when larger numbers were going into science, engineering, medicine, and so forth. and this partly reflected was supposed to market incentives, and now that we are reconsidering the contribution of finance to the well being of the economy, we might conclude that having a smaller fraction going into finance might not be a bad thing to. >> i do want to say this. i think we're dealing with x. i didn't executive compensation and i think one thing that does trouble most americans and members of both sides of the aisle, is that some of the very large banks do borrow very cheaply from the fed. and that is taxpayer subsidized. in one way or another.

whether they invest them in treasury odds or carry trade, or whether they use them to trade and make additional profits. the original premise was that that money would be loans, and it is not. now i will say this, the flip side of the argument is that they're using those trading profits to cover some of their lending losses. and in some ways that makes the banks stronger, and it may avoid the government having to come up and pick up a liability. you know, that's one of their answers. another one that they say is that there are not borrowers. they can find borrowers that are qualified. now, i talk to the people back in alabama, and they say when we deal with a large banks, they

say they are not interested in loaning someone $200,000. they are interested in 100 million-dollar deals. so i think that's a really problem, particularly as banks get bigger and bigger. they are not lending on main street. they are lending to large corporations, but smaller businesses can't get loans. and i do think the american people do believe that by being able to borrow cheaply from the fed, and some of the guarantees that have been extended, that that money is finding its way into compensation, which gives the appearance of being excessive. so i think these are valid concerns. and also, the last concern, and i will close with this and i think it is a concern we all have. as they do this trading, they tend to be going back and doing what got them in trouble in the

first place, and that's speculating, leveraging. and what happens, do we get right back in the problem we had? and if they're going to get in trouble, they say, yeah, you don't want us to make battled. that's true, we also don't want them to make trades that are risky. if anything, the trade to benefit themselves, proprietary trades. where the lending at least gets the economy. >> with a gentleman? if they can make doing money doing everything but link that may be a factor to not let me. will have and all the hearing on friday, february 5 with a borrowers and regulators and lenders, and we want to get into this question about why more loans are being made. it is a bipartisan concern that i think it is legitimate to acquire and to the extent at which other opportunities to make money displays lending either directly or indirectly. i mean, -- >> i think one answer is to look at whether they are linda, and if they're not lending, the

government if they're going to make money available at out to be those institutions that are lending. and lending on main street. and put some competition. >> that will be our february 15. the last question from the gentleman, mr. grayson? >> thank you, mr. chairman. and capitalism, waiters have to win and losers have to lose. people are normally rewarded for success, and they are punished for failure. we went to an expensive we're between the middle of 2007 and the end of 2008, that 18 month period, we lost $12 trillion in our country's net worth, according to the federal reserve figures. the net worth of america dropped from $62 trillion, the 50 trillion, 20 percent in the last 18 months and the bush administration. is there any sign that since these bailouts begin the institutions and individuals on

wall street and in major banks who were responsible for the decisions that led to that loss of $12 trillion, actually were held accountable for it? inside all? professor stiglitz? >> no. >> ms. minow? >> no. >> professor bebchuk speakers i think some of them lost their positions. some of them lost money, but by and large they have not been held sufficiently accountable. and the most important thing is we don't yet have incentives going forward. that would make people to the right thing in terms of risk taking. >> well, you raise an interesting point. i asked the head of aig, who actually were the people responsible for the losses that led to the government bailout and he wouldn't tell me their names. isn't it possible that the people who led to this financial disaster not only in america, but around the world are still doing the same jobs and very often down the block from where they were before? >> i think some of the key people did lose their positions,

so some of the top people at aig are no longer there. but i think that i agree with you, probably they have not been held sufficiently accountable. and more important, many of them have been able to locate and still keep large amounts of money that were based on results that they had in 2006 and 2007, which were disastrously reversed in 2008. >> what does it mean for a capitalist country like the united states, if overlong pit of time fans there is rewarded? and capital is to structure and is rewarded? what does that mean in the long run? >> ms. minow? >> bankrupting. >> for the country? >> for the country. >> professor stiglitz? >> it obviously has a very adverse effect on the efficiency of our economy, and that's what it is not real capitalism where

you socialize the losses come and to privatize the games. and that leads to distort behavior and that's what a lot of what we're talking about is going forward. it's not even with the past that it is going forward, that unless we correct these incentive problems at the organizational and individual level, we are not going to have exact the same kind of problems again. >> and transixty? i agree. the difference between is very substantial and costly for the countries well being. >> no, on wall street that during ratio between assets and equity is often 10 to one or more, right? professor stiglitz. >> if it were only 10 to one i think we would think of that as very conservative. it's been up to 30, 40 to one. and that is an example of excessive risk-taking. with very little social benefit that you can associate with that high level of risk taking. >> lets it was only 10 to one.

is it true that every dollar that is paid in executive compensation and $10 less in love ability for these institutions, the ability to lend out money to the rest of american? >> we were talking bout at the beginning of the hearing, that money that goes out and bonuses is money that is not available in the, you might say the net worth of the bank. and therefore, not available as the basis of the leverage that the bank can lend out. >> to the managers of these institutions on wall street and the big banks around the country have any incentive at all in an economy that's based on incentives, like america's, any incentive at all to economize under their own compensation? ms. minow? >> no, i think the sky is the limit. >> professor stiglitz? >> the incentives are distorted. we been talking about what would happen if they had long running incentives, if they have more, really effective long running

incentives and the really don't have these kinds of really effective incentives. then of course, they would say if i keep the base of the company larger, the net worth of the company larger, it will make larger profits in the long run. and therefore, in the long run, the company is doing better and i will get an appropriate return. but that's not the way the current incentive structures are designed. >> mr. bebchuk? >> they don't have the right incentives. privately they would be better off paying, having larger compensation, even at some cost to the shareholders. we have seen is in firms that were making decisions for top funding. and it seemed that some executives were eager to return to top funding, even one that was closely to their shareholders as evidence i market fractions in order to get out of the restrictions. the top funding had, or the

competition. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> i thank the witnesses. we will take further testimony. particularly on the question of how you deal with short-term. and also on what i think i will title so what part of this, which is if you don't let us make all this money, we will go off and do other things. we know they're not going to england. in fact, you know, one of our major bank ceos that i won't mention here, complained to the chancellor of the that they were driving away, his potential investment on canary wharf because of that compensation restriction. so they really are trying to place off against each other. i will be in next weekend one thing i will focus on is reinforced this agreement, both with compensation and regulation, that we are not going to be playing all. and i think america will wind up

being a little more relaxed than others. so then the question is okay, we will go off and engage in other lines of work. maybe if we got some more family physicians and less people doing mathematical models, it wouldn't be such a bad thing. thank you all. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> and ms. minow will please stop by and spelled out for us. >> yes, sir. i like your tie. [laughter] >> [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] a look at the white house will president obama today is meeting with advisers, but no public events planned. we will bring you the white hous briefing. at a scheduled 4:12:30 p.m. eastern. watch it live here on c-span2. on c-span live at 1 p.m. eastern, they will talk about the state of the coast guard

>> house and senate in recess for the presidents' day holiday. speaker pelosi is leading a delegation to haiti. the associate press reporting that a 12 member delegation will assess ways to aid the recovery from the earthquake. five senators and seven representatives and examining reconstruction efforts there. others include senator harkin from iowa and representative charlie rangel of new york. we're going to bring you a briefing on the situation in haiti and u.s. relief efforts 1 p.m. eastern with the u.s. ambassador to haiti, kenneth martin. that will be live on c-span3. you are looking at the u.s. capitol from the museum in washington. washington, d.c. itself on the fourth day of several snowstorms. if they ask a. the government is back in service today. but with federal government offices closed for much of the week, we spoke with "washington post" reporter earlier today about what the cost has been to taxpayers. >> host: speaking of the work

the government does, and o'keefe is the "washington post" reporter to watch the federal government at work and the capital city. he's on the line with us right now, and the rest of the country, he is the watching could have been telling some of the taxpayers in productivity and and of the ways. what can you tell us about that? >> using investment that the office of personnel management has been using and talking about, these delays have cost taxpayers roughly $450 million i believe as to. and that is basically telling the payroll for about 270,000 federal workers who did not show up to work this week. but yesterday in the afternoon john meyer who basically is the h.r. director step that said, we're probably going to have to redo this estimate because we have solid summary reports this week a federal workers working at home on their laptops or on

their own personal computer using their blackberries to get work done. conference calls have been held over those that it is believed that much fewer than a 270,000, unicom have actually been able to do their work. and so it's expected that they will be able to go back at the beginning of the we can start to put together a new estimate of what it cost taxpayers. in a time federal offices closed because of the weather. >> are there any other effects that people around the country will feel from washington not at work this week? >> i made a few calls on that question yesterday and wednesday to try to get to that. and they remind you if you talk to government folks, that about 87 percent of the federal government employees work beyond the immediate washington region. at the places like irs call centers our social security check processing center, most of those are located will be on washington. so the checks are going out.

the national parks are still being protected, if you will. and as one person put to me yesterday, it isn't really critical it was going to get done this way. >> two hundred seventy thousand federal workers in the washington area, that's the tally, and most of them not able to work at their offices. but you're saying a whole new approach to work with digital connectivity? >> that's right. telework is what they call. it's a grown increasingly popular. if you at least get a comment on my blog, they say i've been working all week at home with the kids in the other room, or with my own internet connection. so don't tell me that federal workers haven't been working. than 270,000 figure is the people who were not able to show up this week. what they call nonessential or nonemergency federal employees. there's an estimated, anywhere between 40,600,000 federal employees and contractors in this region, it is the

washington areas largest employer. but that number is they fire on those that would not show up this week because of the weather. >> thanks are keeping an eye for the rest of us on our federal civil servants, and especially how they were able to respond in this week's historic snowstorm. we appreciate it and we will look for new calculations as the office of personnel management learns to deal with teleworking. >> thank you. >> and you. ed o'keefe with the "washington post." >> the white house is in business today and robert gibbs has a briefing coming up and just over 10 minutes scheduled for 12:30 p.m. we'll have that live for you here on c-span. the house and senate in recess for the president's daybreak. before they left, the senate confirmed by unanimous consent more than a dozens nominees. the "new york times" reported the quote from that statement a good first step, but he added there are still dozens of nominees on hold to deserve a

similar vote, a vote by the and i will be looking for action from the senate when it returns from recess. the president commenting about the approval yesterday by the u.s. senate. so we areaiting for the briefing from robert gibbs coming up at 12:30 p.m. each. why we look at that, news and comments today's of today's "washington journal." this is debi on the democrats line. good morning. >> caller: good morning. it is great to talk to you. i think that it may be off the subject but why do whatever look, we have no idea how much money goes there. we heard there is a lot of wasted. just a suggestion that if i just may say please, republicans and, independent, democrats, they are trying to tear us apart their don't let them do it. to our own research and hopefully we can stay together. thank you, c-span. >> host: next up is mary, republicans watching us in sarasota. you're on. >> caller: thank you for this opportunity. i think one of the ideas that i

had was to tell the senators to develop life insurance policy that cannot be canceled, premiums can be deferred, but in a lifetime of a student, if they were to have a life insurance policy with the u.s. department of education as the only beneficiary. they are nothing all our circles, including those defaulted could easily be paid back. the amount of a premium for life insurance policy for a 55 year-old is still less than one-third of what the collection agencies subcontracted under the u.s. department of education is wanting. and very threatening. another thing i'd like to say is that i also think that part of the unemployment money that's being extended, that those rules should be reconsidered. because all too long, people are just sitting back and they're going through the 200 resumes, but they are not required to take a job that my pay them for

less money. >> host: you're offering your ideas, but this is a question washington's response to the current situation. may i ask you, do you think washington is up to the task of dealing with our current situations? >> caller: yes, i think they have to because they have to support, especially the executive offices, the u.s. constitution. and we have to look at a greater picture. which is not limited to the next 10 years. >> host: thank you, mary. next up is john watching and urgent that independent life. what do you think, do you think washington can do with our current situation on that history will judge the results? >> caller: definitely not the way they're acting a. i think president obama, i watched him repeatedly over the last couple weeks, and he is often confronted with the question, you know, the voters don't appear to be behind you with your big spending initiatives, and yet he constantly corrects the questioner and says, that's not

what's wrong. what they need is this, this and this. for example, recently he said i have a small business owner, and i'm not hiring anybody sense obama took office i have laid off three people. so what he said was small business needs more loans so that they can keep the wheels running. in their business. when i run my business, i don't borrow money. i don't borrow money to keep my doors open. we operate on income. i'm not getting more in debt. and i think it shows how off-track he is. you, what the american people want right now is we want to pay our bills. we want to pay the federal debt. we want to start paying instead increasing it. so we want to stop right now, stop increasing the debt, and we want to start paying the debt. >> host: thank you, john. donna sends us this would've message. the whole congress needs to go.

they only work to get reelected. they have done absolutely nothing for the people of this country. her e-mail or twitter message reflects some of the moves that are captured in this nude "new york times"/cbs poll. we will take a little more into it as we progress here. next is a call from michigan. on our republican line. you were on the air. >> caller: good morning. the last republican caller kind of stole my thunder. i am tired of talking about the deficit. i want to pay down the debt. it's time to balance the budget. we have to do the tough things that need to be done. there's no need for commissions. you know, look at the former comptroller david walker. they have done all the studies have been done. we know we have a horrible, horrible future coming with our entitlement programs. and they have to be fixed now. there's no better time to fix it than when you have one party in

control, complete control like we have right now. and the people who created these great societies, social security, it's their party. they championed these programs. they should fix them, not start new programs. i mean, i'm just appalled. i have three small children and i think governor payton was correct when she said this is generational theft going on. it's horrible. it is child abuse. >> host: banks. i want washington to get out of the way. they just make it worse no matter what it is. next comment comes from donald and tallahassee. on is on our democrats line. you are on the air, donald. >> caller: good morning. >> host: convoy, sir. >> caller: i just wanted to come all the republicans don't want government involved in every morning, if you don't want the government to do it jobs, stop asking for jobs and find your

own job. if you don't want the government to do nothing but fight a war, i think if all the republicans get together and they get and find their own solution to this deficit and let other people alone because we love the government. and the government, the republicans know that the democrats are doing something right. so that would help the budget i feel if the republicans, would go out there and find a job on their own alone for themselves. >> host: question as, do you think barack obama has spent too much, too little or the right amount of time trying to fix the economy. approve disapprove of the way congress is handling its job. congress as a whole, 75% disapproval. in general, is your opinion of the democratic party favorable or not favorable -- not favorable -- which comes closest to your

feelings about the way things are going in washington? 17% say angry and another 53% say dissatisfied but not angry. the question for you is, has washington got the power toç ce together in the right way to fix the problems that failed the nation right now? massachusetts is the next call. albert, republican line. caller: i wanted to say on lincoln's birthday that i feel emancipated that the federal government has been closed and life goes on. i think the lesson here, people talking about jobs -- the economic engine is small business, it is not government. government cannot solve all problems. we spent trillions upon trillionsw3 of dollirr and have done nothing but restrict those of us who own small businesses. here in massachusetts, it cost

another 30 cents or 40 cents >> caller: hello. good morning. >> host: good morning. >> caller: good morning, how are you? >> host: how about your contribution to the conversation today? >> caller: as far as the deficit goes? are you talking about the deficit? >> host: yes, sir. >> caller: i think that obama, his heart is in the right place. i think he came into office between a rock and a hard place. this country is definitely in trouble. i think it has a lot to do with

our current, if he had federal money that was printed, and what have you. i think it is hard is in the right place. there's so much, i get so sick of this partyline stuff. it's got to start. it's not an issue. they look like a budget deal goes on capitol hill. there's got to be a happy medium in there. >> host: when parties, the house and senate are closely divided and the parties are vying for your vote, how do they come together and still win your vote? that's really the conundrum when you're in politics. >> caller: they got to show some sort of cooperation. i lean towards being a democrat, but also an independent. i am for the candidate. that's the trouble with politicians. they will take anything to get elected. and that's where the problem comes in. when they get in and they're looking at the next election. what are you going to do to make things better today. >> host: thank you. next is edward.

edward is on our independent life. good morning to you. >> caller: good morning. i'd like to make a comment about the debt and deficit that i'm old enough to remember when they used to collect a lot more social security and what you call what they're paying a. is all used to be kept separate. of the general fund, and then along came a certain president from i think it was in the '80s, where all of a sudden all of that stuff into dove and a general fund. and ious got put on a separate file for the baby boomers who are paying in. now we're trying to retire, now we're being told that there is what, i don't know how many trillion of unfunded liabilities on the stuff? but nobody wants to go back and see where it all went. . .

they are getting social security and disability and they're perfectly capable of getting a job and supporting their families. this is costing the government, i can't even imagine how much money every year to provide for these people. they're perfectly capable of getting a job and taking care of themselves and their families. these people, a lot of them are in their 20s and their main goal in life to collect social security tax. i just don't understand how the government can do this and why there isn't some kind of overhaul on this and

this is ridiculous. >> host: yesterday the senate came back in brief session and there was announcement of jobs legislation. "new york times" off lead tell us more what is happening. senators strike bipart sawn deal on to break deadlock. republic cans and democrats reaching an area bipartisan agreement on steps to spur job creation. democratic leaders would only move ahead on some elements as two parties move to address both the strugglely economy and voter unrest over grid lock in washington. senator harry reid would take four core job creating initiatives from the by partisan proposal and seek public works spending and seek to move those rapidly -- rapidly through the senate. the plan developed by senators max baucus and charles grassley and caught

lawmakers by surprise and threatened to undercut republican proposal even as members of congress and white house sought ways working together across party lines after months of deep partisan division. let's go back to the phone calls. wes, from alabama. >> caller: yes, ma'am. >> host: yes, sir you're on, please speak up. >> caller: just watching this c-span here and i appreciate you leting me on. one of the things i think this country ought to do is rethink foreign aid. here we are, going trillions and trillions of dollars in debt and we're giving more money away than what we're are trying to help the american people. the second thing, it should be against the law for any publicly-owned company to give bonuses to their management and then, when they're showing a loss. if they are not showing a

profit, at least 10%, where they can pay taxes, and, where, or, can harm american people, the american government should make a law they can not pay a bonus. because of the, they have got these companies set up now that board members make all the decisions. voters can even vote on pays or bonus or anything and they make all the decisions and, it is shafting the stockholders and, american people too. >> host: thank you. >> caller: we are rewarding these companies for taking jobs out of the country. >> host: thank you. next up comment from andrew independent line in since gnat ted. good morning, andrew. >> caller: good morning. i'm sort of listening a and i'm a first time caller and i think we cut all we can. we cut all the services we

can. here in cincinnati we're laying off policemen. laying off workers. we were supposed to be repairing our potholes. it takes money to run these things, and unfortunately the way our system is set up, that any politician, whether democrat or republican who even raises the issue of raising taxes is voted out of office. and, until that changes, you know, you see all these people with the bumper stickers, freedom isn't free, and that's when they're back in this free war or, put it on the debt war, but i mean, hey, i think it is patriotic to pay your taxes. if we're running this war and some kid is over there in afghanistan, the least we can do is pony up money to pay. or if i want your roads running, or if you want the snowplows, your electricity, all these things. this isn't free. we are undertaxed in this

country. so, any politician who supports that, basically dead on arrival. and second thing, so that would alienate the voters. and then the second thing that they could do, which they would never do to alienate the lobbyists. they cot do that by, for instance, enforcing fair trade. chinese, dumping poison on their people, meaninging in their food and you can't pick up a paper these days without some type of call-back and some horrible thing in the manufacturing. but, you know, they have this mantra of free trade. has there ever been a intelligent discussion on why shipping our jobs overseas is good for us? i never heard that discussion. you know. and, any politician who wants to stand up and say, no, tariffs, these types of things, can't get reelected.

>> host: andrew, new voice on "washington journal." what do you do in cincinnati. cody: i got in late flight and don't really want to say our employer. >> host: thank you for "the new york times" reporting on the jobs bill and discussion between the, bipartisan senate members and the leader, harry reid. strong editorial from "the new york times" this morning. listen the to language. how not to write a jobs bill. they say in the lead editorial, the jobs bill emerging in the senate is pathetic. both as a response to joblessness and example of legislation deemed capable of winning bipartisan support. $85 billion proposal put forward thursday morning by max baucus and charles grassley scarcely began to grapple with the $266 billion in provisions for jobs and stimulus that president obama proposed in his budget. it was not even in the same league as the modest house passed $154 billion jobs bill.

worse, about half of the proposal had nothing to do with new jobs. with 14.8 million americans unemployed, more than 40% of them for more than six months. smaller package is so puny as to be meaningless. and even bigger problem is that the hiring credit is unlikely to work as unless it is paired with other federal support to generate and maintain consumer demand. mainly extended unemployment benefits and more fiscal aid to the states. no matter what congress does to lower the cost of labor, employers won't hire unless they believe demand will be sufficient to sell whatever the business produces. that is the "new york times" lead editorial today. we're having this conversation about senator conrad, during a hearing yesterday, on the budget and the deficit and debt issues, saying that history is going to judge washington for how it approaches these problems. next is a call from bellflower, california. this is patrick, democrats line. good morning, patrick.

>> caller: good morning. yes, i am a first-time caller but let's look at history. the history that the, i want to look at is look at what took place under president clinton. he actually invested in america, and when he invested in america, it brought us a surplus which america became a lot more stronger. then, we elected the republican administration, and under the bush administration, what ended up happening is, we went to war under a pretense or a lie which took our deficit and our, we spent tons of money on a lie that just shouldn't have been. and then, because of this lie, we have all of this money we have lost and made our surplus go away. now, what's interesting is

that, when democratic political party gets back in power, we have a president here that wants to invest in america, and yet, everybody is going bananas how much money he wants to spend in order to invest in america. when they didn't, they don't look at what was spent during the republican administration for the war which was a lie. so all of the money that has to be spent on trying to invest in america, to bring america back to its feet, everybody is looking at it like it is so much money that they have to spend when the money that they're spending is, is something that they supposed to do in order for us to get back on our feet. >> host: thank you, patrick. got a lot of callers on the line. sorry to interrupt you but we've got to move on. to dennis a republican in

wisconsin. >> caller: thank god for c-span. i've been listening to c-span or watching c-span for most of my adult life. i never seen this many first-time callers in such a period of time. which is fantastic. i love this about our nation. okay, if less people would apply for federal jobs, the federal government would think they would need to offer less federal jobs. unemployment, don't even get me started with unemployment. if they just take all that revenue, and give it to employers to have people come and work, even if it is on a temporary basis, you know, let people, you know, shake the rust off. let them brush it off and, give the money to an employer. let that employer give that money to them. you know, of course, they can juice the pot a little and up the ante for that and so they get a bigger check. i really feel that less people need to, look towards public jobs and, you look towards private jobs. we, i look in the classified

ads and i see, wanted, you know, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. nobody, nobody is even calling on these. i'm not even looking for a job. i have a job, which says a lot because our, in the construction trades in my area it is 25% unemployment right now. in this small, little faction of this state and, you know, if we just get less people waiting for that, that prime job, that fits all their job criteria. swallow your pride. go out there. help out somebody who needs a helper. work. because it is easier to get a job if you have a job. >> host: thank you, dennis. yesterday the labor secretary, hilda solis, announced new rules on temporary immigrant farmworkers program, saying they would raise wages and strengthen labor protections for foreign and american workers says "the new york times." under new rules growers will not be able

to@test to find american workers to fill jobs but prove they conducted job searches. labor department will establish a national electronic registry of farm jobs to assist the effort. american farm worker organizations hailed changes but growers group said they would could be costly and prohibitively cumbersome, for many farmers particularly smaller producers. next is kansas city, missouri rid. barbara, democrats line. >> caller: hello. >> host: you're on the air. >> caller: yes, ma'am. >> host: gone. jim in savannah, independent line. >> caller: yeah. thanks for having me on. i got a little comment about how possibly we could look maybe killing two birds with one stone, one as far as job creation and one farce taxes. -- as far as, taxes. according to the constitution taxes are supposed to be raised by government in form of duties on trade and tariffs. if we would look at free

trade, it hasn't been free for a long time. we've taken the brunt of it and carried other countries by leting them bring our goods into this country and at a cheap price. we send our to their country and they inflate the price. we probably, looked at what we're taking from the american people, working people, about 30 piss of their wage and apply that, trade and tariffs. that will drive up the prices on foreign goods and make it easier to create americans jobs, people shopping more looking for things in the usa. other than that, i wish these politicians would get together and try to do something for the good of our country instead of fighting how they get elect next four years. >> host: that's jim. barbara on the line from kansas city. thanks for waiting. you're on now, democrats line. >> caller: good morning, susan. i was calling in to say i

think history will judge both democrats and republicans very harshly in the future and that's because the democrats, which i am one, don't stand up for what they believe in enough. they let the bully republicans repeat over and over and over their talking points every time they get on the air, and then, they whip the ignorant and the homophobic and racists up. that is what keeps them in office by saying divisive things. i think if we're going to get a hold of this deficit people are going to have to be more informed. just like the health bill. it is mainly, what the republicans want but they keep yelling that they didn't get what they want. we don't have the public option. we don't have single-payer. most of the, things they talked about abortion thing. they took that out. everything they want, they get because they just holler over and over and the democrats are too nice to do them the same way.

they will get something on a democrat and every time they get on the air they go over and over and over it. democrats don't do that. and so therefore, the squeaky wheel gets the oil and all you hear about is what the republicans and they, and the homosexuals and the black folks. that is because the republicans keep that on their minds so they can get them back in office because it is more, it is a lot of that type of person in america. whether we want to admit it or not. >> host: barbara, in kansas city, thank you, barbara. talk about politics. couple announcements from the political world. in florida, lincoln diaz-balart is announcing his retirement. "miamial has the headline. senate third ranking dem match up could be entertain being and caustic race of the year. he dismiss ad similar draft movement to run against christopher dodd in neighboring connecticut. we told you about patrick

kennedy not seeking 9th term in the house. "providence journal", his hometown newspaper, that he created an emotion-laden advertisement released by his office thursday that will air in the home state on sunday night that is already on youtube. let's listen how he is positioning his decision not to run again. >> having spent two decades in politics my life is taking a new direction and i will not be a candidate for reelection this year. going forward, i will continue many of the fights we waged together particularly on behalf of those suffering from depression, addiction, autism and post-tramatic stress disorder. i'm so grateful to the people of rhode island. when i made missteps or suffered set backs you responded not with contempt but with compassion. those who stood by me like a brother, thank you for all the times you lifted me up, pushed me forward and filled my heart with hope. by standing on your shoulders i was able to do more to advance my family's

fight for social justice and more for our great state than i ever thought was possible. rhode island, thank you. >> host: the two minute spot all together is available on youtube if you want to see all of it. 42-year-old rhode island congressman who buried his father this year and his decision not to seek reelection. we can judge by the language how he is positioning himself for the future. let's go next to winston-salem north carolina. julie republican line. >> caller: good morning. >> host: good morning. >> caller: excited to get through. i think they will be decide be judged with the deficit. blame is to be laid with republicans and democrats. i think one of the things that strikes me is that we've heard so much about there being a lot of fraud and graft in entitlement programs. to me, it seems that you could form some sort of commission to seriously finally look at that. and, lastly, i just want to

say i've been unemployed for almost two years now and, i really wish that we could do something that was a lot more proactive about getting jobs out into the public. i'm not sure what the answer is but the bickering and like the previous caller, i believe, implying that people of different beliefs are homophobes and that sort of thing is just not helping the conversation. that's what i wanted to say. >> host: julie, what field were you in when you lost your job? >> caller: i was in the tobacco field. >> host: what are you thinking about for the future? >> caller: i do have a degree in psychology. unfortunately there has been absolutely nothing available to me. i am right now looking at pursuing a master's. >> host: and in what field? >> caller: in the counseling field. >> host: so you think your future might be in that direction? >> caller: i think so. >> host: how long will that take you and what is your investment like for that? >> caller: it will be very costly. right now i have deferment on ply previous student loan

which was $275 a month. but, if it will get me a job that will hopefully weather future economic stress, i'm sure it will be worth it. >> host: do you mind if i ask what your age range is? >> caller: certainly. 51 years old. >> host: you're making a big change in your 50s? >> caller: that's correct. >> host: are you ready for this? >> caller: i've got to do something. staying at home is certainly not productive. >> host: good luck in your job search. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. >> host: next up, wakeman, ohio, jerry, independent. >> caller: good morning. the entitlement program, both foreign and here, from what i've heard from the economists when i watch c-span and they're talking to everybody, is way out of line. it's just, it's killing the country from what they're saying. they need to do something about the health care, and the banks and get them in

line so they're not cheating the people. i mean, you're taking taxpayer money from a person who makes 50, 60,000 a year, and your giving it to people who are abusing the system and, they don't even have to report that money. they get food stamps through the year. and, then they get a big tax check and the people that are actually paying the money in, they're not getting hardly anything back. and, the whole system is wrong. >> host: thanks, jerry. if you're interested in watching the hearing we covered, senator jeff sessions was also very actively involved. they had rudolph penner and maya maginnis testify before the committee. it is available on c-span's video library and archived there ready for you to watch. i'm sure we'll give it additional play over the weekend. we also linked "the new york times" survey we told you

about this morning that, shows public dissatisfaction with washington at our web site, c-span.org under the "washington journal" box. let's take our last call. from evanston, illinois, excuse me, randy. democrats line. >> caller: good morning, susan. how are you? >> host: fine, thanks. >> caller: you're one of the best hosts the "washington journal". >> host: thank you. >> caller: to answer your question, do they have the power and all to do this here? they really don't. it was pretty much demonstrated about the a couple of weeks ago when kent conrad and that republican hypocrite from new hampshire, judd gregg his name is, they actually amassed a bill to have this budget commission to do this here and the key, one of the key things, parts about that whatever the decision they came up with, would have been binding. you had seven other republicans signing onto the bill. they, when it came time for a vote, seven republicans disappeared even the president was talking about that. so now the president issued

an executive order to get it done but the thing is, it is not binding. this demonstrates that they don't have the political will to do it. to make those tough choices. they can do it. it is like, they need intervention. if you ask this question as though you witness a person burning down a house and then you ask the question, did that person do it. >> host: randy, a question for you. are voters responsible for washington's reaction? >> caller: i tell you what they are. this is why. a lot speak in bumper sticker, gentleman called from cincinnati, andrew, he had it on the mark. people speak, 99.9% of them are republican. they speak in this bumper sticker mentality as eposed to what is reality. that is what, so they do. and the media, kind of help pushes it. which, there is few people on your show that, your colleagues, you know, that

scully, steve scully. these people push, they push this right-wing talking point and it doesn't serve the country at all. it does not. we need to have serious conversations. a tour of presidential grieve sites. the book is a unique and comprehensive guide to the resting places of this nation's presidents. contributor richard norton smith on the concept behind the book. >> it is a wonderful way to humanize and personalize the past. to take events and movements that otherwise that might seem i am possibly remote. there is something universally we'll all one day be on our deathbed. we're all going to face growing old. we all have to question

wrestle with questions of imortality and mortality. those are some of the themes that run through all of this. but, it's also, frankly an entertaining book. there are lots of stories, lots of anecdotes designed again to humanize all of these people. >> available now at your favorite book seller or order directly from the publisher at public affairs books.com.

>> live now, at the white house waiting for the start of the briefing with robert gibbs which should get underway momentarily. the yesterday the senate confirmed by unanimous consent more than two dozen of president obama's nominees to federal positions. he may hear questions about that. also china's reaction today to the planned visit by the dalai lama to the white house next week. elbe at the white house next thursday, february the 18th. it is likely that the spokesman, robert gibbs will get some questions on that as well. from capitol hill, news that speaker pelosi is headed to

haiti with a delegation of 12-member delegation to look at earthquake recovery there and u.s. efforts there in haiti. among those members, one republican, george lemieux, the senator from florida. so the briefing here at white house set to begin in just a couple minutes. live here on c-span2. [inaudible conversations]

gnawed. [inaudible conversations] >> here at the white house waiting for briefing with robert gibbs to get underway. a couple of other live events to tell you about getting underway at this hour on c-span. the commandant of the coast guard, thad allen will talk about the state of the coast guard, earthquake relief in haiti and coast guard budget

and more. >> let's do a couple, one announcement and week ahead before we get started. president obama called former president nelson mandela this morning to congratulate him on the 20th anniversary of his release from prison. president obama expressed the american people's great admiration for president mandela who was very appreciative of the call. next, let's do a quick week ahead. on sunday, i don't have anything for tomorrow. on sunday the president will travel to camp david. he will return to the white house on monday. >> time for that? >> i don't but we will, we will, let me get that for pool duty. >> doing anything --

[inaudible] >> i will inquire. i assume that will be up there at camp david. on tuesday the president will visit and tour jobs training center in the capitol region. on wednesday the president will meet with king juan-carlos of spain at the white house. on thursday, the president is, as we talked about yesterday would meet with the dalai lama here. he will then travel to denver, colorado where he will deliver a remarks at an event for senator bennett. then travel to las vegas, nevada. on friday the president will hold events with senator reid in las vegas. and include discussions with citizens and business leaders about working together to, address our, the economic challenges facing nevada and rest of america. the president will return that afternoon to washington, d.c. and i will find out your pool time for sunday . .

let's understand a couple of different things. one, i don't think there will be, i don't think there'll be only piece of legislation that will encompass all of the ids that members in the senate or even the president have a for strengthening our economy and creating a better environment

for hiring. i think that will probably take many forms, we've never thought that it was going to go through one package. senator reid's legislation i wouldn't characterize it as a democratic only planet since the hiring tax credits as you know the schumer hatch legislation designed by senators schumer and senator hatch, it has small business expenses reauthorization of the highway bill, and an extension of bill america. again, i think this is just one of many vehicles that will likely go through the senate during this process. i think there are a number of ideas that will garner bipartisan support to that aren't in the initial piece of legislation and senator riegle do it.

unemployment insurance extensions. cobra health care extensions for the unemployed and extension of the sba lending program. i think there are a host of things that can and will garner bipartisan support both in the vehicle as center reed is moving when the senate gets back to and will move throughout this process. >> the vehicle as it stands now? >> look, i think their jobs tax credit is very akin to what the president had in mind. and i think infrastructure investment is something he has talked about. the expensing provisions, all of which the president will be using. >> for about the latest happening yesterday? there is a statement released by you about the president's support of a bipartisan senate bill and then by day's end this

was a bipartisan bill. >> i think, let's be clear. i think that the legislation that senator reid will move when the senate comes back into town hall will garner bipartisan support. i think there are things that democrats and republicans alike agree on a common need to be in that -- they need to be in the next, some of which we just went over that also garner bipartisan support. i don't think there will just be one vehicle that moves and i don't think there was only one chance at getting by partisanship. i think there are a series of ideas that all of us agree need to be put forward to stabilize our economy. >> just to finish that thought, understanding this might garner bipartisan support the way this happened did the white house is coming? >> i don't know the degree to

which senator reid who i see immediate reports made his decision before congress -- i don't know the degree to which you talked about that with us. >> speaking of bipartisanship, are you encouraged by what appears to be growing sense of bipartisanship on financial regulation in progress? are you encouraged that that might mean the bill can be finished by this summer and that to you haven't any sense or is the white house willing to compromise at all on what appears to be the biggest thinking points of the financial protection agency? >> i think there are, jeff, strong signals on a number of runs that working together has its advantages whether it is on financial regulatory reform which obviously the president believes is a big priority this year. look, one of the big points that was discussed in the bipartisan meeting on tuesday was what

senator mcconnell about moving nominees -- i recounted the story yesterday with 63 held for more of than a month. 10 times the number that had been held for more than a month at this point in the president bush's administration and the senate passed nearly 30 by unanimous consent last night. so i think whether it's financial regulatory reform, whether it is provisions to help small businesses, whether it is moving qualified nominees forward, i think we can see certainly this week the benefits of work is together. in terms of the consumer, the consumer -- i think the president's still believes is a great priority. two have the independent authority to ensure that

consumers in this reform are protected and unprotected -- protected and from the type of loans that we've seen happen that led to massive foreclosure, the type of tricks with credit cards that we had seen in the past and legislation that congress approved and the president signed is intended to deal with. so the president continues to be a very strong supporter of that function of the reform bill that we said to potter. >> that agency has to be separate entity? something he's willing to compromise on? >> i don't know that nature of the two proposals. obviously this is something that would need to have a independent authority and i think that's what's important and that's what consumers want. important for their protection. >> does that indicate that maybe there's wiggle room as long as

independent authorities preserve? >> look, we will -- i think what the president would greatly resist is the notion that somehow this is the protection of consumers unattainable and financial reform. >> [inaudible] >> when i am saying is without knowing exactly the vehicle might, in a bipartisan proposal from the senate, obviously we would look at this assuming that if strong consumer protections and the authority within the legislation but i don't want to get ahead of -- i don't want to get ahead of that proposal might look like. >> last month asked you if the president had an opinion on some of the discussions in changing the senate rules so that the republicans or the minority in the future would be able to demand 60 roseç as often.

my understanding is one of the president's close allies in the senate, dick durbin, is starting to support the bill with talks with our can brought up and introducing a sliding scale so the 60 votes would be required as often. have the best discuss it with senator durbin? >> let me check on whether we've had conversations with senator durbin. there's been great frustration on either side either on this side or on capitol hill about the sheer amount of times in which co-chair is needed to be invoked. we have certainly discussed the frustrations of particular relation to noncontroversial legislation or noncontroversial nominee is. we've for the president discuss tsa director that had been had

to see cloture, cloture was a close loading and approved 96 to nothing. i think that point he realized that this is a rule that is being abused. i will check with whether any conversation has been had with senator durbin about senator harkins legislation. >> following up on the question about the bipartisan jobs bill that baucus and grassley have been working on, the reason given is my understanding by the majority leader read for scrapping the average to the dismay of the senators working on it is that there were protests from some of the more liberal or progressive members of the democratic caucus and the senate, is of this kind of bipartisan move that those four senators bipartisan senators have been working on exactly what the president had been talking about and isn't harry reid move to scrap it regardless of what comes out of the senate

eventually, isn't that contrary to what the president's been talking about? >> again, i think again -- >> yes put your support behind a bipartisan effort. >> we support working in a bipartisan way to get these things done. whether the vehicle goes to mingei, whether the vehicle is the four items as century has now and whether that includes an employment, kolber extensions now and whether that includes extension for sba lending, whether that includes tax and standards and disaster relief, those are discussions they will have. again, i believe that. i believe that many and have these, many of these will be implemented and voted on and approved with strong bredesen majorities. >> will you guys obviously have

support in the bipartisan effort in these four senators have been working hard on this bipartisan effort in the senator reid because of apparent concerns from liberal democrats scrapped it. that had to been disappointing to the president's into identical to his calls for this. >> i do not think that too -- i do not think that taking first call the main part of the piece of legislation that senator riegle have in the senate is that schumer hatch jobs tax credit to. so i think -- what legislative vehicle of many of these bipartisan ideas, whatever it moves on, i think is in some ways not quite as important as demonstrating that we can work together. in the centerpiece of a bill that will move when the senate

comes back from recess. in a bipartisan jobs tax credit, i think it sends the inappropriate to message to small businesses around the country that washington can work together in to create an environment that incentivizes the additional hiring of workers and small businesses. i think that's what the president has talked about. >> is there paraphrasing the president, bipartisanship can just be adopting one person said of ideas. i understand hatch and sugar were working on the tax credit together but that is something that was the president's proposal, a democratic idea ultimately. >> well, brandon is a proposalç that to the president offered. i'm not sure you consider senator hatch to be somehow overly sympathetic to the white

house's view on these issues. i think it demonstrates -- >> is part of a larger package, my point. >> my way of saying if you look at ninth both what's in this legislation and i think if you look at what isn't in this legislation that will ultimately move, one i can't imagine a scenario in which extending unemployment benefits for those who have been out of work and having those benefits expire isn't going to garner bipartisan support. extending -- health care. >> and jobs version when the president was asked about when he was here and asked about mr. mcconnell talking about how the two support republicans in support nuclear energy or clean coal technology and the president's response was, of course, they like fats republican ideas we are offering in the name of bipartisanship and so what's going on here is the reverse, harry reid taking

out the one democratic idea. >> to think helping small businesses grow by allowing to write off part of their spinach years is just something that's democratic idea? do think extending the highway trust fund extension is somehow a uniquely democratic idea price i think if you were to break the four components of that bill out individually in which each of those would garner strong bipartisan support. look, i think we are in an in some ways over reading some of this because again i think personally i believe that the four components of this bill, several components that are in the bipartisan bill but aren't in the read bill barstow be bipartisan. i don't think any of the ideas i've listed here today are uniquely democratic ideas that

have dispensed with republican ideas in their step. >> could you set us straight on the president's role in deciding whether the trial of ks7 will be -- >> obviously the decision was appropriately in conjunction in an interagency process by the attorney-general, but obviously there are efforts on capitol hill who through legislation to restrict either the type of or the trout 4ksm in this conspiracy. that by definition involves the white house and ultimately the president. so since this effort has moved from saint clean a justice department decision to something in the legislative arena the white house and by definition the president are in bob. >> it seems he is the person

saint -- >> he is not in the map room with a big map of picking a location. obviously the president and members of the white house staff have an equity in this given what is going on in capitol hill legislation. >> following up on that though, let me read your note first, is a valentine's day note? doesn't have snoopy on it? >> i was wrong earlier. if you want to let folks know, i just got word that the debt limit paygo will be signed later today. >> behind closed doors. >> not on my note to appear in. >> following up on the when the case has some question on sunday when katie couric asked the president ruling out trying in your city he said in i have not

ruled out. was he saying there that i haven't ruled out that he is the decision maker on this. >> obviously he is the commander-in-chief of. obviously he said he had not ruled it out, that we had taken into account the security and logistical concerns that have been brought forth by new york city. and those will have me as he said taken into account before when a final decision is made of. >> in the final decision as to strongly implied will be by him? >> again, i think he will have strong equities in this decision. and you will hear from a lot of different people. >> when will the decision come down? >> i don't know, i know it was brought up a meeting i was in earlier today but it was not a decision making meeting.

>> when you said he will hear from a lot of people the input is coming for him to make a decision? >> i think he will hear from a lot of people and be involved in a larger process. >> much more deeply personally involved. >> again because congress has become involved in this, will because legislation to restrict when the venue and the type of trial, the white house is more involved. >> the president thinks there was a political pinning here, to make the decisions to try him in new york in the first place and having a different direction now? >> i will remind you that some of the people who -- some of the people you hear now opposed to the trial in new yorker in november supportive of the trial. again, we are going to take into account security and logistical concerns that those -- those individuals now have, the cost

of the trial obviously is one thing, and all of that will be taken into account. >> if i could follow up on the line of questioning, i think your answer is basically that in the end most of this stuff will be taken off hopefully on a bipartisan basis by is and it's also about the tone and? and by doing what harry reid did yesterday you have four members working together, people were looking around going what's wrong, we have four people working on a bipartisan basis and then we realize harry reid was slapping them in the face were as chuck grassley said point the rug out of this effort to destroy the town of bipartisanship. >> no, i think that is -- the centerpiece was the schumer hatch small-business hiring tax

could. that is the hallmark. >> [inaudible] >> that's now the hallmark of legislation that will move in the senate. here's what i think is most important is are we going to come are we going to get these individual items and items that are in this legislation passed to benefit the american people and army going to get them passed in a bipartisan way? i think the answer to both is yes. >> all that matters is whether they pass bipartisan votes, not whether people were together. >> no, because i thank you are going to have bipartisan votes because there were to gather on ideas that appeal to both democrats and republicans. the president's example of, the president's example that he used that j. brown of the other day was when you just have ideas that appeals to one party on this side or just the idea that appeals to the party on the other side, tax cuts encouraged

to prevent investment is not a person idea. reauthorize and in extending the highway bill for a year, always gets strong bipartisan support. bill america bonds will have bipartisan support, the hiring tax credits written by a democratic senator and republican senator by definition will have bipartisan support. what's not in that bill extending tax cuts, will likely have bipartisan support including something like the research and development tax credits want extending unemployment compensation unwed, because it's not in person idea, extending lending programs. >> does the hardball person tactic -- >> again, i think your greatly overeating and greatly oversimplifying what's going on.

>> to think it was a hardball political tactics? >> i just don't see it. >> attorney general holder commented in the washington post would ever the case is tried it and form we have to assure its transparent as possible and in here to the rules. is that the administration's position where? >> no, the question posed to have an one asks it fair trials can be held in the military commissions. and i get to a transcript. >> we should not treated as a new openness and blacks were. >> understanding this that military commissions had traditionally been something bad to had a sign for the supreme court to woo some constitutional problems until this administration were gained on a bipartisan basis with capitol hill of reforming the process. >> do you feel like the administration feels military

commissions are imperial to the article? >> no, i think the way that things -- i think the reform efforts that have been brought about ensure would withstand constitutional. >> if the administration considering military commission for him? >> i would just go back to what i said earlier in the sense that there are a series of one of things being looked at. most appropriately the security and logistical concerns of those in new york as a decision is being made has been embarrassed the president involved and the location of civilian court trial in the consideration of whether who military commission or that interfere with this? >> look, i've discussed why the president is involved in how we will take part in into. >> following up on that, she

asked if there were, of military commission was something you are considering and your response were a series of things looked at so i would read that to mean that as, yes, that is. >> i would just say this, without eliminating all of the factors that are involved, first and foremost, which as i've said before when security concerns, logistical concerns about where you hold the trial in new york, what that would mean for the downtown area, that have to be taken into account but as you for the presidency last week he's not ruled out the fact tht khalid sheikh mohammed would still be tried in federal court in new york. so i think that is -- first and foremost as with the president is focused on. >> with hasn't ruled out the other options? >> focused on the decision at hand. >> on the issue of recent appointments, when you talk

about the issue to attack iraq people who haven't had a chance to come up for a vote because they're held by a senator over this that are the other. and does the president you not option who plans for some it like a linebacker who did in france have a majority but not super majority. with. >> i think there are the president has nominated north qualified him, very qualified individuals for the positions that he's nominated them for. we hope and believe him that someone after the discussion that the president had with senator mcconnell on tuesday is clear that the senate heard that conversation and acted by she learned that she saw the president in his statement last night he's not going to foreclose that if what continues to stall when continue, he is now ruling at using recess

appointments for anybody who's nominated. the best way to avoid that, the best way to avoid that is for the senate to work through this process. >> which two view that as a stalling technique. >> yes,. anybody the president's nominated to has been approved is somebody that the president would consider. >> if he had only 49 groce? >> i'm not going to go through a hole host of different scenarios. >> is that -- does the president believe that's what the founders had in mind with the recess appointments of provision to given the authority to circumvent the senate's action or inaction on nominees when the senate -- >> i've not spoken constitutionally with the president about his theory on that. i think the practical measure is again understand that while the senate, when it did last night in moving a series of nominees

that the president's bout or qualitatively and quantitatively different than what had been held at that point in the bush administration is still that way. there are 63 that have been pending for a month and they dealt with half of them. so instead of a 10 to one ratio we have a five to one ratio. i don't think the president believes that's an acceptable number. the best way to deal with this and so is by having the senate to work through the process of loading aboard down on these nominees. >> do you remember whether then senator obama objective and with senator reid keeping the chamber in session during the last two years of the bush administration so that he could not make any recess appointments? >> if you may have that -- i don't recall. >> one other question. i wonder what she thought of a cbs news new york times poll finding last night.

>> never heard of it. >> shows only 12 percent of those surveyed believe they got a tax cut over the last year. >> i would say they call the wrong people. look i think what happened and one of the things i think will go through this bipartisan jobs process is state and local aid. understand if you look in last month's job report, the number of state and local government jobs lost was 41,000. out of that monthly jobs report to because i think in many cases and you see now the importance of something like state and local aid because as bad as state budgets for last year there actually worse this year. so i think even s -- even as people may or may not have felt

what they got from the federal government they may have gotten something different from other state and local government in order to make out and -- to make up for a collective budget shortfall among the 50 states and something exceeding $125 billion. ..

>> i don't think the president's decision is -- i don't think the timeline for presidential decision is held up by the timing of whether the senate or the house act on individually on legislation, no. >> is he waiting any particular regist from mr. holder? >> i'm not going to get into the process of what's going on. just to say the process is ongoing. >> would he favor a military permission trial short of being ordered to do so by trial? >> again, i think savannah largely asked that. this is a process that's ongoing. >> robert, what type of message

are we sending to the countries like india that are dealing and also helping the united states on a global war against terrorism on this trial and being soft on the terrorist? >> i'm sorry -- i don't. i didn't get the last part of that. >> many countries seem that the u.s. should be tougher than those countries than are dealing with the terrorists. >> look, we -- mohammed, i forget the exact date he was brought into custody. it's been a long time. one way or the other, he will be brought to justice bethese decisions. i don't think you can be any tougher than that. this president has without going into great detail, taken the

fight internationally to terror suspects. we will -- we are going to -- we will see justice delayed by the way, on behalf of, thousands that were killed on september 11th because of the hateful acts of somebody like mohammed. >> let me -- >> let me go back to -- >> on the senate jobs bill setting aside the bill, does the white house believe it's large enough to have the effect to create jobs? >> major, i don't think what has the umbrella of the jobs bill is going to be the only component that the house and senate deal with in creating jobs; right? i think extenting unemployment

benefits is something that is important for those that don't have work in sun staining their effort to help find work. that's not in what the senate would deal with at the end of this recession. but it's a component of a large -- a series of measures that the president outlined either at brookings speech that he gave at the state of the union or that's in his budget. so again i don't look at this -- right. i don't look at what the administration does and look at what is going to happen at a the end of february when the senate considered these four provisions to be the end of that consideration of measures dealing with economic stability. >> the administration transfer continue to prioritize whatever other follow-on legislation comes from the senate, house, or jobs over any other issues, specifically health care. >> yes, look, --

>> the definition is stillion gaiting the process of dealing with jobs legislation. having it in smaller bills. >> well, look, the legislative process is -- will work through itself. but look obviously some things you're going to have to act on. because for unemployment benefits or cobra, you meet deadlines for expires benefits that these individuals who are unemployed need. i think we're pleased with the pacing of this. this was something that, you know, if you go from the state yours very of the union to what the senate will consider, understanding that the house has already passed a fairly -- >> much larger. >> -- big package. so you have half of that process done. >> all right. i would to get a chance to address something in the "washington post" by former

attorney general mukasey. what the homeland security advisor and attorney general, not only was there no authority and policy requiring that all of the those deteared in the united states be treated as criminal defendants, but relevant authority was and is the opposite. >> read it again. >> there is no relevant authority under the bush administration required that awful those contained in the united states be treated as criminals. which mukasey said was the bush administration policy. he goes on to write but relevant authority was is -- was and is the opposite. >> i don't think mukasey would argue that the process of somebody being an enemy combatant they wouldn't in

fighting have access based on his rulings to council; right? >> yeah, for the me significance. -- for the petition -- not all other rights in the humdy case created as legal venue. not all of the other rights of accusing the bush administration. >> let's also do what attorney general mukasey and others in the bush administration -- they suggested that because military commissions were set up that somebody like a agreed five minutes after they were taken off after airlines flights wouldn't be held because we didn't have military commissions. military commissions aren't a venue for interrogation, it's for adjudicating justice.

is attorney general saying that the united states of america, the minute they walked a mirandaized richard reed didn't have attention? it's a principal that has -- it's a principal that we've had for as long as this country has existed. so i don't know if he ruled that law attention didn't exist on that day. >> on the case, how concerned is the president or white house legislative team about what appears to be a growing number of senate democrat signing on to block all funding entirely. to what degree is the president telephoning members to try to persuade them to hold off or change their mind? >> i don't know know of calls that the president has made. there may have been calls from the council office or from legislative affairs to discuss people's opinion on legislation

or on potential upcoming votes. look, i just leave it at this. >> it was a very important consideration of congress in the entire debate, was it not? >> there's no question about it. and i think -- it is an important aspect of this. it's an important aspect of our broader efforts in dealing with terrorism. and it's something that the administration is working through actively. >> the president would not be personally involved, why? if it's so important. >> i'm saying i do not believe he has made phone calls. you asked me specifically about phone calls to the democrats about the legislation. i will go back and look at the phone logs that are sent around. nothing pops into my head. let me double check. >> all right. i want to try the jobs bill things again on chips point of tone. senator reid changed course, and then effectively challenged republicans to oppose the bill.

that was a fairly significant change in tone and republicans feel that they are being set up politically here to some degree. can they trust the president and democratic leadership in congress when they talk about bipartisanship if this is the first kind of experience that they are having since the state of the union and a lot of this bipartisan talk? >> of course republicans can trust the president. they werer in a room not far from where we are sitting discussing many of the elements that will be voted on at the end of february on a jobs bill. again, i think that -- again, i think you'll see a strong bipartisan vote. i think you'll see -- and i think you'll see a strong bipartisan vote on aspect that is aren't in this legislation but are part of what democrats and republicans alike believe is important for stabilizing our economy. >> does the white house

understand the republican frustration over this? it sounds to me like you are saying what's the big deal? >> we have been frustrated for the better part of the last year. yeah, we've -- >> on this point. the white house yesterday endorsed the process that was taking place. that changes respects are angry and confused. do you understand that? >> look. the president didn't talk about bipartisanship on accident. the president has throughout his tenure as president been frustrated that we haven't worked together more. not just about economically now, but what we had to do economically a little more than a year ago when the times were even more dire. when we were facing job loss in the -- as we've discussed in here, the 700,000 range each

month. when we didn't know if we'd wake up and the financial system that day would have collapsed. look, i can understand the frustrations of democrats and republicans alike that regrettably the process of washington has overwhelmed a series of ideas that the american people want to see on behalf -- work for them on behalf of the cares and concerns that they have. absolutely. >> robert, just two questions. >> make come back at end. i'd like a cherry on top of the sundae. >> you'd like what? >> nothing. don't worry about it. [laughter] >> going back to mark's question, the public perception of the tax cut thes, was that like a marketing problem? >> no, again, i think -- look. again. it's hard to demonstrate to people that did get a tax cut at a federal level if they saw based on a budget shortfall in a

state that may have had to raised taxes and fees. look. that's why -- look, i think that -- i think that the american people look at a number of different factors that goes into understanding and speaking to the frustration that they have about this economy; right? these things -- they don't happen in silos. what happens at a federal level and state level are felt by both of those are felt by individuals on the ground. i think what it demonstrates is that whether there's four aspects of a package that's moving through the senate, they are going to have to be a series of things that happen in coordination with all levels of government in order to get this economy moving again. if the federal government adds

money through recovery to stimulate demand while states are having to pull back greatly, you're going to create a situation where that's not going to ultimately be felt. that's why one the big aspects of the recovery plan that was originally passed by congress was state and local fiscal relief through fmap funding, which cushioned that blow. >> you also structured the tax cut in a way that was supposed to maximize the economic impact. by having the -- that's going to minimize the political impact? >> well, look, you know -- would i have liked to hire somebody and knocked on everyone's door, like the publisher clearinghouse guys, with the check and balloon? maybe that would have had a greater effect. what they found in the structuring of the tax cut was that if i hand you $350 and you

know you're not likely to get handed $350 every week, you're going to pocket and save that money. because you are struggling economically. you're much more likely to put that into the economy in increased consumer spending and demand if you understand that it is going to be something that you feel maybe not all once, but a little bit over a series of time in that you can increase your demand by that much. that's the way the tax cut was structured, obviously the marketers got kicked out of that meeting. >> you guys have been very critical of republicans on filibusters. what message does the way it sends on the jobs bill when senator reid is practically forcing a filibuster and procolluding the chance for any amendment. >> well, again, this is not going to be the last bite of the apple that the senate has.

it's not -- these are four -- these are four very bipartisan ideas. one of them is named by -- the name involves a democratic senator and a republican senator but definition, a bipartisan idea. four elements that individually would go on the bipartisan support and as a whole will go on the bipartisan support. this is not the last time that the senate is going to take up issues of economic stability. >> you are not bothered by not allowing any amendments. >> we'll have plenty of time to go back and -- we're going to need to extent unemployment and small business lending. all of that will be part of this. >> there are report that is china has asked the white house to cancel it's meeting with the dalai lama. do you know if that's true? >> i know that obviously we

discussed the fact that meeting would happen on our trip to beijing. before i announce the it, we talked to them and said we're going to announce the meeting. i do not know if their specific reaction was to cancel it. if that was their specific reaction, the meeting will take placed as planned next thursday. >> well, the president discuss the independence with dalai lama. >> we will have a read out as a result of that meeting. i will get that information to you after that meeting. nice try though. >> i have a question for you on don't ask, don't tell. yesterday politico was saying following the president of state of the union, what kind of guidance is the president giving the lawmakers and is the president expecting appeal legislation on his desk? >> say the last part again. >> is the president expecting

legislation on his desk? >> the president outlined in the state of the union and you heard secretary gates and admiral mullen discuss a process that will take place. if that process results in legislation by year's end, the president would certainly sign it. i think most importantly, the president -- the military, and others feel like we have the best process structured moving forward to end don't ask, don't tell. cristie, on your thing, obviously the president will discuss with the dalai lama their -- his belief that he and the chinese continue to discuss the issues that they have relating to -- relating to

tibet. anything else? >> with the don't ask, don't tell, until the pentagon completes the review? >> i would point you to what the testimony from gates and mullen in what that process will -- the process that will take place over the course of the next year. yes, ma'am? >> on tuesday, at news conference, the president talked about the jobs bill. back then he mentioned doing this incrementally. he used that word. >> i'm sorry. i can't hear you. >> on the news conference on tuesday, the president mentioned the job bill he mentioned it incrementally. even back then was he talking about -- >> again, there were ideas that were -- they were ideas that the

president outlined in the speech and in the state of the union that ideas that the house didn't pass partly because their jobs package happened before the state in december. there were different ideas that the senate was considering, not all of which included the president's ideas. we didn't think then and we don't think now that this is a one-shot deal. and i think that's what's most important to keep in mind. yes, sir? >> what you called the frustration with the sheer amount of cloture, did senator reid ever talk about calling the republicans bluff, making them go to afully buster, especially over one of these noncontroversial nominees? >> look, again, it's a process that takes an inordinate amount of time on something that shouldn't be controversial. i think instead of -- i think

the best way to go forward is to move through each of the qualified nominee that is are held for no reason other than in some cases last week because somebody didn't get a couple of earmarks. and instead, do this in a way that takes qualified individuals that have been nominated and allows them to serve in government. i think that's the most important way. >> robert the, just two questions. >> all right. >> "chicago tribune" report that is five days after scott lee cohen won the democratic nominee for the lieutenant general in illinois, cohen withdraw after reports of beating his wife, threatening a girlfriend, tax aviation. did the president ever have any

concern about cohen be supported by mayor daly? >> i don't know who made one endorsements during the primary. obviously the president and many staffers here were concerned about exactly what you read. and they think the right decision was made to leave the ticket. >> now as the honorary president of the boy scouts of america, what is the reaction to the "new york post" report that the scouts have the policy similar to our armed forces, quote the, new york institutions are barring scout from meeting or recruits in all public schools. >> i have not seen the "new york post" report. and i can have somebody. >> is it fair for them to cut the scout out of it? does he disagree with the scouts? >> where are you on this

lester? >> i support the scouts. do you support the scouts? >> my son is -- we're constructing a pilot derby car as we speak. >> your son is a scout? >> he is. i think he's going to be disappointed if his car doesn't do well. but his father tends to be constructally challenged. thanks, guys. [inaudible conversations] >> a quick programming note, live coverage on a senate hearing on efforts to regulate large financial companies. the concept of systemic risk or

too big to fail has been a big part of the debate over financial industry regulations. that hearing is live at 2:30 eastern on c-span. grave sites?

guest: it is a wonderful way to humanize and p >> it's a will way to humanize and personalize the past. to make events and movements that otherwise might seem impossibly remote. there is something universal about the fact that we're all going to one day be with on our death bed. we're all going to face growing old. we all have to wrestle with questions of immorality and morality. and i mean, those are some of the theme that that run through

all of this. it's also frankly, an entertaining book. there are lots of stories and anecdotes to humanize all of these people. >> next a panel discussion on the obama administration's foreign policy. speakers include retired general richard meyers, a former chairman of the chief of staff. this is hosted in new york at the hudson institute. it's about an hour and 45 minutes. >> at some level, we know until we win this war, nothing else can be debated. everything else is pretty much mooted. this one is for all of the marbles. what is it? what are we fighting? who is fighting? what are we fighting? how can we win? what is victory?

all of those things have become muddled since 9/11. on 9/11, we with knew we were with hit. we knew there was an enemy called al qaeda. since then what has evolved? what threats have been faced. two things, everyone says america is at work, but the public at the mall. the cia and paramilitary are out there. some of the people on our panel know that better than anything else though. i experienced it very briefly on a flight from baghdad to kuwait city. on the back for four coffins. that will drive it home to you like nothing else you can imagine, ladies and gentlemen. we're now in the position of trying to refine american liberty. one the things we have to do first is recognize how we must

protect it both here and aboard. do difference than herb and introduce each of our speakers individually for a particular reason. our first speaker is someone you've seen on the news many, many times. we retired in 2005 after 40 years in the service of the united states air force. general richard b. meyers was the chairman of thing joint chief of staff from 2001 to 2005 and previously he rose from a young fighter pilot, which i think accounts for about 600 combat hours in an f4 and rose through various levels of command to become the president's principal had visor on military matters. he's the author of a book that i read and recommend to everyone called "eyes on the horizon." i'd like to welcome him with a question, sir, have we defined the enemy correctly? who are we fighting? what is this war?

and do we have the strategy in place necessary to win? page, richard b. meyers. [applause] >> well, thank you very much. i've got to start by saying as a pilot fighter, i came with two conclusions. keeping money buried in the tin can in the back yard is still prudent, and i better get one of my children to go into medical school if i want to be healthy. that was a great panel, thank you. i'm going to talk about what issues, one jed doesn't know about, one he does about national security. i'm going to start with the fact that 20 days after 9/11, i was sworn into office as the chairman of joint chiefs of staff. that experience, of course, colors my view of what our security -- our primary security threat is.

and that is to me, anyway, the threat that we have from violent extremist. people that would use terrorism to act fearful and ways that are not logical and not optimism. i think this is the biggest threat to our country and our way of life specifically since the civil war. maybe it's particular we're in this building. let's review the facts, osama bin laden declared war on the united states. we were a little slow on the uptake on that thing. the basic philosophy is what can a handful of people from the middle east, what impact can they have on the united states of america for goodness sakes. then we had the east african bombings in kenya and tanzania, but the impact on the adversary

was not probably as we intended it. problem builded them, because we did not commit our blood and treasure to the task. then we have the bombing in aden harbor. then 9/11. that perhaps was the real wake-up call. i think president bush summed it up pretty well in the first national security council meeting after 9/11. we knew al qaeda was the perpetrator of 9/11. they knew they had trained in afghanistan. we certainly didn't -- this was the next day. we didn't have any idea of what we would do. his last comments that ended the meeting, we're probably going to have to do some things that are unpopular. if that makes us a one-term presidency, so be it. i thought that was bold. by the way, not everybody in the

room was nodding. the political handlers in the back, you could hear the wind whistling fast. do you really want to say that, mr. president? i'm convinced that he absolutely meant that. why is the threat so -- such a concern? first of all, i mean we see it almost daily that this a very ruthless adversary, willing to, of course, die for their cause. thinking all along that they are going to please their god. so absolutely kills innocent men, women, and children. does not give much thought to it. because it's for the cause. if you look at where violent extremist groups like al qaeda want to go, thigh have -- they have a vision for the future. it used to be out on the al qaeda web site. they would turn the globe red

where their vision of the extreme view of islam and their political process that went along with it, where they turn countries red. in 100 years, they turned north america red. canada, united states, mexico, we are in the extreme view. they have a vision. and most of us, they are patient. and they have the will and resolve, i think, to carry out their particular vision. their particularly dangerous, as i mention before because they use terrorism. why do they use terror? because it creates fear. what happens when you have affair. you don't think clearly. few just think back, especially in this city, if you think back to 9/11 and how many of you probably reacted to the events of 9/11 or the events outside in the airliner coming into detroit. that affects the way, you can see it in all of the comments right after that attempt to

bring down that aircraft. how people start to respond in way that is really aren't logical. and certainly some without a lot of optimism. so fear is a very dangerous thing. we know that. and that's the whole game here with these violent extremist that use terror as their method to get things done. i think a lot of things that have been done since 9/11 have made us safer as a country. i believe that. i was part of a lot of that. certainly on the periphery of a lot more. i think we're a safer society than we were before. one of the elements though, that that is missing and has been missing for a long time, probably goes back to when osama bin laden declared war on us, is that we have not come up a strategy, a strategy to deal with this global extremism. we've come up with with, in my view, tactical strategies for afghanistan and iraq and maybe

yemen to some degree. but those are all -- i mean they are important in their own right. but to me, they are more the tactical fight and they are not the strategic fight. because we haven't really defined that fight. and the many times that i've been in the white house talking about terrorism and violent extremism, i can count on probably one hand the number of times we talked about the overarching strategy. hundreds and hundreds of timings, of course, we would talk about iraq or afghanistan. that was all appropriate. once more as happens, i think in most bureaucracies and probably sometimes in the private sector, the urgent always displaces the important. so the important part is trying to get a strategy down. the urgent was okay, how do we work our tactical and operational problems? iraq or afghanistan? the elements of a strategy o, of

course, important. there are three fundamental pieces to that. when i was putting together my book, i spent some time going over some work that i did with four really bright people that i took off of the staff and sequestered for a couple of months. think about the whole -- this was in 2004 -- think about this thing in the broadest term. come back with some ideas. we worked those ideas around. what we decided we were facing is really a global insurgency. and i think you see this if you just take a quick trip around the global. i don't think we have time today. take a quick trip around the globe, there are elements of violent extremism and acts of terrorism that go on essentially daily around the world. and these other thing that is hit the news all of the time are more of the tactical fight and

not stepping back and saying what is really going on here. that is the global insurgency. i characterize it by saying it's primary a struggle within islam to capture the continuing quest for an islamic resurgeon. that is how the extremist would point it. but really the struggle is within islam. the goal of the global insurgency is to limit american influence so extreme views can be the basis for governance. this global move that's been mentioned. this this quest, al qaeda currently leads. but that's going to morph over time, they are not the only organization that has the same view. they are lots of organization. i mean there's hundreds of

organizations. i haven't counted them up. my guess is as i've read through them, probably hundreds of them. this particular enemy, this global insurgency is conducting two complains. one inside islam to sort it's vision and the other outside islam to intimidate the west and to distract muslims from their internal struggle. and at the same time, enhance extremist global stature. it's my belief that the enemy has no discrete theory of victory. certainly not like when we think about victory, our minds go back to recent conflicts. i want to say recent, i'm talking about world war ii and korea and so forth. we think about victory in a certain way. my belief is they have accumulative strategy where basically fighting is winning. and they can have victories that

can be humanitarian, they can even be rhetorical, and they don't always have to be military. i think if you doubt that it's an insurgency, look what the adversary is trying to do in places like afghanistan or pakistan. but you can take this anywhere. but they are convenient and we're up to speed on those issues. clearly the afghan taliban is trying to discredit and displace the elected afghan government. which is the legitimate government, of course, of afghanistan. and the you see the same short of thing happening in pakistan where they try to destabilize or at least give the impression that the central government in pakistan can't handle the issue and therefore maybe gain legitimacy and perhaps maybe gain some power. i think those are probably too good examples of what i'm talking about. so that's one element of the

strategy. identifying who this adversary is. and again to summarize, i think it's a global insurgency with al qaeda in the lead but not necessarily exclusively al qaeda. second fundamental is in any strategy, to me you have to involve all instruments of national power. i can tell you nothing was more frustrating as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff than nothing being able to get all instruments of national power to address this problem with the same sense of urgency that the department of the defense or the military did. and it's, i think it's still a problem today. there's lots of reason for this. it's not because people are bad. sometimes there are resource issues, both money and man power. but the fact is in my last year, i was very frustrated that, for instance, the embassy in afghanistan in august of '05 when i ask, what's the manning of the embassy here in

afghanistan. they said, well, it's about 40%. think about that for a minute. if all of your instruments of national power are going to flow through the embassy through the am bass sour that's working with the military that's only 40% manned, you can imagine a lot of things are going to fall through the cracks. i'm sure it's much better today. i haven't checked the numbers. my guess is it's much better. this strategy has to involve all of the national power, not just the military incident the. it'll certainly play a role. but the political, economic, i would say there are a couple of other instruments but the educational and the information today are instruments of power that need to be harnessed to bring to this fight. and third, along with identifying the adversary coming up with a strategy, with we've got to organizize to execute the strategy. and if i were to ask this audience in my tenure, 2001 to 2005 as the chairman of the

joint chiefs of staff, who was in charge of our efforts against a global insurgency. let's just make it easier. our efforts in afghanistan and iraq. fill out a name. who you think was in charged? >> i heard secretary rumsfeld. that's good. [inaudible comments] >> we're going to go with rumsfeld. you can use any of the names. it's the same thing. assuming that you can't have the president be in charge of everything and be in charge of the execution of everything, if you say secretary rumsfeld he was certainly the point person in all of the media. that was clear. what -- to be -- to be in charge, you have to have both responsibility and authority. so you have to ask yourself, what authority did secretary rumsfeld have over the national

security. what authority over the state department, treasury, homeland security? >> well, the answer is he didn't. you may think that secretary rumsfeld was in charge or vice president or whomever. it's -- the way we are organizized for national security came out of world war two. it was the national security act of 1997. so in a way -- and it's been modified many times. but in a way, we are perfectly organizized for world war ii. that's not the kind of adversary we face. all of these instruments of national power need to be harnnessed in a way to address the threat. i would propose we are not perfectly organizized for that. haven't been for a while. it's no one particular administration for that, it's just the way we are organizized. so that's my part on what i think is the gravest threat.

the exessential threat in terms of national security terms. listening to the economic panel and the folks that were up here before, i have one other comment to make. this is on, on our fiscal situation. the department of defense budget right now is realtively robust. partly due to the fact that we are still involved, we are a nation at war. and we're involved in iraq and afghanistan in a very major way. but you have to fast forward 10 years and ask yourselves, okay. what kind of military budget are we going to have? what kind of military are we going to need? and what i worry is going to happen is what happened in the '90s when we took our peace dividend after the end of the cold war and the budget went down precipitously, and the part of the budget that went down the fastest was the procurement and

research and development with part of the budget. because we had a lot of operations and maintenance that we had to do. and we're not quite in that dilemma today. because we've got this fairly robust budget. and we have additional funding for afghanistan and iraq. but at some point, that's going to go away. and then you have to ask yourself, are we going to leave ourselves two decades from now with the kind of mill their we need. are we going to make the investments and research and development, training, all of the sorts of things that the budget goes for, excuse me, training is not really part of that budget. but the development, research and development procurement. are we going to leave ourself with the tools that we need two decades or three decades from now. i don't know the answer to that. it's just one the things i think we need to think about as another issue in this whole pan of security issues.

thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, general meyers. let me add to that, my college roommate as a son. his son is now flying a kc135 that is almost as old as i am. and he is not nearly young enough for him to be flying. that's part of the issue. and certainly, the national defense part of it. but america and america's military suffers from fallacy that america's military is the victim of it's own success. everybody believe the military can whatever is required whenever is required. there's another part of the issue though. not only just intelligence, but america's legal system. we have two of the preeminent experts on that today here for you. one is our next speaker, the other is general mike mukasey who will speak later. america is at war. but america's legal system sometimes seem to be at war with the war fighters. our next speecher, andy

mccarthy is a federal prosecutor of leading some of the most important case that is have come into the american courts. he is most famoused and honored for the 1995 effort when he led the team prosecutorring omar for the first world trade center attack. after the highest attorneys in 2003, he has since become one the nation's most knockening commentators on national security. he's the fellow with the national review foundation and perhaps most importantly, he's a native of bronx. andy? [applause] >> thank you. well, not for nothing, jed. but i should begin by asking you a question. which is why i was chosen to

speak between two authentic american heros. it's a great honor to be here today. but it's a particular honor to be on this panel. and the topic i was asked to talk about was our legal architecture. do we have the -- do we have the right architecture in place to try to turn back the threat that we're confronted by. and i thought that in trying to answer that question i'd throw out an example. imagine a terrorist regime overseas, or terrorist entity, that trains it's operatives, sends highly trained terrorist to the united states to conduct operations against civilians and civilian infrastructure to

increase the chances of infull tradition -- infiltration and success, they include american citizens in the venture. they come into the united states, they conspire to conduct their terrorists attacks, but they are captured by the fbi and interrupted. the president of the united states decides that they are not going into this civilian justice system, he's going to designate them as enemy combatants. not only as enemy combatants so we can hold them under the laws of war, rather than allows them to lawyer up and hold back when they know from us, he instantly decide they are also going to be tried by military commission. that example is not something that i actually pull the out of the air. that's something that actually happened. in 1942, eight german sack tours

came to the united states sent by the nazis and landed on long island and in florida. they were captured in 1942 by the fbi, they were designated by fdr as enemy combatants, they got their military commission trial not in a place like guantanamo bay, we weren't hung up on the idea that we not only to give them a military commission, we had to make it look like one. they were tried in what's now the robert f. kennedy department of justice building in washington. in the middle of that trial, which there wasn't delay in those days. the trial actually started about four weeks after they were captureed. they sought habeas corpus from the united states courts.

it's a judicial review. they wanted to challenge the notion that people who were arrested by the civilian authorities in the united states could be treated as enemy prisoners and not brought to the civilian justice system. they wanted to challenge being treated as enemy combatants. the president, fdr, got wind of that, fdr, of course, probably the most legendary progressive in american history. and he brought in his attorney general, the legendary progressive and civil libertarian, francis biddle. and he told biddle that he should let the supreme court know that while he looked forward with great interest to what the justices would say about the whole matter, he didn't really particularly care. and he had no intention of releasing the prisoners, regardless of what the justices thought of the matter. biddle passed that piece of

information along to the chief justice of the supreme court. and somehow the court found it within itself, unanimously to affirm everything that fdr wanted to do with the enemy combatants. as they happened, they were executed, six of the eight of them, two of them got life in prison, i think, two of the six of them were executed about seven weeks after they were captured. that took place from june of 1942 until august of 1942. [applause] >> so the question is do we have the legal architecture in place? and i guess the question really becomes what's different? what is different now from 1942? and i think the answer to that is that in a half century after saving the world for freedom, we forgetten two of the essential lessons about that victory.

the first one is that there are worse things than war. there's tyranny, for example, and i must say, i wholeheartedly agree with general meyers remarks. i just add to that that i think the enemy is broader than just the violent jihaddist we're dealing with. i think we have a bigger challenge on our hands. it's amazing that after all of these years, after the world war center bombing, which i still regard as the declaration of war in the united states, that we don't really even understand that jihad is. but the purpose of jihad, you should understand, is not to blow up buildings or to kill infidels, the purpose is to establish sharia. and if you can establish sharia by blowing up buildings, they

will. but if you can establish sharia by legal processes, if you can establish sharia because the enemy is going to roll over and a -- appease you by whatever they have to do. it's the brotherhoods and extremist organizations that come bewith hind them and are making their long march through our institutions. it's not a legal challenge that we're facing simply to confront terrorism. the problem, the threat to our way of life is a lot broader than that. the other -- the flipside of tyranny, i think, is freedom. freedom is not the natural condition of mankind. i think we'd like to think it is. but it simply isn't. it's something that has to be fought for. and if we don't fight for it, if we are not willing to fight for

it, if we are not willing to have the system in place that allow us to fight for it, then we lose it. so that's one lesson. i think the other lesson is the premise of the question is that we're supposed to be able to fit this war into some kind of legal arcticture. and the fact is you don't fit war into a legal architecture. when you fight war, it's because the united states goes to war and needs to win in order to preserve our legal institutions and all of the rest of our institutions. so your obligation is actually to fit your legal institutions into the endeavor of making war to achieve victory over the enemy. i think if we get that wrong, we're certain to lose. holmes, another legendary progressive said in about 1918, when it comes to matters involving the life of the state, judicial processes have to take the back seat to executive processes. that's the system we have.

that's the system the framers designed. and the framers, i think, unlike us, understood that the united states might not always necessarily be here. certainly if we didn't defend ourselves. let me compare what happened to the german combatants. he was able to challenge his status as an enemy combatant because that's the way we do it now. the courts having started to take that power, that ability to review the detention of our enemies, congress actually codified it in 2005 and 20082006. so now enemy combatants can go into court and make that challenge. a federal judge in washington said that we had to -- that hew terri would not be considered an

enemy combatant despite the government proved the al qaeda hard core extremist before 9/11 ever happened. he traveled to afghanistan right after 9/11 using a known al qaeda smuggling route, he contributed money to an al qaeda front that is designated as a terrorist entity under u.s. law, he fled towards tora bora after the u.s. invasion using the same route as al qaeda and taliban fighters, his name was found in an al qaeda safe house on a rooster that said captured hi din on the happen and routinely what al qaeda does, they make them turn in their passports. it was found. which gives them more control over their fighters. the judge decided that was insufficient evidence to conclude that he was an al qaeda fighter. this is not just any judge.

you know, we have lots of judges. you could say we would have lots of crazy rulings with lots of judges. the judge who made that ruling is colleen cotelli, you may have heard that name or in the. you may know her as the chief judge of the foreign intelligence survey lens court. in 1970, we took a power that was an executive national security power for as long as there's been the technology to do it. namely, conducting survey lens, threing to penetrate enemy communications, and we turn that power over to a court. so now judges, rather than the people who are in our government supposed to make these sorts of decisions have the power to decide or the final word on who we conduct survey lens on. the judge that runs that court is the same judge that made the decision i just described to you. to compare again back to 1942,

let me read to you something that was written on behalf of the supreme court actually in 1948 by justice robert jackson who was, i think an interesting guy. he's sort of a giant in both of the political world, having been with the attorney general for fdr, the chief prosecutor at normberg, and in the judicial world, the justice of the supreme court. in 1938, he sat on a case which involved the question about how much involvement courts ought to have in the national security matters. here's what he said. these decisions are holy confided by the constitution to the political departments of the government, executive and

elective. they are delicate, complex, and large elements of prophesy. they are and should be untaken only by those directly responsible to the people who's welfare they advance or imperil. they are decisions for which they did not have aptitude, facility, and has long been in the political power not subject to judicial intrusion or inquiry. the framers gave us an constitution and a system for free self-determining people. the premise of that system was that there was supposed to be an accountability an ex sum. >> they realize those are the most important decision that is a community makes. they wanted that to be made by the actors who were answerable to and responsible to politically the voters, the american people who's lives were at stake.

so that when those people got the decisions wrong, when they instruct the wrong balance between liberty and security, we could fire them, get rid of them, vote them out of office. we weren't born as a legal community. we were as aplite -- as a political community. we were going to make the ultimate decisions about our security. and when you do what we have done since the 1970s, when you take your national security decisions and move them out of the realm of politics, what you have done is taken the core decisions made and moved them from the actors who you have control over and can do something about to the politically insulated judicial branch which you cannot get rid of if they get it wrong. and which because of the institutional nature of their responsibilities are hard wired

to increase due process rights. : now, that may sound and revolutionary. i don't think it should.

the question and answer time at the end of the last session talked about why haven't we had more debate about whether the health care bill is constitutional. it seems to me the answer to that is another measure of how far we have traveled from the 1940's until now. it used to be understood that it was the responsibility of every branch of government to interpret the constitution and to incorporate the constitution in its decision making on behalf of our government. it was not thought that the executive branch of the legislative branch could see how much they get away with, how much will the courts rubberstamp for naught. and the fact is that when congress does something that violates the law, president's don't enforce it and judges have no trouble saying that it's unconstitutional. when presidents go outside their

authority, they did bring in by the legislature and the court. the courts are no different, they are a part of the government but occasionally they act flawlessly and when the act flawlessly it's the obligation of the political branches to say no. not just to go along with it. probably worth remembering, and these words, and i will end with this. governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governor in. when a form of government becomes destructive to that end, it becomes our duty to alter it. those are the words from a the declaration of independence and it's not any different today than it was in 1776. but until we face down this whole notion that we can take our own decisions that go to the

court of -- the core of our south of france to the core whether we're able to preserve ourselves, and hand them to actors to we can't reach, we're headed toward disaster. thank you. [applause] >> a little while ago in the said that my role here today was to make him look column. so let me just suggest that i might not be entirely incorrect. i think one of the things we're facing with the congress we have in the executive branch right now is it's not that they pass things unconstitutional, but they don't care if they do. they don't think first, they don't analyze first, they don't consult constitutional lawyers. i will grant you, i've only got a b plus in constitutional law and why school of but when i look at the cornhusker kick back and they're saying that 49

states are going to be paying for nebraska's medicaid, i don't thank you can get there from here because there's this thing called the equal protection clause of the way. going on from here, they're so many things we can talk about in the legal framework and i hope we will get to them in your question is not the least of which is the ksm trial coming right to our state. arnett speaker want as in the alluded to earlier is an american hero, of course general myerson. alan west is someone who i met quite a while ago. he has been there and done that. this is a professional soldier who served in iraq, general myers asked him where he was when saddam hussein was captured and, of course, alan was right there in to treat in his hometown. he served in tajik iraq as the commander of the second battalion fourth infantry division who, he is now a congressional candidate which means he could speak today

because we didn't thought to have elected official speaking on the panel's but alan is someone who has been there and done that when he spoke -- when he left the army he did not want to stay out of the fight and went back to afghanistan for two years. serving there, helping but our forces were trying to accomplish ladies and gentleman, let me just ask alan west big question, we hear a lot in our counterinsurgency efforts in afghanistan. about the rules of engagement in the air force holding prior to prevent killing civilians. are we sacrificing american lives unnecessarily in that process? what you think should be the rules of engagement in the afghanistan? ladies and gentleman, alan west. [applause] with. >> thank you so much, and thank you for having me invited to be here. one thing at want to let everyone know, when you look at

this panel who have to contrasting persona's here. you have the opportunity to see when you take a flight test and pass the test as general meyer said it also jim but you have an example of when you fail the test to get in the other line which is proposed to jump out of airplanes. [laughter] with that being said that gives an understanding of my level of intellect. [laughter] one of the things we have to understand we talk about the rules of engagement we have to clearly recognize the 21st century battlefield. it is totally different from one i grew up with starting off as a young lieutenant and going to the artillery basic school where they talk about soviet formations and then you went to the national training center in the mojave desert and fought against these formations and, of course, my first tour of duty was in italy were i did torras and patrols against the czech border. but when i went to desert storm

in 1991, we thought an army that pretty much so applied those rules. i was in the first infantry division, we attack them and broke through their lives, we brought them to their news and about five for six days. but when i went back with. >> in 2003 it was a different type of enemy, it was a different type of battlefield. we have now become pace with an enemy that took off those uniforms and have more to themselves within the populace and that man did a whole lot different for us being on the battlefield. when i went back again as a civilian military adviser for two and a half years in canada are, afghanistan, we saw that the whole thing about state oriented military had broken down. now what we're dealing with this non state non uniform belligerence on the battlefield and you're dealing with what i call it illegal to an enemy combatants. yet we have rules of engagement right now that provide them an

advantage, provide them initiative against our soldiers. let me give some examples of things that i have been involved in. when you get into a firefight, you've got maybe about five seconds and after five seconds of people are going to start to lose lives. and if you have rules that are out there right now saying you can't engage until the enemy show some type of hostile intent, we had a fire fight province where we lost about 60 to 20 soldiers. it took approximately one hour to get to reenforcing aircraft to come in because they continually asked them can you verify that they will not have any collateral damage to civilians. when you're commander voir in a firefight you don't have time to stick your head up and look and see our other civilians out

there. and not only that, they watched this enemy assemble themselves in the local village mosque. there were not allowed to engage the enemy. back when i was in afghanistan we had a fire fight down there and put her on the taliban forces. but the taliban did was to enable it to go back and retrieve their dead and wounded from the battlefield who went to a local village. they got children. they brought the children up and held them up close to them. and that is how they retrieved their dead and wounded. when the canadian forces came down and started an operation in the fall 2006, ended the lower area cannot the taliban when two houses with women and children. we continue to see that. one of the things we saw recently was the incident where progress -- congressman murtha castigated our recess murders

but when the enemy knows what the rules that apply to your self with uses that as a gap by which exploits you. how many have had the opportunity to read the book by may co marcus latrell, lone survivor? an interesting dilemma that they found themselves in and i was there at the time in afghanistan operation in 2005, their mission had been compromised and instead of following the normal seal special protocols, they decided within themselves to let those afghan homebuilders go. and those people in turn and went to the local taliban and all of a sudden you had a prince of 100 come down on the seal team of four individuals. they were able to get reinforcing team to come in but if you recall -- and a helicopter was shot down. because they worth more so afraid of being prosecuted and who buy their own neagle system as injured talked about here, we

lost 19 of our most highly trained special operators that day in afghanistan 2005. what must we do with our rules of engagement? first comes back to you have to know your enemy and yourself and the terrain. callus amounts of battles you will be victorious. we still have it in mount of defining the enemy is. recall what a war of terror by the nation doesn't go to war against a tactic. now we: overseas contingency operation. there are times when i went overseas for missions that was not war. if we are going to have the right to proper rules of engagement, we have to understand who was on the battlefield and have to understand an onstage not uniform belligerence and understand we're fighting against islamic totalitarianism the state-sponsored terrorism. the key thing we must do with our rules of engagement there has to be a bottom of refinement. because to best knows what's going on on the brown and the people on the ground?

when we start to have this tom bergeron rule of engagement you are, indeed, putting our young men and women in a bad situation. if you are out in the middle of the night on a road in afghanistan and iraq and you have a shovel and a wheelbarrow and a couple of oblong looking devices with wires coming out i don't think you're out there planting fruit. but yet our young men and women have to ask for clearance. look at any of these apache done tapes and you will hear the pilots calling back and asking to engage. when they have eyes on that target and they clearly know what's happening. the same thing happen pretty much so back in 2005 when a uav operator had what was believed to be a convoy with osama bin laden going down the road at of kabul and because of the delay in getting the clearance he was able to get to pakistan. we've got to get this user-friendly down to the men and women on the battlefield and

one key thing is political correctness with cannot dictate rules of engagement. now another thing --. [applause] what i just talked about was the tactical level or the operational level in the iraq war afghanistan and yemen but we must realize this first the 21st century battlefield he were sitting in there right now. in the united states of america. why was stationed in fort hood, texas till 2004 so what happened was near and dear two my heart as well as my wife and two teenage daughters because we lived on the installation and we knew what they went through. you know about the four gentlemen who had plastic explosives in new york and thought they were going to blow up a synagogue, we know that young man by the name of carlos who got us a gift to yemen and shoots two u.s. soldiers and recruiting station, we have the jordanian and illegal immigrants in dallas, we have the fort dix

six, the north carolina terrorists that i believe marine corps targets, all of these are happening here not to mention a christmas present that we almost got from an algerian terrorist. we've had to understand that right here and now we've got to the love the right rules of engagement to deal with this enemy on this battlefield which america clearly sets in. because giving of the constitutional rights to illegal entry combatants someone is not part of our american liberties. and that's not a proper ro e. [applause] last week in west palm beach, florida, where had the opportunity to hear your colder speak and i took an airsickness bag just in case my stomach started to get --. [laughter] but one thing he said at foreign events he said that we are a nation that is at war. and that his next sentence came

and testified green khalid sheikh mohammed here. he started justifying the closing of guantanamo bay by saying that if we close guantanamo bay we take away the number one terrorist recruiting tool. [laughter] the guys that were shooting at me in iraq or afghanistan could care less about what to do with guantanamo bay. and we must understand that is the that's another aspect of the rules of engagement we need to have in this country think about the fact that right now, with the somali pirates beware -- where is the? want all lawyers up waiting to be tried in and go through our system. think about the young man who just pled not guilty to the christmas terrorist attempt. those gentleman should be sent to guantanamo bay. [applause] and they have to be understood, it has to be understood that they are illegal and in the

combatants and that's part of the domestic rule of engagement that we need to understand here and as a juror talked about, had to take illegal system and applied to this new 20% to battlefield. but i want to talk about something else that's important as we head to the 2010 midterm election. there's a political battle going on as well in the u.s. appear in and the centerpiece of his conservative versus progressive liberal socialist what everyone to call it. but there's also and undermine one aspect to that, they're also irregulars on the political battlefield. in this call a corner, it is called seiu, what it's called the new black panther party, all of these people who are seeking to undermine this political process an electoral process we have here. and we saw what happened when this new black panther party went to be brought up, the attorney general decided.

the electro basis of the united states of america is under attack which is part of our liberty. and that's a key aspect of the rule of engagement. how're we going to deal with back? how are we going to do with the fact that right now you have this thing called universal voter registration floating around here had to deal with the fact that the united states census was taken out of control and brought into the control of the white house chief of staff rahm emanuel? had to deal with the fact that representative youtube caris introduced with an amnesty bill? would want this is about changing the electoral roll base of this country. we will their rules that apply to our political system are being changed. mcbride before yes. we have talked about the violations of the constitution. how to engage them. how do we make sure that this republic and that's what it is, is here for the next 200 years? because that is truly what we're up against, against an enemy

within and in enemy without. and one of the things you have to realize is that to the enemy that is within one is using your constitutional liberties because any time someone is in a mosque on a friday and they are preaching to overthrow your constitutional government, that's not freedom of religion, that's not freedom of speech, that's edition. so how we develop the right type of rules of engagement in this country to protect our constitution blacks protect our liberties? and protect the future and legacy of this great republic. i am proud to see this title reclaiming american liberties because at least we're now starting to understand it's under attack. but now from this point as you said dr. london, this campaign -- our strategy to go forward. and you're on the battlefield in the united states of america. it's about the future of your

liberties. you've got to get off the sideline, how to have the right of the rules of engagement and ensure we fight these enemies so thank you very much, god bless you. [applause] >> thank you very much, alan. well, before we get to your questions, we have last and very much not least our next speaker. we talked for the past our house about the war against islamic extremism and i would just pose to you the definition here that the enemy is not al qaeda as the president said, it's the nations that sponsor terrorism. they are the ones without tune terrorism cannot threaten us, and without defeating we cannot possibly win this war. i think one of the other things we've that going is the fact that the world has a lot of

moving parts and just because we are entirely focused at this time on the middle east, on islamic terrorism, on the threats we face immediately, doesn't mean that there are a lot of other things we can afford to ignore. the world again has a lot of moving parts and forton chain will talk to us about it. gordon has lived and worked in hong kong for two decades, most recently in shanghai as counsel to the american law firm paul weiss. as a partner of baker mackenzie. his writings have been in "the new york times", wall street journal, commentary and the weekly standard, national review and also is a columnist at forbes.com, the author of the coming collapse of china a nuclear showdown north. takes on the world. borden, let's talk a little about nuclear proliferation. which seems to be a little bit of an issue these days. china last week said they would not support for the sanctions

against iran. iran seems to be coming close to achieving nuclear-weapons. why is it in china's interest to have a iran into that goal? [applause] >> this means that the teefive plus one to the five permanent members of the security council in germany are going to have to continue talking to the mall is about their efforts to enrich uranium. to see the significance of this i think we need to put this into context and as he said up to now we've been talking about the militants, the jihadist, the terrorists but now we need to shift our focus to the actors and the international system that can really hurt the year

united states and allies. and that, of course, is other nations. one we have been talking to the mall was about their nuclear program since dissidents. in 2002 revealing the existence of secret iranian nuclear facilities including and underground in richmond plan. in the face of iranian intransigence, the u.n. security council has imposed three sets of sanctions on iran. last fall the obama administration instead of trying to stop the iranian nuclear program, devised in the arrangement to buy the international community more time to talk to the iranians. iran at this month has a quantity of enriched uranium with, and rich to about 5 percent purity, that further enriched to 90% purity would be sufficient for the quarter of one nuclear weapon.

according to obama's proposed deal, iran would take about three-quarters of its enriched uranium and shipped to russia and france. russia and france would further enriched uranium to about 20 percent purity and then turn to fuel rods. these fuel rods would then be sent to iran. the iranian say that they need 20 percent enriched uranium for a medical research reactor in the eye iranian capital. iran a october 1 accepted the deal. today's letter its renamed. the united states, europe and the international atomic energy agency the u.n. nuclear watchdog then gave iran until the end of december to accept the deal. in november they said the united states was confident that china would take the same decision on iran as the other great powers.

as usual, he who is obama's top asia adviser on the national security council was wrong about beijing because beijing soon turn around and, of course, said no sanctions, they took sanctions off the table. iran has not been negotiating with the obama administration -- united states up until now and the chinese have just taken away one reason more of them to talk to us. he should have known that china would not think sanctions. in the middle of october, chinese premier announced that china was going to strengthen its already robust commercial ties with iran thereby giving the iranians more means to resist international pressure. china unfortunately has been, iran's number one supporter. beijing is now a sanctions buster. now, why are people in beijing supporting the iranians? well, of course, there are many

reasons and analysts point to a few of them. such as china wanted to secure access to ibm's cleaner-burning gas, china wanting to compete with russia for influence and iran, china wanting to defend its principle of nonintervention in the affairs of other countries, and, of course, china wanting to support this mullahs because they do not want to see the theocracy to collapse because of it collapses that gives hope to the chinese people that they may be able to get rid of their own dictators. yes, these are reasons why china is supporting iran. but we need to go deeper into understand what china is really doing. and what china is really doing is trying to undermine america's influence and role in the world. they are first us look ineffectl largely because they feel threatened by who we are, by the values that we stand for.

and insecurity and intolerant and secretive china feels that it must change the liberal open and democratic international system that we need. so what is china doing? china is supporting every nuclear road nearby fundamentally altering the structure of the international system. yet china's support per the abdulmutallab by itself is not sufficient to explain what i call the iran paradox. what is this paradox? we, the united states, is the strongest nation not only at this moment in history but in all of history. iran, on the other hand, is a non stable state that is corrupt, it has a stumbling economy, and it's headed by an increasingly divided an unpopular government. yet despite this obvious disparity in power, despite everything else, the mullahs are winning. and unbelievably they are paying no penalty for doing so.

so why are the i renew succeeding against us? are principal problem is that we have our priorities wrong. yes, we are trying to stop the atomic ayatollahs but we are supporting this critical goal to a longer term objective. at least something that we think should be a longer term objective. and that is integrating china into the international system. now, it would be great if china were irresponsible power and one day i'm sure it will be, but it is not one today and in today's washington the obama administration very much like its predecessor is forgetting one critical factor. before china helps on the great issues of the day, before china can play a constructive role in the world, china must do more than just began a fundamental shift in its foreign-policy. it must complete the process of both shedding its self-image as

an outsider and the ending is traditional role as an adversary of the existing wall border. such a change inevitably occurs when a rising power matures but only takes place after internal perceptions have shifted over time and the problem is that today china is not quite ready to play its role as a responsible great power. in an incredibly the united states is giving beijing the incentives to become even less responsible. therefore, we should not be surprised by beijing's aggressiveness because we are in a very real sense the author of many of our problems with beijing. ..

>> that the chinese would become responsible. but as we know, the chinese, in fact, did not. our remedy for the failure of engagement in the past has been to promote more engagement in the future. and as we continued unsuccessful policies, we created perverse incentives. the chinese engaged in unfriendly behavior. so we rewarded them. they continued irresponsible conduct. we rewarded them more. in these circumstances, why

would they ever change? our generous but misguided policy could cause us problems. beijing knowing it's gotten away with bad conduct in the past will think naturally it can do so in the future. prior administration, beginning with those headed by george h.w. bush had been responsible for what i think are indulgent in counterproductive policies with regard to the chinese. but the obama team has taken a bad approach and drove it to illogical conclusion. what do i mean? in november jeff bader said this, quote the, chinese is an essential player on the global issue that is are at the center of our agenda, global economic recovery, climate change, energy, north korea, iran, nonproliferation issues in general, success in afghanistan and pakistan, arms control.

on none of these issues can we succeed without china's cooperation. unquote. in fact, we can succeed without china's cooperation. but that's not the point. the point is that when beijing's strategist hear bader say these words they naturally think they have a veto over american foreign policy. now china having a veto over our policy may seem preposterous to you and me, but that's not the way the chinese see it. they are in decline and therefore they with do what they want. they are wrong. but unfortunately, the obama administration has said and done things like hillary clinton saying that human rights are not important in the dialogue with china and the president himself refusing to see the dalai lama that reinforce the american ficklesness in the minds of strategist. we have to remember the chinese are coming off of their success

of helping north korea get the bomb. the administration of george w. bush wanted to make china part of the solution. it agreed to accept china's leadership of the efforts to disarm north korea. so beijing's sponsored the six-party talks which began in 2003. the chinese were able to drag out the proceedings and give kim jong il the opportunity to test his missiles. in other words, we allowed the chinese to give kim the one thing he needed to make themselves a threat to the international community, that is time. now the chinese have succeeded with regard to north korea are employing the same tactics with regard to iran. washington continues to let the

chinese lead us by the nose. we in fact witnessed washington giving china the right to determine american policy. and we saw that this month. at same time, china ruled out the possibility of sanctions on iran, hillary clinton said that despite three months of insists that there was a december deadline for iran, then turned this week and said, oh, no, there's no deadline after all. washington's climb down was indeed humiliated. and it opened the doors to months more of talking in useless conversations at a time when iran is about nine months with perhaps a year, away from developing their first nuclear device. so china is showing the iranians, and indeed the rest of the world that the united states cannot accomplish its foreign policy objectives. on a critical issue, washington is allows two big rogues

destabilize their region. so having demonstrated that we are in effectual, who is going to follow us on foreign policy manner. this morning i was asked to say what is the significance of washington being unable to thwart the nuclear ambitiouses of iran and north korea. this is the answer. no one is going to listen to us anymore. throughout history when dominant nations have failed to lead, they have faltered soon afterwards. no country can lead the international system if it is ineffective over a period of time. there's something else that i think we should know. an international system that cannot defend it's most vital interests against it's weakest members cannot last. so let me leave you with one thought. north korea is not just about korea, and iran is not just about iran. now north korea and iran is

about our ability to lead, about our ability to ensure stability in the international system. and as we all know at this critical period of time, the stakes couldn't be higher. quote, the only international security system that works is the u.s. alliance system. so writes greg sheraton. it is ironic and sad it takes australian journalist to see the united states presidents cannot. it may have made sense at one time, but unfortunately, those approaches have not worked. at this precarious times, it takes strong american leadership. we are the ultimate, and sometimes we are the only guarantor of the international system. other understand this, it's time for washington to do so as well. thank you.

[applause] >> thank you very much, gordon. as we go to your questions, let me make a couple of quick points. are you safer now than you were a year ago. we're approaching mr. obama's year in the administration. these are not things that have been just neglected and went a certain way in drift. these are things the president has done affirmatively. number one, he has banned the so-called enhanced interrogation method by which a lot of information was guarded from detainees. we know that george tenant the former cia director said that those enhanced interrogation techniques produced more valuable intelligence than the cia, the nsa, and the fbi combined. so by doing so, the president

has left us with inferior and by definition, inadequate methods of garnering. we're closing gitmo. there's no reason beside political reason, or international law to compel us to do so. we are doing so at risk. that risk is best illustrated by the third point. andy eluded to it earlier. we're now bringing terrorist into new york and detroit for civilian trial. it will be a media circus. it will possibly endanger the city here itself and detroit because they will become magnets for terrorist attack. are you safer now than you were this day last year? i submit to you, no. and please we will follow standard ncaa rules. you can ask anyone a question and then everyone else will jump in with his opinion. so please? yes, sir.

>> this has been an honor and privilege to listen to this panel. it's so much vision and experience. i have one question particularly for general meyers, it also applies to perhaps the colonel west. would you consider culture as a national priority? it seems that our civilization, our media, our arts, our educational system has not been doing the job that prepares america for what you are referring to as a realignment of our priorities. i want to explain that at this point, because i think it's a vast deep subject, particularly as it might apply to military confidence and strategic planning. >> sir, general meyers? >> see if i get this right.

because i may need some more definition. when you say culture, could you say another word or two? >> well, it was referred to the last time we knew who we were and our enemies was during world war ii. william manchester wrote a book "the light to darkness" which he credits the bravery of american soldiers that might strike us funny now but that was very true then. he was talking about hollywood films and culture. i would included all of the fine arts, the educational system, it defined courage, it focused on virture, it focused on the good, the true, and the beautiful. today our culture is self-destructive, with anti-american, it's undermining us as much as a 5th column you might call it jihad from our own intellectual elite.

[applause] >> you know, it is striking when you watch movies done in the '30s and '40s, and '50s and listen to radio in the same era. it was a different time. and it's many people think it's quaint. it's the time, of course, with is part of that time that i grew up in. a couple of comments. one is i think there is a danger, there are lots of dangers here. there's one danger i'll talk about being a military person, is that your military is a relatively small part of the numbers of this country. we're at 2.4 million men and women in active duty, national guard, and reserved forces. 2.4 as a opposed to 20 million in the country. the ratio is only going to get smaller as the country grows. and you have to think about is the military going to become

something that is not well understood by the rest of america? and i think that's a real danger. there are lots of dangers in that. but there's some real dangers in that. and i think some of the initiatives that people have undertaken that are trying to get into school curriculums. what -- the united states military has meant to this country are really important initiatives. there are lots of them going on, i'm thinking about the honor society as one of them, but there are many others as well. i think that's really, really important. and we, you know, there's an divergence in cultures, as i think you eluded to this. the military in some cases seems to be sticking out that has values, difference in the rest of the societies. the larger that cap gets, then we are in danger, we are in grave danger for lots of reasons. but we're in grave danger. >> allen? >> you know, i take that comment.

i think about when chris matthews, the comment ha he made after president obama spoke at west pointe. that should be something that's very distinguishing. here you are standing before the young men and women that will go out and fight for our freedoms and liberties, to have someone isn't the media say he was the camp of the enemies. this is chasm between our culture and the men and women. there are two classes of people that are needed to sustain a society. those who teach it and those who defend it. and if we continue to put down the military, we continue to allow that chasm to grow, this culture, this thing that we call america will fall. he called it the paradoxical trinity. he talked about the will of the people, the will of the government the, and the will of the military. all three of those have to come

together. but i think the overarcking thing, it comes back and talks about betsy mccoy brought up, we're losing a sense of individual responsibility and accountability. when that starts to happen, you have the entity that comes in. everyone 15 victim. no one is empowered. everyone feels entitled. those are the type of cultural problems that we have to over come. i think 2010 is a very important year for that. >> one thing i'd add, i learned from reading herb's book, the spontaneous duty to defend the state to contribute to the state. we've lost that. and america, young people don't feel the duty to serve. they don't feel as invested in our culture and our ways of life. i think that's a very big danger. next up, yes, sir. >> this question is addressed to andy mccarthy, i do have to

comment that we are very fortunate to have two of the most courageous lawyers fighting for security here, and i as a member of the bar, applaud them for your courageous. andy mccarthy and michael mukasey. [inaudible comment] >> well, that's quite an honor, sir. we are honored in your presence. we will always raise a class to you at lunch. and i don't mean to make fun of that. it's not a fun subject. but you could take some pride in being booted by those polls. >> well, i don't want to take much time. but i commenced a lawsuit to be reinstated because i was illegally fired. [applause] >> andy mccarthy assuressation

of what has happened to the responsibilities of the three blanches of government -- branches of government to ensure true balancing and the issue of deciding who has the decisional authority on security issues, he sited the fdr decision to let the supreme court know he would ignore the supreme court. lyndon did the same thing when he ignored the supreme court order to release a southern sympathizer. but we have seen in the recent administration and the supreme court the holding unconstitutional of various bush administration decisions in the security area without any real hope for the future at least as i see of how that's going to change so that the executive authority is again reinstated on security issues. and i wonder if andy you would comment on how are we going to

turn that -- that slippery slope around so that security is again either responsibility in the executive authority? >> thanks, jerry. i don't think you do it through the courts. for sure. part of what's changed so critically and so badly for the country is the self-perception of the court. during the second world war, the court still thought of itself as one of the three branches of our government. which meant if our country went to war, we all went to war. including the entire government. the judiciary being part of it, judiciary is there for americans to protect americans against adhesive and arbitrary actions by their government. i think unfortunately what the courts have become at this point is a forum that sees itself as standing somehow above and

outside our constitution, a forum for all of the world to come and make it's case against the united states. and that was not the idea. i don't think you are going to talk them out of that. but you can ignore them. and it would require a very strong president who was willing to do that, like fdr did in 1942. but look, fdr did that and felt confident doing it because the reason hamilton thought the courts with the least dangerous branch. because they can't enforce their own orders. i don't want to say courts are debating society. you practice before courts, i practiced before courts for years. i have abundant respect for courts and judges in their proper role. but their role was never supposed to be the national security of the united states, their role was not supposed to be a number of things they have now intruded in. i think until the other two branches say no, we're not going

to honor the rulings that get made in places where the constitution and the framers did not assign responsibility to the courts then we continue to go down the cycle. so i don't think you can -- you can't rely on the courts to turn it around. it requires the other two branches to say stop. >> yes, sir. >> okay. general meyers. i'd like to ask you a question about the contact of the joint chief of staff at the time the iraq war was just getting started. some will recall that our hero in the congress, jon paul, that only the congress can declare war. henry hyde, former head of the congressional judicial committee hold congress that that provision was an rack extraanymore and need not be enforced. i'd like you to raise the question, who would have standing to oppose the

executive. i wonder if you would discuss whether there's any concern athe joint chief of staff to require a declaration of war before sending into harm's way. if not, why not. looking back now, do you think that would have been an appropriate thing for the joint chief of staff to do. >> before i get general meyers to answer that, he's a fighter pilot. he's a real person. he's not a lawyer. >> my point is who would stand up to the american people if the congress would not enforce the constitution and the folks at west pointe, as you know, more than any other group in our country, they are indock track mated. >> let me take a different approach. i think what's important would be the support of the american people. we've learned time after time that if the american people aren't behind your effort, then

you're not going to have their support. we are going to be a nation of war and the other 2.4 million men and women at war and the other in the mall. so i think that's the issue. i think if -- i'll tell you if we did not come up as an issue. it it had, i think it's an appropriate thing for -- we certainly had enough time in front of congress if we were so inclined we would have said that we needed to say. we wouldn't be inhibited. we didn't feel inhibited. it did not become a particular issue. as time went on and conflict became less popular, then there was an issue, of course. and i would say exacerbated by the debates surrounding the 2004 elections. and i could go into more detail. that sort of got us off track

about what was at the time a fairly coherent effort by this country. >> andy, maybe you want to add something. >> i just want to say it's never been the law of the united states that you can't be at war unless there's a declaration of war. a declaration of war is a legal designation that defines a number of things that you can do once the law of war is evoked and two countries are deemed to be in total war against each other. if you had to have a declaration of war in order to defend the united states, we wouldn't be able to defend ourselves. in this war we had an -- a sweeping authorization for the use of military force. which as a matter of law is every bit as much a declaration of war as we would have a declaration of war. >> i think that's why. >> right. we also under the circumstances, congress could end the war if they wanted to.

>> let me add one thing on that point. just as a former military lawyer, the military's obligations to follow orders unless they believe those orders are illegal for some reasoning with the american military is not going to go out and kill civilians. if the president says go, unless there's some reason to believe that is inlegal under the wars of the united states, you go. yes, sir? >> first of all, i just want to thank you for reminding us that we have a clear and present danger. and that we -- we are at war. the people. we're at war. it isn't just our government or military out there. i think that would -- and as far as the culture,ing with in the business, first of all, i want to assure you that the people in the theatrical business are not

not whimpering liberals. >> really? how could we possibly prove that? >> we are moving. we have a group that i'm involved with in los angeles and here in new york where i live. and we are growing in tremendous stride. we have at least 1500 in l.a., writers, directors, producers and so on who are really on our side and have separated themselves from that community. and we are growing here even as of last night. i was at a meeting. but that's -- my question really is about readiness for what's ahead of us. not just the obvious but iran and what we do about it. and how we are making statements of disrespect and nonsupport of

israel which is to me outrageous , absolutely outrageous that we would put that up and go to foreign country and tell israel what they should be doing on land. here's -- this is a subject matter which is really my question. sorry. >> that's okay. let me try to help you out a little bit. >> yeah. let me just -- the readiness about our military and our people to take on iran. now we have afghanistan, we have iraq, we have what have you, all over the place. but iran is obviously a clear and present danger. and just to leave it up to israel, and hope and show weakness towards supporting them is horrible. and do we have enough -- general

meyer this is mentioned, i think andrew mentioned that we have not enough military, financially supported the military, and more importantly, a very bad subject, nobody wants to address especially the military is a draft. i know the military does not want a draft because they have the kind of soldier that they love right now who's a volunteer who's been trained in so forth. but a draft -- >> yes, sir. let's try to move things along here. let me help you out. i know military readiness has a particular -- i'm sorry. [inaudible comment] >> oh. thank you. thank you. let me just say military readiness is a word of art. i think your question is broader than that. it goes to the sean connery question, what are you prepared to do? we may be ready for a lot of

things. i don't think we're prepared to do a lot of things. >> well, there were a lot of questions in your question. let me take the readiness issue. you know, in some respects we've never been more ready than we are today. we have the combat force of recruiting and reattention are actually pretty good. but it's got some fertility to it right now because we've been at war for so long. that has impacted families and of course the military members as they discuss their options in the future. they are losing some mid grade ngos and officer particularly in the army. having said that, recruiting, moral is generally very good. we have the equipment. the sr. what's the will of the

people. when you look at iran, very complex problem. it looks like now maybe for the first time in decades that there's a willingness on the people of iran to say the enough of the i told yous. how far it will go, i don't know. they suggest the hand in the brutal fashion. we'll see where that goes. whether or not military intervention will be required is an interesting thing. if it is military, my guess would be it'll be primary those forces that aren't currently engaged in iraq and afghanistan. which means we have some capability there. it'll be up to the current military and senior political leadership what they want to do though. let me just mention something about the draft. and most of my statement, in all ofs my statements to date, i don't favor a draft. the time i would favor a draft if we find our military going in

such a different direction than our society that the military doesn't reflect society then you have to think about the equalizer might be the draft. i don't think it produces better soldiers, but it does produce other consequences for the country. they are out there, the army and guard, they have day jobs plus their military job. they keep us connected in the ways that the active duty doesn't. that's a general comment, i guess about the draft. >> do you want to add something to that? >> as is mentioned, this is not an issue of military readiness. this is an issue of political will. because for 7.5 years, we have confronted the threat to the international system. we are at one of those times where we have not demonstrated the political will for a number of reasons. essentially what you have is a period where it is necessary is not considered practical.

and if you look back at recent history, you can see that when what is necessary is not considered practice call, you have uncertainly, turbulence, and worse. we are at one of those points where the international systems breaking down because we are not willing to enforce it, it's becoming more complex, and that is the next half a decade we can see a different system. :

>> don't sugarcoat it. speculate my me of why i'd like to be around the british army so much down there in helmand province. you're absolutely right, and that comes back to educate the people about what the geneva convention has in there.

they are not protected under the geneva convention. once again it comes back to the benevolence we had in western society of what we seek to provide to them. but we have to be very careful about when tolerance becomes a one way street, it leads to cultural suicide. and that's where we are right now. because if we continue to go out and say, you know, this guy shot a syringe into his underwear, but we're going to reagan ran to a right and that he goes to the court system, you will have more that agree. it's pavlovian. if you continue to reward that type of bad behavior you're going to get more bad behavior. we are being studied each and every opportunity that they can. these are not isolated events. and a good commander, and i'm sure general myers will agree with me, he looks for indicators

of warnings. he starts to connect the dots, and we have to do this with this enemy and realize they don't deserve to have their day in court. they deserve to be taken off the battlefield, and in some instances if they can be locally tried by military tribunal, and i think that's what it thinks we should be doing with our military jack officers over the combat theaters of engagement is to bring them before him and try them and expedite whatever the decision is. be careful about what's going to happen possibly in afghanistan and bob graham because we turn that person over to the afghans, corruption is rampant and i cannot say how many times somebody got paid off and the person that you detained or captured or what it was right back out on the street. we have got to take the in the awfully battlefield. as long as they want to fight as they stay locked up. that's a we have to believe in as a people. >> the legal system we have now we can do all of that. it just takes a commander-in-chief who is willing to make the decision to do it. yes, ma'am. >> hi. i am a guest of family security matters. thanks for calling on me. i was wondering, i'm a candidate

for phd which is like more liberal -- sorry, i'm a candidate for phd or for my doctorate at nyu. and so i am combating constant constantly, and i was wondering if you could clarify based on doctor london's discussion also, the distinction between senator mccain's take on closing down guantanamo bay and our current president, that would helping out a lot. i was wondering if you could clarify it. >> let me go real fast, first because i don't think there's a lot of distance between mr. mccain and president obama. i think mr. mccain is responsible personally for changing the law on torture to

make it so unconstitutionally vague that we don't know what it is anymore. i think mr. mccain has a lot to answer for. anybody who wants to add anything to that, andy? >> you know, they will use anything, but the position of mccain and obama, as i understand, is that guantanamo bay causes terrorism. and we hear that israel causes terrorism, and get know, israel, israel, i think i soft drinks probably cause it. [laughter] >> but what causes terrorism is islamist ideology and successful attacks. which make them think they can win. i mean, to the extent that what we're aiming our, what we're trying to do, to help that they don't jump in with the real bad guys, what makes a difference is we stop them from attacking. but if anybody thinks -- i

convicted a guy, who was sitting in a nice of him in prison after having a nice civilian trial. if you think those guys are not offended that he is an american prison, just because he happens not to be in gitmo. that suggests of completelcompletely being divorced from the reality of who we are dealing with. >> thank you very much. will try to get the last two real quick. yes, sir. >> and i am also a former marine so i may be a little unrefined here. my question is mainly for the warriors. we were talking about how to identify the enemy. last week, is -- pausing for booing. it was after the christmas bombing incident and they were talking with a counterterrorism. her question was why do they want to do this? in answer was, because there's this war division of islam that

is motivated. her question again was, why, why would they want a religion in order to attack us? as if that was the order it happen. we have to attack america, let's warp is a. what you say in or to make us the bad guy because her conclusion is that they are fighting a war to be isolated and sovereign. not a war against us. how do you answer for people like that? >> we have some and legal fights here. >> take the fifth. [laughter] >> i mean, they just have to increase their understanding of what's going on. they don't understand the foundation of what's going on to the need to increase their reading. [inaudible] how do you answer them? how do you explain to them why she's wrong? >> hopefully there are other voices out there that are rational and they can explain it in ways.

>> let me say this, and i don't care about being popular or whatever. the first thing you got to do is study and instead you are up against. you must realize this is not a religion that you are fighting against. you are fighting against a political system. you're fighting against something that's been doing this thing since 622 a.d., 1388 years. you want to dig up charles martel and ask you he was fighting the muslim army at the ballot tours of 732? do you want to ask them in nation fleet why they were fighting a muslim fleet in 1571? do you want to ask the christian -- i mean the dramatic and austrian knights why they were fighting at the gates of vienna 1683? you want to ask people what happened at constantinople and why today it is called istanbul because they lost that fight in 1543. you need to get into the koran. you need to understand their presents, read they had this and then you can really understand, this is not a perversion.

they are doing exactly what their discipline says. [applause] >> but -- all right. and i want to close -- i want to close by saying this. and i think that we've said this all through this boring so far. until you get principle leadership and deny states of america that is want to say that, we will continue to chase our tale because we will never clearly defined who this enemy is, and their understand. their goals and objectives which is on any jihadists website, and then come up with a right proper goals and objectives to not only secure our republic but to secure western civilization. thank you. [applause] >> last question. >> followed the near fatal christmas day incident over detroit, "the wall street journal" reported that there were 540,000 people on the

confirmed or suspected terrorist list kept by the national counterterrorism center. but only 1% wanted no-fly list in over 3% while the list of people who would be required to have more rigorous scrutiny before boarding a plane. can you shed some light on why the rest of us should sit next to a suspected terrorist and not even know it? why they are all on that no-fly list be? let me just say one very important point. one thing and i will just die to the other guys. if you read the white house report, that came out last i think a week ago last tuesday, in terms of what led up to that attack, if you read, i forget what pages on, but there's a paragraph there that shows there is an enormous, very heavy bias against putting someone on the no-fly list. in my book, it should be really easy to put one on there and really hard to get off. [applause] >> yes. why should they all be on there? >> because we're operating under a philosophy where i think john

o'sullivan, it is perfect where every organism on the planet earth is an american waiting to happen. board with a full panoply of american constitutional rights. and that's the way that people are making the law thinks. and not withstanding that we are now in a security environment, where the war is not just asymmetric, but we are dealing with ununiformed, illegal, ending combatants. so that your suspicion level should be higher, and the fourth amendment should allow you to do more, even if you assume the fourth amendment applies because of the fourth amendment only prevents you from doing unreasonable searches. so you would think would be up here, but unfortunately with political correctness, we are down here. i don't think there's any other explanation. >> anybody else add to that? all right. plays and joan, i am getting the hook.

thank you very, very much. [applause] >> [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

next up massachusetts governor deval patrick state of the commonwealth address. governor patrick begins by giving his thought on the recent senate victory by republican scott brown. the governor also speaks about reforms in education, health care, job creation, and

renewable resources. from the statehouse in boston, this is just over half an hour. [applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] [applause]

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[applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] the joint convention will come to order. it is my privilege to convene a joint legislative session on behalf of the people of massachusetts. on the occasion of the governor's annual state of the commonwealth address. on behalf of the legislature and

this great commonwealth, i would like to welcome you to the people's chamber. we look forward to working together with you on the many challenges and decisions that lay ahead. ladies and gentlemen, governor deval patrick. [applause] >> thank you. thank you very much. thank you. thank you very much. thank you very much. thank you very much. thank you. thank you, everyone. thank you. thank you very much. thank you. thank you all so much. madam speaker -- madam speaker?

[laughter] >> all right, do over. madame president -- [applause] -- mr. speaker, there we go. [applause] >> and all of the members of the house and senate, lieutenant governor, fellow constitutional officers, and members of the cabinet, to the members of the honorable judiciary, congressman and mrs. capuano, mayor menino and other municipal leaders, reverend clergy, distinguished guests, and above all, to the people of the commonwealth of massachusetts. i want to first acknowledge and thank my first lady and yours, diane patrick. [applause]

>> you should all know that diane has done marvelous work around the commonwealth on domestic violence issues. and, diane, i think people have come to be almost as grateful to have you in their lives as i am to have you in mine. [applause] >> i want you all to please join diane and me in thanking the men and women of massachusetts who serve in the united states military, and their families. [applause]

>> we are every one of us in their debt. special thanks to pastor laguerre, who joins us tonight for the invocation. we pray with you for the rescue of the haitian people, for comfort for their families and friends here in the commonwealth, for strength for the relief workers from massachusetts who are on the ground now in haiti, and for blessings for all of the good people of this commonwealth who have offered support to the victims. i want to commend all three candidates in the special election for a spirited campaign. general, thank you for being here. [applause]

>> and i want to congratulate united states senator-elect scott brown. [applause] >> i spoke to scott on election night and again this afternoon, and we pledged to work together, as i do with the whole delegation, on behalf of the interests of all of the people of the commonwealth. the best news, in my view, is that even on a cold, snowy day in january, for an out of cycle

election, the voters came out in force and engaged in their democracy. at a time when many people feel powerless, people reminded themselves and us that they have all the power they need to make all the change they want. that's good news. three years ago when i took the oath of office on the steps just outside this building, i described a vision for a better, stronger commonwealth. i talked about good jobs and good wages, all across the state, a great school in every neighborhood, and citizens with a renewed sense of community, where each of us sees the stake we have in each other's dreams and struggles. i knew the challenges before us, and acknowledged them. young people were leaving our state. there was no real plan for job growth. our public schools were too often failing poor children. our roads and bridges were broken. health care reform had passed, but had not been implemented.

and the culture of beacon hill, with due respect, was famously resistant to outsiders and to change. we chose to confront these challenges, not because it was politically expedient or popular, and certainly not because it was easy. but because we understood the stake we each have in each other. because people need not big or small government, for its own sake, but good government. and because confronting these challenges was the only way to build a better, stronger commonwealth. our task was made harder by bumps along the road, some of my own making, i acknowledge. others left behind by predecessors, but most the result of a global economic collapse that no one foresaw and few living have ever experienced.

the economic meltdown produced $9 billion in budget gaps, cuts to worthy programs, and elimination of thousands of state jobs. just like in household after household, and business after business, we in state government have had to make do with less, to improvise and innovate, to work harder. but because we made it personal, because we understood that a better, stronger commonwealth would lift us all up, we kept going. the toll this global economic crisis has taken on people here at home has only served to make me even more determined. i meet people every day, and i see the anxiety in their faces. i hear their stories of lost jobs or lost homes, of lost retirement accounts or lost hope. i know they are stressed, not

just for themselves, but because there are still kids to be educated and parents to be cared for. i met a grandmother at the career center in lynn this month who told me about moving her son and daughter and their kids, nine of them strong, into her home because they're out of work and strapped for cash. now she has lost her job. she's not asking for much, just a chance to provide for her family, and a little help holding on until she can make her own way. meanwhile, like so many other citizens, she is feeling powerless against forces beyond her control. this is not the american dream she counted on. and it is not the american dream we will accept. [applause]

>> so for her, for every other striver who aches for a better, stronger commonwealth, we kept faith with our vision and kept going. too fast for some, not fast enough for others, learning from our mistakes as well as from our triumphs, but always forward, without ever losing sight of who we are working for. and so, working together, we closed that $9 billion budget gap and delivered a third consecutive budget that was responsible, balanced and on time, which is not something that many other states can say. [applause]

>> but we also worked to understand and address the impact that each cut would have on the people who depended on the program, and to deliver the service in better and more efficient ways. we made it personal. to create jobs, we leveraged our world-class universities and health care institutions, making investments in biotech, life sciences and green technology so that the people of massachusetts would have opportunities in the innovation economy of tomorrow. but we also went to work every day calling individual business leaders about locating or expanding here, working out ways to help them prosper and create jobs. 10, 50, 200 at a time, making sure the workforce was trained, and extending unemployment and health care benefits to help families hold it together in the short run. we made it personal. we did the hard work, the hard work, of implementing health

care reform so that now nearly every man, woman and child in the commonwealth has reliable health insurance and we are a model for the nation. [applause] >> but because we know many families and small businesses are struggling to afford the premiums they pay, we went to work to drive down costs, hauling insurance companies into public hearings to explain why premiums keep going up when everything else is coming down. we made it personal. and a time of dwindling state revenue, we funded public schools at the highest level in history. in the budget i file next week, i will propose to do it again by fully funding the education budget through chapter 70 next year, so that no school will see a cut in state support.

[applause] >> but because schools need innovation as well as money in order to be great, we made law and history this week by signing an education reform bill that will put a great school within reach of every child in every corner of this commonwealth. we made it personal. thank you. [applause] >> we did all that and more this past year, and i want to thank you. i want to thank president murray, speaker deleo and each member of this senate and house, for your willingness to work

with us, frequently across party lines, and to take the tough votes that we know will make a better, stronger commonwealth. i also want to thank the members of the cabinet and their teams for your creativity and tenacity, and a state workers who, despite furloughs and contract concessions, pay freezes and increased health care contributions, go to work every day trying to do right by the people we serve. [applause] >> change is never easy and rarely quick. woodrow wilson once said, if you want to make enemies, try to change something. and lord knows he was right. [laughter] >> but it is worthy.

it's worthy. because we are together building the foundation for a better, and i ask you, don't just take my word for it. here are some facts. for the first time in 20 years, more people are moving into our state than are moving out. business confidence has improved nine of the last 10 months, which means more investment and more jobs ahead. home sales are up for the fifth consecutive month, 59 percent in the month of november alone all three national rating agencies have affirmed the states aa credit rating and stable outlook for the future, expressly citing our successful management of this fiscal crisis. massachusetts is one of the few state in the country able to access the bond markets to fund our student loan program. we are first in the nation in student achievement for the third straight year, and first in the nation in health care coverage for our residents, with

over 97% insured. [applause] >> our clean and alternative energy initiatives set national standards. we will increase wind power 10 fold and solar power 15 fold by next year. and then the solar industry we have already more than doubled the number of jobs and quadrupled the number of companies. and still, still, people sometimes ask, what does all this mean for them? well, a good credit rating means that we can do construction projects like assembly square in somerville, or the appleton mills redevelopment in lowell, or the route seven improvements in pittsfield, or the route 24 ramp in fall river, and on and

on and on. projects that put people to work right now, create other jobs shortly, and improve the quality of life for years. it means people like r. evans stewart can get a state subsidized aglow to help his grandson pursue his dreams at western new england college. that's what it means. implementing health reform well means peace of mind for people like jaclyn from norwell who would not have had her breast cancer treated without access to affordable care. it means by a cost effective way to cover over 26,000 immigrants who live and work here legally and pay taxes into the system. [applause] >> simplifying the transportation network and abolishing the turnpike authority means we have saved taxpayers a quarter billion

dollars and can put toll and tea fare hikes off a little while while we focus on better service for commuters. holding the line on funding for schools or passing the education reform bill means the kids i meet in arlington or east boston high school, or the south middle school in brockton, or the university park campus school in wurster, or the walsh school in framingham, or the poor and special needs kids i carry around in my heart, will get the chance i got to make a better life for themselves and their families. [applause] >> let me tell you what it means. investing in clean and

alternative energy, or the life sciences and biotech, means dan leary, an iraq war vet, can hire more people at his solar installation coming in north andover. i think he's up to 45 so far. and randy moquin can get trained, get off unemployment and go to work as an energy auditor out in springfield. and josh hamilton can build a center for regenerative medicine in woods hole and start to transform the future of human health. investing in infrastructure means that, now and even more so in the coming spring construction season, new bridges will be built. and exit ramps and roads are being restored, broadband cable is being laid under i 91, stations, office parks, medical research buildings, parking garages are all going up. investments that put people to work today and become the economic enabler of tomorrow. and ending --

[applause] >> and ending the abuse in the state pension system and tightening the ethics and lobbying rules means that people can trust that state government is focused again on their business and not personal gain. governing for people, the ways your government can help you help yourselves, is why we come to work every day. by investing in people, by making it personal, we are building a better, stronger commonwealth for all of us. i know there's much more work to do. and i will not be satisfied until it's done. unemployment, even with the disappointing numbers released today, is not as high here as the national average, but i will not be satisfied until we have put all our people back to work.

[applause] >> more people than ever are insured, but i will not be satisfied until the cost of health insurance is lower, especially for small businesses and working families. [applause] >> i will not be satisfied until cori and sending reform are enacted into law and we start getting as smart on crime as we are tough. [applause] >> we, all of us, have worked together to give local communities new tools to cut

costs and raise revenues, to regionalize more municipal services. but i will not be satisfied until we find a way to bring property taxes down. [applause] >> i will not be satisfied until we have reshaped and reinvented state government itself, consolidated more agencies and wrung out of them every inefficiency. that must be our agenda and i will not be satisfied until it's finished. and neither should you. [applause] >> these are each of them tough issues. i know that. but you ought to know by now, friends one and all, not to doubt my resolve or my

determination. i hear the detractors who fiercely or passively defend the status quo. i hear the challengers pressing to return to old, familiar ways, even policies that have failed us in the past. but i also hear a public deeply frustrated with the pace of change, who need a little help from us right now so they can help themselves. our job is to be leaders for them. to stand up and make the hard decisions that are necessary to build a better, stronger commonwealth. we must make it personal. to the people of the commonwealth, above all, especially those whose lives have been turned upside down by this economy, you are not powerless. and you are not alone. if we here work together and creatively, we can make a

difference where it matters, not on our resumes but in your lives. we have shown we can do this with historic reforms already, and we must redouble our efforts. we will do our part. now you must also do yours. be angry, but channel it in a positive direction. it's easy to be against things. it takes tough mindedness and courage to be for something. in massachusetts, at our best, we are for each other, we are about seeing our stake in our neighbors dreams and struggles as well as our own. and i know some kids who understand this especially well. the high school in brockton, massachusetts, is the largest in our commonwealth. 4100 young people go to that school. 64% are on the free lunch

program. for nearly half of them, english is a second language. i visited the school last spring to announce some of the federal stimulus funding for education, and arranged to meet beforehand with parents of special needs students. i sat with about a dozen of these parents in the school library, surrounded by members of the student council who had come to observe. and at first we talked about programs and policies and information, but the conversation got personal, when one mother asked me, she said, governor, imagine what it's like to have a child in school who has no friends. and as a parent, the comment was searing. her child's learning issues were so profound that other kids just shunned him. and at that .1 of the student council members raised her hand and said, i want to be your child's buddy, right here in the high school. it was a beautiful and spontaneous thing. another parent then said that's

nice but my child is in the grammar school. her child had similar issues who wasn't in that school, which prompted another student to raise her hand and say, wider we have a program where high school students can be buddies for special needs kids in whatever brockton school they attend? marvelous. that is cool superintendent was there and had a natural reaction in these times. he worried aloud about how, in a time of scarce resources, we could possibly pay for such a program. to which another student replied, we don't have to be paid. this is our community. his message was plain and powerful. if there is a need, send me. that program now has a name, called the boxer buddies. it is going strong, and i want to acknowledge the buddies who are here tonight. i am so proud of you. [applause]

[applause] >> the point is this. in a city as hard hit as any by the economic crisis, these young people did sit around wondering and worrying what to do and who was going to do it. they didn't accept that they were powerless. they saw a need and met it, and found power in service itself. and through that not only have they inspired me and many others, but they have build a better, stronger commonwealth.

brick by brick. block by block. neighborhood by neighborhood. town by town. that is what each of us must do. that is who each of us must be. that's the opportunity this crisis presents. and if we seize it, i'm certain that our best days lie ahead. thank you, everybody. not bless you all and god bless the commonwealth of massachusetts. [applause]

>> next a discussion on the character of traditional american culture and morals. at a 2010 ronald reagan symposium hosted by regent university, scholars discuss the former president values. from virginia beach, this is about two hours and 15 minutes. >> in honor of our nation's 40th president, ronald wilson reagan. our first imposing in 2006, the future of conservatism, now publish enable, we seek a lengthy and superlative review in the "new york times." our second symposium in 2007, the future of religion in american politics, came out as a

favorably reviewed university press block. our third symposium in 2008, the legacy of ronald reagan, came out as a book titled the enduring reagan, which prompted credit reduced to say, it is hands-down the fighters fighters compilation on ronald reagan. and no compilation comes close to matching it inside and credibility. our for symposium in 2009, the future the american presidency will come out as a university press book later this year. so it is that what we have said and done here reaches an audience around the world. but not just in books. each year, c-span televises our reagan symposia nationwide. and this year, is no exception. let's welcome c-span and c-span television crew with a hearty

round of applause. [applause] >> thirty years ago when america struggled from the decade-long malaise of the 1970s, ronald reagan rejected the notion that the sun had set on a once great country. he countered, it's morning in america. what better time than now, 30 years later with america's once again facing forceful challenges to our identity at home and abroad, to re-examine the character of american culture. can a traditional view of american culture successfully compete against postmodernism? what are the sources of cultural renewal in a divided, pluralistic society? is the promotion of traditional

american cultural values merely an antiquated relic of the past? to those questions, president reagan responded vigorously, boldly declaring that the greatness of america is in you. her people, and in your families, churches, neighborhoods, communities, the institutions that foster and nourish values like a concern for others and respect for the rule of law under god. ronald reagan encouraged americans to return to their fundamental roots of faith, family and freedom. here to address the vital subject of the future of american culture are seven of our nation's foremost authorities. hadley arkes, allan carlson, jim, paul cantor, charles kessler, kit myers, and wilfred

mcclay. ones our for morning speakers conclude their remarks, we'll have a 10 minute break and then return for a robust question and answer session. to allow ample opportunity for you to ask questions, i have asked our speakers to limit their formal presentations to approximately 20 to 25 minutes. upon your return, up this morning break, please line up behind one of the two microphones at the head of each aisle. during our first portion can we've had as many as 24 people standing down both liles waiting to ask questions. so let's get in line early. [laughter] >> and now, let's begin. entering first onstage, hadley arkes. professor of american

institutions at amherst college. who also serves as a senior fellow of the ethics and public policy center in washington, d.c.. the princeton university and cambridge university presses have published all of his books, including the most recent, natural rights and the right to choose. his writing as a public intellectual and parents oust publications as the "washington post," wall street journal, weekly standard and national review. a serious scholar, he is that. but now, here is the rest of the story. [laughter] >> when i asked a friend to describe hadley arkes, the friend said, he is the groucho marx of american professors. [laughter] >> he always manages to leave in his wake a legacy a funny story. and would you believe he drove

here from amherst and his new lexus, listing on his mp3 player, to jack benny. the shadow. [laughter] >> captain midnight, mr. district attorney, and orson welles, mercury theatre of 1939-40. let's welcome to the regent university stage, hadley arkes, to address the touch for first principles, reagan and the recovery of culture. [applause] >> it's lovely to be back but when chuck said the foremost authorities in america, i suddenly looked around to see who had walked in the room. [laughter] >> ladies and gentlemen, in the 1980s, in the days of president reagan, there is a running line in the "washington post" called reaganism of the week.

which the insinuation was the gipper was speaking frontier gibberish. and he offered once the case in point at which the president was asked how would you, as a legal office of the government be supporting the contras of nicaragua where there is seeking to overthrow a legitimate government of nicaragua? and the president said, it's true that the contras are seeking to take power at the point of gun, but of course the senate has its whole power at the point of gun so i'm not clear on the difference between the contras and what you are please call a legitimate government of nicaragua. the gipper could not fill in the bibliography. he couldn't explain that his reflections here follow the paths by such writers of international law, he probably could not have explained that his reflections here had put

them back to the difference between an international law based on positive law, and an understanding of of international influence more fully by the axioms of natural. and by positive law we mean something that is it is posited, set down, enacted by the people at any places you these are giving the force of law. with a positive asked the question who formed a legitimate government of nicaragua, the answer came back without any more ingredients, it was the legitimate government? was that government that had effective control of the territory. that was not necessarily a government that enjoys the consent of the government. they could be a hitlerite regime. or the regime of saddam hussein. but if it was firmly in control of the territory and counted in the positive reckoning, as legitimate government. the alternative view drawing on the moral tradition insisted on privacy of moral tests, casting

of warnings before we would confer legitimacy on some exotic desert just. that perspective reflected an older vision of international law. because it reflected an older understanding of the connection between morality and law. the modern project of law was reflected in justice holmes when he famously hoped that every word of moral significance could be banished from the law altogether. and replace with legal terms nicely purged of any moral shadings. that state of mind has taken hold among many lawyers and professors of law, not among ordinary people. but the connection between them, the logic of course, and the logic of law is inescapable. it just can't be removed. when we moved to the level of moral judgment, we move away radically from statements of merely personal taste or private believe. would begin speaking about the things that are more generally or universally right or wrong, just or unjust, which is to say

right a wrong, just or unjust for others. as well as for ourselves. if we come to the judgment that is wrong compared to torture their infant, the next line is not, therefore let us give them tax incentives to induce them to stop. ordered a dvd player. if we think the torture of infants is wrong, we don't make contract with people or offered an incentive we offer with a command that the torture cities. we forbid that torture to end to everyone which is to say, we forbid it, with the force of law. and that a century i think was the classic connection between morality and law. now in spite of the best efforts of the law schools, that's still the understanding of law that is held by ordinary people, talking about these things with ordinary language. ronald reagan spoke about

politics in law that way without knowing that he was speaking the language of natural law, even after people in football schools had stopped taking natural law seriously. harry jaffa in his classic work "crises of the house divided" managed to bring out the ways in which lincoln moved on his own law that a denmark copy for them by aristotle and others. and as one commentator observed in the accomplishment maybe even more oppressive when we know that lincoln was not familiar with the writings of aristotle. it might be said that his mind moves when actually along the paths taken by minds that rank among the most impressive in the ages. without overdoing the matter i was just something similar was at work with reagan. he read widely. but even so he could not readily bring out his support of. the striking thing about him was that on his own come in his own

curiosity of mulling over puzzles or moral questions, he often moved along passed a reflection that had not tried before and. by writers more accomplished and celebrated then he. its trees as to how this turn of mind went unnoticed, even among journalists who affected to watch them close to that one of the most notable examples here occurred early in the administration. the new administration seem to be losing traction or faltering in the winter of 1981-82 with a severe recession setting and. . .

leave them with questions. and framed them in ways that are sensible. in a speech in 1980, i recall him citing president carter's charge defensive labor for making competitive demands, people heating up the economy, generating inflation an their own spending. reagan insisted that we do not have inflation as mr. carter says because we have lived too

well. high taxes we're told are good for us as if when government spends our money, it isn't inflationary, but when we spend it, it is. with a joke he delivers us from the haze. it makes us look more closely for the real cause of inflation in that same address i found him dealing with empassioned environmentalists determined to block that we will not permit the safety of our people, our environmental heritage be jeopardized, but, we are going reaffirm that the economic prosperity of our people is a fundamental part of our environment. now, what was curious and striking about the passage is that it anticipated the argument that would be made more fully 30 years later by benedict xvi.

the pope was the nature of purged of human things. we might put aside the question that the human beings were not the peak of creation and the biblical understanding but it take ascertain perverse genius, you might say, to conceive nature in our own day detached from the existence of those creatures who alone bear a moral purpose and can impart a moral purpose to inanimate matter, whose presence marks the existence of a moral purpose in nature, but in the scheme of the environmentalism, we are c constantly drawn to save the planet as though human beings were not as much a part of that nature as trees and flowers. it is benedict takes the occasion to drive home the point that has eluded these people.

environmentalists seem unreal that what they seek to do in the name of saving nature may actually do damage to the integrity and character of the human person. that moral being who is every bit as much part of nature. and that may be done by inducing people to believe that they have a license to manufacture and discard human life to suit their own interest or advance a project in research. as though human life had no intrinsic importance. we seek to extend the span of human life, while we purge from ourselves any sense of reverence for those lives we profess to treasure. ronald reagan, of course, was nowhere near the world class philosopher that joseph ratsinger is, a man recognized by the french academy, deeply learned in philosophy of theology, man who works readily in greek, latin, german,

english, french. but what is so notable here is that reagan grasped the central truth of the matter, he grasped something that had eluded environmentalists along with everybody else. he understood a that intentions far exceeding his own have not managed to grasp even yet. plato recognized political man would need to understand what the philosopher understands and deliberating about the things that were just or unjust, but the political man also has to make themselves an his measures acceptable to the multitude of most of the people who are not philosophers. task then was to speak in a mode that was accessible. lincoln said the task was to impart the central idea and gave us the examples o of how that was done. mr. reagan had something close to that and is combined with his touch for things that ran into

the common understanding because they touched primary truths. one of my own disappoints during 1980 was i couldn't get my friends that led mr. reagan to a rift. on that striking example of natural law seasoning, that lincoln gave news that fragment he wrote for himself on slavery when he mentioned himself to be engaged in the conversation put into question why he justified in making a slave a black man, is it because he's less intelligent than you? you might be rightly enslaved by the next man who comes along more intelligent than you. is it because he's darker than you? you may be rightly enslaved by the next white man who comes along with a complexion even lighter than yours. the upshot was that there's nothing one could cite that could not apply to many whites as well. and at no point in the chain of reasoning was there an appeal to

revelation of faith. this was simply a model of principled reasoning. it was accessible to people across the religious divisions. he didn't need a clinl education in order to understand it. it could be understood by catholics, baptists, even aethists. it was a model of speaking in a manner that was commonly understood an in a manner that touched primary truths. i was urging that same mode of reasoning to the matter of abortion and running it this way. why was that chiel in the womb anything less than human? doesn't speak. fiert do deaf mutes. it doesn't have arms or legs while other people lose arms and legs in the course of their lives. without losing anything necessary to their standing as human beings to receive the protections of the law. and the upshot was there was nothing one could site to disqualify the unborn child in the womb that would not apply to many people walking around well outside the womb. my own judgment was that this was the kind of speaking that

quite fitted reagan's style. he could have delivered it with considerable effect. but of course mr. reagan and hi staff decided not to make abortion a central point, but to his credit he sought to teach gently about this question, of the unborn child. he would do it in that style of his by raising questions. in those radio talks he gave in the late 70s he noted the first time he faced the question of aabortion that he was a governor. he was drawn by this curiosity that the same legislature in california seeking to establish the rights of abortion had passed the law making it murder to kill an unborn child in the course of an attack on a preg nan woman. he all noted that the child in the womb already had standing to inherit property as an heir. so it posed this question to his staff. let's say a woman had become widowed during her pregnancy. he found that her husband left his estate to her and to the child she was carrying.

reagan asked, would she be free to order the killing of the child in order to keep the whole estate for herself? wouldn't that be murder, he said, for financial gain? and was reagan not leading us back to the central question in the most engaging way? steve hayward an his age of reagan remarked on the tendency of those people in the class of pub lib intel chuls to dismiss reagan as sip police tick. but the problem is hayward recognized is that people who rather schemes of administration may be temped to absorb themselves in details while avoiding the moral question that lay at the heart of the thing. e we often find ourselves making judgments hinging upon certain rules of prudence that may cut through the debates waged by experts on technical issues. after today it seemed ronald

reagan reduced one part of the conflict to this role of conjecture. that in a regime of arms control the advantage tilted to the side of those disposed to cheat and who could be far more successful in controlling information and closing off the channel of leaks. on the other hand, if they br one of an arms race the advantage tilted to the side that had the larger capacity for technological inventiveness with a history of rewarding innovation. that was our side, the united states. reagan bet on strategic defense and did it out of a moral conviction that any natural defense could be built around the notion of protecting the lives of our own people, not keeping them vulnerable to nuclear assaults for the sake of holing to a theory of deterrents that might never be tested. and in marked contrast to his critics, reagan was more firmly grounded in his moral starting point. saw more clearly than they that

his move to strategic defense could put the soviet leadership under pressure and foster a crippling crisis in the character of the soviet regime. ronald reagan, of course, was famous for his knack of telling jokes. but the jokes were all part of his teaching. jokes have a point. they play off principles we count on people out there to understand. my friends here have known me for a long while know the argument i have made that the comedians and philosophers are often in the same distance because they both make their livings playing off the shades of meaning and the logic tucked away in our language, heady. how do you keep a marriage going for 40 years or more twice a week my wife and i have an intimate dinner with candlelight an wine. twice a week. she goes on tuesdays, i go on thursdays. people haven't yet seen the real

reach of the observation of the whole system of fill lostsy could be conveyed to a train of jokes. one thing that hassen been appreciated is that the laugh illicited from the add again is the sure sign that people have unstood the point. people may not see that they may concede true the laugh what they may not concede if it were put to them explicitly in the form of an argument. the best examples come on that of sex but i'll put that aside for another occasion. when i'm taking drives, as chuck said, i listen to those radio shows that chuck and i listen to when we were growing up. and what i find listening to those old comedy shows is that those recordings from the '40s, they offer a kind of anthropological record. when we see where the laughs come, we have a rashable accurate picture of what the american people evidently understood if the vain of

natural law in the 1940s. one case it's established jack benny. some people still remember jack benny. jack benny with a bow and arrow is lethal, but phil harris offers him a bet that he can't -- ten cents, a dime, you can't hit the apple off the head of don wilson. jack said, i'll take that bet. don wilson, whoa. jack said, what are you getting upset about. it's our money. the laugh was instant and massive. point of course that we can't risk human life for anything as trivial as a sporting bet. and the bet of ten cents. now fsh all of this holds, the premises are in place for something cutting closer to our politics. i have in mind a scenele in mel brooks movie where the king in france is out skeet shooting. the king yells pull. what is thrown up in the air is

a pheasant. now mel brooks doesn't offer a sensibility over the refined. he has to count on the failure that people larger than the mass audience will get the joke. the joke is we don't hazard human life as a play thing. i'd submit that when people laugh at that, see the joke, they have essentially put in place every critical premise to a moral judgment running in this way, young man tells his girlfriend it's all right, we can do this for fun. we don't need a commitment. don't worry, if anything happens, we can throw it away. now, that's how something once regarded as serious, or even partenthis if generating real life may be reduced to a matter so trivial that some among us will not suffer the least hesitation in throwing away that life. and one of my favorite rhymes,

red skeleton said they have a military wedding, or i think they had a military wedding. let's put it this way. there were guns there. that joke is clearly the reflection of a culture that has vanished. it reflects a time when the residents of dog patch usa somehow didn't think they had a franchise to solve their problem through the simple exceed yent of getting rid of the child in the womb. the no shot gun weddings, either because marriage is no longer required as a necessary frame work for sex but now pregnancy may be entered without forcing marriage. that joke may be taking an a fragment, a clear sign of a culture that has dramatically shifted through the 1940s or even from the 1960s. the task fou of recovering that culture is the task of teaching again the moral understandings that were once anchored in the

culture that has been dramatically eroded. but we have seen the moral recovery in the past, just as we've seen conversions in the past. conversions involving persons, then spreading to the rest of the society. and just as we see the sexual revolution of the 1960s, that revolution has begotten its casualties, its regrets, its deep thoughts. what has changed before, what has changed before, may change yet again. the joke about the military wedding reflects a shift in conventions marking changes of moral import. but the question is whether some of these jokes actually touch the things that will not change, the permanent things. my own hunch is that the mel brooks joke on shooting peasants as though they were clay disks will still be funny years from now because people will still understand something as dramatically, even cometically out of scale in destroying human

life as a sport or a play thing. but if i'm right, it means that we touch again those recognitions that cannot be extinguished because they involve things that aren't truly primary. the things that human beings are constituted to understand you might say wherever we are. and of course certain things we are constant to know may simply fade from our awareness. when lincoln offered his fragment on slavery, and we recognized that there was no principle drama for which to remove black people from the domain of beings, we were being awaken to things we regularly should have grasped. when ronald reagan argued in this same way, the reaction was often, of course, he was alerting us the things we should have known if only spun had posed the question in the right way or framed the problem for us. 'aftermath of that recent

election, in massachusetts several commentators remarked that this is a central right sen trie. the democrats were the swollen majority, thought it was 1965 all over again, where they could re-enact the surge of the great society, expansion of the federal government in all fields. now, that surge of 1965 followed the land slide victory of barry goldwater in 1964. so let us recall. that when ronald reagan stood up to give that speech for barry goldwater in 1964, the speech that launched his political career, he was not standing up in a country understood at the time to be center right. quite the opposite. he was thought to be a voice in the far margins of our politics. is it not in effect that if we have a central right country today, it is because ronald

reagan in a manner that was accessible and appealing. he taught us to understand in a different way, in a way we used to be, way that the intel chuls told us that it would be recovered. but of course all political culture was never ir recoverable because the case was always there, always to be made anew. in the way that ordinary people would understand. reminding that closing the permanent things will not always be seen. that it is the precisely the function of teaching or statesmanship to bring them back to us. we find ourselves backing again into the lessons of plato, that so much of our knowledge is already tucked away within us and becomes a matter of drawing out the things we've come to

feel we've known all along. the genius of state as teaching is that it reminds us of the things we used to know and when it is done with the art of ai ronald reagan, it also stirs the recognition that these are things, these are things we have never ceased to know. thank you. [ applause ] sfoo >> alan c. carlson, his books include family questions, reflections on the american social crisis, the american way,

family and community in the shaping of the american identity, and congugal america, on the public purposes of marriage. he has appeared on the pbs news hour, mpr's morning edition all things considered, talk of the nation, voice of america, abc, cbs and nbc news, cspan, australian, czech and polish tv and ag special pbs productions on family issues. but now for the rest of the story. alan lives on a farm in illinois where his wife betsy an he tend a one acre vegetable garden. perhaps reflecting his swedish peasant roots, his favorite crop is the potato, particularly the

red. his fellow swedish americans think he is a very funny guy, which he admits is a fairly low bar on the humor scale. and in as much as swedes are notoriously humor challenged. but because of their high regard for his low level of swedish humor, he serves as master of ceremonies at the county jewel fest scandinavian christmas party, where alan modestly reports knocking them dead with his ole jokes. let's welcome alan c. carlson. [ applause ] >> well, thank you. it's a pleasure to be with you today.

oddly enough, like professor harkes, i, too, want to talk about jokes. a mythical swedish american couple, probably residing in minnesota, and notable for their remarkably dysfunctional marriage. one story goes like this. ole and lina had grown old. one day ole became very sick. eventually he was confined to an upstairs bedroom, barely conscious, bed ridden, growing ever weaker. and after several weeks of this, the doctor visits and tells lena, he is just about a goner. i don't think he's gonna survive the night. so lena, being a practical woman, decides she better start preparing for all the guests that will be coming to the funeral. she begins to bake. starting with loaves of limpah arch swedish sweet rye bread.

mrez an smell of baking bread is soon wafting through the house. suddenly upstairs oley's nose twitches. his eyes bolt open. limpa, he says. he jerks into a sitting position, swings his legs around, climbs out of bed. it's like a miracle. af walking, half stumbling, he enters the hallway, starts working his way down the stairs. limpa, he says again. he reaches the ground floor, stumbles across the kitchen, pulls himself into a chair by a table where a loaf of freshly sliced bread sits. he reaches over to take a slice. stop that, shouts lena, as she whacks his hand with her spatula! that bread is for after the

funeral! we can still laugh at oley and lena. because they are now out of time. characters from a much earlier era of swedish immigration into america. their ideal type, we might say, no longer exists. more importantly, and this is a.made in the prior talk, i think, their dysfunctional marriage also belongs to another era. several generations ago when there were real oley and lenas, divorce would have been rare in their community. for better or worse, person stayed in unhappy or troubled marriages. perhaps for the sake of the children. perhaps for other cultural an religious reasons. successful jokes involve making fun of institutions that are strong and stable. the marriage joke, a staple of

comedians during the 1950s and 1960s, seems to be fading in our time. symbolically, rodney dangerfield, perhaps the last master of the marriage joke, is reen recently deceased. it's hard to make fun of an institution that is battered and bruised, such are marriage and the family in america. marriage rates are now at record lows in this country. the average age of first marriage is at a record high for both men and women. the proportion of adults who will never marry is also at a record level. at the same time, the marital fertility rate in america is at a fear record low. meanwhile, 40% of all births are now outside of marriage, a figure steadily climbing again. cohabitation, living together without benefit of clergy, as we

used to call it, grows ever more popular as an alternative to marriage. while the american divorce rate has been fairly stable for a decade or two, it remains at a high level. one of every two marriages still ends in divorce. and finally, gay rights activists are clamoring for the right to marry. for some even success among the states. there are those, such as harvard historian nancy cott, who argue these changes simply represent the inevitable evolution of marriage and family 37 a natural adaptation of a plastic like institution to new conditions. industrialization, modernization and the quest for equality cott concludes have freed marriage from the shackles of the past, allowing it to evolve into a

high and new form. there is no doubt that the vast process called the industrial revolution brought new pressures to bear on what i prefer to call the natural family. at the most basic level, this process severed the workplace from the home. for all of human history before, the great majority of humans had lived and worked in the same place, be it a small farm or partisan's shop or nomad's temp. under the industr

stronger commonwealth.