0 him cry! we got some others. >> we have some others. meatloaf and gary busey. mary had mika because she would be fun while she's drinking. hue hugh hefner and jesus is also on the list. >> good stuff. appreciate it. "morning joe" starts right now. ♪ "time" magazine just published president obama's prom photos and there he is. he's with a friend and their date. i would say the girls in kenya are very good looking. obama is 17 years old here. notice, he is the only one not holding champagne. that's called plausible deniability. the girl on the right side of the screen is his date, her name is megan hughes and here is another photo. the other two are of his friends kelly and greg. he seems so happy back then. like he was allowed to eat junk food or something. looks like he took two women to the prom and greg is crashing the threesome, right? kelly is the one who gave the photos to "time." she also gave them a copy what the president wrote in her high school yearbook. kelly so nice getting to know you this year. you are extremely sweet and foxy. i don't know why greg would want to spend any time with me at all. you laugh at my jokes and i hope we can keep in touch this summer even though greg will be gone. call me up and i'll buy you lunch some time. good luck in everything you do. love barry obama with a heart. barry was on the prowl, wasn't he? >> wow. >> good morning. it's friday, may 24th. so much to talk about today. with us on the set msnbc and "time" magazine and political analyst, mark halpern. richard haass. the case for putting america's house in order, author. former white house press secretary and now an msnbc political analyst, robert gibbs and nbc news capitol hill correspondent kelly o'donnell. so much to talk about. "the wall street journal" talking about how the president of the united states is resetting the war on terror and also "the new york times" leads with that. reviving the debate on national security. president obama delivers a speech and he seeks to narrow the fight on terror. "the new york times" on the inside editorial page very complimentary of that. also, of course, news from the irs. news from the justice department. eric holder we find out knows a lot more about these press leak investigations than we originally thought. in fact, he signed off on a very controversial search warrant. also -- >> no. you were doing so well, joe! >> this is a serious day. the new york tabloids talking about our fair governor and possibly our future mayor and "the daily news" you can't leave it out. also another great tabloid. what is going on with news? how do you not get the feel for new york? a sense, the smell. the aura without looking "the daily news." ." a tabloid pun who can make the most egregious pun. >> how much did they pay anthony weiner to get in the mayor's race? >> box office. >> the gift that keeps on giving. >> he rode the subway yesterday. >> the great news is, mika, the winner of the -- award will be the american peek. >> i want you all to stop on that. i want to have one store about anthony weiner where we just do straight news. can we do that? >> i'm just reading the newspaper. when is that a crime? let's get to the news. lois lerner is off the job at the irs today two days after she refused to answer questions on capitol hill about the tax agency's targeting of conservative groups. lerner who was placed on administrative leave after reportedly refusing to resign is the third senior irs official to lose their stop or step aside. her suspension follows a letter to the agency's acting commissioner by senator karl levin and john mccain who echoed the same sort of frustration put forward by us on "morning joe" last week. we have been including the different players in this including lois lerner who was aware from nearly the beginning of all of this. i'm assuming that is next. i'm not sure. i'm not sure about this firing. i think it, obviously, makes sense because the guy is at the top but i would expect more. lerner denied any wrongdoing during a congressional hearing on wednesday before invoking her fifth amendment right but congressman darrell issa is now planning to haul her back to capitol hill saying that because she delivered an opening statement, she has lost the right not to testify. lawmakers are particularly interested in when lerner first became aware of the agency's actions and whether or not she kept that information from congress. according to the inspector general lerner was alerted to the targeting of groups with the word tea party or patriots in their names back in june of 2011. at that time, june of 2011 -- >> that is two years ago. >> yeah. >> two years ago she is aware that conservative groups are being targeted. >> at that time she ordered the criteria to be revived to make changes to that. "the wall street journal" reports that in april and may of 2012, letters from miss lerner to republican lawmakers made no mention of the problems that had surfaced and just two weeks ago, lerner suggested that she only found out about the issue in february and march of 2012 after reading news reports on that same day. so from the news, lerner offered an apology to the targeted groups in response to what turned out to be a planted question during a conference in washington. tell you that instead of jay having to shift his story day in and day out. this looks like bush's white house press secretary mcclellan who got beat up like that. >> it is reminiscent of that. they need to explain who is held accountable and can't be in conflict with capitol hill on areas they disagree. >> robert gibbs, is it not the responsibility of a press secretary be or she a republican or democrat to get the facts and go out there and not be blindsided the way mcclellan was blindsided by the bush administration and i think the way jay carney is blindsided the past couple of weeks. >> i think it's clearly the responsibility of the press secretary to do some of that and i think jay has probably done some of that. i think it's also the responsibility of people inside the west wing who know that they have information or knowledge of this to go to jay and make jay's job easier. was getting some excrete knee. also the inspector general talking about the fact when she gave this information two weeks ago with that some say the planted question at a conference, by doing that in that way at that time before the report was signed off on, she may have violated the rules and there are questions about is any of this going from simply sort of bad management over into a criminal case and they are saying they don't know if there is any criminal activity yet but that is one of the areas they are are looking at. for lois lerner she is trying to take the position she has done nothing wrong. we heard her say that and there is going to be a the although more scrutiny on details here coming forward. >> i used to work in the government, we used to call it powell's law. the first reports and first accounts are never accurate and never complete. what we are seeing here is the second and third reports are also not complete and not accurate. this is bad. they have to stop as best they can and get the story together. >> then moving on to this one. president obama has ordered the justice department to review its guidelines when it comes to investigations involving reporters. it comes a bid new revelations that attorney general eric holder signed off on a search warrant to seize reports from rosen. an after the said rosen had solicited and encouraged a source to disclose documents and intelligence information relating to north korea's nuclear program. the search warrant for rosen's communications which were approved by holder in the spring of 2010 fell under the espionage act. >> unbelievable. what chuck todd talked about a couple of days ago. it seems the justice department is, quote, criminalizing journalism to have a journalist who is doing his job. first of all, seizing his phone records, seizing phone records at fox, fox news and then following him throughout, you know, where he is scanning passes and when he is going in and outs inside the state department? >> and maybe even further. >> as if he is a soviet spy. unbelievable. >> they also labeled him as a coconspirator. on sunday "the washington post" record that the justice department used records to track the reporter's trips to the state department. two days later, the new yorker reporter dozens of phone records were monitored by the doj and appeared to be associated with fox news. on wednesday the department of justice denied claims that the home phone of rosen's parents was also monitored. although holder recused himself from a separate investigation into the leak of classified information to the associated press. he made no mention at the time of approving the warrant targeting mr. rosen. president obama addressed the larger issue during a speech at the national defense university. >> journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs. our focus must be on those who break the law. that is why i've called on congress to pass a media shield law to guard against government overreach and i've raised these issues with the attorney general who shares my concerns. so he's agreed to review existing department of justice guidelines governing investigations that involve reporters. >> i think it's pretty incredible actually that he brought it up at that speech. do you agree, mark halpern? >> well, it's obviously connected and about balancing national security which is a lot of what he was talking about yesterday. robert was on this program few days ago and talked about this. it needs to be explained. eric holder has not explained sufficiently, not just the general principles but the specifics of this case so troubling to people in journalism and should be troubling to the whole country. >> robert, we were talking about jay carney and how you make his job easier. my god. the guy is going -- he has got a target on him now from the press and, in fact, doesn't this entire case, whether you're talking about the a.p. or fox news, doesn't this entire case make the white house's efforts moving forward over the next three, three and a half years much more difficult? because the press is going to be suspicious. when you start grabbing guys and trying to charge them with espiona espionage? not great for press relations. >> no. i don't think you need to be -- you don't need to be the white house press secretary to know this complicates your job. to build off what mark talked about and what i talked about earlier this week. it is incumbent upon the justice department and the attorney general to come out and give an explanation about why they have done this, why they need to do this. if the president of the united states can talk about how this is inappropriate and having had that conversation with the attorney general, then the attorney general can have this conversation with the american people. it's not going to threaten the case because they clearly have the records. presumably, they subpoenaed the records to look at them and look at the record who might have called james rosen. the president said we are looking for the law breakers and not the reporters doing their job. >> right. >> the attorney general should come out today and talk about why this is and why this needs to happen. so there is not, as you've talked about, joe, a chilling effect on investigative journalism. we don't want that to happen. we want a vibrant free press in this country. >> robert, also for the best interests of the white house and for eric holder and the justice department, don't allow this drip, drip, drip to continue which has happened in the irs case and happened here. you know what? it would have been painful but they probably should have got the information out about james rosen when the a.p. story was out because you have eric holder saying, hey, i had nothing to do with this. i didn't know anything was going on. and then we find out he signed off actually on a warrant that was far more chilling than the a.p. warrant. >> well, i remember the day all of this came out with the a.p. information and i literally was thinking to myself somebody should be on the phone -- trying to be on the phone to justice department, yelling, if need be, to get out and try to explain some of this, because, you know, the white house is at a significant disadvantage in trying to explain this because it's clear that somebody at the justice department has clearly decided it's a criminal case. you do not want the white house involved. >> easier said than done. >> the back and forth of a criminal case but, at the same time, the absence of any explanation is hugely damaged. >> it is. richard? >> one of the differences between the united states and britain is britain has an act that journalists are held liable under the law. we don't. it's government officials who sign an oath not to disclose classified information and it seems to me to be going after the wrong parties. rather than going after the journalist you ought to go after people in government who signed a pledge not to disclose. >> great point. kelly? >> one of the things that strikes me about this is there more to come? anybody who covers national security must be thinking were my phone records also taken? have they been looking at me? when we hear the officials tell us they learn about these important events through news reports there is sort of a chilling effect on news and so you have the president saying, oh, i learned about this through news reports and lois lerner saying i learned about this through news reports. a circle here you don't want to put a chill on news coverage. it's ironic. >> it is. >> we have to get to funerals in moore, oklahoma, and children going back to school there and trying to restorm some err sort of normalcy. >> people in oklahoma again having to rebuild their lives. >> nvenl. coming up on "morning joe" is zbigniew brzezinski and jeffrey tambor and also david ignatius and ugueth robinson. >> richard haass, we will get into that later. a leader on wall street says one thing keeping women from being self traders, i can't say it! because when i read this, i was like this. >> you were a little thrown off by this, weren't you? >> yeah, childbirth and having kids. we will discuss his comments with a panel of female business leaders. >> he specifically said that once they start breastfeeding, they are finished as traders. >> that's right. up next in the politico playbook, anthony weiner tough first day on the campaign trail. he better learn the difference between new york and pittsburgh before the election. we will sprain alrea we will explain coming up. first, the forecast with bill karins who knows the difference. >> probably the worst two-day start to memorial day weekend ever in new england. as ugly as it possibly can get. yesterday, the rain was horrendo horrendous. rain in nyack, you know, the rain flowed down the streets. here it is. somebody taking video from inside one of the stores. a river going down through main street and three inches of rain fell in a short period of time. the rain has kicked up through northern new england and it's raining now and probably won't stop until about sunday afternoon. i want to show you western new york. it is 40 degrees and raining in buffalo and white on that map, my radar is showing some wet snow! yes, snow! it is mixing in right now in western new york. it may get even worse. that cold air continues into saturday night. my computer is predicting snow in the higher elevations of the higher mountains. some of the ski resorts, how crazy is that going to be? take you through your holiday weekend forecast. again, the northeast, the airports won't be as bad as yesterday because the rain is lighter but not a pretty day. middle of the country, not looking bad. chance of a storm there around dallas. now into the holiday weekend, rainy. like a nor'easter type storm on saturday in new england. typically thunderstorms in the midwest and i don't think see too many tornadoes. the southeast is probably the place to be this holiday weekend. low humidity. sunny. beautiful and warm. we are still dodging those showers, though, on sunday in areas around st. louis and finally by memorial day, new england improves. you get maybe one of the next four days to be even half decent. taking you to a shot of new york city. you can't see the top of the empire state building. you're watching "morning joe," brewed by starbucks. [ jennifer garner ] why can't powerful sunscreen feel great?