“Those who commit sexual assault are not only committing a crime, they threaten the trust and discipline that makes our military strong,” he said. “That’s why we have to be determined to stop these crimes.”

A string of sexual assault allegations against officers around the country and a recent Defense Department report that detailed rampant assault and harassment have forced Obama, military leaders, and legislators into action. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel will deliver the commencement address at West Point Military Academy on Saturday. A staff member there has been accused of secretly videotaping female cadets while in the shower.

The president also spent much of the week trying to revive his legislative agenda–which looked all-but-doomed following the Internal Revenue Service scandal, a fresh round of Benghazi hearings, and the Department of Justice’s decision to seize phone records of Associated Press journalists. This was a pivotal moment for the president, who is seeking to keep his second term moving forward.

Here’s how the week played out.

First, Oklahoma: At a news conference on Tuesday, Obama spoke forcefully, intent on showing leadership and engagement—traits that critics said he lacked during scandalpalozza. Besides promising aid, Obama pointed to American resilience in the face of other natural disasters that have struck the nation, including in Joplin, Mo., Tuscaloosa, Ala., and Breezy Point, N.Y. He also mentioned Boston, which was rocked by twin bombings at last month’s marathon.

“In some cases there will be enormous grief that has to be absorbed, but you will not travel that path alone. Your country will travel with you, Obama said. “We are a nation that stands with our fellow citizens as long as it takes.” The president will travel to the tornado-ravaged town of Moore on Sunday to survey the twister’s devastation and to meet with survivors.

Next up, immigration reform: The president is urging lawmakers to pass a final plan after the bill cleared a major hurdle in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. “None of the committee members got everything they wanted and neither did I, but in the end, we all owe it to the American people to get the best possible result over the finish line,” said Obama after the vote.

The proposal that passed–after weeks of hearings–beefs up border security and would allow the country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants to apply for U.S. citizenship. The 13-5 vote occurred only after panel chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy agreed to drop a provision allowing gay Americans to seek green cards for their same-sex spouses or partners.

Republicans had made clear they would not support a bill that included the LGBT visa proposal. The trade-off was painful for many Democrats (and perhaps also for Obama) but it kept alive the prospect of achieving immigration reform. The full Senate is expected to begin debating the bill next month.

The IRS scandal continues to simmer, amid Congressional hearings on the tax collection agency’s targeting of conservative groups before the 2012 election. Obama says he was unaware of the practice, and the White House seemingly offered a new account of how and when it learned the IRS was specially scrutinizing certain groups.

Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday that White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler told White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, along with other top officials, about the IRS’ findings nearly a month ago. Ruemmler decided the information should not be delivered to the president because the inspector general’s report had not been released. Previously, the White House said they did not know about the targeting until the report was released last week.

And then, on Wednesday, Lois Lerner, the IRS official who heads the tax-exempt division at the IRS, invoked her constitutional right to not testify as a witness at a House Oversight committee hearing. She insisted, however, that “I have not done anything wrong.” She quickly came under fire from Republicans for not elaborating on her role.

The White House, still reeling from headlines that the Department of Justice issued subpoenas for AP phone records while investigating the disclosure of classified information having to do with a CIA operation in Yemen, was dealt another blow, too: it was revealed that the DOJ sought a warrant in 2010 to inspect the private emails of Fox News correspondent James Rosen as well.

On Thursday, Obama had a chance to make news rather than react to it, giving a major speech on national security. He repeated his call to close the controversial detention facility in Guantanamo Bay where more than 100 detainees are on a hunger strike. He also defended the use of drones, insisting that the tactic is both effective and legal. “We are at war with an organization that right now would kill as many Americans as they could if we did not stop them first. So this is a just war—a war waged proportionally, in last resort, and in self-defense.” The remarks come as Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged for the first time that the U.S. killed four Americans in drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, including Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical Muslim cleric.

Obama made the case that drones were the best available option in certain circumstances. “For the record, I do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S. citizen–with a drone or with a shotgun–without due process. Nor should any president deploy armed drones over U.S. soil,” he said. “But when a U.S. citizen goes abroad to wage war against America and is actively plotting to kill U.S. citizens, and when neither the United States nor our partners are in a position to capture him before he carries out a plot, his citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a swat team,” he said, referring to al-Awlaki, who planned a Christmas Day 2009 bombing of a plane over Detroit.

Obama said he’s asked his administration to review proposals to extend oversight of drone strikes and wants to work with Congress on establishing an independent court to review future potential strikes.

In the Thursday speech Obama discussed the future of Gitmo. As a candidate, Obama promised to close the Guantanamo detention center. The fact that it remains open–holding detainees who have been cleared or never charged, and with increasing concerns about the force-feeding of hunger-strikers–is seen by many in the president’s progressive base as the most significant disappointment of his presidency.

During his foreign policy speech, Obama repeated his call for Congress to close the prison camp. He announced he would lift (his own) moratorium on transferring the prison’s Yemeni detainees to their home country. But he didn’t disavow the practice of indefinite detention.

Even with the human rights questions that remained unanswered, the national security speech was a strong performance. Obama–with his speech about race and Rev. Wright, his defense of “just wars” when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize–has shown an ability to communicate complex ideas to the public with nuance and authority.

He is also apparently benefiting from optimism about the economy: despite the messy week, Obama’s approval rating stayed above 50%.

The next few weeks will be full of more tests for the president as he seeks to regain control of the political conversation. He will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping early next month in California to discuss cyber security and North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. He’ll also visit Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. And there’s nothing like an exotic backdrop to produce some fresh headlines–even as his political opponents show no sign of letting go of the old ones.

It’s not that women aren’t capable, Jones said in April at a University of Virginia panel discussion in front of students, “they are very capable,” but babies are a “killer” to a trader’s focus.

Jones posited that having children hurts the success of women just as traumatic emotional events, like divorce, affect male traders.

“As soon as that baby’s lips touched that girl’s bosom, forget it,” Jones said, recalling two women who worked with him in the late 1970s. “They both got married,” he said, “and then they both had—which in my mind is as big of a killer as divorce is—they both had children.”

The billionaire who tops the Forbes 400 list at number 108 said men aren’t affected by their children in this way.

“Every desire to understand what is going to make this go up or go down is going to be overwhelmed by the most beautiful experience,” he said, “which a man will never share, about a mode of connection between that mother and that baby.”

A video of a panel discussion obtained by The Washington Post through a Freedom of Information Act request.

“The emotional distraction that comes from divorce is so overwhelming,” he said. “You can just automatically subtract 10- to 20% from any manager if he is going through a divorce.”

Jones responded to the newspaper, saying “my off-the-cuff remarks at the University of Virginia were with regard to global macro traders, who are on-call 24/7 and of whom there are likely only a few thousand successful practitioners in the world today. Macro trading requires a high degree of skill, focus and repetition. Life events, such as birth, divorce, death of a loved one and other emotional highs and lows are obstacles to success in this specific field of finance.”

The Morning Joe panel discussed the comments with a panel of powerful women. Watch below.

On the West Coast, he joined the Antelope Valley Dynasty All-Stars, a competitive extracurricular cheerleading club. As a first-time cheerleader, he learned in a week what other athletes take months to perfect. His new middle school in Palmdale didn’t offer football, but he hoped to play the sport again when he entered high school. Nigel looked forward to traveling with the cheerleading team to Las Vegas, Anaheim, and Palm Springs for competitions.

“It seemed the gym was a release or escape for him,” Nigel’s father, James Hardy, told MSNBC.

Nigel also enjoyed playing his guitar and listening to music with his older sister; when he lived with her in Indiana, he often asked for advice about dealing with the girls at his middle school.

(Photo courtesy of the Hardy family)

Nigel was found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound on April 15 at a restaurant in Rosamond, Calif., after being reported missing and possibly armed with a gun.

More children’s stories>

Earlier this week, Democratic Arizona State Rep. Juan Mendez was invited by a Republican-controlled House to give the day’s opening prayer. What Mendez, an atheist, said was less a prayer than an invocation of the First Amendment, and the separation of church and state:

Most prayers in this room begin with a request to bow your heads. I would like to ask that you not bow your heads. I would like to ask that you take a moment to look around the room at all the men and women here in this moment, sharing this extraordinary experience of being alive, and dedicating ourselves to working toward improving the lives of the people of our state. This is a room in which there are many challenging debates, many moments of tension, of ideological division, of frustration. But this is also a room where, as my secular humanist traditions stress, by the very fact of being human, we have much more in common than we have differences…Let us root our policy-making process in these values that are relevant to all Arizonans, regardless of religious belief or non-belief. In gratitude and in love, in reason and in compassion, let us work together for a better Arizona.

Fellow Arizona Rep. Steve Smith, however, didn’t seem to think Mendez’s prayer was adequate; the next day he led the Arizona House to join him in a prayer of repentance for it. The Speaker of the Arizona House, though appreciative of Smith’s concern, said he saw no issue with Mendez’s prayer.

The Pope too seemed to soften the Roman Catholic church’s stance on atheism Wednesday in a weekly radio address. As MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said in Thursday’s Rewrite, His Holiness “got all performance art and inserted an imaginary atheist in a dialogue” about doing good.

“We must meet one another doing good,” the Pope implored, to which the fictional atheist in his speech said: “‘But I don’t believe, Father. I am an atheist!’ But do good,” the Pope replied, “we will meet one another there.”

This exchange, said O’Donnell, “is a very big improvement on ‘you will burn in Hell forever,’ which was the official Catholic position [on atheism] through the first half of the 20th Century.”

Zimmerman’s lawyer, Mark O’Mara, plans to introduce into evidence photos showing Trayvon Martin blowing smoke, what appears to be marijuana, and a hand holding a gun. Additional evidence, released through a website run by Zimmerman’s defense team on Thursday, includes texts from Martin where he discusses smoking marijuana, school suspension, and guns.

“I’ve explained to them it’s just a desperate attempt by Zimmerman’s defense to try to prejudice and influence the jury, and that is an old strategy,” Martin family lawyer Benjamin Crump explained on Thursday’s PoliticsNation.

“All of this stuff they put out today is completely irrelevant,” he said. ”These photos are irrelevant. The only photos that are relevant are the pictures of Trayvon Martin on the night that he was shot and killed by George Zimmerman.”

“We’ve always believed that [Zimmerman's lawyers] know if the jury follows the evidence that they will convict George Zimmerman of killing Trayvon Martin,” he said, calling photos and text messages referencing marijuana use “red herrings.”

Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty in the Feb. 26 shooting death of Martin, claiming he shot Martin in self-defense after Martin attacked him.

O’Mara defended the relevance of some of the images and messages on Fox News Thursday afternoon. “Arguably [the picture of the gun] is relevant because if the issue of Trayvon Martin’s propensity for violence becomes relevant, then the jury can consider the fact that he had several pictures of a gun and of course his text messages talked about his attempts to purchase a gun,” O’Mara said. “That that could be relevant concerning a propensity of violence.”

He also defended some of the text messages in which Trayvon discussed violence.

“If we are talking about who Trayvon Martin was that night, if that becomes relevant regarding how the state represents it, then the idea that this was a person who was familiar with fighting, familiar with getting on top of somebody, another text said. I think that’s very relevant for a jury to look back and say what did happen in that one minute or so that we don’t have audio evidence for,” he said.

It’s unclear at this point if the evidence will be admissible in court.

Jeff Deen, a former assistant state attorney in Florida and the head of a state agency that represents criminal defendants, told NBC News that strict rules having to do with character evidence will likely make Martin’s texts and photos inadmissible at trial.

“What does his mom saying he needs to live with his dad for a while say about why he was shot? Nothing,” he said. “Generally, reputation evidence is not admissible in court.”

Late Thursday NBC News learned that Zimmerman’s defense team filed a request for a delay in the trial.

Note: George Zimmerman has sued NBCUniversal for defamation, and the company has strongly denied his allegations.

In the run-up to the speech, media outlets reported that the speech would center on drones and Guantanamo prison; however, President Obama saved the issue of the 166 detainees for the end of his speech;

I once again call on Congress to lift the restrictions on detainee transfers from Gitmo. I have asked the Department of Defense to designate a site in the United States where we can hold military commissions. I am appointing a new, senior envoy at the State Department and Defense Department whose sole responsibility will be to achieve the transfer of detainees to third countries. I am lifting the moratorium on detainee transfers to Yemen, so we can review them on a case by case basis. To the greatest extent possible, we will transfer detainees who have been cleared to go to other countries. Where appropriate, we will bring terrorists to justice in our courts and military justice system. And we will insist that judicial review be available for every detainee.

President Obama’s statements were contradictory. He blamed Congress for halting transfers, but announced he would be lifting the ban on transfers to Yemen, which is a self-imposed policy. “The idea that he has lifted the ban on returning Yemenis to Yemen is something you can’t give him too much credit for because he’s the one who put that in place,” said attorney David Remes, who represents 17 of the current prisoners at Gitmo, 14 of whom are Yemeni.  “It’s a meaningless statement. At the same time he’s saying Congress has tied his hands,” added Remes.  In an earlier conversation with MSNBC, Remes spoke of the needed action regarding the 56 cleared Yemeni detainees; “[Obama] cannot make meaningful progress without sending the Yemenis home…they all want to reunite with their families and rebuild their lives.”

While the appointment of a new envoy to oversee transfers is a step forward, it is mostly a symbolic one until prisoners start leaving Guantanamo.  That announcement also comes close on the heels of the closure of the  State Department’s office that served the same purpose, suggesting that the renewed spotlight due to the hunger strike may have forced the administration to retrace steps. The president’s remarks echoed much of what he said in 2009 when he called for the closing of the prison, citing its expenses, damage to the country’s reputation, and unjust practices.  “This is what he did in 2009 and everybody thought that the Guantanamo issue was over.  Everybody thought Guantanamo was closing and had been closed and simply fell out of public consciousness for four years or more and then it took this horrible hunger strike,” added Remes. “And now he’s put it away again.” Back in 2009, Obama announced he was ordering a review of all 240 Gitmo cases, 69% of those prisoners remain in Guantanamo.

The president concluded his statement on the detention facility by saying,

Even after we take these steps, one issue will remain: how to deal with those Gitmo detainees who we know have participated in dangerous plots or attacks, but who cannot be prosecuted–for example because the evidence against them has been compromised or is inadmissible in a court of law. But once we commit to a process of closing Gitmo, I am confident that this legacy problem can be resolved, consistent with our commitment to the rule of law.

Those words are another endorsement of indefinite detention. In spite of the president’s calls for judicial process, he couched what is being hailed as a resumption of transfers with the option to continue holding prisoners regardless of evidence.  “We needed to hear [Obama] also make the case under the existing authority he has under the NDAA,” said Pardiss Kebriaei, of the Center for Constitutional Rights, on All in w/ Chris Hayes.  President Obama “said transfers will resume under the extent possible, we needed to hear him say now,” she continued. “He has said the right thing before.”

While the president referred to the ongoing hunger strike, he made no mention of the Joint Detention Group’s (JDG) treatment of prisoners.  Since the start of the hunger strike in February, guards at Guantanamo have removed prisoners’ basic necessities, interfered with sleep and prayer, and have recently begun conducting invasive searches whenever prisoners leave their cells in Camp 5 or Camp 6 to receive phone calls or meet with their attorneys in Camp Echo or Camp Delta.

Wednesday evening attorneys for Saeed Mohammed Saleh Hatim filed an emergency motion, with more than 10 addition legal teams joining, concerning prisoners’ access to counsel. The motion contends that these intrusive searches “which involves touching and holding a detainee’s genitals and buttocks” prevent legal counsel and that the “government had previously recognized that such searches offend and humiliate Islamic detainees and had banned them at Guantanamo.”

The president’s statements echoed 2009. Will his actions be different?

But in the course of his hour-long remarks, Obama did not address a number of pressing issues, raising questions about how significantly his counterterrorism policy will actually change in the next three years.

The Obama administration acknowledged that the United States had killed four American citizens in drone strikes since 2009. The president laid out his rationale for using targeted lethal force, calling drones “legal” and “effective.” He insisted that only “al Qaeda and its associated forces” are targeted, and that even then, “the use of drones is heavily constrained”–although he did not spell out the definition of “associated forces.” He did not commit to releasing the legal memos that lay out the justification for drone strikes or account for the thousands of collateral deaths that have occurred.

The president also avoided explaining exactly what information has been included in the briefings that Congress receives in advance of drone strikes, and he didn’t describe what future increased oversight will be. Also notable for its absence: any mention of “signature” strikes, which target individuals based on patterns of behavior deemed to indicate militancy, without information on the target’s actual identity. Some have interpreted the use of force rules released by the administration Thursday to mean an end to signature strikes, but neither Obama nor the rules explicitly commit to ending the practice.

Drone strikes are a tool in the 12-year-old war on terror–a war, the president said, that cannot continue. American involvement in the Afghan war is winding down and al Qaeda has been decimated, he said, and while the United States must defend itself against threats going forward, “this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.” But last week Michael Sheehan, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, testified at a Senate hearing that he believed the war on terror will last “at least 10 to 20 years” from now.

Perhaps most troubling to human rights and civil liberties advocates was what the president didn’t say when he laid out his new plan to close Guantanamo Bay. Obama once again called on Congress to lift the restrictions on detainee transfers (despite the fact that he has the power to order the Secretary of Defense to issue waivers that would allow prisoners to go home). He did announce that he would appoint a new senior envoy to arrange prisoner transfers and would lift his moratorium on transferring detainees to Yemen.

Obama conjured the devastating legacy that inaction on Guantanamo would leave. “Imagine a future–ten years from now, or twenty years from now–when the United States of America is still holding people who have been charged with no crime on a piece of land that is not a part of our country,” he said. “Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are holding a hunger strike. Is that who we are?”

While he spoke movingly of the moral imperative to lessen the suffering of men who have been held without trial or charge for years, Obama made no promise to discontinue the practices of indefinite detention or military commissions, both of which have been condemned by human rights organizations here and abroad. Obama acknowledged that if all the men cleared for transfer leave the prison, there will still be men whom the government deems to be dangerous but “who cannot be prosecuted, for example because the evidence against them has been compromised or is inadmissable in a court of law.” On the question of how to prosecute these men fairly under the constitution, the president said only that he is “confident that this legacy problem can be resolved.”

Military commissions, notoriously slow and opaque, will be an inefficient way to prosecute terrorism cases once the prisoners are relocated to the United States, as Obama promised to do. So it could still be years before the men stand trial. “Moving the location of Guantanamo does not make the just prosecution of people any quicker,” Laura Murphy, Director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union told MSNBC. “I don’t know what is in his speech that would make us believe that these people are going to be prosecuted any more quickly. There wasn’t a time commitment.”

Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth echoed Murphy’s skepticism. “The president’s plan to move detainees into the United States, including for prosecution before discredited military commissions, is not the answer. The detainees should either be prosecuted in US civilian courts, or released.”

A group of 1,300 activists including Daniel Ellsberg, John Cusack, and Medea Benjamin of Code Pink signed an ad published in The New York Times calling on President Obama  to close Guantanamo and “stop the torture.”

Benjamin attended the speech and interrupted the president more than once to demand the immediate release of the 86 cleared prisoners and question the president’s handling of the drone program. “The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to,” Obama said. But he quickly returned to his prepared remarks.

School districts in Texas would allow school employees to carry concealed weapons on public school campuses under the school marshal program, which is modeled after the federal air marshal program, according to the bill’s author, Texas Rep. Jason Villalba. The bill’s author said the Newtown mass shooting led him to draft the legislation. Villalba argued that the Protection of Texas Children Act ”provides school districts with a cost-effective school security option that includes robust training tailored to protect children in schools during an active shooter situation.”

Only certain school officials, law enforcement officials and the Texas Department of Public Safety would be able to identify the school marshals, who would be authorized to respond only to an active shooter or other emergency situations. School districts lacking the resources to hire law enforcement officers for their campuses would appoint an educator, administrator, staff member or campus official to undergo 80 hours of training developed by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education. The training would include a mental health evaluation and firearms proficiency test more stringent than the concealed handgun license statutes.

The news of the major gun bill to pass the Texas Legislature falls on the same day a newly released Pew poll indicates broad support for the expansion of background checks. Eighty one percent of Americans believe Congress should pass legislation expanding background checks but a majority–56%–say it is unlikely that Congress will pass significant gun control laws this year. The poll also found that Democrats and independents were more supportive of passing the Senate background checks bill than Republicans. Nearly six in 10 Republicans support the Senate bill vs. 88% of Democrats and 71% of independents.

In April, the Senate rejected a gun proposal drafted by Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia (a Democrat) and Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania that aimed to tighten restrictions on gun buyers and on firearm sales at gun shows and on the Internet. The failure to pass stricter gun legislation prompted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to put the bill on hold in the Senate.

While the school marshal bill advances in Texas, gun rights advocates are filing a lawsuit in federal court against Connecticut’s new gun control law, stating that the law signed by Gov. Dannel Malloy violates Connecticut’s constitution and the Second Amendment right to bear arms. The gun lobby is asking a federal court in Bridgeport to overturn the law banning more than 100 types of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.

Connecticut’s gun control legislation was passed less than four months after the horrific Newtown shooting.

Filed by the Connecticut Citizen’s Defense League and with an assist from the National Rifle Association, the 49-page lawsuit argues that the rights of gun buyers have been largely curbed by the Connecticut government. “The lawsuit seeks to vindicate the constitutional rights of citizens who are harmed by the broad prohibitions and unworkable vagueness of the new law,” Scott Wilson, president of the CCDL said. “The suit also challenges Connecticut’s definition of assault weapons and cites confusion among law enforcement over what is and is not banned.”