Special: SCOTUS to Tackle Same-Sex Marriage, Petraeus Pleads Guilty, Obama's Immigration Hurdle, and Iran’s Role Fighting ISIS

ANNOUNCER: This is the WASHINGTON WEEK Webcast Extra.

PETE WILLIAMS, WASHINGTON WEEK GUEST MODERATOR: As someone just said, this is the WASHINGTON WEEK Webcast Extra. I’m Pete Williams, in for Gwen Ifill this week.

I’m joined by Doyle McManus of "The Los Angeles Times", Josh Gerstein of "Politico", Pierre Thomas of ABC News, and Joan Biskupic of "Reuters".

Joan, the Supreme Court heard big case this week with Obamacare. What’s left? Are there any other blockbusters?

JOAN BISKUPIC, REUTERS: Huge. April 28th, we’re going to have the same sex marriage cases up there. Four cases from the Midwest, from Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee and Kentucky, come up. And this is it. This is when the justices are being asked to decide, is there a constitutional right to same sex marriage.

WILLIAMS: So it would apply nationwide.

BISKUPIC: Yes.

WILLIAMS: Not just in those states.

BISKUPIC: Because you’re right, we have 37 states that have allowed it. A little controversy over whether Alabama is letting it go through. But 37 states have allowed it and these four states in the Midwest are under a ruling that said, no, there is no constitutional right.

They’ve appealed to the challengers of those states, people who want to get married, who have appealed to the Supreme Court, and the justices will hear two and a half hours of arguments on April 28th. And as of today, we got all the briefs in from the side of the challengers to those laws banning same sex marriage. And in about a month, we’ll see the other side come in. So, definitely watch this space.

WILLIAMS: Now, let me ask you, the last time the court was confronted with this question from California, Proposition 8, they took a pass. Could they do that again this time or will they really for once and for all answer it?

BISKUPIC: You know, we keep saying they’re about to do it, they’re about to do it, we said that in October when they didn’t take a bunch of cases up. I think this is it. I think with the vast majority of the states now allowing same sex marriage, there’s such a disparity out there that the justices will feel that they need to standardize, make the law uniform nationwide. So, I don’t think there’s an out this time.

WILLIAMS: Pierre, there was about a month’s worth of stories out of the Justice Department this week. And one of them was the end of this legal saga for the former CIA director and former military commander, David Petraeus. Would you say he got a good deal?

PIERRE THOMAS, ABC NEWS: You know, that’s a difficult question to answer. Clearly, no jail time is always a good deal if you’re the person in the hot seat. On the other hand, having your reputation damaged in the way that his was damaged. Remember, this was all over an affair, at least the heart of it in terms of how this came to light.

So, for a person who had such a storied career, the notion that he was so cavalier with classified, highly classified if you believe --

WILLIAMS: What did he plead guilty to?

THOMAS: He basically pled guilty to mishandling classified information. And namely that he had these eight black books. And this book, according to the Justice Department, included information about covert operatives, conversations with the president of the United States, military strategy, our intelligence capabilities.

So, there were a lot of very sensitive things in these books. The irony is that they call it black books and he was accused of having an affair. So, there you go.

WILLIAMS: And he gave them to his mistress who was writing a book about him, right?

THOMAS: Exactly. There was a period of time where he gave the books over to her and I think one source said, what was extremely disturbing is that he kept the books at his home in an unlocked door.

WILLIAMS: Pierre, there are a lot of claims in these cases that there’s a double standard, that high ranking officials who leaked information of mishandled it rarely get punished, or get a slap on the wrist. Whereas, low level people, Bradley Manning or others who released information get often very lengthy pretty sentences.

Do you think this feeds one of those arguments or the other? Because he’s not going to get jail time. But as you say, he’s now been publicly charged with a crime and sort of humiliated.

THOMAS: Well, that’s a long standing argument in terms of do the people in power get the sweetheart deals?

But let me say just in covering these stories, typically, the officials who are charged this time or put them in jail, it’s doing something with the information and making it vulnerable. In this case, there was no evidence that anyone saw that the secretary -- excuse me, the CIA director, intended to hurt national security. It was basically sloppiness, with a little dash of, was he giving these books to his mistress to maintain their relationship?

And so, at the end of the day, if you’re the Justice Department, you’re looking at this storied professional and long time patriot, and you say, OK, are we really going to put this man in jail over what was largely a personal fault?

WILLIAMS: Is this the end of it, or Paula Broadwell herself still have some exposure?

THOMAS: She still does have some exposure, as far as I can tell. That case is not been closed and again, she, according to officials, had taken some of this material home, taken notes about it. And so, therefore, the question is, what do you about here/

WILLIAMS: But he law is focused on people who give classified evidence, not -- or information -- not on people who received it, right?

THOMAS: Pretty much. Again, the bottom line is that you’re not supposed to take this classified information out of secure locations. And two, you’re not authorized to give it to people who don’t have these specific clearances. And whatever clearances that Ms. Broadwell had, it’s pretty clear there were certain things that a four-star general would have access to that she probably shouldn’t have gotten access to.

WILLIAMS: OK. Pierre, thanks.

Josh, one of the legal developments that you’ve been following is over the administration’s new immigration policy, which has been put on hold by a Texas judge. Where does that stand? What’s the next move?

JOSH GERSTEIN, POLITICO: Well, it stands that the administration has appealed that judge’s ruling already to the Fifth Circuit court of Appeals. But that sort of goes along on one track, and the administration, after mulling the issue for about a week, right after this ruling, said we’re going to try to get that stayed, to get that ruling lifted while the appeals go forward.

They filed a request. You have to go to the judge that actually issued the ruling. So, it seems improbable that he would stay his own ruling, but it does happen sometimes. And the process has dragged a little bit.

At one point, the administration said, if you don’t do this right away, we’re going to go to the Fifth Circuit and go over your head demand that this be halted immediately. The judge didn’t act at the pace that the Justice Department. They’ve now said, again, if you don’t act by this coming Monday, one way or the other, we’re going to go over your head.

I assume that this time, they’re serious. And the issue should be I think very likely in front of the Fifth Circuit soon. That’s not a great place for the administration. It’s a very conservative appeals court, probably the most conservative in the country.

So, if this is seen in partisan political terms, they may not get the answer they like right there.

WILLIAMS: So, what they did is they said to the judge, if you don’t decide by Monday on whether to -- you know, put a hold on your own ruling and let us start this process of taking these applications from people, we’re going to go over your head?

GERSTEIN: Right. They said, we reserve our right to that. And the administration is very eager to get this process started, this immigration executive action of the president because some of them have sort of ramp-up time. They’re going to take sometime to process these applications.

And there aren’t that many months left in president Obama’s term. They’ve got, you know, a year and a half or a little more than that to work with. You also have a presidential campaign coming in next year, and there’s some nervousness that this program doesn’t get off the ground and is stalled for six months or nine months, that they might not be able to crank through the millions of applications they’re hoping to crank through in a very short period time, even if the courts eventually lift the hold on this program.

WILLIAMS: All right. And, Doyle, we talked on the broadcast about Iran being the bad guys in the nuclear sense. But there was a very interesting story this week about Iran potentially being the good guys when it comes to fighting ISIS. Tell us about that.

DOYLE MCMANUS, LOS ANGELES TIMES: Well, this is one of those questions about whether the enemy of your enemy is your friend, or your friend on some days, your enemy on others, and it’s a complicated Iraqi situation.

But let me describe it this way -- you remember that, of course, last summer and last fall, the ISIS, the Islamic State, swept through western and northern Iraq, came all the way to the gates of Baghdad. Eventually, the Iraqi army rallied and stopped their momentum. Well, just in the last week, the Iraqi army and associated forces have begun their first counteroffensive against Tikrit, which was Saddam Hussein’s hometown.

Good news, right? Maybe. Maybe not, because it appears that this counteroffensive was actually undertaken against the advice of the American military advisers. It’s being done. The United States is not giving any air cover for this.

It is being -- Tikrit is a very fervent Sunni Muslim area. That’s why Saddam Hussein is from there.

And the main force attacking Tikrit isn’t the regular Iraqi Army, which the government is trying to get more Sunnis in, along with majority Shia. It’s zealous Shiite Muslim militiamen, the equivalent we don’t have an equivalent of this basically, but they’re just not the right people to be doing this, from the long term political perspective. And they’re being advised and supplied and even possibly officered by Iran. That’s the Iranian part.

So, this is basically an Iranian sponsored ground operation that the United States is not comfortable. And what this is about isn’t just the tactical question of who has this piece of land or whether the government extends its grip (ph). It’s about who’s going to control these cities after they’re taken back if they’re taken back. Will there be any control to make sure that the Shiite militias don’t undertake reprisals against the Sunni population, and who will be influential and in control in whatever kind of Iraq comes after this conflict? Will it be an Iranian satellite?

WILLIAMS: So, what’s the U.S. future about all this? Are they just sort of turning a blind eye to it? There really isn’t much they can do about ISIS.

MCMANUS: There isn’t much they can do about it. Actually, it’s in a sense it’s embarrassment, because this was -- we’ve spent a lot of time to build up an Iraqi government that was supposed to be patiently building up Sunni Muslim forces to take Sunni Muslim areas. Now, that government has jumped the gun, done this Iranian-sponsored operation that is making Iran the hero of the Shiite 50-plus percent of Iraq. The United States can’t condemn, but you can tell the administration and military aren’t happy about it.

WILLIAMS: Is it working?

MCMANUS: Is it working? Well, that’s an interesting question. We don’t know yet. It’s actually going quite slowly. And again, it doesn’t have American airpower, which tells you that the United States was not ready to take a lot of risks to make this work.

WILLIAMS: All right. Thank you all, fascinating as usual. Thank you for joining us.

I’m Pete Williams. Gwen will be back here next week for another edition of the WASHINGTON WEEK Webcast Extra.