Did Obama's Explanation to Charlie Rose for NSA Scandal Fall Short?

On Sunday before leaving for the G8 summit, President Obama gave Charlie Rose an exceedingly rare interview which aired Monday. The President and Rose covered a range of topics, including the National Security Agency phone and internet surveillance scandal which the president insisted was transparent, subject to checks and balances, and effective. From the AP:

“It is transparent,” Obama told PBS’ Charlie Rose in an interview broadcast Monday. “That’s why we set up the FISA court,” he added, referring to the secret court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that authorizes two recently disclosed programs: one that gathers U.S. phone records and another that is designed to track the use of U.S.-based Internet servers by foreigners with possible links to terrorism.

On "Real News" Tuesday the panel weighed what the President said with demonstrable reality based on FISA court rulings that suggest the checks and balances perhaps don’t have the teeth that Obama would like everyone to believe. S.E. Cupp asserted that the administration is confusing transparency with oversight.

"We want answers," Cupp said. "We want to know why a program this big is actually effective and why it's actually necessarily.

"It's not enough for you to say it's transparent, we got a court, stop asking questions." 

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