Anger boils over following Morsi decree

>>> egypt's president is expected to address the nation. before that atresz, more violence today in the streets of cairo . protesters demanding president morsi rescind his decree once again clashing with police. there are calms for giant protests coming up for tomorrow as well as saturday. nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel joins us live from cairo with more on this. president morsi, richard, is expected to address the nation at the top of the hour. do we have any information about what he's going to say basically trying to calm the crowds that are expected to protest?

>> reporter: yeah. i think what he's going to say, however, is not going to calm these crowds. it is only going to make them more angry. he's probably going to set a date for a referendum on the constitution . as you said, a week ago today, president morsi gave himself extraordinary powers. he made himself more powerful than any previous egyptian presidents. more powerful than the kings of egypt , in fact. he said that his word was law. that in decree that he issued could not be overturned by the supreme court , by any court in this land. his word was god's word. and people here became very upset. they couldn't exactly figure out what he was trying to do. now it's become clear what he was trying to do. the constitutional drafting body that is writing the new constitution for this country, like the founding fathers , if you will, of the united states , decided to speed up the process. there are some people who believe that this body is not representative. it's composed of islamists, people who support morsi. and, believe it or not, they finished their constitution in record time. and now because they have the protection of morsi, the constitution cannot be challenged. that's why people are out on the street here. they think that this whole process has been a sham. that morsi grabbed powers, he had his allies rush through a constitution that, according to people here, doesn't protect women's rights sufficiently, gives too much power or potential power to islamic clerics in this country, makes coptic christians second-class citizens. a whole host of grievances against this new draft constitution . there are other people in this society, morsi supporters, who think this cushionstitution is fabulous. egypt is very divided. we expect morsi to come out and say to all egyptian people the constitution is written. now you the people have the right to vote on it. and half the people in this country, the people who are represented here in tahrir, are going to clearly vote no. but most observers expect that the constitution will pass. this is not a good sign for the revolution that began here nearly two years ago which was supposed to be for liberal and let's call it democratic values, not for what many believe was a muslim brotherhood takeover by morsi.

>> a lot of people will be watching coming up to find out exactly what morsi has to say again at the top of the hour. protests still planned for tomorrow and saturday. richard engel reporting from cairo for us. richard, thank you.