Every american needs to know about and be thinking about. It is a story about a secret court. One that is operating inside the United States. It only hears one side of any argument. A secret court that is honestly, it is rewriting our surveillance laws. It is deciding what we meant as a society, as a country, when we said the government cant indiscriminately spy on us. To understand what this court is doing, though, we need to get into a corner of the law making process. A part of how we really do it. That most in the country dont think that much about. The way that most of us think about the process of lawmaking is kind of simple. Congress passes a bill, and then the president signs a bill and maybe hes got a lot of pens when he does it and gives the pens away. When that is done, when that ceremony comes to a close, that bill is is now a low. In president obamas first term, before all the gridlock paralyzed washington, this kind of thing, bills becoming laws, happened a lot. Congress passed Health Reform in 2010 after a big, long, ugly fight. And then president obama signed Health Reform into law at a big fancy signing ceremony. There were a ton of pens that day. Then when it was over, when it was over, we had obama care. Congress passed it. The president signed it. It was done. We had ourselves a brand new law. That is how it works. Frankly, we even have a cartoon about that. You guys remember lonely little bill from the incredibly awesome schoolhouse rock series. Lonely bill made this process, how a bill becomes law, really familiar to most americans. Theres something schoolhouse rock left out. Theres something that happens after the pens are given out and the bill becomes a law. This other thing that happens which is people either, they dont like the law or dont understand what it means or maybe the laws now old and people arent sure if it applies to some new thing thats come along. And so they take the law to the court. And sometimes it goes to the federal courts and sometimes it goes all the way up to the Supreme Court. And after that, the courts look at the law and they say, well, heres what the law means or what that word means or heres what it applies to or doesnt apply to or heres whether it is constitutional or not. And when they say that, when it reaches a highest court it will reach and they make that decision, that court ruling becomes effectively the law. Whatever that court decides, that is what the law actually means now. It is a law we have to follow. Take obama care, the original law that passed congress, the one president obama signed with all of those pens. You can see him reaching for them and putting them back down. It said something pretty important. It said states that dont expand their Medicaid Programs to accept millions and millions of new lowincome individuals, they lose all of the medicaid money they get from the federal government. All the rest of it, too. Not just the new medicaid money, the old medicaid money. All of it. No state can afford that. They were all going to take the medicaid money. That provision was challenged in the courts, and the Supreme Court ultimately decided that while obama care, itself, is constitutional, and while it may say you cant have the Medicaid Expansion if you reject it, you lose all your money, they decided that part actually is not constitutional. The court said states do not have to expand their Medicaid Programs in order to keep their money. They tweaked the law. Now a bunch of them arent expanding their Medicaid Programs. Congress passed a bill. The president signed it into law and then the court had the ability to redefine the scope of it. To essentially remake the law. Heres the thing. This is really important. This is how democracy works. When judges make or change the law like in the case of obama care, the rulings are open to the public. Their reasoning, their reasoning is open to the public. Why they did what they did. Both sides of the argument get represented in court. We can listen to those arguments. Since everything is open to the public, congress can then hear from voters then go back and rewrite the law. To can make it clear, make it inform to the constitution. The public accountable democratic legislative process continues on. That is how law making works. That how the court works. That is how it works usually. What we learned this weekend thanks to extraordinary new reporting is that one section of our court system has been of operating in a completely different way. Its the court that decides how much the federal government is allowed to spy on us. So an important court, the spying court. It meets in complete secret. This one court that meets in secret has been reinterpreting the laws passed by congress in a way that gives government vastly more power to spy on the American People than it had before, than we thought we were giving it when we passed the laws. Today the wall street journal reported this courts decision to redefine a single word in the patriot act, the word relevant, relevant, is the thing that changed the decision that allowed the government to essentially begin collecting whatever information they wanted on our communications in bulk. Just hoovering it up. When Congress Passed the patriot act, do you remember that . It allowed the government to compel businesses to demand they hand over records and information as long as it could show those records were, relevant to an authorized investigation. Relevancy was a key. It had to be part of the investigation. The only way the government could get those kinds of personal records was to go to court and prove they needed them. Prove they needed them because they related to the case that they were working on. That is what congress wrote into the law. What the American People thought got signed with all those little pens. This court, however, this spying court, decided in secret that the word relevant didnt mean, like, relevant to the thing they were doing, it just meant kind of everything. Congress didnt mean relevant in the way we normally understand it. They just men, sure, collect whatever information you want because it could become relevant some day. They redefined a word in a law passed by congress and, thereby, authorize the federal government to just hoover up phone records indiscriminately. And we didnt know about that until now. And, look, it would be one thing if this were a normal court. If this were john roberts and scalia, kagan, clarence thomas, and all the other, all the rest of the gang remaking these laws in public where we can hear what theyre saying and read their opinions and congress could react, saying, yes, thats what we meant by relevant or no, its not, this is what we meant by relevant. Thats now how its happening. This is happenings in secret. Laws passed by congress are being rewritten by the secret Court Without any sort of Public Comment or public review. Over the weekend the New York Times reported on more than a dozen, a dozen classified rulings from this court that have created essentially a secret body of law totally removed from public scrutiny. The times said this court has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court. That, i think, is a scary quote enough. A parallel Supreme Court out of view. It is unlike any other court in the country. It would give the schoolhouse rock guys a run for their money if theyre still trying to make adorable explanational videos about this. The 11 judges for 7year term, theyre chosen, appointed, selected by one person, the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Every single one of these 11 judges serving on this court right now, on the spying court, this very powerful court, every one of them chosen and appointed by chief justice john roberts. And john roberts alone gets to continue making those appointments until he either retires or dies. Those dont need to be approved by the senate, the majority of the Supreme Court. It is simply john roberts, who do you think would do a good job here . As you might expect from john roberts, out of the 11 judges currently serving on the court, 10 of them were appointed by republican president s. Only one of them was appointed by a democrat. These 11 judges all chosen by roberts, ten of which are republicans, they meet in secret at this federal courthouse in washington. The presiding judge only hears the governments argument before issuing a decision. Theres no representative of the people or the other side. No one even tasked with making the argument of the other side which, by the way, is how it is core to how every other court works. You have to hear both sides. The decision this judge, this john roberts appointed judge who only hears one side, cant be appealed by the public, seen by the public or criticized by the public because the public doesnt know it happened. They cant read the rulings. Theyre not informed of them. Nothing. No other part of u. S. Law works this way. No other part of the court system works this way. After Congress Passes a law and the president signs it, it is this secret court that has the ability to go back and reinterpret what they meant without the public and without most members of Congress Even knowing what theyre doing. This is big news and thanks to this reporting, we now know, we know that the court is doing something we did not know they were doing before. Theyre not just telling the federal government, yes, what you want to do is in accordance with the law or no, it is not. Its not just mother may i . This court is reinterpreting the law. Making law. None of us can see it. None of us can comment on it. It affects all of us in a really direct way. Now that we know this is happening, a sort of odd bedfellow coalition in the senate including democrat jeff merkley and republican mike lee are pushing to declassify the rulings. According to my colleague, Greg Sergeant at the washington post, democratic senator Chuck Schumer of new york is now also lending his support to the proposal and the top democrat in the house, nancy pelosi, said she supports a similar piece of legislation over in her chamber. So thats something. That would be better. It would at least let us know what this court is doing. But is this really the way it should work . This secret court thing . Is this really the way we want to run our democracy . Joining us now is eliza goitein, codirector of the liberty and National Security program at nyu school. Eliza, thank you so much for being here tonight. Thanks for having me. So right now when the government goes before this court, they have an incredible win record. It is the tiniest fraction of the thousands of cases they bring before them that are rejected. Thats before you get into rewriting the laws. What do we take from that . Because this kind of court structured the way it is is very its possible its getting captured. Only hearing from the government and theyre being too soft. What can we take from this incredible win record . Absolutely. I think this is a Flawed Institution by design. By concept. Because it operates in secret, because it only hears from one party, as you said, always the same party. Because all the judges are appointed by one person, its very difficult to see how a court like that could avoid capture, and if you look at the win record that you were talking about, were talking about somewhere about 34,000 applications since 1978 of which only 11 were denied, and thats one of those numbers where if you type it into your computer to get the percentage, you get your decimals is way out its something like. 03 were denied. It really is an incredible win record. I think its very important to understand that the adversarial process in our court system is not a matter of giving some sort of procedural handicap to whichever party happens not to be the government. It is the best way that any legal system has found for getting to the truth. And when you only have one party showing up, youre just more likely to get the wrong answer. Right. And now one thing that i want to separate out here is we knew, we knew beforehand, we knew a week ago, two weeks ago, three weeks ago that these courts were getting these 20,000, 30,000 applications and accepting almost all of them. Sometimes they modify the application a bit, but accepting almost all of them. But im not sure we knew at least we werent sure about was that they were in interpreting, reinterpreting the patriot act in very important ways. That they had come up with new classifications like deciding that your metadata, who you were calling and how long you were calling and who you were emailing wasnt the same thing as your communications. How new is this actually . How much did we kind of sort of know this was going on and how much is this something of a shock to the system to learn this court is engaging in sort of highlevel reinterpretation like that . Sure. We certainly knew metadata is not generally thought of in the same Way Communications are thought of legally, they dont have the same protections under the fourth amendment. But there was still a statute. Section 215 of the patriot act that said the government couldnt get that metadata unless it came in and showed it was relevant to intelligence or a terrorism investigation. I dont think anyone would have predicted that the court would look at all americans metadata for all telephone calls that american makes and would somehow come to the conclusion that all of this data could be relevant to a specific authorized investigation. I think, you know, you can predict that the court is going to lean in the governments direction for all the factors we discussed before. This is an extreme interpretation i think has taken a lot of people by surprise. Eliza goitein, thank you very much for being here today. It is honestly a shocking issue. Thank you. I guess this is big announcements by governors day here on the show. First weve got the epic battle for rights in texas. It got even more complicated today after governor rick perry shared his future plans. We will have the very latest from austin, next. And later, on the interview, my guest will be former new york governor Eliot Spitzer who is making some very memorable headlines of his own. Stick around. 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So youre worried about house fires . Farmers pres. Manage your wires. Watch out for space heaters. Clean the chimney. Get one of these. Cool the romance. And of course, talk to farmers. Hi. We are farmers bum pa dum, bum bum bum bum this right here, this is holt cat. Holt cat, i love saying that is the largest caterpillar dealership in the United States. Were not talking caterpillar the bug. Were talking the heavy machinery caterpillar. The owner, he also owns the San Antonio Spurs basketball team. And is one of the most generous donors to republican donor rick perrys campaigns over the years. We are talking hundreds of thousands of dollars generous. You do not have any friends this good, and if you do, id like to also be their friend. It was no surprise when governor rick perry wanted to stage a big event launching his campaign in 2009, he chose as a backdrop his Campaign Donors dealership. But things did not go well at the holt cat dealership that day. The whole event was supposed to stream live on the internet to millions of texans. Instead of millions seeing it, only thousands did. The live stream was compromised. Instead of seeing rick perry in front of a local business launching his reelection campaign, people saw an error message. The campaign accused Kay Bailey Hutchison of hacking. Her campaign said, we did not hack you, you just are very bad with the computers on the internets. The fbi investigated and nothing really came of it. That was the last time rick perry was at the holt cat dealership in san antonio for a big event, that was four years ago. Today, today he was back with a slightly different announcement. I remain excited about the future and the challenges ahead, but the time has come to pass on the mantle of leadership. Today im announcing i will not seek reelection as governor of texas. It was like the decision, Texas Governor edition. Rick perry is not running for governor again which is a very big deal. Hes the longest serving governor currently in office. For a while during the 2012 republican president ial primary there, he was actually the frontrunner. Rick perry is a Significant National figure. But that announcement today, that is only one reason all eyes are on texas. This reason. This is the other. Republicans in the Texas Legislature are back this week for the Second Special session dedicated to accomplishing just one goal. Shutting down 80 of the abortion clinics in the state. The number of clinics in this great big state, huge big