we are going to hear from maryland democrat chris van hollen. that is the correct picture of course of chris van hollen and that is coming up. bill: severe weather causing all kinds of problems this week including this right here. that right there is a hailstorm that you do not want to be outside in. forecasters say they are not out of the woods yet. we'll tell you where that is going on in a big part of the country. martha: new developments in the deadly fire at the home of former tennis star james blake. look at this inferno. 6,000 square foot mansion burned down with four people inside. now the investigation takes a startling turn. >> you never know, things happen. it happens to the best of us. makes me grateful that i have another day, you know. makes me sad some families are suffering right now. cúp,@s#b bill: new developments now after that fire that killed a family of four after the home they were renting owned by former tennis star james blake burned to the ground. this is the tampa bay area house. reportedly i.d.'d as a married couple an

it's certainly the wrong thing at this time. >> chris van hollen, thank you for your time. >> thank you>> i want to bring in now dave weigel and brian boyler. do you think this all ends in tears much like the congressman outlined? the government shutdown ended in tears for republicans. >> well, i think the fact that the committee has been established at all is the victory ta the conservative base wanted on this. if you go back, really from january from the inauguration of barack obama, conservative groups had been asking for a select committee to be created. the reason boehner held off on it for so long, i think congress van hollen got to it. there's a specter of going too far in investigation and it backfiring. of your members accusing people of crimes that they can't be proven and asking for impeachment immediately. i think what happened was the base dragged boehner to it at a certain point and i think boehner has more confidence that some of the e-mails that will have revealed the administration not taking this very seriously, that those themselves can become scandalous. i think that

servants everywhere, they turned out 25,000 pages of documents joining me from capitol hill is chris van hollenare you going to vote no? >> oh, yes, i'm going to vote no because ronan, as you just indicated the benghazi tragedy has already been exhaustively investigated here in congress and also by an independent panel that was established and a long time ago it veered off the road for legitimate serious inquiry into a witch hunt based on conspiracy theory. it would be a waste of taxpayer money to go down this road once again. >> congressman adam schiff was calling for a boycott and pelosi demanding equal representation within the hearings. what's the better strategy? >> one is whether we should be spending taxpayer money on this new panel. i think democrats in the house will be united and say that's a bad waste of taxpayer dollars. if republicans establish a panel, should democrats participate in what leader pelosi has said if this is a fair process, meaning if you're generally interested in trying to get more facts rather than engage in a political witch hunt, then you should have even partic

i believe this is chris van hollen's district. it used to be -- i won't even try. they change so much. host: you can see here, this is just wildly everywhere. have there been suits on the other side filed? guest: yes in maryland there were a number of lawsuits filed. after the districts were drawn in 2010 and 2011, republicans filed suit, they wanted to put the redistricting on the ballot. they did. they succeeded in putting it before the voters on a ballot measure. but the interesting thing -- it was a good example of how asking the voters to have a referendum on it. it doesn't necessarily change anything because the way the ballot question was worded, it was simple and straightforward. who's going to vote against the constitution. they're in a deficit of about 18. so they're in then minority. u can have a party win the national popular vote and unrepresented in congress. host: 202-585-3880, 202-585-3881 for republicans and 202-585-3882 for independents. brandon from milwaukee, wisconsin. you're first on with christopher. caller: seems like a case of influencing