white house is now signaling that they just might have to consider military tribunals. california democratic congresswoman jane harman supported the administration s strategy so far, she s on the homeland security committee and chairs the intelligence subcommittee. welcome to you. first of all i m envious, you were on recess back there in l.a., i know you re working hard but i got to tell you, washington is no place to be right now. but let s talk andrea, i feel your pain. yeah, but let s talk about the terror trial because the white house, the washington post did some pretty sharp reporting and now brother gibbs has weighed in during his briefing today that they say that since the congressional folks have said they re going to start legislation, that the white house has to get into this, and it s not they re overruling eric holder and the justice department but they have to reconsider and look at the whole congressional relationship since congress is thinking of taking away th
mcconnell that the holds were unprecedented and mcconnell backed down a bit. despite the votes yesterday, 31 other nominees are still being blocked. the stalling tactics and efforts to block votes do come with a cost for both parties in congress. according to the most recent polling, the percentage of americans who have trust and confidence has dropped to 45%. only 25% approve of how congress is handling its job. quote harvard law professor lessig joins us now. thanks for being with us. you say congress is morally bankrupt. how can it be fixed in your view? the only way to fix it is
job. it is important to do good airport screening but also important by the way for the administration to finally establish the privacy and civil liberties board that was mandated in the intelligence reform act of 2004, so that whatever new practices we set up don t violate our constitution. we don t have to shred our constitution to protect our country, security and liberty are not a zero sum game. with that, we have to leave it there. thank you very much, jane harman from l.a. thank you. come up the end of a political era on capitol hill. congresswoman harman pointed out patrick kennedy had an important impact on mental health legislation, his departure marks the first time in almost four decades a kennedy will not be serving in congress. we ll talk about that next on andrea mitchell reports. decisions, decisions.
break the debilitating dependency they have on private campaign contributions. they spend between 30 and 70% of their time raising money. they are like a driver driving down the road texting. the only way to fix that is a different way of funding. citizen fix funding. that would have to be through a constitutional amendment? no. you can actually right now pass a law, and congress has one before them, a bill supported by congressman larson and jones, republican from north carolina, that would create opt-in system where candidates, for every $100 they raise from a citizen get four times that in matching funds. kind of a bottom up way to have just low dollar contributions. if members only had these small dollar contributions, they would not spend all of their time trying to woo special interest
careful op-ed in the newspapers today says is no longer has to be the procedure since we now have more developed military commissions, nonetheless it s the procedure the bush administration followed and it was followed with consultation with the intelligence community and i don t believe there was an intelligence gap in this case. i believe that this suspect has given us operational intelligence. remember he s just a 23-year-old kid. he s not one of the masterminds of plots against us, but in terms of who he trained with and so forth, i can t discuss that, but we are focussed on the yemen target, more than we were, i do think the way we handled the christmas day bomber was a failure in terms of our system working to block him from getting on the plane. we are learning lessons, but my point is, federal courts are a good way to convict terrorists when we have overwhelming cases as we do here, if we re going to fully develop military commissions, so be it. congress will have to, i think,