Transcripts For MSNBC MSNBC Live 20110604 : vimarsana.com

welcome to msnbc saturday. we have new word from president obama this morning on the economy. in his weekly radio address, the president made an effort to explain the tough economic picture. even though our economy created more than 2 million private sector jobs over the past 15 months, and continues to grow, we re facing some tough head winds. lately it is high gas prices, the earthquake in japan, and unease about the european fiscal situation. that s going to happen from time to time. there are going to be bumps on the road to recovery. nbc s athena jones is at the white house this morning. good morning, athena. this may jobless figure, it is a setback. how is the white house dealing with it. reporter: well, certainly the numbers are disappointing to this white house, alex, but what was interesting yesterday in the speech in toledo and today in this weekly address we re hearing from the president is that he makes no direct mention of the actual figures that were released. you know, 54,000 jobs were added in may. that s still in the plus side, the economy didn t lose 54,000 jobs, but the white house knows that that number is far far below what is going to be needed to really put a dent in the unemployment rate going forward. we all know this is going to be a big issue in the next election next year, if the republicans have anything to do with it, which, of course, they do. so you hear the president really trying to offer an explanation as to why the economy is still facing some challenges. yesterday in toledo he also mentioned the middle east instability, that was causing uncertain among some people. the white house wants to show the president is thinking about the economy and is really trying to show americans he cares. what is interesting also about yesterday s speech was the setting. he went to a chrysler plant in toledo to try to shine a spotlight on what the white house sees as one of this administration s big successes. you know, after president bush left office, president obama made the decision, the unpopular decision at the time to continue to use taxpayer money to continue to help two of the american big three auto companies, chrysler and gm. and now chrysler paid back all of the money that was loaned out under president obama s watch. fiat agreed to buy the treasury stake, so the white house wanted to go out there, have president obama talk about chrysler as a big success and show that the american auto industry is on the mend. so he tried to counter the bad jobs numbers yesterday with the good news on the auto side, alex. you mentioned the republicans there. and there is some sort of a golf summit coming up? what is that about. reporter: that s right. speaker boehner is an avid golf player and so is president obama. he played just this past week on memorial day. and so finally they have arranged a date, they re going to play on june 18th, a saturday, coming up in a few weeks. we don t know where they re going to play. we can probably expect that the debt and the deficit and that sort of thing will come up. what we don t know again is where they re going to play, who else is going to be part of that foursome. and what the score is going to be. interesting to watch and wait for that. i m just wondering, do you beat the president or do you let him win? i don t know. reporter: i think you beat him if you can. no difference. go for it. athena jones, thanks so much. we ll see you again. for more on the jobs report, i m joined by msnbc financial analyst vera gibbons. so these numbers, what do you make of them? they re not good, right? they re about a third of what economists were expecting. i don t think you can put a positive spin on them or turn them into numbers that look better than they do. no matter what you say here. we re coming off gains of a cup hundred thousand a month. this is nothing. you see people blaming the weather and energy costs, all sorts of excuses out there. but we have 30 million americans who are looking for full-time work and if you look at the nation s long-term unemployed, that number has been growing. that accounts for 44% of our nation s unemployed. those are people out of work for six months or longer. it is a challenging environment. does it indicate the economy is losing momentum? it does. if you combine this report with the other reports we have seen in the manufacturing sector, in the housing sector, consumer confidence taking a hit as well, it does suggest the economy is sort of shifting into a much lower gear, which is why you re seeing people concerned on wall street and main street alike. is this just a temporary setback two years into the recovery or is the economy going to possibly reaccelerate as it did toward the back half of last year. a lot of questions out there, again, both for main street and for wall street. okay, vera, we ll keep asking you the questions later. thank you. day ten of the casey anthony murder trial and the jury returns to the courtroom today to hear more testimony against the accused killer. on friday, jurors watched jailhouse tapes of her mother, cindy anthony, begging casey to tell her what happened to little caylee. it was an emotional scene. someone just said that caylee was dead this morning, that she drowned in the pool. that s the newest story out there. surprise, surprise. nbc s lilia luciano has more for us. good saturday morning to you. was there anything else in that jail visit that we just saw that affects this case? reporter: well, alex, besides this moment where we see casey completely dismissing what now the defense holds happened, which is that caylee drowned in the pool, we see a casey anthony that is completely self-serving, even selfish, somebody who does not seem to be concerned at all by having lost her daughter. now we know that caylee had already died and according to the defense casey knew her daughter was dead. we see her taking self-pity. so it is somebody who is really hard to sympathize with. and those are five hours of conversations with the family, you see the family concerned and casey just, you know, concerned about her own well-being. yeah. it can be shocking, given what we have from the prosecutor and the defense at this point. you re saying that they knew she had died at this point. with the trial today, again, in session on a saturday, what else is happening. reporter: well, we don t know exactly what is going to happen today. we expect for the prosecution to present more evidence. yesterday we saw one of the crime scene investigators on the stand. he said he smelled the smell of a body of a decomposing body on the car, in the pontiac sunfire when he first investigated it. there were other pieces of evidence presented, such as a lining from the carpet of the trunk of the car, which, as we now know, the prosecution claims had the smell of a decomposing body. there is also a single strand of hair that people are talking about might be presented today which, according to the prosecution, presents the evidence that it came from a dead body, that it presents death bends that appear on a strand of hair that comes from a decomposing body. all of that might come in today, but we don t know for sure. the trial is expected to go on until 1:00 p.m. this afternoon. okay. starts in a couple of hours at 9:00 a.m. eastern, right. reporter: yes, at 9:00 a.m. we know you ll be inside for part of that. we ll see you again. lilia luciano, thank you. breaking news from yemen. mixed reports this morning on the whereabouts of yemeni president ali abdullah saleh. arab tv is reporting that saleh and top members of his cabinet were sent to saudi arabia for treatment of wounds they suffered in a rebel rocket attack on the presidential palace. but yemeni officials are denying that saleh is in saudi arabia. we re going to continue following that story as we get information and it develops. four suspected cases in the us us have been linked to the outbreak of e. coli in europe which killed 19 people. the source of the contamination may be vegetables like lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes in germany and in spain. the centers for disease control says all four sickened patients in this country had travelled to hamburg, germany, in may. they became ill when they returned to the u.s. a food and drug administration official says produce in the u.s. remains safe. right now, the swelting missouri river is rising slower than expected in north dakota. more than 12,000 people have still been forced to evacuate from their homes. the river is now over 17 feet, that s more than a foot or so above flood level. the army corps of engineers is releasing water from the garrison dam which sits in the middle of the state. those engineers are expected to increase the rate of that release over the next three days. on the heels of that, we get a look at today s weather. we bring in nbc meteorologist bill karins. good morning, bill. good saturday to you, alex. the heat, the big story. this really jumped on us in a hurry. we went from flooding to tornadoes, right to excessive heat. this looks like the weather pattern that may set up through much of the summer. we re just baking out there from memphis to dallas to atlanta to new orleans. all of our big cities in the south are suffering through an early summer heat wave. the cool spots, the west coast and also up there in northern new england. look at yesterday, yesterday we were 97 in dallas. new orleans was right behind it, 95. 94 in atlanta. everywhere in the red, all the way up to minneapolis, in the 90s yesterday. now look at the next five days in a row, including your weekend in atlanta. easily mid-90s. no rain in sight for you. as we go into the memphis area, one of the hottest spots in the country over the next five days, temperature between 97 and 100 degrees, you ll be lucky if you get an afternoon shower or storm. and then in dallas, and in much of texas, suffering from a horrible drought. look at your temperatures this week. 95 to about 100 from saturday right into the middle of the upcoming workweek. so you get the picture here. the hot temperatures is the story. 97 in dallas as we said. as we go up to kansas city, 92. st. louis will also be around 95 today. as we mentioned, areas around arkansas through mississippi, easily a chance of a few spots hitting 100. we go towards sunday, it looks to be just as hot. we will see some thunderstorms cooling some areas off there in the mid-atlantic possibly in the carolinas especially, maybe kentucky and areas of tennessee. but we re not going to get any relief whatsoever along the gulf into areas of texas and we re getting really hot in areas like phoenix. alex, only the beginning of june, you wonder what the rest of the summer is going to hold if it is this hot already. i know. i was thinking the same thing, bill karins, thank you. former presidential candidate john edwards is a free man this morning after pleading not guilty to violating campaign finance laws. federal prosecutors say he illegally used $925,000 in contributions to hide his mistress during his 2008 presidential run. nbc news chief investigative correspondent lisa myers is live for us in raleigh, north carolina, with a good saturday morning to you. what is edwards saying about these charges against him. reporter: well, good morning, alex. edwards said he s not guilty and he did not break the law and he did not believe when he was involved in all this that he was breaking the law. as you can imagine, the case has generated banner headlines here this morning. it is, after all, a sordid tale of deception and betrayal. even if most of the facts in the indictment prove true, there were is a controversy about whether this all adds up to a federal crime. here he comes. reporter: with his daughter kate by his side, john edwards took responsibility for doing wrong. but not for breaking the law. i take full responsibility for having done wrong. and i will regret for the rest of my life the pain and the harm that i ve caused to others. but i did not break the law and i never, ever thought i was breaking the law. reporter: at issue, almost a million dollars provided by two wealthy donors. now 100-year-old heiress rachel bunny mellon and fred baron. according to the government, the money was used to hide edwards mistress rielle hunter and later their child while he ran for president. the six count indictment alleges the payments constituted unlawful campaign contributions, and accuses edwards of soliciting and covering them up, saying he knew that if the affair became public, it would undermine his image as a family man, and destroy his candidacy. as proof the money was intended to help the campaign, prosecutors cite a note from mellon written after an uproar over edwards $400 haircuts. from now on, she writes, all haircuts, et cetera, that are necessary and important for his campaign, please send the bills to me. it is a way to help our friend without government restrictions. no one has ever been charged, either civilly or criminally, with claims that have been brought against senator edwards today. reporter: in a short court appearance, edwards lawyer entered a not guilty plea. a former senator joked about the number of lawyers present, five for him and seven for the government. rielle hunter and her daughter francis quinn now live in this house in charlotte, two hours away from the edwards estate. as he left the courthouse, i asked edwards what he told his young children about today. that i love them. reporter: he walked away without another word. sources close to the case tell nbc news that edwards and the government almost reached a last minute plea deal but that negotiations broke down over terms of a prison sentence, alex. okay. lisa myers, many thanks for that. we look forward to seeing you again. a community searches for answers after a child s deadly accident on a ferris wheel in new jersey. we re going to tell you what police are saying right now. meanwhile, sarah palin continues her tour of the nation s historical landmarks and it looks like she s getting a lesson in paul revere s last ride. plus, some say they want this new rihanna video pulled from the airwaves. why is it causing such a stir? [ manager ] you know. i ve been looking at the numbers, and i think our campus is spending too much money on printing. i d like to put you in charge of cutting costs. calm down. i know that it is not your job. what i m saying. excuse me? alright, fine. no, you don t have to do it. ok? [ male announcer ] notre dame knows it s better for xerox to control its printing costs. so they can focus on winning on and off the field. [ manager ] are you sure i can t talk ok, no, i get it. [ male announcer ] with xerox, you re ready for real business. a new jersey community is reeling today from what is being described as the ghastly death of an 11-year-old girl who fell from a ferris wheel. wildwood police believe the death was an accident. the witnesses say the girl was scene leaning over the side of the gondola while the wheel was moving. wcau reporter rosemary conners from philadelphia joins me live from wildwood, new jersey. as a mom i was sick when i heard of this story yesterday. can you tell us more of how this death happened, rosemary? reporter: that s just it, alex. police are trying to investigate exactly what happened. in fact, they re reaching out to anyone who may have been here yesterday and may have seen it. they would like to get that information as they continue to investigate. those who knew the victim are simply stunned. going to be a very difficult time. she was well liked, well loved, everybody knew her. reporter: hours after her death, friends posted this facebook picture of 11-year-old abiah jones who police say fell nearly 100 feet from the moving ferris wheel at morey s mariner s landing pier on the wildwood boardwalk. a bunch of towels covering her face. it was terribly shocking. just stocked in our tracks and immediately went into action and emergency mode. reporter: administrators at pleasantech academy in pleasantville where she was a fifth grader explained the chaperone trip to the boardwalk was a yearly education extravaganza for 120 of their students and others from neighboring districts. abiah was one of our star students. that s why this trip was for our exceptional students that had done a wonderful job all year academically and behave yore io. reporter: state investigators arrived and inspected the ferris wheel. the ride passed its last inspection in march of this year. according to police, jones was the only one in her car. it might just be a freak accident. until we get some more information, i really can t tell you any more. the investigation thus far by the wildwood police department and the department of community affairs and our staff has not revealed any mechanical or operational issue with the ride. reporter: while the ferris wheel stood still late friday night, the entire pier shut down out of respect for the family. the community grieves still in disbelief. everybody experienced this loss. reporter: and on a final note, alex, the school will plan to have grief counselors available for everyone who was here on that trip, chaperones, staff, and, of course, students. that s the latest in wildwood. back to you. rosemary conners, thank you for bringing us the latest on such a tragic story. appreciate that. from there now to politics. the latest round of economic data. the jobless rate ticked up to 9.1% in may. no president since fdr has been elected to a second term with the unemployment rate topping 7.2% at the time. joining me now, john harwood, cnbc chief washington correspondent and political writer for the new york times. good morning to you. good morning, alex. i got to say, i m sick to my stomach over rosemary s report. my 13-year-old was at a theme park yesterday riding a roller coaster on precisely the kind of school trip that rosemary was just talking about. and that that just takes your breath away. it does. i heard about it driving home from work and i just i was in the car and sick about it. i know. our heart goes out to those poor people and the families and kids who witnessed it and, anyway, john, let s put that aside for the moment and get to some politics here as we talk about this latest economic news which cannot be good for the president s re-election campaign. you heard the stat i gave. is this a critical moment for the president? does he need to shake up his team of economic advisers, perhaps? don t expect that to happen, alex. i think the view of the obama white house is that they have done pretty much every pulled every policy lever they know how to pull. there was a stimulus package. the fed had a very accommodative monetary policy to try to get businesses money to hire and begin job creation. and the problem is there is just not robust consumer demand or the expectation of consumer demand in the future. i would expect you see some more talk of business tax breaks, some of which the administration has already supported with republicans in congress. they have already extended the bush tax cuts which is one of the principle things that members of both parties who believe in tax cuts thought would do something to boost the economy. maybe take a little bit of steam out of the efforts to cut spending because economists think that the more you cut spending right now, the more you might pull demand out of the economy. so it is hard to know what to do. the only bright side i would say, alex, for the administration is that some economists believe that temporary factors are behind this slowdown. the japanese tsunami, the surge in oil prices as the middle east is in turmoil, weather issues. and that job growth and economic growth will accelerate in the second half of the year. the president needs to hope that happens. sure does. the president has not acknowledged has acknowledged a hit, the economy did not specifically relate to the figures. are you thinking americans want a direct reaction to the numbers or do they look at this as being more continued malaise? i do think the administration pretty much talks about the economy and job growth almost every day. the president did make specific reference to the numbers. he was trying to set a more favorable context yesterday because he was in toledo talking about the recovery of the auto industry. his argument, like his argument for the economy overall, is that he took office at a time when the auto companies, gm and chrysler in particular, were hurting very badly. they extended a lifeline. the government invested. and now those auto companies are making a profit, they re gaining market share, chrysler has repaid the government stake or the amount of money the government put into the rescue. and so what he s trying to say is however difficult it is now, it is better because of the things that we have done and his re-election will turn on whether the american people find that persuasive as republicans go out and say, look, he hasn t gotten this going again. can i ask you on that note, real quick, with the republicans, how much does this leave an opening for the gop in 2012? huge opening. mitt romney, i was up at his announcement in new hampshire, late this week, and his entire campaign is focused on the economy. he said the president failed america and you can see in the evidence of these this weak economic data. so if mitt romney is the nominee in particular, but really if anybody whoever wins the republican nomination, they re going to go squarely at economic performance and the hard times that people are feeling right now. that s the case they re going to make against this president. john harwood, always good to see you. thank you. more details about the e. coli outbreak in europe. four cases have been found in the united states. how the bacteria is spreading and how to protect yourself. rihanna s controversial new music video. one parents group is outraged and hear what it wants done with it and how the pop star is firing back. 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[ thunder rumbling ] [ thunder crashing ] and then, in one blinding blink of an eye, their tree had given its last. but with their raymond james financial advisor, they had prepared for even the unthinkable. and they danced. see what a raymond james advisor can do for you. rihanna s new music video has some parents riled up and they want it pulled from the airwaves. check this out. shot a man down in central station in front of a the parents television council is urging bet to stop airing the video and asking mtv to not put it into rotation. their issue, the video depicts the pop star shooting and killing a man as payback for a sexual assault. i m joined now live by amy palmer, senior editor with in touch weekly. good morning. this star has taken risks before. but there is a controversy around this one. what do you think about it? i think this is only going to empower her message saying young girls, you need to really be aware of your surroundings. i was a victim of domestic violence, i know how it can happen, so this is really aligned with what she s been saying for the past year. mm-hmm. she s taken to responding to all the criticism on her twitter page. one tweet she says the video is a very strong underlying message for girls. she also says i m a 23-year-old rock star with no kids. what is up with everybody wanting me to be a parent. i m just a girl. then, you can t hide your kids from society or they ll never learn how to adapt. this is the real world. so these calls by parent advocacy groups to bet and mtv, what are they saying? bet is saying this is art with a message and they re going to continue playing it. mtv is reviewing it. but this is on youtube. over 1.4 million hits so far since tuesday. the power is in the consumer s hands. so there really is no power with the council. i mean, people, if they want to see this video, they can see it. it is a very empowering message if you get what she s saying. she was in eminem s video i love the way you lie, a number one song and that depicted domestic violence as well. she s hitting home with what happened to her with chris brown in 2009. the music industry s reaction is what? they re rallying around her. she was 20 years old when that happened with chris brown. they were really shocked. they were really angry and they re saying we re supporting this artist and that s what music is for. it is for getting the message out. so they re supportive of this and it is really driving conversation. not only here with us, but online. if you look at all of those videos, there is a recurring conversation among people of what does this song mean. i think that s really what her message is, let s talk about this. that s what you and i are doing, we ll do it again. amy palmer, thank you. thank, alex. what do you think? should rihanna s video be taken off the airwaves or is this much ado about nothing? tweet me. i ll read some later on this morning. @alexwitt. here are your fast five headlines. for the first time in nato s campaign in libya, british apache attack helicopters have been used. the british ministry of defense says apaches are believed to have hit two targets overnight. in syria, a human rights activist claims 63 protesters have died in clashes with government troops. most of the deaths reportedly coming when troops opened fire on crowds in the city of hamaa. in arizona, firefighters are battling two of the largest wildfires in state history. the two fires are burning more than 200,000 acres and they threaten to burn many more. in miami beach, florida, hundreds of personal effects once owned by bernie madoff go on the auction block. they are items of his palm beach mansion. they include 79 pairs of shoes, dozens of pairs of pants and nearly three dozen suits. in a private high school in northern texas, the top graduating students have more than academic achievement in common, they are identical twins. those are your fast five headlines. there are now four suspected cases of e. coli contamination in the u.s. all four people were in europe where 19 people died from the deadly outbreak. nbc s michelle kosinski has the latest. good morning. reporter: hi, alex. there are four cases of infection in the u.s. there is no sign, no hints that anything could be contaminated in the u.s., just to clarify. the relentlessness of the outbreak continues to surprise doctors. 200 new cases of e. coli infection in two days here in germany. 18 deaths. more than 1800 sick in a dozen countries. what is unusual in this situation is that the percentage of people who actually have severe complications is higher than we expect. reporter: now we know four people in the u.s. have it. three of them, two women and a man, are hospitalized after the bacteri bacteria s toxins attacked their kidneys. they were all in or near hamburg in may. two u.s. service members in germany are also believed to have it. so could this spread to the united states? officials say highly unlikely. scientists think it originated in raw vegetables from europe, possibly cucumbers, tomatoes or lettuce. now every shipment of those items imported into the u.s. from germany and spain as a precaution is being tested before it is released. only .2% of all u.s. produce imports comes from those countries. the cdc says this mutant strain is highly toxic. and its incubation unusually long. up to 12 days. they also think it might not be so new, that it or something very similar may have caused an outbreak only two years ago in the republic of georgia. in hamburg, this woman was one of its first victims, was in the hospital, in isolation, for weeks. the stomach ache that was so strong and it was in cramps. then later i also got stomach headache, very strong ones. that never happened to me before. reporter: she says the sickness made her so out of it, she was unable to count backward. those who are still stricken, after eating what is best for them, are being treated with transfusions, dialysis and a u.s.-produced antibody. it is the best doctors can do against a germ they haven t had to battle before. and we re hearing directly from the cdc, fda and usda that the u.s. food supply is safe. there is no reason to change your eating habits and no expectation that this will become an outbreak in the u.s. thanks for clarifying that. we ll try to get our sat signal a little clearer there. michelle kosinski, thanks so much. anthony weiner still swirling in a media hailstorm following a racy post to his twitter account. he s saying it is time to move on, but the story doesn t seem to be going anywhere for now. and sarah palin is learning a hard lesson in u.s. history. looks like she had some trouble recounting a famous midnight ride. that story just ahead on msnbc saturday. [ groans ] [ marge ] psst. constipated? phillips caplets use magnesium, an ingredient that works more naturally with your colon than stimulant laxatives, for effective relief of constipation without cramps. thanks. good morning, students. today we re gonna continue. communities are built by everyone doing their part. this year jpmorgan chase increased its lending commitment to small businesses to twelve billion dollars. and we re raising billions more for local services to help hospitals expand and schools grow. investing in the places we all call home. this is the way forward. [ male announcer ] introducing mio. a revolutionary water enhancer. add a little.add a lot. for a drink that s just the way you like it. make it yours. make it mio. ben and his family live on this block. ben s a re/max agent, and he s a big part of this community. re/max agents know their markets, and they care enough to get to know you, too. nobody sells more real estate than re/max. visit remax.com today. discouraging news for job seekers this week as the unemployment rate creeps higher. the may jobs report shows a 9.1% unemployment rate. that s up from 9% in april. only 54,000 jobs were created and the labor department says 13.9 million americans are unemployed. i m joined now live by cnbc steve liesman in studio with us. good morning. good morning. so the number, what do they mean for the economy? i can t imagine it is anything good. in first instance they mean the economy slowed and in a sense that jobs are known as a lagging indicator in the sense that what happens in the economy then affects the job market. it is not like the jobs leave the economy. it is always helpful to have jobs in the economy. they keep a recovery going. so the question becomes whether or not these are temporary or permanent factors and whether or not this one month we have had of decline in job growth means that the recovery is now more in danger. but i m curious about what is behind that. because if you look at the numbers, steve, only 54,000 jobs created in may. but the three months prior to may averaged 230,000 jobs per month. i mean, what could be behind that dramatic of a slowdown? in the first instance, a big part of the decline in job growth has been the decline in government workers. we lost 29,000 government workers over the past year. we have lost 850,000 government jobs and added 1.7 million job! s in the private sector. so the budget crisis is hitting the job market. that s in the first instance. there is a whole bunch of other things that are out there. higher oil prices, the tsunami in japan has really disrupted the global supply chain for automobile manufacturing. there has been a slowdown because of that. you had terrible weather issues. those are the temporary issues. more permanently there are questions about whether or not high deficits are kind of weighing on the confidence of businesses and whether or not they re thinking if this the best time to hire. here is a number very troubling. 6.2 million americans have been um employed for more than half a year, steve. why is long-term unemployment such a problem? it is a problem because what happens when people are unemployed for a long time, they lose skills, they lose attachment to the workforce, and so the longer you are unemployed, the longer you re likely to remain unemployed. the question becomes whether or not the private sector can actually put the long-term unemployed back to work or whether or not some more drastic program from the government is needed here to try to help these people get back into the workforce and remain attached to the workforce. you know, you heard a statistic i read earlier, i saw you in the studio, that no president has been elected with the unemployment rate standing at higher than 7.2% since fdr. you have this congress board, research business association, that says that it will be standing at about 8.5% at the end of next year. talk about the problem that poses for a re-election campaign for this president, and if this gives a lot of opportunity to his opponents. there is no doubt this creates a huge challenge. probably the most important challenge to president obama. i m not sure i would be quite so doctrineaire about the number. i think what is important is they see a sense of momentum about the job market improving and a sense that not only will i be able to keep my job, but if i m unemployed or that i can find a job elsewhere. that is not really out there. and what is interesting, alex, it wasn t out there while job growth was doing reasonably well. you re at a situation where you were, as you said, growing jobs at 200,000 per month, and still all the polls showed us that people thought the economy was relatively lousy. steve liesman, thanks for coming on over. good to see you. pleasure. a texas high exile will be allowed to hold prayers after an appeals court overturned the decision. the family has not said if their son will participate in today s ceremony now that the prayers will be allowed. now to a homecoming that united a family with buster brown. yep, that s the name of their labrador that disappeared from the family home in boulder, colorado, about six months ago. but thanks to an implanted microchip, the dog was found, but it was all the way in california. no one knows how buster got there. i m sure he has a great tale, if only he could talk. but the family, look at that, just glad to have him back home and looks like he s happy too. look at that tail wagging. 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[ male announcer ] ducati knows it s better for xerox to manage their global publications. so they can focus on building amazing bikes. with xerox, you re ready for real business. two of the most important are energy security and economic growth. north america actually has one of the largest oil reserves in the world. a large part of that is oil sands. this resource has the ability to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. at our kearl project in canada, we ll be able to produce these oil sands with the same emissions as many other oils and that s a huge breakthrough. that s good for our country s energy security and our economy. each day was fueled by thorough preparation for events to come. well somewhere along the way, emily went right on living. but you see, with the help of her raymond james financial advisor, she had planned for every eventuality. which meant she continued to have the means to live on. even at the ripe old age of 187. life well planned. see what a raymond james advisor can do for you. well, sarah palin may need a refresher course in history after visiting landmarks in new england this week. palin s bus tour rolled through boston. but when asked about paul revere, she had some troubling recounting his famous midnight ride. which was something new to learn, and, you know, he who warned the british that they weren t going to be taking away our and have some good new hampshire food. yeah. very good. thanks so much. in a place like this, bunker hill, knowing the sacrifices people made here. so there was word about the british there. in fact, paul revere rode secretly to alert the revolutionaries that the british forces were getting ready to attack and no bells or warning shots were involved, only the lanterns in the old north churches signaled, one if by land, two if by sea, remember that? the questions continue about anthony weiner. he canceled a speech on thursday night after a difficult week. it started with a twitter photograph sent to a college student which he says he did not spend, but the questions just keep coming. i was hacked. happens to people. you move on. did you send it or not? if i were giving a speech to 45,000 people and someone in the back threw a pie or yelled out an insult, i would not spend the next two hours of my speech responding to that pie or that insult. so you never intentionally sent anything to miss cordova? no, nothing. she says that. i m saying that clearly. i ve said that ever since saturday when i said that originally. do you do all your own personal tweeting or do your staff members do it? i do, with some limited exceptions we have of a firm that does mass mail that links to it. does anybody else have your pass code? that s one thing unfortunately we re going to be looking into. not that i know of. cole hall joins us with reaction to this controversy. if only people could have been part of our conversation during the commercial, right? what do you think of the statements by congressman weiner trying to address the issue? it is fair to say there are very few facts still remaining in this. when it broke, all that we could do was speculate reasonably until his statement saying c ii could not say with certitude whether or not that was him. how can you not be certain if that image is yours. then the speculation the pendulum swings the other way. why aren t you being completely open. and perhaps there is a tiny bit of obfuscation here. would that be the better way to handle it, to be just brutally honest with it? i think, you know, through the wisdom of hindsight, you look back and see that representative weiner didn t handle this exactly great. when it broke last weekend, memorial day weekend, he ignored it, a prank. and then he did this sort of horrible interview with a news crew and dana bash where he called someone a jerk. that was the moment where he seemed really, really defensive. on wednesday, he did sort of junket style interviews with luke russert among others and that s when he sort of leaned into it, where he said this is what i think that would have been the smarter approach from the very, very beginning. why is it that congressman weiner is following so many hot babes, you know, on twitter? it is not clear that he is. he is, there is lots of young women, but, you know, i have no idea why that s the case. i do know there have been people on twitter eager to sort of go out, somewhat obsessed with representative weiner. vanity fair article from 2001 makes the story he may he was a bachelor, he may have been somewhat of a lady s man. it is not clearknow, it s not c has all these young women or even if he does. he s an elected official, public person. you know, he s going to have fans. it s also not clear what his beautiful new wife is saying. we can only speculate there. the larger picture for democrats is what? it s too soon to say. i can t imagine that this takes weiner down. if it were any other elected official they would be chastised into being quite. weiner s a firebrand. he won t take it lying down and will make a point not to use this against him. stowe end of the day, i think it will be a chuckhole that the right will use to dismiss him. i don t think tell keep him silent or will have a big impact. we ll see if you re right. kobe hall, good to see you. tell dan hi. there s a high schooler in american fork, utah, who is glad the year s ending. not because of school he s tired of his dad seeing him off to school by waving him at the school bus each morning. if that wasn t bad enough, his father would dress in different costumes each day. my gosh, dad, what are you doing? when he did it the first day i was in shock. because it s like my first day of sophomore year. a way of letting him know that we care about him, doing something different. okay. the teen s father says it s his way of saying i love you and will give a sense of good stories to tell his kids someday. good picture, too. look, every day we re using more and more energy. the world needs more energy. where s it going to come from? that s why right here, in australia, chevron is building one of the biggest natural gas projects in the world. enough power for a city the size of singapore for 50 years. what s it going to do to the planet? natural gas is the cleanest conventional fuel there is. we ve got to be smart about this. it s a smart way to go. aren t absorbed properly unless taken with food. he recommended citracal. it s different it s calcium citrate, so it can be absorbed with or without food. also available in small, easy-to-swallow petites. citracal. new newtons fruit thins. real cranberries and cranberry citrus oat. crispy whole grain. newtons fruit thins, one unique cookie. the casey anthony trial will resume an hour from now. prosecutors think they ll reach the halfway point today. anthony s acuesed of killing her 2-year-old daughter. jurors have been watching more courthouse conversations between casey and her parents in 2008. you think she s okay? i know in my heart, mom. i know in my gut she s all right. i wish there s more i could do. i would give my life for you and for her. let s bring in our panel, rebecca rose wilson is a defense attorney, and we have jay, a former prosecutor. here s the problem, i see it, haven t they admitted that they knew she had drowned? isn t that what the defense says? and you play the tapes where what s going on? i think they re trying to show that she s consistently lying, whether it s to her brother, mother, even if the father is there, that she s continuing to lie and hide the fact that she knows her kid is dead already. but the defense alleges at that dad knew and the mom didn t? that the dad knew but the mom did not. there were tapes with just the father which made no sense. the defense theory is throw the kitchen sink at the prosecution and see what sticks. some of it doesn t make sense. i think the theme is she lied consistently throughout this, knew that she was dead. and just consistently lied. if that s the case, how much do the jailhouse tapes hurt the defense? the jailhouse tapes horrible for the defense. how the defense planned this strategy knowing because they had to have seen these that this is the prosecution is putting these out. let s be clear. didn t they try to hold them from being ad snitd. they did. the defense admitted? they d. the defense knew they existed. there s always a possibility they ll be introduced into trial. they are incredibly damning for this girl. two days ago the defense has been scrambling asking the judge can we please put a psychologist on the stand who s never really, from what we understand, had contact with casey who will talk about how some people interpret trauma and death. and just go into a complete denial process. that this is a scrambling to make up for these tapes. so jay, do they put casey on the stand, and if so, why or why isn t. they almost have to because in the opening statements, they said that she was abused by her father as a child and she was somewhat abused by her older brothers. it explains her mental state? that s why she obeyed her father when casey allegedly drowned. he and her father were hiding the fact. in order to get the fact out, the only one who can say he was abused by her father is her. the father denied it on the stand. the only way to get her defense on is it by taking the stand. she s lieded, the partying, et cetera. the only way for to see get the defense in is to take the stand. thank you very much. we ll make it up to you later. thank you very much. it is becoming a growing, dangerous problem facing air travel. and a man who created a safety hazard has been arrested. we ll explain more in the next hour. ahead, the mystery over newly discovered photographs of the late, grate marilyn monroe. what shot them and when? you re watching msnbc saturday. 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