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Bracing for an impending Supreme Court decision that could limit the reach of the Voting Rights Act, liberal legal experts and advocates are assessing what to do if the court strikes down a central part of the law.

Addressing the annual convention of the liberal lawyers’ group the American Constitution Society, Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a pioneer of the civil rights movement, told an audience of more than 1,000 lawyers and law students in Washington, D.C., that as a young activist in the 1960s, he’d chosen to “get in trouble – good trouble, necessary trouble” using civil disobedience and street protests to win the right to vote. Now, Lewis said, “I think it’s time for all of us once again to get in trouble.”

Referring to the high court’s imminent decision on Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, Lewis said, “We’re at a crossroads. Something’s going to happen, maybe next Monday, maybe next Thursday, the court is going to say something.”

Arguing that voting rights were in jeopardy, Lewis said “I think it’s time for all of us once again to get in trouble.”

In the Voting Rights Act case before the high court, Shelby County, Ala., is challenging the formula under which only some states, mostly in the South, are targeted and must get permission from the Justice Department or a federal court in Washington for any attempt to change voting procedures.

“What’s unique about Section 5 is that we’ve never (before) had a federal statute that singles out particular parts of the country for unique control by the federal government,” said New York University law professor Richard Pildes, a voting rights expert and a legal adviser to the 2008 Obama campaign.

Shelby County’s lawyers argue that the coverage formula, which relies on election data from the 1960s and 1970s to determine which places Section 5 applies to, is outdated.

If the court does strike down Section 5, “the most likely way they’ll do it is to go after the coverage formula,” Steven Shapiro, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the American Constitution Society meeting. “If the court goes down that road – and I hope they do not – the important takeaway is that’s not the end of the game. That just puts it all back on Congress’s hands.”

If the justices scrap the coverage formula, “It’s a call to action – it’s not a call for despair” Shapiro told the ACS convention.

Members of Congress may be disinclined to take up the highly charged political task of deciding anew which states to cover and which ones to leave free of federal supervision.

Pildes said Congress should have updated the coverage formula in 2006 to reflect where the voting barriers really were; instead, it used a voting formula that dated to 1965.

“I was very, very troubled during the reauthorization process for Section 5 in 2006 -- when I testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee -- that there was no effort made in Congress to do anything at all to signal in some way that Section 5 would be updated…in a way that would put the statute in the best possible position in the inevitable constitutional litigation that would follow,” he said.

Mark Almond / AP

Louis Farrakhan and other activists caravan across Alabama on June 14, 2013, to encourage the U.S. Supreme Court to save a major portion of the Voting Rights Act.

But new strategies are emerging among progressives. Stanford University law professor Pamela Karlan, who has worked as an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, said that in addition to the Fifteenth Amendment, which protects the right to vote, two other provisions of the Constitution – Article I, Section 4, which gives Congress the power to make or alter rules governing elections for federal office (the Elections Clause), and Article IV, Section 4, which gives the federal government the power to guarantee representative government in each state (the Guarantee Clause) – provide ample authority for Congress to pass laws ensuring that citizens can vote.

“We need to be thinking about what kind of legislation we want Congress to enact” using both the Elections Clause and the Guarantee Clause, she said. “Do I think either of these things is going to happen in the very short run? No, I don’t, because of the Congress we have.”

Like Rep. Lewis, Karlan mentioned street protests as an essential tactic: “Movements in the courts are a product of movements in the streets,” she said.

Pildes said if that the court strikes down Section 5, it would be a mistake to then focus the strategic efforts on ways to “tinker with Section 5” to make it more acceptable to the high court. “There’s much more power in the Elections Clause than in the civil rights model from the 1960s era…. We have to think about new ways – not stay with the status quo of the past – to protect the right to vote.”

He added, “The Department of Justice invokes Section 5 to block voting changes much less often than I suspect most people assume.” For example, in the 10 years leading up to the 2006 reauthorization of Section 5, the Justice Department reviewed more than 54,000 Section 5 submissions and objected to 72, an average of about seven a year or 0.153 percent.  

Even if Section 5 is struck down, Pildes said, there are other routes to challenge discriminatory state or local impediments to registration or voting: for example, section 2 of the Voting Rights Act empowers the Justice Department to sue local governments anywhere in the country for discriminatory voting procedures.

And there are “state constitutional right-to-vote provisions, which were relied on in 2012 to lead state courts to invalidate or postpone voter ID laws in several states that Section 5 does not reach at all,” he said. He added that there are “the equal protection/due process protections for the vote, which is what federal courts relied on to require Ohio to open up its early voting sites to all on the weekend before the election.” 

Pildes said, “We can be fairly confident that the high-stakes, high-profile issues -- like statewide redistricting or changes to statewide laws restricting voting -- will continue to be challenged” under other parts of federal law even if the high court invalidates Section 5. “The bigger concern is low-profile changes at the local government level, such as changes of polling place locations, which might either fall under the radar screen or not be high-stakes enough to justify litigation.” 

Related:

• Full Supreme Court coverage on NBC Politics

This story was originally published on Wed Jun 19, 2013 4:10 AM EDT

In a boost for proponents of comprehensive immigration reform, a new report from the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the immigration bill currently being debated in the Senate would increase the U.S. population by 10.4 million and would decrease federal budget deficits by $197 billion between 2014 and 2023.

The much-anticipated report indicates that enacting the legislation would create new federal outlays of about $262 billion in the first decade but would increase revenues – largely from new income and payroll taxes – by $459 billion.

It also estimates that about 8 million undocumented immigrants would initially gain legal status under the bill’s provisions.

While the CBO does not typically provide estimates beyond the first decade of enactment, the report tackled estimates for the time period of 2024-2033, estimating that the federal budget deficits would decrease by an additional $700 billion over that time. By 2033, the net increase to the U.S. population as a result of the bill's enactment would be about 16 million, CBO says. 

The positive estimates are a boon for proponents of the reform effort, who argue that immigration is an economic imperative for the country as well as a moral and political one.

Bill sponsor Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the report "a huge momentum boost for immigration reform." 

The White House also lauded the CBO report, saying the numbers are "more proof that bipartisan commonsense immigration reform will be good for economic growth and deficit reduction."

And Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who has worked to woo conservative support for the bill, said in a statement that the report "further confirmed what most conservative economists have found: reforming our immigration system is a net benefit for our economy, American workers and taxpayers." 

Opponents of the bill argue the influx of new foreign workers would hurt Americans still affected by joblessness. 

The Senate is currently debating the legislative language of the bill offered by the bipartisan "Gang of Eight."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he wants a final vote on the bill in the upper chamber by the July 4 recess. 

But lawmakers are still making amendments to the legislation, which many Republicans say cannot survive to the president's desk without substantial changes to its border security provisions. 

This story was originally published on Tue Jun 18, 2013 5:08 PM EDT

The Republican-controlled House passed legislation Tuesday that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, offering social conservatives a symbolic victory even as the bill is all but certain not to become law.

The vote was 228-196, with six Democrats and all but six Republicans voting for the measure.

But the legislation, sponsored by Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona, has virtually no chance of becoming law, with the Democratic-led Senate certain to ignore it and the White House threatening in scathing language to veto it.

The bill, called the "Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act," would outlaw abortions after 20 weeks, unless the life of the mother is at risk. The legislation cites studies which indicate that a fetus feels pain starting at this gestational threshold; supporters of the bill say this medical research dictates that these fetuses should therefore not be aborted.

The vote came after Republicans – facing criticism over an alleged gaffe by bill sponsor Franks - altered their strategy to argue to bill, sidelining the Arizona lawmaker as the leader of the debate in favor of highlighting Republican women who support the ban.

House leaders also added language to the legislation last week after Franks stated that “the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low.” Democrats compared that assertion to one made by then-Senate candidate Todd Akin, who suggested last year that women who are victims of “legitimate rape” often experience a physical, biological reaction to the trauma, preventing pregnancy.

Under the changed bill, pregnancies that are the result of rape or incest -- and are reported to authorities -- are excluded from the ban.

The vote also comes in the wake of a murder conviction for Kermit Gosnell, an abortion provider found guilty of murder for performing illegal late-term abortions.

Responding to criticism Tuesday that the House should be focused on economic issues instead of the largely symbolic abortion vote, Republican House Speaker John Boehner pointed to the Gosnell trial as evidence that taking up the abortion ban is warranted.

“After this Kermit Gosnell trial and some of the horrific acts that were going on, the vast majority of the American people believe in the substance of this bill and so do I,” he said.

And Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., argued on the House floor that the bill would send the "clearest possible message to the American people that we do not support more Gosnell-like abortions."

While the vote offered a chance for members from socially conservative districts to flex their political muscles, some moderate Republicans grumbled about the leadership’s decision to hold a vote on a controversial measure with no chance of going beyond the House.

“I think a lot of people are shaking their heads and not understanding why we’re doing this,” said one GOP official, who added that votes on hot-button social issues don’t help the party maintain much-needed Republican seats in moderate districts.

Republican Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania bluntly told The New York Times that the vote is “a stupid idea.”

“The economy is on everybody’s minds. We’re seeing stagnant job numbers. Confidence in the institution, in government, is eroding,” said Dent, a moderate whose southeastern Pennsylvania district only narrowly voted for Romney last year after voting for President Barack Obama in 2008. “And now we’re going to have a debate on rape and abortion.”

Last year, the House considered a similar piece of legislation that achieved the same ban, but applied only to the District of Columbia and did not include the exception for rape or incest. That bill achieved a simple majority (220-154), but ultimately failed because it needed a two-thirds majority for passage.

Last week, the White House made clear that it would veto the legislation, calling it an “assault” on women’s rights and a direct violation of the Supreme Court’s rulings.

“Forty years ago, the Supreme Court affirmed a woman's constitutional right to privacy, including the right to choose,” the administration said in a statement. “This bill is a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade and shows contempt for women's health and rights, the role doctors play in their patients' health care decisions, and the Constitution.”

NBC’s Jessica Taylor and Frank Thorp contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Tue Jun 18, 2013 2:15 PM EDT

The Obama administration will not drop its pursuit of tougher gun laws, Vice President Joe Biden vowed Tuesday, warning lawmakers who opposed earlier gun legislation of political hell to pay.

“The country has changed,” Biden, the administration’s point person on gun control, said at an event at the White House. “You will pay a political price for not getting engaged with dealing with gun safety.”

Two months after the Senate fell short of mustering the 60 votes it needed to advance a bipartisan proposal to expand background checks to firearms sales online or at gun shows, the administration has renewed its push for gun control. The revived effort coincides with the six-month anniversary of the deadly Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in Newtown, Conn., the grisly massacre which prompted President Barack Obama to seek an overhaul of the nation’s gun laws in the first place.

Mandel Ngan / AFP - Getty Images

Vice President Joe Biden speaks on reducing gun violence in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House, on June 18, 2013 in Washington, D.C.

Biden said that his message to gun control proponents was simple: “The president and I, our team, we have not given up.”

An April 17 vote in the Senate seemed to put gun control efforts to rest for the time being. Four Democrats joined 41 Republicans in a vote to block consideration of a compromise, scaled-back gun control proposal crafted by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa.

“I am confident some of them -- I know for a fact, some of them -- wonder know whether that was a prudent vote,” Biden said of that vote, which saw the National Rifle Association do battle publicly with pro-gun control groups like Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which is backed by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The weeks since then have seen those groups blanket key states and districts with radio and television ads looking to ratchet up pressure on lawmakers to either maintain or reverse their position on Manchin-Toomey.

To that end, as Biden spoke, Bloomberg’s group was making stop in Concord, N.H., as part of a bus tour in honor of the six-month anniversary of the shootings in Newtown, Conn.

The stop is designed to put pressure on New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R, who voted against a compromise to expand background checks. 

Biden cited a “fundamental change in the political calculus” on guns, in which pro-gun control voters have mobilized, and will look to exact revenge against opposing lawmakers on Election Day.

“Look at those who voted no, and look at the pool results in their states immediately after they voted no,” he said.

And while Biden touted the administrative efforts undertaken by President Barack Obama to strengthen existing gun control enforcement, he said it was no excuse for congressional inaction.

“As proud as the president is of the progress we've made, we need Congress to act,” the vice president said. “The American people are demanding it.”

NBC’s Kasie Hunt contributed reporting.

This story was originally published on Tue Jun 18, 2013 2:08 PM EDT

House Speaker John Boehner said Tuesday that he does not “see any way” of bringing an immigration bill to the floor that does not have backing from a majority of the House’s GOP members, calling the border security provisions in the measure currently making its way through the Senate “weak” and “laughable.” 

Comprehensive immigration reform must – in some fashion – run through the United States House, and Boehner’s statement further complicates what is already a delicate process of compromise as proponents of the bill navigate political landmines on both sides of the Capitol dome. And the willingness of House Republicans to sign on to any reform efforts remains a large question mark. 

“I don't see any way of bringing an immigration bill to the floor that doesn't have a majority support of Republicans,” Boehner said during a press briefing with reporters Tuesday.

“I frankly think the Senate bill is weak on border security, I think the internal enforcement mechanisms are weak and the triggers are almost laughable,” he said of the bill drafted by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Republican Sens. Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Jeff Flake. “So if they're serious about getting an immigration bill finished, they should reach out to their GOP colleagues to broaden support.” 

Proponents of the “Gang of Eight” bill currently being debated in the Senate have hoped that – if it garners a strong bipartisan vote for passage in the Senate – Boehner would be under enormous political pressure to bring it to the House floor for a vote. 

Republicans in the Senate, including Rubio, have pushed for additional border security provisions that could make their bill more palatable to the Republican-led House. But Democratic leaders argue that those attempting to make the bill’s “path to citizenship” contingent on the completion of stringent border provisions are hoping to derail the legalization process for undocumented immigrants. 

So far, the major GOP border security amendments voted upon in the Senate so far have failed to garner enough support to be adopted; a proposal by Sen. John Thune, R-S.D.  to build a 700-mile border fence before undocumented immigrants can obtain green cards failed 39-54 Tuesday afternoon. 

Speaking to reporters before that vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he believes popular support for the immigration measure will prevail. 

"No matter what he [Boehner] has said, there's going to be significant national pressure on the House to do something on immigration," he said. 

But on Tuesday, Boehner accused Democrats of seeking to sabotage the legislation. 

Win Mcnamee / Getty Images

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) meets with members of the press to answer questions at the U.S. Capitol June 12, 2013 in Washington, DC.

“I'm increasingly concerned that the White House and Senate Democrats would rather have this as an issue in the 2014 election rather than a result,” he said. 

Last week, Boehner told reporters that he would not bring a bill to the floor that violates the “principles” of the Republican Party. His harsh description of the legislation Tuesday made clear that he believes the Senate bill as written would be such a violation.

House committees are currently working through individual pieces of immigration legislation that are less sweeping than the Senate bill. The lower chamber will convene a special conference to discuss immigration reform next month.

This story was originally published on Tue Jun 18, 2013 11:06 AM EDT

She's not a presidential candidate yet but Hillary Clinton is already starting to pile up the endorsements.  

Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill Tuesday added her support to a growing roster of Democratic activists pushing the former secretary of state to make another bid for the White House in 2016.  The nudge gives Clinton a marquee, swing-state backer and could be an early glimpse at a major source of support for any potential campaign -- Democratic women in the U.S. Senate.   

McCaskill announced her support for Clinton on the website of the group "Ready for Hillary," a super PAC which has looked to build grassroots fervor for a potential Clinton candidacy in 2016.  The group is not tied directly to Clinton but has been aggressive in gathering support for a potential candidacy.  

Larry Downing / Reuters file

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., speaks about pending legislation regarding sexual assaults in the military at a Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 4, 2013.

"Hillary Clinton had to give up her political operation while she was making us proud, representing us around the world as an incredible Secretary of State, and that’s why Ready for Hillary is so critical,” McCaskill said in a statement. “It’s important that we start early, building a grassroots army from the ground up, and effectively using the tools of the Internet – all things that President Obama did so successfully – so that if Hillary does decide to run, we’ll be ready to help her win.” 

Speculation has grown in recent weeks about Clinton's political future.  Just weeks after stepping down as Obama's Secretary of State, she started to re-enter public life. While she has been deliberately coy about her intentions in 2016, Clinton launched a Twitter account last week teasing her "to be determined" future plans.  Her profile reads: "Wife, mom, lawyer, women & kids advocate, FLOAR, FLOTUS, US Senator, SecState, author, dog owner, hair icon, pantsuit aficionado, glass ceiling cracker, TBD..."  

And in a major new policy push, she outlined new initiatives involving access to education and advancing women's issues at last week's "Clinton Global Initiative," another nod at her unique position as the most high-profile woman in American politics. 

While she has endured criticism from Republicans over last fall's terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya in which four Americans were killed, Clinton received a rare send-off from the president when she left office that included a joint interview that some observers saw as a passing-of-the-torch moment.     

McCaskill is one of 16 Democratic women serving in the Senate, many of them representing key swing states like Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Minnesota.  Regarded as a relative moderate, McCaskill won re-election to her second term in 2012. Though Missouri has trended slightly toward Republicans in recent statewide and presidential elections, it is still considered a "swing state" in relative terms — a state whose 10 electoral votes are important to winning an election. 

McCaskill's early support for Clinton is even more noteworthy for the fact that she was an early supporter of Barack Obama's during the 2008 Democratic primary versus Clinton. The Missouri senator's support for Clinton reflects the manner in which a number of Obama supporters have now turned their sentiments to Clinton, who served as Obama's top diplomat during his first term.

This story was originally published on Tue Jun 18, 2013 8:29 AM EDT

Obama at the G-8: It could have been worse… Germany visit: 2013 vs. 2008… Obama on Syria, NSA surveillance, and Bernanke… McCaskill backs “Ready for Hillary” Super PAC… House to vote on abortion ban… Biden to talk gun control… Not-so Great Scott… And revenge is a dish best served … by running for office. 

*** It could have been worse: As President Obama today wraps up his G-8 meetings in Northern Ireland before heading to Germany later this afternoon, it’s safe to say that this hasn’t been a very successful overseas trip for President Obama. At least so far. He was hoping to get a big show of early support on a free-trade agreement with Europe (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), but he got some pushback (especially from France). And regarding Syria, there wasn’t much of an agreement on anything, especially from Russia. Of course, it could have been worse -- the U.S. will still host the first round of talks on the trade partnership next month in DC, and Obama’s meeting with Putin was at least cordial (yet still awkward). At least Putin didn’t make any cannibal references while sitting next to the president. That said, the White House is hoping to turn things around with a successful speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Germany tomorrow. But even that seems like an uphill climb. Der Spiegel doesn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat for Obama like they did in 2008.

Ian Langsdon / AP

President Barack Obama, left, and French President Francois Hollande attend a round table meeting of G-8 member countries at the G-8 Summit at the Lough Erne golf resort in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday, June 18, 2013.

*** 2013 vs. 2008: NBC’s Andy Eckhart notes:  “Germany meets the superstar" was the headline on the cover of Der Spiegel weekly before his visit during the 2008 campaign. Some 200,000 Germans cheered him on. In this most recent issue of Der Spiegel, Eckhart notes the cover features Obama in Kennedy’s shadow with the tagline, „The Lost Friend“ and then it has an „angst-ridden report about fraying ties. "Kennedy's visit to Berlin was an almost ecstatic celebration of a protective alliance," it wrote. But it said nearly 70 years after World War II and two decades after the end of European communism, "the trip of (JFK's) no-less-charismatic successor will likely be a prosaic family gathering." Commentators note that Germans, like other ardent Obama supporters, are frustrated by impasses on slowing climate change and closing Guantanamo Bay prison.“ Needless to say, expectations are a LOT lower for Obama’s reception in Germany than they were five years ago. 

*** Obama on Syria: So what did we learn from Obama’s Charlie Rose interview from last night? Well, he outlined his Syria policy (or as some argue, his non-policy) a bit more. “We know what it's like to rush into a war in the Middle East without having thought it through. And there are elements within the Middle East who see this entirely through the prism of a Shia-Sunni conflict and want the United States to simply take the side of the Sunnis,” he said. “And that I do not think serves American interests.” He went on to say, “And we have a legitimate need to be engaged and to be involved. But for us to do it in a careful calibrated way sometimes is unsatisfying, because what people really typically want is a clean solution, a silver bullet, ‘Here's what we're going to do,’ and we just move forward.”

*** Obama on NSA surveillance: In his interview with Charlie Rose, the president also commented on the controversies surrounding the NSA surveillance programs. “The way I view it, my job is both to protect the American people and to protect the American way of life which includes our privacy,” he said. “And so every program that we engage in, what I've said is ‘Let's examine and make sure that we're making the right tradeoffs.’” He went on to say, “If you're a U.S. person, then NSA is not listening to your phone calls and it's not targeting your emails unless it's getting an individualized court order.” Obama’s comments came as a new Pew poll shows that Americans are split on the NSA surveillance story, with 49% saying that Edward Snowden’s release of the classified information serves the public interest, versus 44% who say it harms the public interest. (Strikingly, younger people strongly say that the NSA leak serves the public interest, which might not be that surprisingly given that the younger generation has a greater expectation that things are more open and transparent.) Also today, the House Intelligence Committee holds an open hearing at 10:00 am ET with NSA Director Keith Alexander. 

*** Obama closer than ever to replacing Bernanke? Perhaps the biggest news that Obama made in the Charlie Rose interview was that Ben Bernanke isn’t going to serve another term as Fed chairman. Why? Because Obama spoke of his service in the past tense. ROSE: “Some people would like to see you announce that you are reappointing Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Fed.” OBAMA: “Well, I think Ben Bernanke's done an outstanding job. Ben Bernanke's a little bit like Bob Mueller, the head of the FBI where he's already stayed a lot longer than he wanted or he was supposed to.” ROSE: “But if he wanted to be reappointed, you would reappoint him?” OBAMA: “He has been an outstanding partner along with the White House, in helping us recover much stronger than, for example, our European partners, from what could have been an economic crisis of epic proportions.”  

*** McCaskill backs “Ready for Hillary” group: In 2016 news today, the group “Ready for Hillary” announced the support of Sen. Claire McCaskill, whom it says is the first member of Congress to get on board of the Super PAC that’s supporting Hillary’s candidacy (though that doesn’t have official ties with the former Secretary of State). It’s also notable because McCaskill was an early Obama supporter in ’08. This McCaskill news comes after former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm has been assisting Ready for Hillary, too. One thing that was clear to us yesterday, there seems to be a concerted effort to recruit prominent Democratic women early to Hillary’s side. That said, let’s everybody take a deep breath and realize, the only “news” a top Democratic official can make now about 2016 is announcing their intention NOT to support Clinton.  At this point, announcing support for her is not exactly NEWS. 

*** House to vote on abortion ban: Remember when, right after the 2012 election, Republican establishment types wanted to move beyond abortion and the culture war? Well, months later House Republicans today hold a vote on a measure that would prohibit abortion after 20-22 weeks of pregnancy. The New York Times: “Aware of the risks inherent in abortion politics, Republican leaders have moved to insulate themselves from Democrats’ criticism that they are opening a new front in the “war on women.” Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, will manage the debate on the bill when it reaches the House floor, a role that would customarily go to the sponsor, Representative Trent Franks of Arizona. And in a last-minute revision, House leaders slipped in a provision that would allow for a limited exception in cases of rape or incest, but only if the woman had reported the crime.” Those limited exceptions come after Franks drew criticism for saying that the incidents of pregnancy from rape were “very low.” Per NBC’s Frank Thorp, the vote takes place around 6:00 pm ET. 

*** Biden to talk gun control: Meanwhile, at 1:00 pm ET, Vice President Biden delivers remarks on reducing gun violence. But after the administration’s defeat on the Senate background-check vote, Biden’s focus will be on the executive orders that the administration has pursued on guns. “Senior administration officials said the vice president will deliver a ‘progress report’ touting completion of a slew of executive actions — including writing emergency management plans for schools and churches and training police to respond to active shooters,” the Washington Post reports. “Sure, these steps might make communities safer and better prepared to respond to gun violence. But, gun-control advocates said, they are baby steps that do relatively little to prevent the next mass shooting.” More: “Biden plans to announce that the administration has completed or made significant progress in 21 of 23 executive actions first rolled out on Jan. 16, according to senior administration officials.” 

*** (Not so) Great Scott: Folks, the fact that this new Quinnipiac poll is being touted as good news for incumbent Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) shows just how endangered he is come 2014. Yes, his approval rating has increased from 36% to 43% from 36%. And, yes, he’s now trailing Charlie Crist by 10 points (47%-37%) instead of 16 (50%-34%) in a hypothetical gubernatorial match up. But those are rough, rough numbers for a politician facing re-election next year. You never want to see your approval rating below 45%, and you never want your ballot number to be in the 30s… 

*** Revenge is a dish best served … by running for office: After it became pretty clear that Senate Republicans wouldn’t allow Elizabeth Warren to officially head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Warren decided to run for the U.S. Senate, and she beat incumbent Republican Scott Brown. (It raises the question if Brown might still be in the Senate if Republicans had been willing to accept her appointment.) And now Donald Berwick -- who headed Medicare and Medicaid for the Obama administration as a recess appointee but who never even received a Senate confirmation hearing -- is following the Elizabeth Warren route. Yesterday, he announced he was running for Massachusetts’ open gubernatorial seat in 2014 as a Democrat. In addition, it’s possible that Richard Cordray, Obama’s recess appointment at the CFPB, could run for Ohio governor. As one plugged in Hill Democrat emails us, “Remember, there’s historic precedent for blocked nominees seeking revenge through future elected office.  If things had gone differently in the 80s, Jeff Sessions would currently be toiling as an obscure federal judge in Alabama, not leading the charge against the immigration bill.”   

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President Barack Obama and key congressional leaders may agree on current national security surveillance policies, but a heated debate is under way outside Congress -- perhaps most fiercely between two former and powerful vice presidents, Dick Cheney and Al Gore. And their rhetorical clash seems to suggest that the national security consensus that has existed since Sept. 11, 2001 may be getting harder to maintain.

On Sunday, Cheney unabashedly defended the National Security Agency’s program to monitor phone and email data and was scathing in his criticism of Obama’s handling of the War on Terror. Two days earlier, Gore challenged the constitutionality of the surveillance in an interview with a British newspaper, saying, "I think that the Congress and the administration need to make some changes in the law and in their behavior so as to honor and obey the constitution of the United States.”

Fred Watkins / AP

Former Vice President Dick Cheney speaks on Fox News Sunday June 16, 2013.

“I don't pay a lot of attention, frankly, to what Barack Obama says,” Cheney told Chris Wallace of Fox News. Cheney added that the president is “just dead wrong on the status of the threat” from al Qaida, disputing Obama’s judgment that the struggle against al-Qaida is winding down. “The threat is bigger than ever,” he contended.

Cheney took personal ownership of the NSA surveillance program saying, “We set up this program back in the weeks after '01 … We did it in my office, in the West Wing.” If only the NSA surveillance had been in effect before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, he said, “we might have been able to prevent 9/11.”

But Gore, in an interview with The Guardian – the newspaper which first published contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations about NSA surveillance – denounced the program as unconstitutional, “not right” and “not really the American way.”

The Cheney-Gore clash was a reminder that one can’t debate war on terrorism issues – from surveillance to Guantanamo – without considering the prelude of policies from George W. Bush.

Progressive activists who gathered over the weekend at the American Constitution Society’s annual convention in Washington voiced dismay over Obama’s conduct of the war on terrorism, including revelations about the NSA as well as his use of drones to kill Americans and others overseas.

But American Civil Liberties Union deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer suggested that the fact that Obama, not Bush, is in the White House may not matter as much as people thought it did when they voted back in 2008.

“We are starting to see a kind of indifference of the ‘Security State’ to the character of the particular administration,” argued Jaffer. “It doesn’t matter who’s in power; these policies just seem to grow and grow. I think the surveillance disclosures of the last week are some evidence of that. The logic of these security polices is so strong that it doesn’t matter that much who’s in power.”

Last week the ACLU filed suit against the Obama administration, asking a federal court in New York to order the NSA data collection to cease.

Jaffer disputed Obama’s statement on June 7 that the NSA data collection “was not secret” because “every member of Congress has been briefed on this program” and that NSA programs “have been authorized by broad bipartisan majorities repeatedly since 2006.”

Jaffer said, “Most members of Congress didn’t know about this meta-data program, they didn’t have access to the OLC (Office of Legal Counsel) memos, they didn’t have access to a lot of the crucial information about the scope of the program.” So, he said, “It’s not true to say that there was congressional oversight.”

As chagrined as some progressives are about Obama, of course they haven’t forgotten Bush and Cheney. Georgetown University law professor David Cole said that Bush and Cheney had engaged in “criminal action” by approving waterboarding of captured terrorists.

A member of the audience, Shahid Buttar, executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, told the panelists that the Obama administration had failed to “to pursue executive accountability for torture, as is required under international law” thus, he said, “ensuring that torture will recur by making it OK to permit the Bush administration’s abuses.”

But former Obama administration official Marty Lederman, who served in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2009 to 2010 and from 1994 to 2002, replied, “What is it exactly that this accountability would consist of – but for I guess prosecution of President Bush and Vice President Cheney – which I don’t think would be particularly healthy for our public right now.” 

Cole said Bush and Cheney need not be criminally prosecuted but he urged that a bipartisan commission to formally investigate torture.

Representing the Bush era on the panel was John Bellinger, an attorney at Arnold & Porter in Washington who served both in the Justice Department in the Clinton administration and as legal adviser to the State Department under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from 2005 to 2009.

“We really need to restore bipartisanship,” Bellinger told the skeptical crowd. “It is very easy to demagogue these issues from either the right or the left … .”

Looking out over the audience – which contained many law students who might seek future employment in a Democratic administration – Bellinger said, “I hope many of the people in this room will serve in government. When you are in government, you’ve got to work with Republicans, you’ve got to work with Democrats. And the way to do it is not to go bashing the other side calling them ‘criminals,’ impugning their motives.”

As Buttar pointed out, there are two types of bipartisanship: the kind Bellinger was urging, which pursues continuity in national security policies, and the more populist kind, which unites libertarian Republicans such as Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky with Al Gore and other progressive Democratic critics of NSA surveillance.

This story was originally published on Mon Jun 17, 2013 3:54 PM EDT

The series of controversies in Washington over the last month have taken a political toll on President Barack Obama, according to one new poll released Monday that showed his ratings slipping.

Even as Americans mostly back the National Security Agency’s controversial practices involving the “data-mining” of phone and internet records, Obama’s own approval rating has suffered slightly, driven by drops in support among independent voters.

A CNN/ORC poll released Monday found that Obama’s approval rating – the number of Americans who say he is doing a good job as president – is now under water; that is, more Americans disapprove of the way Obama is handling his job than approve. Forty-five percent of Americans said in the CNN poll that Obama is handling his job well, while 54 percent said they disapprove of the job Obama is doing as president.

That’s a drop from just three weeks earlier, when a series of national polls, including CNN’s, found Obama’s approval rating holding steady amid a series of controversies involving his administration’s handling of the targeting of conservatives by the IRS, the crafting of talking points on the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, and revelations that the Justice Department had targeted journalists’ phone records as part of a leak investigation.

The weeks since then have seen the administration being forced to respond to an explosive new controversy, this one involving the disclosure of classified domestic surveillance techniques undertaken by the NSA. And though the administration has won supporters in both parties for these practices, the feeding frenzy in Washington appears to finally be taking some toll on the administration.

The most pronounced shift in CNN’s numbers over the last three weeks came among independent voters, the pivotal voting bloc that has counted increasing numbers of disaffected Republicans among its ranks. Obama’s approval vs. disapproval rating among independents went from 47 percent approval and 49 percent disapproval in mid-May to 37 percent approval and 61 disapproval in the most recent CNN/ORC poll, which was conducted from June 11-13.

That mirrors the results of the June 4 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, which found that Obama’s favorability rating among independents had fallen from 37 percent in April to 28 percent most recently.

The slippage is further demonstrated on the question of whether Obama is seen as honest and trustworthy. Forty-nine percent of Americans said in June’s poll that such a label applies to Obama, versus 50 percent who said it does not. (That question was 58 percent to 41 percent in favor of Obama several weeks ago, and again, the number of independents who said they would call Obama honest and trustworthy dropped by 12 points over the past few weeks.)

Sasha Mordovets / Getty Images Contributor

President Barack Obama arrives at the G8 venue of Lough Erne on June 17, 2013 in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland.

Obama also suffers from a sharp negative shift among younger voters, though the sample size in both polls was higher than for most other sub-categories.

The figures in this one poll, though, could suggest that several weeks’ worth of difficulty have had a cumulative effect on Obama. Sixty-one percent of Americans said they disapprove of the way Obama is handling the government’s surveillance of U.S. citizens, while just 35 percent approve.

But whether any of these controversies is able to diminish the president’s long-term political standing remain to be seen.

And Monday’s CNN poll isn’t all bad news for Obama, either. Even amid the lingering IRS, Libya and Justice Department controversies, Americans appear to slightly favor the controversial NSA monitoring practices themselves that prompted the most recent outcry from civil libertarians.

A majority of Americans don’t think the Obama administration has overreached in its pursuit of terror suspects. Thirty-eight percent of Americans said they were content with the way the Obama administration had balanced between preserving civil liberties and fighting terrorism; another 17 percent said Obama hadn’t gone far enough in curbing liberties to pursue terror suspects. But of all three views, a plurality of 43 percent said the administration has gone too far in disregarding civil liberties.

Americans were mostly split on whether the NSA was right or wrong to collect domestic phone data for analysis, the program at the NSA uproar. Fifty-one percent of Americans said the administration was right to continue that practice, which had begun during President George W. Bush’s administration, versus 48 percent who said such a practice was wrong.

Americans were also more forgiving of the NSA’s monitoring of foreigners’ internet communications in the name of pursuing terrorist suspects. Sixty-six percent of Americans said the government was right to undertake such a program, versus 33 percent who said it was wrong.

The June CNN/ORC poll was conducted June 11-13, and has a 3 percent margin of error for its entire pool of respondents. The subsample of self-described independents has a 4.5 percent margin of error. By reference, the May CNN/ORC poll was conducted from May 17-18 and has a 3 percent margin of error for its overall sample, and a 5 percent margin of error for its subsample of independents.

This story was originally published on Mon Jun 17, 2013 2:12 PM EDT

Organizing for Action -- the old Obama campaign apparatus -- is out with its first TV ad, and it defends the federal health-care law.

"What the impact of ObamaCare?" the ad's narrator asks asks. "The truth is, Americans are already seeing the benefits. She's seeing more seniors for free wellness visits. He received a $150 rebate from his health insurance company. And next year, she can expand her small business -- thanks to tax credits that cover up to half of her workers' health insurance."

The ad concludes, "Better coverage and lower costs -- that's what ObamaCare means for them. Get all the facts at BarackObama.com/HealthCare." NBC News has learned the ad is airing on national cable news, and it's part of a seven-figure ad buy over the summer.

This ad comes as the most recent NBC/WSJ poll found that just 37 percent of Americans said the health-care law was a good idea, versus 49 percent who said it was a bad idea.

That 49 percent on bad idea was the highest negative rating on that question since the NBC/WSJ poll began asking it in 2009.

It also comes as the law's opponents have outspent supporters on TV ads by a 5-to-1 ratio since 2010, per Kantar Media CMAG.

Cold  War tensions are back as G-8 summit begins… A test of Obama’s international leadership… Cheney vs. Gore on NSA surveillance… New Yorker: Everything you wanted to know about the Gang of Eight... Boehner to abide by Hastert Rule on immigration?... What does Rowhani’s win mean for the U.S.?... Poll: Markey leads Gomez by double digits… And Manchin gears up … for 2018!!!

*** Cold War tensions are back: As the G-8 summit in Northern Ireland begins today, we probably aren’t the only ones having flashbacks to the early 1980s. With Russia alone among the G-8 nations in backing the governing Assad regime, the old divides have resurfaced in dramatic ways. On Sunday, Russian President Putin publicly lectured British Prime Minister David Cameron on Syria in a joint appearance, saying, “As regards to the supplies of weapons to the Assad government, … I believe you will not deny that the blood is on the hands of both parties. ... And there’s always a question, who is to be blamed for that?” A new Snowden-leak story about how the U.S. and British intelligence agencies eavesdropped on world leaders -- including then-Russian President Medvedev -- at a London conference in 2009 is sure to add to the tensions. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s a new allegation from New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft who claims Putin stole one of his Super Bowl rings. All of this is the backdrop when President Obama meets with Putin at 6:30 pm ET.

*** A test of Obama’s international leadership: As we wrote on Friday, this G-8 summit has become a test of Obama’s second-term international leadership. Can he stare down Putin? Can he keep the Western allies on the same page when it comes to arming the Syrian opposition? Can he articulate exactly what the U.S. strategy is beyond just hoping Assad will step aside and allow a political peace process to begin? Bill Clinton’s criticism of the president’s Syrian policy wasn’t nearly as impactful domestically as it was internationally. All this comes at a time when the president appears, well, a tad smaller today than he the last time he was in Europe. Over the past month, little has gone well for the administration as it’s been nicked by several different cuts -- Syria, the NSA leaks and surveillance debate, and the IRS story. And now there’s a new CNN poll showing that Obama’s approval rating has declined to 45%. As Team Obama is fond of saying, everyone gets their turn in the barrel. And right now, the Obama folks are definitely in the barrel. The potential good for them: That situation can always change. Indeed, it was just a year ago when the Obama campaign suffered a tough spell in May and June (poor jobs reports, “the private sector is doing fine”), and that situation changed in July, August, and September. Perhaps it’s a June thing. What they have to hope it’s not is some sort of second-term pall setting over them because that can be hard to shake. Appearance or illusion of weakness only creates actual political weakness. Bottom line: Obama needs to some meaningful progress, and it must gall him that his fate, at least internationally when it comes to Syria, is in the hands of Putin.

*** Cheney vs. Gore on NSA surveillance: Here’s a fun exercise -- looking at the NSA surveillance debate through the lens of two former vice presidents: Dick Cheney and Al Gore. For starters, Cheney “told ‘Fox News Sunday’ the National Security Agency-led programs have to remain confidential to keep the information from enemies and that he and other U.S. intelligence officials were concerned about a nuclear attack. ‘It was 19 guys with box cutters and airplane tickets,’ but the next time it could have been a ‘nuclear attack,’ the 72-year-old Cheney said. He said former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposing the gathering of information on phone calls and emails has done ‘enormous damage’ to the United States' anti-terror programs and called Snowden a ‘traitor.’” And here’s Gore, via National Journal: “In a long interview with The Guardian published on Friday, Gore said that the NSA surveillance is ‘not really the American way.’ And that's not the least of it: ‘This in my view violates the constitution. The fourth amendment and the first amendment—and the fourth amendment language is crystal clear...It is not acceptable to have a secret interpretation of a law that goes far beyond any reasonable reading of either the law or the constitution and then classify as top secret what the actual law is.’” It’s time for someone to step up and moderate a debate on surveillance between these two -- we are happy to moderate!

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President Barack Obama gestures during a speech at the Belfast Waterfront on Monday, June 17, 2013, in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

*** Everything you wanted to know about the Gang of Eight: As the Senate begins another week debating the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” immigration reform legislation, don’t miss Ryan Lizza’s New Yorker piece. It has everything you needed to know about the politics inside the Gang of Eight -- the McCain-Schumer relationship and how it developed, the tension between McCain and Rubio, improved relations between Schumer and Dick Durbin, and even McCain taking some of the blame for the bad relationship with the White House. (Another sign the Old McCain is back?) Bottom line takeaway from this piece: This is Chuck Schumer's show, he put this team together, and he seems to be keeping them together.  

*** Boehner to abide by the Hastert Rule on immigration? But that’s the Senate. When it comes to the House, the Washington Examiner’s David Drucker reports that Speaker John Boehner won’t bring any immigration-reform legislation to the House floor if it doesn’t have a majority of Republicans backing it, according to sources familiar with Boehner’s plans. From the piece: “One GOP strategist noted that Boehner is navigating a different set of dynamics than Reid in the Senate. In particular, House Republicans are likely to suffer a greater voter backlash in the 2014 elections is they back the wrong immigration reform bill than they would if they simply did nothing on the issue. ‘There is no national crisis with an artificial deadline the president can trump up and trot out on the nightly news,’ the GOP strategist said. ‘Boehner is under no pressure to put the Senate bill on the floor.’” Make no mistake: Boehner is facing two different pressures: 1) from Republicans who are convinced that the GOP must fix its problems with Latino voters; and 2) from conservatives in his caucus who are opposed to immigration reform -- and, frankly, anything President Obama is supporting. The question is: Which pressure will win out?

*** What does Rowhani’s win mean for the U.S.? Turning to international politics, there was a PRETTY BIG development in Iran over the weekend: In a surprise, the most moderate of the actual candidates Hassan Rowhani won that country’s presidential contest. The New York Times: “But while the election of the new president, Hassan Rowhani, a former nuclear negotiator who is considered a moderate compared with the other candidates, was greeted by some administration officials as the best of all likely outcomes, they said it did not change the fact that only the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would make the final decision about any concessions to the West. Even so, they said they wanted to test Mr. Rowhani quickly, noting that although he argued for a moderate tone in dealing with the United States and its allies when he was a negotiator, he also boasted in 2006 that Iran had used a previous suspension of nuclear enrichment to make.” 

*** Poll: Markey leads Gomez by double digits: Before next week’s special Senate election in Massachusetts, a Boston Globe poll released on Sunday shows Ed Markey (D) leading Gabriel Gomez (R) by double digits among likely voters, 54%-43%. One of the reasons why Gomez is trailing is that he isn’t running up the score among independents, which a Republican candidate needs to do in order to win in deep-blue Massachusetts. “Gomez is the candidate poll respondents find more likable and he holds the lead among unenrolled voters — the critical bloc of independents whose support he’ll need to top a Democrat in Massachusetts. But that margin is only 9 percentage points. Analysts believe that for a Republican to win in Massachusetts, he must win the unenrolled vote by a 2-to-1 margin.”

*** Manchin gears up … for 2018! Are we the only ones who think Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and his political team are overreacting a bit here? After all, Manchin isn’t up for re-election until 2018!!!! “Sen. Joe Manchin, co-author of a plan to expand background checks on gun sales, is launching a TV ad to defend himself from attacks by the powerful National Rifle Association,” Politico says. “Manchin will begin running the TV ad later this week, although details on how much the West Virginia Democrat will spend on the ad buy and its content were still being finalized on Sunday. Manchin will pay for the ad out of his reelection campaign.” If you were wondering if Manchin was going to run for re-election, well you have your answer -- 5 ½ years early!

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Republican Sen. Marco Rubio on Sunday said the comprehensive immigration reform bill is almost "ready to go" but still needs substantial border security fixes, dismissing accusations from conservative critics that he has been manipulated by veteran Democratic lawmakers in their efforts to pass the bill. 

"I think it's an excellent starting point, and I think 95, 96 percent of the bill is in perfect shape and ready to go," he said of the bill, which is being debated in the Senate this month. "But there are elements that need to be improved."

Asked about rhetorical jabs from some immigration reform opponents during an appearance on ABC's "This Week," Rubio dismissed conservative commentator Ann Coulter's charge that he is "being played" by Sen. Chuck Schumer, another member of the bipartisan "Gang of Eight" that drafted the original legislation. 

"Quite frankly, I don't even know what that means," he replied. 

"I recognize there is a division among conservatives about [immigration reform.] I respect other people's views on it," Rubio added. "I understand why they are frustrated by it. I just hope people understand that the reason why I've undertaken this is because this is a major problem that's hurting our country."

The Florida Republican, who has said the comprehensive bill will not pass without the beefed-up border security requirements, declined to engage in "hypotheticals and ultimatums" about whether he could vote for the bill without those fixes.  

"I think the debate now is about what that border security provision looks like," he said. "And if we do that, this bill will have strong bipartisan support. If we fail, we're going to keep trying, because at the end of the day, the only way we're going to pass an immigration reform law out of the House and Senate so the president can sign it is, that it has real border security measures within it."

On CNN's State of the Union program Sunday, Rubio's "Gang of Eight" colleague Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J. said that negotiators are open to more specificity on the border plan but that its "triggers" must not impede the bill's path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. 

"I would simply say to our colleagues we are open, if you want greater specificity about what that border plan looks like, we're open to that," he said. "But what we cannot have and what I cannot support and what I believe the community cannot support at the end of the day is that we're going to have triggers that can never be achieved in terms of border security as an impediment to the pathway to legalization and citizenship.

And the New Jersey lawmaker warned that, without embracing that legalization plan, Republicans will face political extinction.

'The road to the White House comes through a road with a pathway to legalization," he said. "Without it, there'll never be a road to the White House for the Republican Party."