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it's where we begin tonight with our justice correspondent pete williams. pete, good evening. >> reporter: brian, a dramatic day here because the court agreed to wade into the legal battle over this far-reaching law. it raises a question the court has never confronted before. does congress have the power to require virtually everyone to buy something? [ beeping ] >> reporter: it's a huge change in federal law and a landmark in the obama presidency. >> health care should no longer be a privilege in this country. >> reporter: but it touched off shouting matches at congressional town halls. >> no government health care! >> reporter: tea party protesters took to the streets to condemn it. >> kill the bill! kill the bill! >> reporter: and every republican candidate for president is against it. >> obamacare is wrong. i will repeal it. i'll get it done. [ applause ] >> reporter: opponents including 26 states say congress went too far by requiring nearly all americans to buy health insurance. the constitution, they say, allows congress to regulate the insurance mark

pete williams, nbc news at the justice department. >>> now to the latest on the awful child sex abuse scandal at penn state university. signs tonight that more victims may be willing to come forward. nbc's peter alexander reports tonight from the penn state campus. >> reporter: with the penn state child sexual abuse scandal growing, several lawyers tell nbc news more potential victims of jerry sandusky are now coming forward and beginning to share stories of abuse, some reportedly dating back to the 1970s. >> there is comfort in numbers. i think that they now understand that we're not alone. >> reporter: ben andreozzi represents at least two alleged victims. one not in the report. andreozzi said he was told by authorities he is victim number 11. >> my client was sexually assaulted by mr. sandusky in the early '90s. he was sexually assaulted on the grounds of penn state university. >> reporter: also today the new york times reports officials at the second mile, sandusky's children's charity, discovered several years of documents missing. according to the times, investigators are concer

i would not be surprised to see two, maybe even three conservative votes to uphold it. >>> pete williams reporting. the supreme court focusing in on that individual mandate to buy health insurance. on that subject, a new cnn poll shows 52% of americans favor the proposal, up from 44% in june. 47% are opposed. the question, do you favor or oppose the health insurance mandate? oral arguments on the healthcare case will begin before the supreme court in march with a final ruling expected in late june. >>> still ahead here on "way too early" you should all be well rested because you didn't have to stay up late to watch the packers dismantling of minnesota at lambeau. highlights of aaron rodgers playing catch with his buddies ahead in sports. >>> plus the sound of gabby giffords voice. the arizona congresswoman gives her first interview since that awful day in tucson. we'll hear from her and get a check on weather when "way too early" comes pa right back. >>> there's a sim p reason that florida law and the law in many other states calls for a careful check of the machine results in elections

pete williams, nbc news, washington. >>> it's as big as an aircraft carrier and it's coming our way.ow the asteroid yu-55 will be close enough to get a picture of it. it's going to pass closer to the earth than the moon is, closer than anything has come since 1975. scientists promise it won't make impact though it's good to have your affairs in order. >>> a lot of people reacted to our story about the giant california sequoia that came crashing down to earth and the debate now over what to do with it. most say tunnel through the tree and leave it there. you can join thousands of others in this robust interactive discussion on our website -- nbcnightlynews.com. when we come back here tonight, some news about the new iphone, the field of dreams, the so-called freshman 15. as the week goes down to the wire, a few things we thought you should know. >>> it was another busy week around here. while we were busy covering the big stories as always happens a few things got by. so in the waning minutes remaining in our broadcast week as we go down to the wire on a friday night, tonight we look

we begin tonight with our justice correspondent pete williams. >> reporter: investigators were carefully checking the white house today looking for other possible rifle rounds like the one that hit a window. it's on the truman balcony, third floor. inside is the oval living room near the family living quarters. it damaged the historic glass, but stopped by a bullet resistant layer, a security feature on white house windows. on the south lawn below agents with metal detectors looked for more rounds. only two have been confirmed. agents want to know if pock parks they are discovered could mean other rounds hit. investigators are virtually certain shots were fired last friday night about 9:00 p.m., from a car speeding along a nearby street. the shots came from here on constitution avenue, about a half mile south of the white house. they were fired from a car moving in that direction, apparently by the driver firing across the passenger seat and out the window. that distance equal to nearly eight football fields is the limit for the useful range of the assault rifle thought to have been used

pete williams, nbc news, washington. >>> up next, a major league baseball player kidnapped. and the next oscar host has been announced. >>> as we mentioned, a major league baseball player has been kidnapped while home in his native venezuela. wilson ramos, the 24-year-old catcher for the washington nationals. he just finished h his rookie season. he was kidnapped last night, taken away in an orange chevy suv later found abandoned. so far his family has not received a ransom request or any other communication from the kidnappers. authorities believe he is still alive. >>> congresswoman michele bachmann got an earful from the occupy movement today. as they occupied a foreign policy speech. she was trying to give a speech on the deck of the u.s.s. yorktown in charleston. it's home of the medal of honor museum. they rose from the crowd and started reading their message. >> american consumers -- [ shouting ] >> mike check! >> mike check! >> this will only take a minute. >> this will only take a minute! >> reporter: while they said their piece, reading in unison, the congresswoman

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pete williams, nbc news, washington. >> for his part the president is in australia tonight, his third try to get there, he cancelled once during the health care debate, again after the bp oil spill. both nations have announced the u.s. marine corps will move an entire task force to australia. >>> it's been a dangerous day of weather in this country across the southeast. a giant storm system and a gigantic front along with it, still spooling out to the north and earlier produced several tornados, there are reports of tornados in mississippi, alabama, and georgia. at one point downtown atlanta was included in the warning zone. suburbs told to take cover. more than a dozen people were injured. thousands are without power after a lot of trees and power lines came down. now, to the latest in the awful scandal at penn state. new scrutiny on the assistant coach who was the star witness here, because of what he saw. tonight there are new questions, new e-mails emerging about whether he did or didn't go to the police to report wrongdoing. peter alexander live on campus tonight state college, p

nbc's justice correspondent, pete williams, has more from washington. >> investigators were carefullyking the white house, looking for other possible rifle rounds like the one that hit a window. it's on the truman balcony, third floor, inside is the yellow oval room near the family living quarters, officials say it damaged the historic glass, but was stocked by a bullet-resistant layer, a security feature on the white house windows. on the south lawn below, agents with metal detectors looked for more rounds, only two have been confirmed, but agents want to know if other pock marks they've discovered could mean other rounds hit. investigators are virtually certain the shots were fired last friday night, about 9:00 p.m. from a car speeding along a nearby street. the shots came from here on constitution avenue, about half a mile south of the white house. they were fired from a car moving in that direction, apparently by the driver. firing across the passenger seat and out the window. that distance equal to nearly eight football fields is around the limit of the useful range for that kind

joining me now live from the supreme court nbc justice correspondent pete williams. explain where we go from here? >> dramatic decision from the supreme court to take this case because now we'll find out the answer that has been debated and argued about ever since the law has passed, is it constitutional or not. the centerpiece issue is this requirement that all americans virtually all americans buy health insurance. it's first time in history that congress has ever required people to buy a product from a private company. so that's the big question. other questions in this case are, if that part of it is unconstitutional does the rest of the law collapse or do parts survive? additional question about the new medicaid requirements for the states. very interesting question here, thomas, about whether the supreme court can actually consider this now. if you don't buy insurance you have to pay an extra tax. and there's a federal law that says you can't challenge a federal tax before it goes into effect. the individual mandate kicks in 2014. one of the questions the supre

i'm joined by nbc news chief justice correspondent pete williams. pete, governor nicky hailey who is the daughter of immigrants, is named as the defendant in this? >> right. this is the third time the obama administration has sued a state. the first two were arizona and alabama. similar pattern there. sued the state and the governor as well. and in each case, the obama administration is saying the states cannot have their own immigration laws that are at odds with the federal law and a balance of federal policies. the justice department says one thing that south carolina has plainly said it wants to do is have a law that is so tough that it pushes illegal immigrants into other states and the federal government says that's not the way to have an immigration policy is to shove the problem from state to state. now the governor spokesman put out a statement saying if the federal government would just do its job, the states wouldn't have to. here's the statement. if the feds were doing their jobs, we wouldn't have to address illegal immigration reform at

joining us now to talk about that video is nbc correspondent pete williams. let's begin. how did they get this video? >> he went to idaho state and asked for help in making the tame. the university referred him to a student there to help him. he wanted to make this tape and try to get on oprah winfrey's program to talk about his views. the whole tape is 45 minutes long. you hear where he's obviously mentally troubled. the fbi was in idaho where idaho state is earlier this week to get a copy of the tape. now it's come out and everybody is looking at it. there's another bit of information that's come out that he met with a computer scientist or computer science student in idaho and said i think barack obama wants to put chips in every child like the kind you put in a pet to find them if they are lost. that will be the mark of the antichrist. more and more is said about how troubled he was in the months before he came here. >> any indications that this is the kind of thing that people should have reported to authorities in advance of what happened last week? >> he wasn't a s

joined now by nbc news justice correspondent pete williams. pete, this is the third state now. >> third and probably not the last one. the justice department has indicated that it's looking also at recently passed state laws in utah, indiana and georgia. now, those laws are all in various stages of legal action because they've been challenged by other groups. and so, the enforcement of those laws have been to some extent interrupted by the courts, but the justice department says it still might sue them. south carolina, they say the same problem as alabama and arizona, two other states the government has sued. they say states are not free under our system to have their own immigration laws that are at odds with the federal immigration law and federal policies that try to balance a number of interests. and so, the justice department has sued seeking a court's order to block enforcement of this new south carolina law that's to take effect in january. south carolina says that if the federal government would just do its job, the states wouldn't have

pete williams is nbc's justice correspondent and joins us from the newsroom. te? we now know the bullets apparently hit the window of the white house, incredibly. >> reporter: two rounds hit the window of the white house. the picture that's just right over your shoulder -- >> which window was it? >> if you look up where andrea was. if you looked just up -- well, actually the other side. the other side of the white house. >> the south, i think. >> the truman balcony on the third floor right in the middle outside a room called the yellow oval room near the visitors or the first family's quarters. agents were concentrating their investigative attention there. that's where one of the rounds was believed to have hit. it broke the glass but didn't penetrate the building because it was stopped by bullet resistant glass. almost all white house windows have it. it is believed the shots were fired friday night from a car moving down constitution avenue on the other side of the white house from here. the south side has the familiar rounded truman balcony. the car was spee

we have our man, nbc justice correspondence pete williams to take a look at what's going on here andrgument. >> okay, chuck. good morning. from the supreme court where three years ago the court said that it was all right to impose the requirement. they say doing so it did not unconstitutionally restrict the right to vote. now more states are doing what mississippi is trying to decide they want to follow. the push of voter i.d. laws came after the 2000 bush/gore debacle in indiana. the first state to require that registered voters show government issued photo identification like a driver's license to cast a ballot. voters without one could still be counted but only if they produce a photo i.d. within a few days. since the u.s. supreme court upheld the law a few years ago the idea has spread and six other states have passed the strict similar requirement. kansas, texas, wisconsin, tennessee, georgia and south carolina. now voters in mississippi are deciding whether to amend their constitution. the idea has strong support among republicans. >> we want to make sure that when you show up

he te >> pete williams tonight. pete, thanks. >>> now to the presidential campaign trail. republican contender herman cain took a stumble on camera when asked about libya by the editorial board of the milwaukee journal sentinel. nbc's kelly o'donnell has that story. >> good luck, mr. cain! >> reporter: tonight herman cain's campaign has a new challenge. not the allegations of sexual harassment he fiercely denied but the way cain handled a basic question on libya during a meeting with editors at the milwaukee journal sentinel. >> so you agreed with president obama on libya or not? >> okay. libya. president obama supported the uprising, correct? >> reporter: cain had just taken part in a debate on foreign policy saturday night but today gave a halting, uneasy response. >> i do not agree with the way he handled it for the following reason. um. no, that's a different one. >> reporter: the newspaper says it was cain who offered to drop by for 30 minutes this morning between fundraisers. the editorial board released a five-minute clip. >> got to go back. see. got all this stuff

pete williams is live.a, arizona, this is the third lawsuit that they filed against new measures and they enacted to crack down. how can we expect this legal battle to play out? >> like the other, i suspect. the government will go to a federal judge and said please block enforcement of part of the law. the judge will decide. it will go to an appeals court and the government makes the same claim and said the states are free to take steps to try to deal with illegal immigration and they can't pass laws that are at odds with federal policy and that under the constitution preempts the field. arizona's case got through to the supreme court and we are waiting to see if the supreme court will take the challenge over arizona's law that has been stopped. the enforcement of most of the contversion provisions have been stopped because of the court and we are waiting to see if the court takes the arizona case. if it does take it this term, that will go a long way towards sorting out the claims between the states and th

nbc's pete williams has the details from washington this morning.hock some to understand that bullets were sitting right there on the white house grounds. >> reporter: especially given the distance here, more than half a mile away. and when this happened friday night, it didn't seem to involve the white house. the shots were fired from a moving car. this was sort of a rash thing to do. the car was driving down constitution avenue about a third of a mile south of the white house. that's at least seven football fields away. nobody was hurt. the president wasn't there. he was out of town in california. but investigators found the car a short time later. the driver had run off but left behind an assault-type rifle. it's been traced to a 21-year-old drifter who spent time in idaho, utah and texas. oscar ortega hernandez. there's a tattoo on his neck that says "israel." there's a warrant out for his arrest. he has that tattoo on his neck. then yesterday morning, çricha, the secret service discovered two bullet rounds hit the white house. one hit a window

want to bring in pete williams now from our d.c. bureau, our justice correspondent. ser look at some of these voter i.d. measures that states have been looking at and implementing around the country. >> craig, in fact, mississippi voters are trying to decide today whether they will also impose the same requirement in their states. it was three years ago that the u.s. supreme court said that requiring voters to show a government-issued photo i.d. at the polls did not violate the constitutionally protected try to vote. and once the court made that ruling, many other states jumped on the bandwagon. the push for voter i.d. laws came in the wave of calls for election reforms after the 2000 bush/gore debacle. it started in indiana, the first state to require that registered voters show government issued photo identification like a driver's license to cast a ballot. voters without one can still have their ballots counted but only if they produce a photo i.d. within a few days. since the u.s. supreme court upheld the indiana law three years ago, the idea has spread and six ot

. >> pete williams is live from washington, d.c. to see you. >> nice to see you. >> how can we expect this latest legal battle to play out? >> we'll see how the government does here. it's been fairly successful in challenging these tough new immigration laws. in arizona, for example, two federal courts have put a hold on that law. arizona is waiting to see if the u.s. supreme court will agree to hear an appeal of those rulings. the justice department has succeeded in getting parts of alabama's law shut down and now they are trying to do the same with south carolina. the government says south carolina has basically admitted that the goal of this tough law was to try to push illegal immigrants from their state into others. and they say that's not the way to have a national immigration policy. that the south carolina law is preempted by federal law, that south carolina can't have its own immigration laws and policies that are at variance with the balance the federal government is trying to achieve. now there's a statement from the gover

joining me now, pete williams.o talk about here but i think the headline many people are curious about is the allegation or the possibility that client funds could have been used. what is the latest on this fbi investigation? >> the company itself says this is what they did. it is very early. they're just getting it into. it will be a while before they have any conclusions on that. you were showing the website. let me show you from mf global's own website what they said about the key issue here. in a thing on the website, they talk about segregation of consumer funds, calling it the cardinal safeguard. it is what federal law required them to do. not use individual investor money to go off on the company's own. that's what the government is suggesting happened here. so the regulators are looking at it. the commodities regulators, the securities and exchange commission, the fbi will look at it. several questions remain to be answered. were any laws broken? regulations maybe but was there criminal action? was there fr

they traced those things to ortega hernandez. >> pete williams with the breaking details.hank you. >>> and we're following breaking developmentsje)q wake of the bombshell e-mail by mike mcqueary. in this e-mail he claims he did not physically stop the attack on a young boy by jerry sandusky. that mcqueary witnessed in 2002. but he says he made sure it ended, whatever that means. here's the headline. he wrote in that same e-mail, quote, i did have discussions with police and with the official at the university in charge of police. but just a short time ago the police chief and state college, pennsylvania, told nbc news, we don't have any record of him coming to us. nbc's allison joins us live from state college. you talked with that police chief. the distinction is did mcqueary claim that he went to the police of the city, the local police, or if he was referring to so-called campus police? >> reporter: that's exactly right. that's what we've been trying to determine all day. after this e-mail came out, i started placing calls to the university police, to the state police,

here's nbc's pete williams. >> reporter: if it passes it would be the tough test anti-abortion law inmerely restricting action but outlawing it. >> with over 1 million couples waiting to adopt these babies, isn't it time for the senseless killing to end? >> reporter: the initiative would change the state's definition of a person, someone entitled to legal protection to include "every human being from the hoemt of fertilization." advocates say medical science has come a long way since the u.s. supreme court decided roe v. wade 38 years ago saying it makes sense now to define life at the moment of conception. >> the technology that has advanced today demands that we change our minds. >> reporter: while some doctors in the state favor the proposal, many are against it. the state medical society declined to support it saying it could make it a crime for doctors who try to save a mother endangered by a problem peg nancy. opponents say it would outlaw not only abortion also morning-after pills and some other forms of birth control, and would discourage in vitro fertilization by banning dest