrow's primary in illinois. in springfield, mitt romney kept his focus on president obama. he conceded the economy is improving, but he argued the president's policies have prevented a much stronger comeback. >> the economy always comes back after recession, of course. there's never been one that we didn't recover from. the problem is this one has been deeper than it needed to be and a slower recovery than it should have been by virtue of the policies of this president. almost everything he's done has made it harder for this economy to recover. >> sreenivasan: the romney campaign also aired a television ad in illinois accusing santorum of being an "economic lightweight." but in rockford, santorum shot back that romney's own economic credentials leave a lot to be desired. heard governor romney here call me an economic lightweight. because i wasn't a wall street financier like he was. do you really believe this

country wants to elect a wall street financier as the president of the united states? do you think that's the kind of experience we need? >> sreenivasan: polls had romney leading in illinois, where 54 delegates will be at stake. he won the puerto rico primary yesterday, taking all 20 of the territory's delegates. romney now has more than twice the number of delegates as santorum. the world's most valuable company, apple, has announced it will pay out dividends. the tech giant has nearly $100 billion in cash on hand. it said today it will use part of that sum for a dividend of roughly $10 per share, over one year. apple shares hit an all-time high of $600 apiece last week. they closed above that level today for the first time. the news from apple helped wall street stave off a losing day. the dow jones industrial average gained six points to close at 13,239. the nasdaq rose 23 points to close at 3078. in syria, rebel fighters battled government security forces in an upscale district of damascus today. it was a show of force by the

opposition, after being driven out of the cities of idlib and homs in recent days. we have a report from john irvine of independent television news, who filed from inside syria, near idlib. >> reporter: this is as close as we dared go to the city where the government flag now flies. it's the latest rebel stronghold subdued by the syrian army. it's their children's future they are fighting for, they will tell you, they want for them a better life than they have known. yet this is half the town it was. thousands have already fled, fearing that assad's iron fist will soon be swung here. and when it is,.... >> the people here feel for geten by the rest of the world. nobody helped us. no united states. no islam. no arab. no one.

>> reporter: many houses in this village have been emptyed by sniper fire from an army base that's home to helicopters you can just make out. they were used to spot for the artillery aimed at homs and idlib. these young men escaped those battles and are now licking their wounds. all were syrian army con scripts who defected to the rebel side and have paid a price. mohammed has been shot in the hand. he was injured attacking the assad militia responsible for killing his older brother and cousin. the weapons on the wall are the paltry sum of their arsenal. so the free syrian army doesn't lack the motivation to fight; it lacks the means. >> make anything against tanks. >> reporter: in libya such displays of bravado were

accompanied by shooting in the air, but in syria no bullets can be wasted. theirs is a rebellion being fought on a shoe string. >> sreenivasan: a gunman in bbince shot and killed a and three children outside a jewish school today. it was the latest in a series of attacks on french minorities. the school shooting happened in the southwest city of toulouse. police said the shooter rode up on a motorcycle and opened fire. they cordoned off the area near the school as families awaited news about those inside. president nicolas sarkozy denounced the violence. >> today is a day of national tragedy because children have been killed in cold blood because a killer came into a school, a jewish school. this tragedy shocks the entire nation. i have asked the education ministry to organize a minute of silence in all schools in memory of these martyred children. >> sreenivasan: the french government also raised the national terror alert across

part of southern france. police said one of the handguns fired in today's attack was used in two other motorcycle killings in the same area, over the past eight days. the victims in those killings were soldiers of north african and caribbean descent. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to judy. >> woodruff: the death of a teenager in florida-- and the lack of an arrest for the man who shot him-- has provoked anger, and captured more attention in light of 911 calls released this past weekend. ray suarez has our report. snaurz protestors gathered again today outside the seminole county courthouse in sanford florida, just north of orlando. it was the latest local outcry over the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager, a death that gained national attention. on february 26, 17-year-old tray von martin left a home in a gated community where he and his father were visiting family. he was walking to a convenience store, but he was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch member george zimmerman who is white and hispanic.

the 28-year-old zimmermanman said he acteded in self defense but sanford police found martin laying face down unarmed and last friday they released 911 calls from the shooting. first zimmerman spots martin and calls police. >> a real suspicious guy. this guy looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something snaurz then he pursues the youth ignoring a dispatcher's warning. >> they always get away. >> are you following him? >> yeah. >> okay. we don't need you to do that snaurz 911 calls from eyewitnesses tell the rest. in one the sound of a struggle can be heard. >> is it a male or female? >> it sounds like a male. >> you don't know why? >> i don't know why. i think they're yelling. there's gunshots. >> you can hear somebody yelling for help. i'm pretty sure the guy is dead out here. >> so far zimmerman has not been charged with any crime and the police maintain they

cannot act without probable cause. but that decision has fueled racial tensions. >> can you justify that shooting. >> reporter: martin's parents have asked the f.b.i. to investigate. they say their son was targeted because of the color of his skin. they say the police are protecting the killer. >> i don't think he would have even followed if he was a white kid. >> i just don't understand why. i don't understand why the police department hasn't arrested him. >> reporter: meanwhile it's been revealed that zimmerman had called police numerous times to report other incidents, mostly false alarms. some eyewitnesses dispute his claim of self-defense in the martin killing. >> i heard the crying. it was a little boy. as soon as the gun went off, the crying stopped. >> reporter: the case has also raised questions about florida's so-called stand your ground law which aallows the use of force if an individual has a reasonable fear of being killed or seriously injured.

more now about this story about a reporter for the miami herald. is pressure increasing now on local politicians and law enforcement to respond now that we're... well, two weeks since the shooting. >> more than two weeks. it was february 26. absolutely. i mean, if al sharpton and jesse jackson show up on your doorstep that's pressure. the fact of the matter is that the police were resisting releasing those 911 tapes. after pressure from lawmakers and all this national attention they finally did friday night. i think that shows that there's a key strategy in all of this by the attorneys to keep the pressure on, to keep the pressure on, and hope that they can get at least some criminal charges filed. >> reporter: does a local police investigation continue because earlier in this story it sounded like they thought they were done. >> i think that they do think they're done. they forwarded to it the state attorney's office. what the police chief told me is if there's something that the state attorney's office

asks us to do we'll do it. they canvasesed the neighborhood and tested the physical evidence. it's in the state attorney's office hands. >> reporter: how has the release of the 911 calls changed the way the people understand this story. >> i think it made it much worse. it's interesting because the chief really believed that everything was going to go away, that everything was going to be alleviated once everyone heard the 911 calls. i think just the opposite happened. there was a few things that took place. the witnesses who had said, wait a second, that's not what i her. i heard screaming and then a shot. and then the screaming stopped abruptly which made me think that this boy was in fear for his life. and then the 911 tapes came out. it sounded just like what they said. everyone is saying wait a second. how come i told you this thing, these tapes show exactly what i said. how come this guy didn't get charged. that really is going to amp things up and amp things up. the other thing about the tapes that is really getting complicated is that there's a

point in one of the tapes that there's a loud sound, that the attorneys are taking to be a second shot. i actually should say a first shot. the first shot and perhaps a warning shot. i'll be honest with you, ray. when i hear it i don't hear that as a shot. i hear that as fall to go the ground or something of that nature. it just opened up all this speculation of whether there was a warning shot that would really set is stage for calling this murder. >> reporter: your reporting has offered up a fuller portrait of george zimmerman himself who has been widely called a neighborhood watch volunteer but to hear some of the people in the local community tell it, he kind of was the neighborhood watch. >> my sense so far is that he was a member of a watch committee of one. i could be wrong. maybe there will be more people who will come forward to say they were doing nightly patrols but i don't think so. what people are telling american league is that george zimmerman took it upon himself to go out every night. he had a dog. that made it a little easier to kind of just walk around in circles with his dog. keeping an eye on things.

he kept an eye on open windows, on open garages. if there was a person he didn't recognize who was standing around, he would say, hey, what are you doing here? or he would call a homeowner and say there's someone staring at your house. you better come check it out. i want to be honest about something as well. the people that i met who met him, who interacted with him, they liked him. they thought he was perfectly normal. they didn't think there was anything weird about him. one guy said to me he didn't show up at the homeowners association with a ban dan a around his neck and a bowie knife in his back. that was an interesting point. but if you look at the track record, his arrest record and different police reports there's no question that at the very least he's a busy body. he'll go chasing after somebody if he thinks they committed a crime. he went after someone in the supermarket once. so you see that over and over again with this man. this time it got him into a big heap of trouble. >> reporter: this incident has brought new attention to florida's "stand your ground" law which i understand already

had some controversy around it at the time that it was debated and passed. it says in part a person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if he or she reasonably believes such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or harm. is this getting a second look now? >> we'll see. i mean people were real proud of that when they passed it. it's been a real problem here. one of the types of things that happens quite a bit is, for example, you'll have a drug dealer shooting at another drug dealer. that other drug dealer shooting back, missing the first drug dealer, hitting the three-year-old on the corner. when it comes time to file criminal charges, nobody gets in trouble because drug dealer one didn't kill the three-year-old. and drug dealer two was legitimately defending himself. this happens over and over again. where people are not getting... they're either not getting charged or getting acquitted on cases where people are getting killed.

everybody says wait a second. where is the justice here. >> reporter: when are the next round of demonstrations? you said pretty big names are coming down. >> there was a demonstration today by a group of students. i want to say it's al sharpton on thursday at a church. i'm not sure when jesse jackson is coming. there's a teleevangelist who is coming back march 26. he said he will shut florida down. he is calling for bus loads of people to come. he wants everybody to come with a little bag of skittles in their hands because that's the candy that tray von martin had. they're not going to let up. they won't. we'll see what happens. the police chief told me that he can't wait for the state attorney's office to make a decision. he was hoping that he'll do it, that the state attorney will do it with a grand jury. take it out of law enforcement hands. put it in the hands of the public of regular citizens so you can offer some credibility because unfortunately there have been enough little inconsistencies along the way in this case that law enforcement has lost all

credibility. >> reporter: thanks for joining us. >> thanks for having me, ray. >> now to a very different legal kind of challenge that came before the supreme court today. margaret warner has that story. >> warner: at issue is whether children conceived after the death of their father, using his frozen sperm, are entitled to get his social security survivor's benefits. here to walk us through the case, as always, is marcia coyle of the "national law journal." welcome back. >> thanks. >> reporter: first of all, explain how did this case which pits the social security administration against a widow with now eight-year-old twins. how did it end up in this court? >> the father in this instance was diagnosed with esophageal cancer back in 2001. he and his wife wanted to have another child as a sibling for the child they did have.

so he had his sperm frozen before he underwent chemotherapy because he feared he would become sterile after the treatment. after he was treated he seemed to recover for a while. then he went downhill and died in 2002. about 18 months after his death, his wife gave birth after undergoing in vitro fertilization to the twins. she applied for social security survivor benefits for the twins just as she did for their other child. the social security administration denied them, said that she was not eligible. she went to court. the lower federal appellate court here found that the administration was wrong, that she did qualify. so it's the government, the social security administration, that brought the appeal to the supreme court today. >> reporter: the original law or provision of the law that established survivor benefits was meant really to what? protect or help a young-ish widow who is sud suddenly left

without a wage earner. >> it's to replace the income that they were dependent upon until the wage earner's death. the law was passed back in 1939 i believe. so it really did not anticipate the kinds of situations that the court faced today. >> reporter: what were the arguments in court today. >> theish... the issue here and i want to say we talk about constitutional questions on the news hour. but the case today is the bread and butter of the supreme court. trying to resolve conflicting language within a federal law. there were two provisions of this law at issue. the definition of "child." that definition says a child is the child or the legally adopted child of an individual. another provision is entitled "determination of family status." it gives a list of ways to determine whether the child is eligible for benefits. those two are at conflict. the government argued today that you have to look to the

second, the determination of family status. you have to look to state law to see if the child is eligible. in this situation, the man died in florida. he did not provide for his twins or any children born after his death in his will. under this particular provision since those children cannot inherit, they do not get survivor benefits. the lawyer for the woman says the definition of "child" ends it. these are children who are born, biological children of the married parents and that should govern. >> reporter: what about the clause that you mentioneded that the child has to have been dependent on the parent at the time the parent died which implies the child is alive. >> that's a second requirement here. if the woman wins and the court finds that she needs... she meets the definition of child and is eligible for benefits, the second rirpt is to show that the children were

dependent upon the parent at the time of his death. so she still would have to go back and fight that battle. >> reporter: how did the justices react to this very human case? >> they didn't seem happy with either argument.ice alito gave a hypothetical to the government of, well, since you want to look at state law, what if the state had a crazy law that said the biological children of married parents can never inherit? and justice breyer.... >> reporter: would you then make a federal benefit depend on that. >> exactly. chief justice roberts said, well, okay, the children were born 18 months after the parent's death. he said to the mother's lawyer, what if the children are born two years after the parent's death? justice breyer said he didn't think that any of the arguments being made were going to solve the problems that they saw coming down the road.

many of them mentioned that this is new technology that congress could not have foreseen in 1939. >> reporter: how many people potentially are affected by this? >> right now the government estimates that there are about 100 applicants in this position, applicants for survivor benefits. it's also interesting, too, it was noted in the briefs that soldiers going to iraq and afghanistan, a number of them have also preserved their sperm in the event that they're killed or they're injured in a way that they cannot have children. there's many more than just the death of a parent from cancer that could be affected by the court's decision. >> reporter: referring to what you mentioned earlier, this is not the first time this court has had to face reconciling an old law with new technology. >> absolutely. in fact, just this term we discussed how law enforcement was using g.p.s. devices to surveil criminal suspects.

but this comes in a very different type of case, a civil case, not a criminal case. i think as we go forward we're going to see more and more the new technology come to go the court in different guises. >> reporter: and how it affects ordinary people. >> definitely. >> reporter: marcia, thank you. >> my pleasure. >> woodruff: next, most of the country is experiencing a warmer than usual springtime, with temperatures hitting summertime levels. in the nation's capital, that's causing the famed cherry blossoms to arrive early for the celebration of a 100-year old tradition. hari sreenivasan has our story. >> this family from arlington heights illinois was in washington d.c. this weekend for a family reunion. they lucked in to an earlier than normal cherry blossom season. >> i was following it on the internet. i was hoping and hoping we'd

be having an early bloom this year with the mild weather. sure enough. we've gotten lucky with that. >> it's something i've always tried to make down here in the spring. this is the first time it's happened in like ten years we've made it. >> reporter: these blossoms are only around for about two weeks on average. predicting when those two weeks are going to happen is the job of the national park service. due to mild winter in the d.c. area, the park service already moved this year's projected peak bloom dates earlier, twice. >> aren't they gorgeous. >> reporter: it now says 70% of the cherry trees here will be blooming in the next two days. bill line is a spokesman for the national park service. >> much warmer this year than it has been and the trees are simply react to go the temperatures. >> reporter: cherry trees are very sensitive to temperature not just how hot it is getting during the day but also how cold it gets at night. >> typical this time of year in march to still have, oh, you know 30, 32, 34 degrees as

the overnight low temperature. this year we've had a number of days, multiple days, where the coldest it gets overnight is 50 degrees, 55 degrees. a couple of days the overnight low was 60 degrees. that's a significant change in terms of that overnight low temperature. >> reporter: in fact the cherry trees here in the tidal basin have bloomed almost a month later some years. we know that because the park service has been keeping data on these special trees for decades. they were a gift from japan 100 years ago this year. and it becomes cinnamon... they become synonymous with spring in washington d.c.. now the cherry blossom festival attracts more than a million visitors and is expected to bring in more than $100 million to the local economy. whether this year's extraordinarily early bloom is due to climate change or just an unusual streak of warm weather across the country, studying peak bloom times over a longer period reveals

something interesting. this doctor studies how plants adapt to environmental factors at the university of washington. he's been pouring over 50 to 60 years of dates, when cherry trees have bloomed at this famous landmark and says the blooming is indeed tied to rising temperatures. >> every degree of temperature that you add can have quite an impact on their process of flowering. >> reporter: over the past 60 years on average, the cherry trees in washington d.c. are reaching their peak bloom earlier by about five days. still predicting when the cherries will bloom next year is almost impossible. but based on two scenarios of population and climate devised by the inter-governmental panel on climate change, the doctor predicts that decades from now cherry blossoms will steadily arrivearlier. he says in one scenario the the cherries could come

between 5 and 13 days earlier by the 2050s. the trees could bloometween 10 on29 days earlier by the 2080s. meaning a peak bloom in late february. while these trees and the festival that accompanies them add millions in tourism dollars there's still no guarantee that the people and the blossoms will arrive at the same time. >> people have to plan ahead. people make those hotel and plane reservations in advance. mother nature is what mother nature is. >> reporter: if you're in luck like this family you get to see a fabled change of seasons. >> i think it's an iconic part of washington d.c. that we've all heard about growing up and you always see pictures of it. it's great to have a chance to really see it and be a part of it. >> reporter: but if you're making plans to see the cherry trees in full bloom over the next few decades it might make sense to err on the earlier side. >> brown: online, we have another climate-related story, marking the beginning of a

special newshour series called "coping with climate change." it's about a man dealing with the texas drought by collecting, bottling, and selling rainwater. he calls it "cloud juice." >> woodruff: finally tonight, a different take on the presidential campaign. with rhetoric heating up and calls for bipartisanship growing across the country, a new group called americans elect is pushing a new way. the nonprofit says it will secure ballot access for a unity ticket-- one democrat, one republican-- in all 50 states in november. i spoke late last week with two former governors supportive of the effort. in miami, christie todd whitman, a republican and the former governor of new jersey who sits on the americans elect board. and in oklahoma city, former senator and governor david boren, a democrat who now is president of the university of

oklahoma. thank you both for being with us. governor boren, if i may call you that, to you first. how did you come to this place? why to you is this a good idea? >> i think it's because our country is in real trouble. we look at the fact that our portion of the world's output of goods in the world economy is going down dramatically. we scramble to stay even in the top 20 in educational rankings around the world. respect for us is going down. what do we see in washington? we see democrats and republicans wasting precious time, fighting each other instead of getting together to solve these problems and meet these challenges. it seems that it's time to do something to get the two-party system working again, to bring it some shock therapy to get it going. i think that's what american life is all about. >> reporter: why do you like this idea? what do you want to see happen

this year? >> i want to see us get over this partisan gridlock that david was talking about. we have real issues in this country. we have real problems. we have to solve them. not every issue is a partisan political issue. we have policy decisions that need to be made. when i looked at american-elect and was first asked to consider going on the board, first of all let's open the process. we have over 4,000 delegates. that's more than if you go back through the history of the two parties and all their conventions, more than you have all of them put together. we're opening the process to people by using the internet. anyone can be a delegate. but also by putting together a bipartisan ticket will mean that each party has a dog in the hundred as it were. they won't be quite as likely i hope to say no the minute a suggestion comes from the executive branch because we can't afford to keep going like this. we can't afford it fiscally. we can't it morally. we can't afford it for our quality of life. >> reporter: governor whitman,

to that point about it being online. as i understand it, people go online to be he will vibl... to be eligible to vote. not everybody in the country has access to the internet. >> that is a challenge that we have. that's one of the reasons why we're trying to make sure that it's in every library so that people who don't have their own computers can access it through the library because it's open to any voter, any registered voter. you have to be a registered voter to become a delegate for americans elect. this is as ubiquitous as you can make it. is everybody going to be able to participate? probably not. as you say not everybody can get to a library. we're trying to make it as open and as accessible to as many people as we can. when you go around the country- and i know senator, governor, president boren all of those titles as somebody i really respect he's seen it and knows it too. there are so many frustrated people saying a pox on both

your houses. i don't like the rhetoric of these campaigns. i want a change. this is the way to do it. give them a chance to be heard if they're serious. >> reporter: governor boren you are a long-time democrat. why walk away from the democratic party and the party's nominee, president obama this year? >> judy, this is not personal toward president obama. we have to wait and see if this process produces a ticket that we should all get behind and support. we think it should be given an opportunity. you think about every single registered voter in this country, democrat, republican or independent, will have a chance to go online. at either the republican or democratic conventions there will be a few hundred people. mayb it's 1100 is the magic number i think for the republicans. we're talking about millions of people. opening up the process of both parties and independents as well helping to choose the next president. we ought to emphasize this. people say to me you're supporting a third pear. oh, you might be supporting an independent.

no! this is a bipartisan ticket. this would be the first bipartisan ticket in modern american history. a democrat and republican running together. putting together a cabinet that would be half democrats, half republicans like churchill did during world twar 2 in britain. it worked. it brought that country through the perilous times. when we've met challenges before as americans we've always come together. i wouldn't be giving up my party. christie whitman would not be giving up her party. to participate in this process. we would be supporting a bipartisan ticket. when we look back, when perot did run as an independent and got 19% of the vote, the disapproval rating of both parties in the congress, for example, was 30 to 40 points lower than it is right now. right now it's 91%. disapproval. i think it is because people are fed up with the fighting between the two parties.

we're americans first. there's something more important even though i'm a democrat, there's something more important to me than the democratic party or the republican party. it's the united states of america. >> reporter: let me ask you both a few more questions. governor whitman again, the same question, you are a long- time republican. why walk away from your party, potentially your nominee whether it's romney or somebody else. >> i'm fighting for the republican party i knew when i was growing up. i want to see the kind of change in washington that will get us to the point where we start making the big... taking on the big challenges and making the important decisions that we stop looking at every issue through that partisan political prism saying what's going to get me another vote in caucus? what's going to get me another percentage point on my re-elect and start saying what's going to solve the problems? when david boren was in the senate people came together. they could stand up for their parties and they did. they objected to one another. they went on the floor of the senate. they talked about the issues

that were important. then they went... got together afterwards and said, okay, how can we solve this problem? here's where i am. here's where you are. let's talk about how we really solve the problem for the american people? it doesn't mean you give up your party. it means you honor your party by honoring america. >> reporter: you're not discouraged by the recent history of third parties that they just, including unity '08, many whose supporters four years ago are now on board with this effort? it fell apart in the last time. >> well, it's a growing thing though. this is a new trend. we've never done this before. we've never had an internet convention. we are making the rules as we go along. it's been excite to go see how people have responded to it. literally when you talk about 400,000 delegates, 2.8 million people have signed petitions to get americans-elect on the ballot. that tells you there's something happening in the country and the time is right. now is the time to get this process started. >> reporter: governor bornn, who will the candidates be? >> i think it's too early to

tell. i'm listening to christie whitman in this broadcast and i'm thinking to myself, now there's a person i could vote for, even though i'm a democrat and she's a republican. there's a person i could vote for as part of a by partisan ticket for president or vice president of the united states. people like bill cohen who have been mentioned also. he and i worked together as chair and vice chair of the intelligence committee of the u.s. senate for four years. during that four years, we did not have a single divided partisan vote. in fact most things were passed by unanimous consent. >> reporter: governor whitman, there is a lot of criticism. how is americans-elect raising money? and there has been criticism of not enough disclosure of who your donors are. >> right. we're a 501 c-4 which is a charitable donation so you don't have to reveal your donors. we encourage the donors to allow us to release their names. judy, this is taking on your

party. it started with a few who have given quite a bit with you one of the things that we have is to ensure that no one person can give more than 20%. we don't take any pac money. we don't take any money from corporations. we don't take... it's all individuals. now the money is coming in through the internet i think we have several thousand donors at this point in time. i'm not sure of the fact number. but we're continuing to fund it that way. we hope that all the donors who have given in the past will feel comfortable at some point in saying, you know what? i'm not ashamed to be associated with this. i do think it's time. not fear the retribution of their party. frankly that's part of the concern is getting the right candidates as president boren has talked about. we have to see who the candidates will be. it means we're going to stand up and say we're not happy with what we see. we're willing to stand for the betterment of this country. we have to move forward. this is the time. we will see as we continue to move forward on this. we're now widening the base

every day with the number of contributions we're betting. >> reporter: former governor christie whitman, former governor david boren we thank you both for talking with us. >> a pleasure. >> thank you, judy. >> woodruff: you can join us online tuesday at 3:00 p.m. eastern time for a live video chat about the americans elect concept. details about how to participate can be found at newshour.pbs.org. >> brown: again, the major developments of the day. the staff sergeant accused in the massacre of 16 afghan civilians had his first face-to- face meeting with his attorney at fort leavenworth prison in kansas. rebel fighters in syria battled government security forces in an upscale district of damascus. and a gunman in france shot and killed a rabbi and three children outside a jewish school.

online, we look at a surprising new finding about the use of social media in newsrooms. hari sreenivasan explains. >> sreenivasan: just 9% of americans frequently turn to facebook and twitter to find news links. learn more about the findings of the pew research center's annual report on the state of media and journalism on the rundown. another study tracks high school graduaesonloat r, and shows they're on the rise. check how your state fares using the interactive map on our american graduate page. and fred de sam lazaro reflected on the work ofi,ynatus l co- founder of roe usnpnofit groupnp heal africa. she died saturday of cancer at age 62 after devoting her life to helping women who were victims of violence and rape during congo's civil war. all that and more is on our web site, newshour.pbs.org. jeff? >> brown: and that's the newshour for tonight. on tuesday, we'll look at education as a national security issue with former secretary of state condoleezza rice, and former new york city schools chancellor joel klein. i'm jeffrey brown. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. we'll see you onlinmoveow eg.ni.

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