Guantanamo Issue News Today

Some questions from democrats and republicans. two big lines of questioning today from the republicans, though, were dealing with judge jackson -- brown jacksons representation of detainees at guantanamo bay and also a line of attack that was telegraphed for some days now about how she sentenced defendants convicted of child sexual abuse. we have with us in this room senior legal analyst laura coats. i want to deal with the guantanamo issue. unlike the, you know, child porn issue, which well get...

Leading this fight are in fact women. were seeing something that we dent usually see, which is bipartisan agreement which is something that needs to be done. you are seeing senator claire mccaskill, kelly ayotte come together, getting tough on this issue. theres an agreement that something needs to be done. most lawmakers think that it should really address victims and how they are treated and how they are getting support in the instance of a case of sexual assault but center kristin gillibrand ...

Civilian court with appropriate, judicial screening and action but at the same time weve got to recognize what happened in boston, what has happened in 9/11. we still have a threat from terrorists. >> you said a terrible image abroad. elaborate on the impact of gitmo as well as the strikes on foreign relations. >> well, obviously in pakistan it has probably hurt our policy the most. the guantanamo issue, the drone issue. on the issue of drones, the president has also made important statements. o...

>> well, its going to be tough but i think its possible. theres momentum towards making this change. youve got to remember, alex, this was caused, this guantanamo, by illegal detention of prisoners, by por tur in the past administration. what the president has said is he wants to have the congress eliminate the ability of the president to keep the ability of the president to transfer prisoners. congress refuses to do that. he said that we can try a lot of these prisoners in civilian courts, limi...

Talking and they had to remove her. i thought it was interesting that this was allowed to go on and that he engaged her in this discussion. i think its because he has sympathy for her on this issue. in fact, her position is the same that he had, which is to close guantanamo bay. the problem is that hes run into a lot of obstacles and trying to do that. there is logistical issues with that, that make it very difficult for him. i think that the fact that he sympathized with her cause meant that he...

Has president obamas approval rating at or about 50%, despite controversies that some have said are the toughest of his presidency. joining me is ed rendell and chip saltzman. governor, do these approval numbers make sense to you? >> sure. its basically democrats rallying around the president and again its a symptom of the republicans overplaying their hand, trying to turn it into a partisan issue, trying to place blame directly on the president when theres no evidence to support that. its a lit...

Going to come out, andrea. but we will know in a couple of hours, members are voting now of the national council, 1400-member strong. this is not the same proposal that the scouts first floated in january. back then they signaled that after decades of fighting to preserve their ban on gay scouts and scout leaders, they were willing to accept a change in which local scout units could decide the issue for themselves. well that didnt go over very well. because people who wanted to keep the ban thou...

Hospitals? >> i think you nailed it. i think we are just to the point where this thing is starting to settle into a rhythm and people that were affected are able to do more accurate reporting and were able to consolidate those numbers better. >> well michael thompson, thanks so much for taking the time. i know youre out there working on this horrible recovery. and we thank you for everything youre doing. thanks for checking in. >> thank you, mrs. mitchell and thank you for the attention you gave...

2007 and 2008 and when i was elected in 2008, i said we need to close guantanamo. i continue to believe that weve got to close guantanamo. >> in his speech, coming up shortly, the president is expected to revive his stalled effort to close guantanamo by working to lift the congressional ban on transferring detainees to places like yemen. and reappointing a high-level state department official in charge of reducing the prison population. joining me is the "miami herald"s carol rosenberg and forme...

Drones them like the use of drones. i think it keep americans out of harms way. >> it was 64% positive to only 12% negative back in february. >> this is a speech for a longer term. it goes to some of the fundamental thing he ran about in 2008. it goes to a promise he made in this years state of the union address to do more to explain and defend and joif and limit and restrict and also to deal with guantanamo bay. americans arent, it is not a big political issue in this country. it is huge around...