0 three people are reportedly trapped inside the bus. behind that transit bus is a school bus that was also involved in this accident. thankfully, no children were on the bus. just the driver. the bus everyturned, the school bus did. you can't see it in the shot, but it's behind this bus. >> steve: they've autopsily called for a med vac. switching gears completely, the 2013 academy awards are going to be in the land of lincoln, the movie. 12 oscar nods, including best picture and director. other films up for best picture are "argo," "beast of the southern wild." "django unchained," "les mis," "life of pi," and "zero dark thirty." >> brian: katherine big low wasn't nominated for the controversial movie. ben affleck also passed over. >> steve: sorry, ben. and "silver lining playbook" received four nominations all in will be yet but we're compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and rest of the cabinet members as well as legislative action we believe that is required. bill: this is top pick a, now. stephen hayes, senior writer "weekly standard." good morning to you. >> good morning, bill. bill: what type of order would fit an executive mandate in this case? >> there are a couple different things the white house is considering. one would be harvesting the information already available to a wide variety of government agencies and passing that onto the fbi for inclusion in its database about who can and can not buy guns. things that would indicate mental health problems, what have you. i think there are also potentially looking at recess appointing the head of the atf, the alcohol, tobacco and firearms bureau, which hasn't had a head since 2006. those are a couple of things that the white house might be looking at doing sort of on its own. bill: we're about to dive back into the debt fight and the spending issues in washington. mitch mcconnell says that will take up the next few months of time. >> yeah. bill: so you start now to see the strategy as to why the white house would pursue executive action if they follow what the president said after newtown, that he is not going to delay on this. >> right. it's been interesting. we've seen the white house of course do this. for a white house that came in, a president that came in having railed in the 2008 campaign against sort of the overreach of executive power, he has shown very little restraint in using executive power himself, whether you're talking about immigration or a wide variety of other things he did in the first term to expand his power to do the kinds of things he wanted to get done but wouldn't be able to get done legislatively. i think we're looking at exactly the same kind of scenario here. bill: what kind of pushback would you anticipate if it goes forward? >> very strong. you alluded to the kind of pushback we're likely to hear. you will hear pushback on substance. republicans and others are saying this is not something we should be doing. gun control hasn't worked. you looked at assault weapons band for 10 years. it didn't do anything to reduce the gun related violent crime. you will also hear objections that will be based on process. people will say, look, mr. president, you can't do the kinds of things you're talking about doing if he goes beyond a couple of sort of smaller-scale things that have been reported the white house is looking at. bill: something to watch. we certainly will. stephen hayes from the "weekly standard." fox news contributor down there in washington. here's martha. martha: more on this now. second amendment supporters are rallying. they plan to hold a gun appreciation day. that will take place on january 19th. they're encouraging gun rights supporters to go to shops, ranges and shows with a copy of the constitution, u.s. flags and hands off my guns signs with them. they want to send a message and want to send a big one so both sides of the fence, much tighter rules. with the intention of eradicating all the abuses we saw in the boom years. and as you said, martha, it will very likely lead to fewer loans being offered. martha: you know when you read through this, stuart, it reeds like the kind of laws and common sense stuff been in place all along. it doesn't feel like we should need a consumer finance protection board, blah, blah, blah, to put this into action but you do wonder how well it will be executed. how well will they do the job deciding whether you're fit to get a mortgage and have people decide that on their own? >> the point we went so far off the rails in the boom years, especially 05, '06, so far off the rails with those liar loans that now you've got this retreat towards much tighter standards, much more strict rules. as you say, martha, it is common sense, isn't it? i mean you have to limit how much you can afford to pay on your mortgage and the bank should make sure you can afford to repay. it is common sense but now it's been codified, so to speak. the rules go into effect one year from now. martha: we'll see how effective they are. stuart, thank you very much. stuart varney, fbn coming up. bill: we have brand new jobs numbers from the labor department 40 minutes ago. for the week last week that number rising by 4,000 americans to 371,000. that is the highest number we've seen now in five weeks. we'll see how the markets react to that coming up at 9:30, 23 minutes from now. since december of 2007 though, weekly jobless claims have stayed above 300,000. spiked in early 2009 on the chart as you see. economists say that weekly claims must consistently fall below 375,000, shown by that yellow line on the screen right there, to indicate that the job market is strong enough to lower the unemployment rate. this past fall weekly jobless claims dipped below that line. today's report of 371 shows slightly below that line again. well under that to bring that unemployment number down. 7.8% now. martha: john brenneman could be in for a battle as president obama's pick for the central intelligence agency. lawmakers looking to press brennan on his support for the enhanced interrogation techniques before he decided he was against them. chief intelligence correspondent catherine herridge live from washington. you have followed john brennan's career for many years here. he has been all over the map on this issue has he not? >> reporter: that's right, martha and good morning. the senate intelligence committee recently finished a classified 6,000 page report on the cia's enhanced interrogation program said to concluding a aggressive methods, critics call them torture did not provide solid intelligence. it was during this period john brennan was at cia senator feinstein is ardent critic of cia program and she leads the senate intelligence committee along with ranking republican saxby chambliss the past has been highly critical of brennan's law enforcement approach to terrorist prosecution. it comes with the release of the movie "zero dark thirty." which depicts the manhunt for usama bin laden and the cia's use of the enhanced interrogation program. while deannouncing waurd boarding as un-american in a 2007 interview, brennan told cbs news said it was valuable. quote, there has been a lot of information that has come out of the interrogation procedures that the agency used against real hardcore terrorists. it has saved lives. aside from what critics describe as significant inconsistencies in his public statements on the program they also question whether brennan can cast himself as neutral after four years inside the white house, martha. martha: it is said john brennan and the president have a good relationship and that that may be one of the reasons that the president really supports him for this job. what's the white house's defense of john brennan? >> reporter: well, martha, earlier this week the white house took the position that brennan's stated portion four years ago is the only one that matters. >> one at the time, mr. brennan wrote a letter in which he made clear he opposed so-called enhanced interrogation techniques and two, for the past four years john brennan has served as this president's chief counterterrorism advisor. >> reporter: we talked about the cia piece of this confirmation but brennan will also likely face very aggressive questioning about the administration's expansion of the drone campaign and targeted killing of american citizens. you see here the al qaeda operative. anwar a al lackey, killed in a cia strike in september 2011. without due process. that is the came time they were advocating the 9/11 suspects be transferred to federal court in new york city with full constitutional rights and presumption of innocence and these are two strategies impossible to square, martha. martha: we'll hear a lot more in these hearings. catherine, thank you very much. >> reporter: you're welcome. bill: on top of all that you have hillary clinton on benghazi too. so watch for it. a startling new statistic how complicated it is to do your taxes and how much you pay in the end after all of that. how many hours a year would you say americans spend on paying their fair share? we'll tell you. plus the push to simplify things and whether or not that goes anywhere. martha: a whole industry counts on that, right? lessons on libya. how the terror attack cast as shadow on the future of afghanistan. bill: this is a public health emergency in a major american city, one of our largest after the deadliest flu outbreak we've seen in a decade. >> a strain out there causing a lot of cases is more virulent strain than some others. as a result more people seem to becoming down with symptoms bad enough to warrant the visit to the emergency department. new prilosec otc wildberry