CHRIS WALLACE: Obama says federal judges can be trusted to keep data mining/PRISM programs honest. Why? When his administration got one, meaning a judge, to sign the Rosen one. CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: She's absolutely right, but it's mostly the fact that you can't trust the administration that it went to a judge with information that nows says it w

SHEP SMITH: We have that document that the Founders wrote out. They can make whatever laws they want, but I wonder, Judge Napolitano says this has no hope of standing the test of the constitution if ever tested. The problem is there's no way to test it because you don't know when you're the victim. ### CHRIS WALLACE: If I make a call to you

MITT ROMNEY: I took responsibility for myself, and I've been a governor and I know what happens when there has been a natural disaster. And that is you look for help from the federal government. You want the president and you want other agencies of the federal government to step and provide help. Governor Christie did what he thought was best for t

"I think it would be remedial education for those who are doing this. They need to go back and read the Constitution, read the Fourth Amendment, and understand that our records are private. You know, some of the court decisions have gone the wrong way," Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said about the Obama administration's justification for surveillance of ph

JONATHAN ALTER: They almost certainly will hold the House. It's very, very tough in a midterm election for the president to gain seats in the sixth year of his presidency. Bill Clinton, because of the backlash against impeachment, was the only one in the whole 20th century who managed to do that. Franklin Roosevelt didn’t do it. None of them did

ANN COULTER: "I must say after all of the scandals from this unbelievably corrupt administration, unbelievable how they harass their political opponents as we found out just in the last few weeks particularly out of the IRS, I think Congress ought to pass a law suspending the power to even look at the phone numbers until late January 2017 because y

Civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz says limits are needed but he supports NSA data mining of Internet activity. MORGAN: You see, I think that's a very good point. And what it comes down to, Alan, isn't it, it comes down to trust. I think Obama's big problem is that this comes so soon -- DERSHOWITZ: Absolutely. MORGAN: --

OBAMA: Now, having said all that, you'll remember when I made that speech a couple of weeks ago about the need for us to shift out of a perpetual war mind-set, I specifically said that one of the things that we're going to have to discuss and debate is how are we striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concer

"When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls," the president said. "That's not what this program is about.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I came in with a healthy skepticism about these programs. My team evaluated them. We scrubbed them thoroughly. We actually expanded some of the oversight, increased some of the safeguards, But my assessment and my team's assessment was that they help us prevent terrorist attacks. And the modest encroachments on privacy that

EZRA KLEIN: "Everything, all the movement here I would say is small. I would call this a very status quo jobs report. I mean, you're looking at a number of new jobs that have been very much in line with the last four months or so. You're looking at an essentially unchanged unemployment rate. You're looking at very, very small changes in wages. I ag

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Obamacare would be a "liberation, a freedom" and encouraged people to "be optimistic" about it at her weekly briefing with the press on Thursday. Pelosi also acknowledged that healthcare premiums for some people will increase under Obamacare. "I don’t remember saying that everybody in the country woul

BEN DOMENECH: The real politics of this is that President Obama never wanted to pass an immigration law. He wanted to figure out what he could actually get out of the House this year and then come back in '15 and get it out of the House. He wanted to go into the election having the House kill an immigration law so that he could have the one shot th

June 6: Rachel Maddow reports on the development of U.S. wiretapping programs since the Bush administration and the regular renewal and codifying of such practices by Congress, all to general indifference of Americans despite serious Constitutional questions.

Chaos in the federal government with the revelation that the NSA has been spying on Americans' private communications.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) opened floor debate on the Senate Gang of Eight immigration bill today, explaining that the legislation was written in secret to benefit special interests rather than the national interest. SESSIONS: This is the bill as printed, front and back of each page. It was reported there were going to be 1,000 pages. Colleagues,