back with the panel, judge napolitano, we welcome a.b. studdard, associate editor of the hill, and charles krauthammer with us through the statement. quickly, a.b., before the president gets here, the siege mentality that may be overtaking, as wendall describes it, at white house. >> yeah. i think even the president's supporters were frustrated and concerned that there was really a lack of a response really materially no response to the collective damage that these three scandals were causing. too much passivity. sort of brushing off the benghazi thing. they were under pressure obviously from last night's release of an email to release the rest of them. and some action has to be taken at the irs. that's what we'll expect. >> bret: and here's president obama by himself in the east room. >> good afternoon, everybody. i just finished speaking with secretary lew and senior officials at the treasury department to discuss the investigation into irs personnel who improperly screened conservative groups applying for tax exempt status. i look forw

a.b.we documented many of the issues and problems with obama care and this seems to be a big one. >> this is a big one. i think it's especially important politically because it's the president's own allies turning on him here we have seen this in fits and starts from other groups who have expressed concerns about the bill and, of course, you have had conservatives and others who have opposed it all along. when you have the president's own allies, indeed people that he deliberately sought protect in the formation of this law. turning on him and criticizing anymore that fashion i think is particularly significant. the roofers call was significant because they call for a full repeal. that's only 22,000 workers. when you have the united food and commercial workers 1.3 million strong making a call for dramatic changes and suggesting that the president in the september 2009 speech in pittsburgh wasn't keeping his word, that's a major political headache for the white house. >> bret: a.b., i will

a.b.'s going to run against obama and the democrats, whoever the democratic nominee is. >> ashley judd, would she have been a better candidate? >> i don't think so. she wanted to run -- if she runs for the senate, she's going to have to run to policies of president obama and they are going to tie her to that. she's been a delegate and has ties to the party that the other delegates don't have. look, she's been looking into this. she's certainly having the right conversations. it's entirely possible that she jumps in but at this point she's running against the record. when people run against mitch mcconnell, later on she has a path to perhaps the governor's office one day. their careers end up ruined and they don't run again. >> let's talk about you first this time. let's talk about mitch mcconnell. now, i guess it's okay, if you're very right wing, to support someone who says my number one job is to screw this presidency, make sure it's a disaster, make sure nothing gets done. nothing gets d

thank you, a.b., thank you howard fineman. we'll be right back after this. >>> let me finish tonight with this. i'm profoundly impressed by the power the african-american vote this early century, despite efforts to keep people from getting there is a solid, good thing for the country, a display of civil energy that promises to enliven this country politically. people who vote control things, people that don't just get to complain about things. the big republican mistake was to take the wrong side on the civil rights struggle. the irony, they had it right in the early '60s, it's when they adopted the so-called southern strategy when it came back and bit them and will keep on biting them until they change again back to the party of abraham lincoln. today is a special day also, may 29th, the day john f. kennedy was born. there's a book out there, which i'm proud to say i wrote, about the man himself, what it was like to sit with in a room and to tens of thousands of fellow americans is this, he was the president, he, jack kennedy

thank you, a.b., thank you howard fineman.ht back after this. ♪ [ agent smith ] i've found software that intrigues me. it appears it's an agent of good. ♪ [ agent smith ] ge software connects patients to nurses to the right machines while dramatically reducing waiting time. [ telephone ringing ] now a waiting room is just a room. [ static warbles ] i'm on expert on softball. and tea parties. i'll have more awkward conversations than i'm equipped for, because i'm raising two girls on my own. i'll worry about the economy more than a few times before they're grown. but it's for them, so i've found a way. who matters most to you says the most about you. at massmutual we're owned by our policyowners, and they matter most to us. ready to plan for your future? we'll help you get there. see, i knew testosterone could affect sex drive, but not energy or even my mood. that's when i talked with my doctor. he gave me some blood tests... showed it was low t. that's it. it was a number. [ male announcer ] today, men with low t have androgel

a.b. stoddard associate editor of the hill and syndicated columnist charles krauthammer. the president's use of the term was deliberate and based on u.s. policy it comes after a "new york times" article quoting senior officials saying they were surprised by the president's unscripted comments about syrian chemical weapons. >> which means the contradictions on the meek of all of this continues -- meaning of all of this continues. they can't get the cover up retract story correct. slip off hand and no it was intended. in either case, up to now it's meaningless. i think what's really interesting is that the israelis went ahead and acted on red line undeclared so everybody understands in the region. for israelis to that don't have a dog in the fight it's a shiite sunni war which is not going to help israel in either way. it has a red line on the issue of strategic balance between it and its enemies in terms of weaponry. it won't allow hezbollah the weapon that israel attacked today are. are missiles of precision that could hit tel aviv. will not allow that -- and the reason i

ban next the president and let the courts do his work for him there have been more than one hundred a.b.'s corpus cases filed on behalf of get no prisoners by groups like the center for constitutional rights so he the president can instruct his justice department to not fight these court cases essentially giving him a good no plaintiff's a win that would lead to either their release or an actual trial and finally the president can actually make closing gitmo a top priority all these blocks by congress expire on september thirtieth when the national defense authorization act which contains these provisions expires to congress will likely try to keep these provisions in place but the president can tell congress that he'll veto any bill that prevents him from closing gitmo is three and a veto before but never actually went through with it of course this would require the president to use a lot of political capital but if he really considers getting only moral stain that would cost him and the nation a lot more to keep it open in washington same sex are two. well from the detention faciliti

a.b. stoddard is associate editor and columnist for "the hill." good to see you. generally waiver of fifth amendment applies to trials only. this isn't a trial and normally you can invoke your fifth at any point in time. the lawyers will have to iron that out but look, what happened yesterday seemed to really anger people on both sides of the aisle, republicans and democrats. so has this just inflamed or escalated the vitriol and recriminations over the irs scandal? >> yes, i think this week it's really taken a turn. we learned, a, that the story from the white house continues to change and that's unsettling. lois lerner decided she couldn't testify because she could incriminate herself. we've also learned that the irs has known about this targeting and extra scrutiny for conservative groups now for more than a year and didn't tell congress. so that's really what matters. not so much with what happened in the back and forth in her statement where she tried to say i have never given false information to this committee and then run out the door before they could ask

it is someone who worked for fox or a.b. but does it include a blogger or someone tweeting? they are journalists and entitled to constitutional protection? we need to ask 21st century questions about a provision that was written over 200 years ago for the constitution. >>chris: turning to the irs scandal, and we have a lot of ground to cover, senator graham you say that president obama may not have directly ordered the i.r.s. to target conservative groups but it was a culture of political manipulation that filtered down from the white house. explain what you mean. >> guest: i think that the president is basically told the supporters, you know, the best way to get back at someone is to win. we're talking about revenge, taking no prisoners' altitude. this is clearly an organized effort in the i.r.s. to target political opponents of the president. that is undeniable. how does that culture come about? how vast was it? this really does call for a special counsel. the justice guidelines about dealing with leaks of classified information goes back to the 70's and we need to review

charles rossotti on his a.b. in economics and was magna cum laude. he received his mba from harvard business school. including the distinct service medal from the department of defense and the department of the treasury. he also was named alumni of the year award from the school. he serves on many boards, including merrill lynch and company and habeas corpus and sends a senior adviser of the carlyle group. please welcome the author of the book "many unhappy returns", mr. charles rossotti. >> thank you. thank you very much for that kind introduction. it is good to be back. the gentleman was kind enough to welcome me when things were not looking so good at the irs in 1999. so i do appreciate it. as you mentioned, i completed my time in november of 2002. but i still have trouble imagining that i actually ended up taking a job. because i was not planning to leave. and i certainly have not signaled the government agency. and let alone their i was in november of 1990s davin as acting commissioner. it was not normal time for the iron ask him if there ever i

at that point, we knew that is classic view youpoint discrimination and we knew we had to bring a.b. akron -- an action so we brought a lawsuit against the irs. z street versus the commissioner of the irs. after we filed our lawsuit the irs began having several different positions on why it was taking so long. one of which was because terrorism happens in israel. therefore they had to look into our organization because they thought we might fund terrorism. we are fuhrl purely educationa. we funded ourselves. >> greta: you are part of the cincinnati tea party group is, that, correct? >> that's correct. i work with the cincinnati tea party. >> greta: and another group which w. which you had no connection with seeking tax exempt status. is that right? >> that's correct. >> greta: how did you learn your name got put in a questionnaire to them? >> when they received the irs letter, they being the liberty town high pressure teship tea e board members called to tell me they got the letter but called to tell me question no. 26 that asked describe your relationship with justin binik-thomas. >

i thought, a.b. he is right. -- maybe he is right. define smart? >> it has a lot of definitions. could tell you one way i am not smart. if you put me on a basketball court, i will embarrass myself. i am not smart at basketball. what is smart to me means really the capacity to use one's intellectual ability to create new solutions, to find answers to problems, in ways that maybe have never occurred t before. >> where did you meet your wife? >> m.i.t. is an impressive lady in her own right. she is a medical doctor who has been in practice in charles county, maryland, for over 20 years. she is the managing partner and ceo of the business side of the practice she runs and treats patients. she has recently gotten into public medicine and is now the health officer for charles county and has always wanted to do public medicine. she plays three instruments. i play zero. i am not smart there. , andlays guitar, piano clarinet. she is just incredible. we met at m.i.t. i felt it was hate at first sight. she was actually a student who i had the perception she had a lot of attentional that she

so when they were pushing for are volunteers we posted on our web seat and sent out a.b.ail saying we need volunteers to do this, is anybody available. that is the extent of your involvement. >> greta: and one the things that i irs wanted is printouts of all your website pages, right? >> oh, absolutely. website. every facebook post. every tweet we have ever done. ever i have flyer that a guest speaker might have asked for -- are might have passed out they wanted that as well. they wanted a list of our volunteers and every role. what they do. where the money comes from. who gives it. what we spend it on. what vendors we use. it was an insane amount of questions that really dug into private matters. >> greta: did you feel this was fair or did you think you were targeted. >> we he knew we were being targeted. that was never a question. >> greta: do you feel intimidated by the irs? worry about the the irs? >> absolutely. we a very strong tea party. we have some great worker bees in our tea party and we are effective and know that the politicians have taken notice of northeast

[applause] up next on booktv "after words" with guest host a.b. stoddard associate editor of the hill. this week former senator olympia snowe and her book "fighting for common ground." in it the moderate republican from maine explores the issues of how congress came to its current state of gridlock and what could be done to forge a greater spirit of cooperation and compromise. the program is about an hour. >> host: we are here today to talk about "fighting for common ground" we can fix the stalemate in congress with olympia snowe the senator from maine. i am a fan of your service and i want to start by thanking you for all that you did in the congress and i'm looking forward very much to what you are going to do outside of the system. you actually, it's so interesting to read. i have read about you departing the congress of course but then when i read your book you called it the place of forced kirk and that you were leaving because you could no longer fulfill your responsibility as a problem solver and eight you were embarrassed by the 112th cong

cleveland supposedly gave him the first a.b. carriage and became a fixture in the house. she grew up, she started to call him uncle cleve. her father was tragically killed when she was 11 in a carriage accident. money manager,od some people who knew more about the family history said he was a bit of a roague. cleveland stepped in as executor and money manager to help handle the affairs and work with emma to oversee france s'education. >> i read all of these short biographies, and it tells a story that he became interested after getting into the white house on a visit from the mother and daughter, but your tail goes back further. all the time that she was in college, he was sending loads of flowers to her and writing letters constantly. his eye on her for quite a while? >> i think he did. one thing that is interesting, people know little of her history. there -- her alma mater will special about the train them would come so he could come visit her. he did write her letters and send flowers. she also come -- accompanied him on campaign appearances when he ran for governor o

everything you do, the minneapplis man, teenage daughter targeted with ads in the mailbox for diapers and a.bund out before dad did because they were watching her buying habits. medical data is really valuable. posted privacy clearinghouse, here is what she told me. >> this data is the most valuable personal information about you. more valuable than anything. many people know information like your social security number is valuable for identity thieves. it cost between $0.50 and $1 to get a social security number. but through medical records identifiable patient records can be bought for 14 to $25 each online. gerri: so think about that. your medical data is worth more than even your social security number. the bad guys know that, and they come after you. there are rules you are not supposed to share this information but physicians and hospitals don't pay attention to it. health and human services said virtually everybody in the sample pool ignored the rules because they didn't have time to think about it. they didn't even know them. we will be covering this in detail as we change our focus t

a.b. stoddard, associate editor and columnist for "the hill." our "news watch" panel today. charlie, did it surprise you this story did not get a whole lot of attention especially on abcn and nbc? >> i get a lot of reports saying this is an event happened sometime ago in the midst of a big presidential campaign where people were focused mainly on the economy. it happened far, far away and things like that but the bottom line you had a terrible attack on american interests. you have four people that were dead and then you had the administration, you had politicians come out and give a explanation blaming the attack on some, you know, anti-muslim video that was posted online in order to sort of minimize the importance of the event. and it turns out all that is not true. it was a coordinated attack by terrorists, and by any definition that sounds like, i mean that is a cover-up. and i don't, i, normally cover-ups in this town dominate the news and they become, you know, the stories that everybody follows without any regard for, you know, partisan politics or anything like that

let's talk about it with a.b. stoddard an associate editor and columnist for the hill. absolutely chilling are the words that suzanne collins of maine used to describe this. what are the reverb bracings in washington right now? >> well, it is absolutely chilling. what is a little bit surprising is that we're here on monday morning after this broke several days ago and we haven't heard a lot from democrats on the hill about how chilling and frightening this is. this is really a shocking story. even if president obama has nothing to do with it, he should be shocked and he should be outraged, and he should be talking about this. because people within his administration were able to do this without any kind of direction from people high up in the white house, if if that's the case. he is accountable at the end of the day, and he's got to make sure that the american people know that he's going to make a vigorous attempt to find out what happened. congress certainly will without him, there will be hearings, there will be an investigation and oversight into what this really --

she is interviewed by the associate editor of the hill, a.b. stoddard. >> we are here today with olympia snowe, the senator from maine, to talk about her book, "fighting for common ground." i want to they thank you for all you have done in the congress. i am looking very much forward to what you're going to do outside of the system. i had read about you end up when i read your book, you talk about how you can no longer fill your responsibilities as a problem solver. and that you were embarrassed by the 112th congress and the challenges facing america. you were compelled to leave because you hope that you can help correct the system from the outside rather than the inside. that is news, obviously to people like me. as you noted in your book, bob schieffer of cbs asked what did it say about the state of our government when people like olympia snowe feel that serving is no longer worth their time and effort. that is the part that you worry the rest of us. so make the case for me in the viewer that you can actually try to change the system from the

she is interviewed by a guest host a.b. stoddard associate editor of the hill. >> host: we are here today to talk about "fighting for common ground" how we can fix the stalemate in congress with olympia snowe the senator from maine. i am a fan of your service and i want to start by thanking you for all that you did in congress and i'm looking forward very much to what you are going to do outside of the system. you actually, so interesting to read. i read about you departing the congress of course but then when i read your book to learn you call that a place of burn bridges and scorched earth and you could no longer fulfill your responsibility as a problem solver and that you are embarrassed by the 112th congress with the bipartisan inactivity and bickering and inability to address the challenging problems in america. you now hope that you can help correct the system from the outside rather than be in. that is the bad news obviously two people like me and longtime watchers of the congress who felt that people like you needed

a.b. we need to get to those points so we can invest in the capabilities where people have more risk. >> next question? >> you alluded to -- i know said, iman adam smith have for lewis in my district, i have an air force base. my constituents don't want to hear about problems. what they want to talk about is social security. medicare. medicaid. losing their 401(k). we seem to be not putting that message across. they're cutting defense budgets. the british and had cut back on their military. american people look and think we spend this money on our military. why should we be doing and being the world why policeman? >> the first thing, we do not take up the addition that we should be the world by police. i think one of the things we really endeavor to do in this report is actually talk about the real need for some appetite suppressant with respect to contingency outbreaks. to endeavor at the beginning set minimum acceptable and achievable objectives. when you do, then you reevaluate whether

she is interviewed by a guest host a.b.stoddard associate editor of the hill. >> host: we are here today to talk

. >> a.b. coulter tweeting this morning. the idea that he would be investigating himself in this. that's the point here. >> anna: ultimately what do you think the president is going to do? he is trying to keep this thing as far as away from him as he can. this thing has come out attorney general eric holder and he has stood behind him so strongly recently. you wonder if his days indeed are numbered. >> clayton: why is his leak so important anyway for the doj to be investigating? if you look at whether or not there was a small scale discussion of what north korea might do with the weapons test. they always do a weapons test. when south korea shows some strength, they fire off a weapon. when they -- when iran wants to do something or we have some resolve against iran they fire off a weapon to. >> mike: that's about all they really found out in their investigation. it just seems like they are targeting a news organization that being fox news. >> clayton: ron kessler the author of the secrets of the fbi has more thoughts on jame

the government, city council, civil rights organizations, almost every candidate running for mayor a.b. with the exception of joe load up. mayor, maybe with the exception of joe loda. for about targeting mosques intelligence gathering, go through those. what do you say to your critics? thatt me give you a number i think is important. of mayor years bloomberg's administration, there were 7346 fewer murders than there were in the previous 11 years. those lives saved are largely people of color, young people of color. saving lives.e we know we are saving lives. --p and frisk is something that practice has been embedded in law enforcement throughout the world. not just throughout the country. supremealidated by court decision terry versus ohio in 1968. legislation or laws exist in all 50 states in the country. it's a practice not invented here. one of the things that has happened is we have started to report it more accurately. as a result, there is the possession -- a perception that the numbers have gone up dramatically. it really hasn't. .e have done a lot of training we are not unaware