so we'll see, especially at digital sales keep going, perhaps we'll see a greater preponderance of smaller independent stores. a number of them have open. certainly they see many of the pressures that have been debated over the last decade. but the ones that have opened and have a certain business and try to engage both within their communities and also develop a full e-book strategy seemed to have the best chance for survival. i think we'll hopefully see more of those. so the ecosystem is going to change. it will certainly impact how publishers perhaps sign-up authors and web votes will be most visible. but to say that the shrinking of the chain bookstore business needs the book industry is dead is the connection i would be deeply uncomfortable in making because there are too many signs

that are pointing towards more optimistic waters. >> who were some of orders biggest creditors? and what if they said in the filing? >> well, on the unsecured creditors side, the biggest penguin, which is owed 41 million. after that most of the major publishers, for example, simon & schuster is owed 33 million. random house is a somewhere around the mid-30 million range. harpercollins, but million and so on and so forth. i believe the only publisher that has issued a statement is penguin. others have stayed mum with respect to what is happening. and of course there are the larger secured creditors, which are bank of america, which helps the credit agreement. they are still owed about 200 million bga capital, almost 50 million off of their own trench agreement as well. so they have to pay off the banks, have to pay their big

publishers. and of course to get whatever they can as well as additional creditors. so i believe workers is about 300 or so million to vendors and not to figure out how they're going to get paid. >> can in your view porters emerge from bankruptcy or with its remaining stock of stores, et cetera become a profitable company? >> i think it would be wonderful to see them emerge as a smaller leader, more profitable company. i also believe many of the factors that have enabled them to go into bankruptcy may not be so kind and forgiving. they are to my mind a little bit too much concordance when they went into chapter 11 at illustration in late 2008 and realized they didn't have an appropriate business plan that went into chapter seven. numerous reports indicate a publishers are not terribly happy with what orders seems to

have in mind. her top priorities seem to be highlighting the borders plus card. the customers come in and they know this company is in trouble. if they want to regain their borders plus card or sign up for membership in a company they may feel doesn't have a future? so i think it must borders has a rocksolid strategy is to either going to survive, they made suffer the same. but at the same time, i don't think we'll know for several months at the earliest. >> sarah weinman is the publisher of publishers market. tanks for joining. >> thanks for having. >> thanks, james buckley judge on the u.s. court of appeals argues against the extension of the federal government and contends that it growth questions the original intent of the framers of the constitution.

he presents at the heritage foundation in washington d.c. it's an hour. [applause] >> wow, i suppose the first thing -- i'm a little bit or 10. should we address u.s. senator, judge, under secretary of state? which do you prefer? >> is very confusing. how about you? >> a man of the people. this wonderful book, "freedom at risk," which are remarks in speeches and statements and articles which you have written over the last several years was a low bit of the disturbing title about freedom at risk. so i guess the first question that i'm sure would like to have you address is how much freedom is at risk and what do we do about it?

>> i do believe that freedom is at risk if you're talking about the autonomy, the exercise of personal disclosure that have been at the root of our country since its founding. i believe that the time is relatively short for us to reassert with vigor the principles that have safeguarded us in the years past. back in 1976, when i was running for reelection to the senate, it was my misfortune to have an opponent, the formidable daniel patrick moynihan. but our first encounter, he told the audience that it's really a very fine fellow, but unfortunately my feet were stuck in the 18th and jury. in response, i admitted that i was guilty as charged.

i can fast and during fealty to the failures in the cetaceans embedded in the declaration of independence and the united states constitution, i neglected to confess my equal fealty to the inside and adams notes wealth of nations. the question that and the question today is whether those bodies and institutions and insights have any relevance to the extraordinary differ world in which we now live. i believe they do then and i believe they do today. the fact is that our country was created by a remarkable group of men. people like james madison who had studied the history of experiments and freedom from the

most ancient times, times of greece in athens and on through the ages. and in just about every instance, freedom eventually failed because of the one factor in human affairs which is a common nickname is human nature. in this case they are talking about the impulse to exercise power, to concentrate power is exercised either by an individual desperate or by a parliamentary majority. so when construct in the constitution, although ultimate responsibility for protecting our freedoms lies with the people suffered by people what he called auxiliary precautions are also required.

and these are in the case of constitution every time from a principle of the imbalance of powers between coequal branches of government and the principle of federalism, namely the reservation for the states and localities, does closes to their problems. i'll reservation to them of all powers not specifically allocated to the federal government in the constitution, which is largely concerned with things like foreign policy, military coinage, currency and so on, which had inherently to be national. over the years the checks and balances worked pretty well.

they are constant arguments between the executive of the legislature as to which is more a cool and to know why offered for better or for worse and shows it more deep than the others. at the principle of federalism has here truly been ruled out of existence. over the years, encroachments by congress or the executive that has been sanctioned by the court had so diluted the principle that today it is virtually impossible to identify an exercise of government authority by the federal government that the supreme court will rule unconstitutional. what has been the effect of this on extraordinary expansion the concentration of power in

washington that the founders feared. and because those encroachments have been progressive and a lot of them under the cover of public attention, i don't think that any americans today recognize the extraordinary transformation that has occurred in our country in recent years. for the first 150 years, the original plan was pretty much intact. beginning with the new deal, we saw more progressive exercise in the federal president. and i think this is especially illustrated by the fact that when i went to law school, the united states code, which contains the total body of u.s. statutory consisted of three

volumes. today it is three volumes. i think the most telling statistic has to do with attempts at describing and emphasizing the nature of the changes. it has to do with title 42 of the code, which contains all the laws relative to education and public welfare. when i went to law school, title 42 consisted of 128 pages. today it consists of 6200 pages for 1700 mark pages in the entire body at the time the new joe started. but that of course is just the tip of the iceberg. it is increasingly federal legislation has taken the form of bureaus and agencies that are

in turn and dowd was ever broader responsibility and discretion in defining the specific rules that will be governing our cavities in our lives and that have the force of law. and unfortunately, congress in recent years has first of all increase the number of violations of regulations that are criminalized and number two, waving the constitutional -- rather that, my requirement did you know you're breaking the law before you can be thrown in jail. so today it is quite possible to be thrown in jail for violating a regulation, the existence of which you have no reason to notes as to. in any event, it is the accumulation of these trends that i think have resulted in

the omnipresence of the federal government, the extraordinary increase in this pending by the federal government preemption of national income in the deaths that are towering beyond sight with the entitlement programs put in place. so these are the threats to freedom that i think exist today and are already having an effect in constraining the ability of individuals and individual enterprises to exercise nonthreatening to reduce. what can be done about it? well, first of all, in terms of relying on the balance of powers, there is conspiracy i'd say between each branch of the federal government to exercise

and, in a predominance of his estate and federalism is no longer restrained on power, which leaves us with the people. and the vital question today is whether the american people retain their independence, spirited independence, the spirit of self-reliance, the spirit of responsibility that we summed up by the founders and the term republican virtue, namely the willingness to subordinate individual advantage to the public good. we're putting that to the test. i think the tea party movement is something that is the vehicle through which we are going to see whether this test works or not. the question is, has there been

over time a change in the american character that was so priced individual autonomy and freedom that they would resist encroachments of our government or will it capitulate to the inducements reduced by the entitlement state? time will tell. >> well jim, it seems that you're talking about putting an awful lot of looking to the old rather than to the states. also in your book, the importance of federalism and how he looked about for so long. is that possible that somehow this dates might not rise to and help to bring about a greater balance in these checks and balances? >> they ought to. and before the 16th amendment to the 17th amendment, which made senators not appointed by state legislatures, but probably

elect to have less influence. but here again because of the expansion of federal aid programs, the states themselves have become more and more dependent on handouts from washington, which unfortunately included whole series of federal requirements that have been transforming states more and more into the administrators of federal these instead of being the originators and applicants of the policies to is handled their discrete problems that happened in the organize society. but we also have a terrible situation today in which the states themselves are facing formidable deficit of over

$250 billion to say nothing of towering contention obligations as a result of improvident retirement plans and promised public employees. so a bunch of saved him away from mine of connecticut to california are facing critical challenges and undoubtedly people are going to become had in hand to the federal government to bail them out. it is my personal recommendations haven't gone through the new york city police is a 1974, 75, which assured my defeat when i decided -- when i thought the idea was federal bailout for new york. i think that the kindest thing that the federal government can do for the state is to deny a single penny of federal money to bail out the state municipal governments. i should also note that the five

states in the greatest fiscal trouble today are among the 12 wealthiest states in the nation. and a dollar they get back from washington is a fraction of the amount of money sent to washington. so they should be able to handle their problems and be forced to do so. >> as we said to me that this unique opportunity and i was trying to do some research as to how unique are you. are you familiar -- how many other americans have this opportunity to serve in all three branches? perhaps that's a research project. >> i started the research project once. and as far as i know i'm the only one arise. [laughter] >> very much so. >> i had a book of existing topographies with existing federal budges and then i got as far as ui, namely secretary of state supreme court justice and

senator. >> perhaps we have a latter-day james burns here. >> maybe not. there's an election coming up. we'll see. of these careers, do you have a favorite? >> yes. let's put it this way. if one's primary interest is matters of public policy, there could not have been a more glorious position to have been to have been a united state senator 100 or more years ago. why in the past 10? because by virtue of congress are getting more and more matters of concern within its

scope, you have transformed the ability to think in congress. when i entered the senate in 1970, was presented with a study that has just been completed at the bar association in the city of new york, which had concluded that the workload of the average congressional office had doubled every five years since 1935. but once upon a time, a service in congress -- citizen servant servant -- congress was in session five, six and seven months of the year. the act dvds for a leisurely winter that was occurring on the floor, everyone was expected to be there to hear what was being read. you could think things through.

there is comedy among all members. there were discussions on and off the floor. he was relaxed. but what does dublin and the deadline, the point came when there were no longer enough hours in the day for months in the year to accommodate thoughtful discussion and analysis of the issues. and so it has become in my personal experience and i'm a slow reader, which complicates things. my personal experience it became almost impossible to do a decent job of what the primary response is had to come out to reasonable solutions to it. but nevertheless, in the ideal world, the legislative would soon find particular chemistry.

the others are extremely interest in and rewarding. i had no trouble when i was a judge at a totally different role now is to faithfully apply the rules and regulations of congress to put in place and not the desired. >> is there any particular legislation your progress. there's only a cleavers of something or another. >> that was not legislation. buckley versus valeo has become the most cited kay's recent supreme court history and has involved a challenge to the campaign reform act in 1974. by plaintiffs and i had the

temerity to conclude that a limitation on the ability of an individual to support a candidate of his choice was not merely unconstitutional. the supreme court disagreed with me in the federal judge i defer to that, but also the policy. >> i think that's very appropriate. we are constantly consumed with this idea of fund raising. >> to get the full flavor of the case and to understand what is really involved in it, first i stayed at the campaign format of 74 place limits on total spending election as well as a thousand dollars limit on

whether an individual can contribute to any candidate in the $5000 limit on what an individual can can tribute to aipac -- political action committee. the people who join together to challenge the constitutionality of the package involved me, although i was then a sitting senator, i had one election as a third-party candidate of the conservative party of new york and was the first person to be a lot good on a third-party candidacy in 40 years. i was joined by former senator eugene mccarthy who had challenged lyndon johnson for reelection and had reached a

sufficient way significant initial campaign to cause one to johnson to drop out of the race. he was also the co-plaintiffs but the new york civil liberties union, the new york conservative party, surabaya to have contributed $220,000 to the eugene mccarthy campaign. what was the common element of these groups? they were outside the norms. they were assertions outside the norm of the noblest establishment. it was our concern that at least at this flaw was kept intact, it would squeeze out the ability of challengers to comment and confront the political establishment.

and we want on one side and that is the limitations on what could be spent in the campaign. we lost on individual contributions because the supreme court said the appearance or five of corruption supported this restraint. but the effect has been to consolidate the power of the establishment, especially incumbents who have extraordinary advantages over challenges to elevate packs in two important factors in this election and far more likely to corrupt individuals and to

discourage individual and spontaneous action because of the rules and regulations that have been created in order to enforce these laws. so it has distorted american politics in a very, very real way and i think that one is a harmful web. >> utah about the company that used to prevail the senate. perhaps there is still some trace of the newer the senate on 30, 40 years ago. of course today, i think we really have to -- it's pretty hard to avoid it, what is going on right now. are you concerned about that? >> well, i'm concerned about it. when i entered the senate, if used with stability. it is a warm envelope around you. and it was wonderful in terms of making it easier to have a real

fundamental disagreement on matters of critical importance. i think civility is one of the big guns of the increasing treadmill aspects of public service now to the point where the discussion is impossible. it's one political solution. an issue comes up and it is responded to by preventable reaction rather than a thoughtful process examining the willingness to reach an understanding of the other will point of view and pursued the individual. how one recaptures that, i don't know. but one way to recapture it, my constant aim is to go back to federalism is to reduce the volume of issues, and other

issues that distract congressional attention into 2000 different pieces. >> right. the question of fund raising with top little bit about that. i'm just curious, how much fund raising digi do when you are running? >> my campaign did a great deal. one of the things that happened is that limiting the amount of money that any individual can give to a candidate. i'm told members of congress now spend most of their time after hours on the phone's, pleading for money. i never telephone anyone ask him for assignment. i did attend my election campaign in the southern the baby half dozen or fund-raising events, but i had a finance

chairman. i do finance committee and they raised the money. most of the money i raised was through mail. but before he was able to get into a position where letters could go out across the country, had to establish that it was a viable candidate. i could not under the present rules have established my viability because in order to get started, there was one family, one individual who put together a part, one on a loan of $50,000. it enabled me to hire people i needed to put up berkshires and higher a respect of all had quarters, the one that bobby kennedy once occupied.

.. >> you talk about the intrusive bureaucracy, and you've already made mention of that today, and you recommend that citizens be allowed to sue the federal government for damages. >> yes. isn't that reasonable? >> is that constitutional? [laughter] >> it is not constitutional. incidentally, most people who work in the bureaucracies and some agencies are good people,

intelligent people doing their job. they become -- there is a tendency to become so specifically focused on their particular portfolio that they often can't understand the consequences of what they think they ought to do on other parts of society and so on. but start with the thing that they are decent people, good people. but they're also human people, and they're not immune to the faults of human nature. and occasionally you'll find people who will be bullying, who will misuse their power. they recognize that whereas they don't have to pay for their lawyers, anybody they're contending with can really reach in and may not be able to afford combating and protecting their rights. so abuse does occur. and in a fair society, a just

society it ought to be possible for a citizen to protect legitimate interests, and in the process, help define the limits of the, of legitimate exercise of federal authority. as part of the federal government, the agencies enjoy sovereign immunity. but sovereign immunity can be waived. congress has the power, the authority to waive it, and i think it should. >> hmm. well, there's, perhaps, something for this new congress to look at. [laughter] >> why don't you pass this around to every new member of congress. >> ah, wonderful idea. [laughter] phil, can we get a little budget for that? okay, done. okay. >> and tell them to read it. [laughter] >> so we're on the record there. another one of your reforms that you mentioned, jim, in "freedom

at risk" is term limits. you say that you favor term limits. and so i, i was thinking about this. i was thinking, well, that might have meant the early retirement of, for example, bob taft or barry goldwater or even newt gingrich before he became famous. i mean, those are all important conservatives. >> also congressman frank. >> right, okay. right, right. barney frank, yes. and the -- what about -- so are you really that strongly supportive of the idea of term limits? >> i am. >> talk a little bit about that. >> the constitution invokes all kinds of compromises. human nature is human nature. and as, as service in -- as we have moved from a system of citizen legislators into career legislators, i think from my own

experience of what i've been able to see and i think from what people have been able to put together in be reading and following the news carefully is the temptation to protect your right to get reelected, the ability to get reelected overwhelms your willingness to always vote the way your conscious tells you you ought to vote. when i was elected -- even though i was elected as a candidate of the conservative party, i joined the republican caucus. and shortly after we were sworn in, john tower who was then in charge of recruiting -- [inaudible] and so on had a meeting for the new members. and he opened by saying your first obligation from now on is to assure your re-election. >> hmm. [laughter] >> now, so many when you're in

office, the bell will ring, and you're supposed to race to the senate floor to vote on something you've never heard of before because there's no way of keeping track of anything anymore. there used to be. and so what you do is to find yourself a friend whose judgment you trust on the relevant committee who -- and ask them, you know, how you should vote. there was a particular friend of mine, a westerner, on the finance committee. and during the last year an issue would come up on a bill that he had voted out or had been on the committee that had voted out say, john, how should i vote on? and he said, well, this is what it's all about, and this is the correct way to vote. but you're running for re-election in new york this coming year, you've got to vote the other way. that was the accepted premise. and so i think that there has

been as a result such a subordination of public interest to the superior interest of being reelected that this restraint on, on tenure will serve the public good. yes, those wonderful people would not have stayed in -- figure i had a modest 12 years. >> twelve years. >> which is enough time to accomplish what it is you want to, especially as no one else would have more than 12 years' seniority on you. and you can then serve as senior statesman. to influence policy. >> well, jim, i know that -- let me ask you this, did you have a chance to vote on raising the debt ceiling? this is going to be a big issue

come march, april. >> i had several occasions to vote on the raising the debt issue. and in my day the habit developed to attach something they could never have possibly voted into law to the resolution increasing the debt limit to try to sneak bad legislation in on something that in the last analysis has to be approved. you cannot risk destroying the credibility of the united states government obligations. no responsible person will vote against doing it. my solution at the time, and i put in an amendment that was voted down, to abolish the debt limit, it never has had any

effect on suppressing the drive to spend more money. that has to come from some other source. >> that might be another possible legislation act by this new congress as well. all these wonderful ideas that we're coming up with here. you talk in the book about many, many things. one of them is the role of religion in the public square. why are so many intelligent people in public life so seemingly afraid of religion, and do you agree that we should pay more attention? >> i'll answer your question in two points. religion in the public square which in part -- let me start with that one, and then i'll get to why so many intelligent people oppose it. and in anticipation of that question i actually brought

something that i can quote, which i think is important. again, getting back to the original understanding of the people who created this country who wrote the first amendment. the thesis that you'll find throughout the early writings is that freedom can only be protected by, by people who are not only self-reliant, but also virtuous, moral people. and moral people if informed most reliably by religion, so although the federal government will be forbidden to declare an official religion, to establish a religion, it is not unfriendly to true religion. and the, the congress that adopted the first amendment also

reenacted a provision of the northwest accord that reads as follows: religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and happiness of mankind schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged with the understanding that schools and means of education you learned about the bible and all kinds of other good things. the congress that enacted the first amendment also made grants of land to serve religious purposes and to finance sectarian missionary work among the indians. in the 1960s -- 1860s, the, what became known as, considered the most authortive analysis of the constitution and what it meant by thomas cooley who published this treatise in 1868. he said that the framers considered it entirely

appropriate for government, quote, to foster religious worship and religious institutions as conservatives of the public morals and valuable if not indispensable assistance to the preservation of the public order. so that is totally at odds with the current thesis that religion is so purely a private concern. why are so many intelligent people saying banish it from the public square if you can find it anywhere in the public square these days? we have been engaged in the cultural revolution since the 1960s. a lot of the leaders of the cultural revolution are highly intelligent. they feared the power of religion. they know the americans are the most religious people on earth outside of the arab community. [laughter] and they fear its influence. being intelligent, they want to keep it out of the public square which doesn't keep them from having their anti-religious

contention within the public square. >> jim, we're, i think we're all pretty much agreed that we're at war with terrorism, that we, of course, are engaged in two military operations, one in afghanistan, one in iraq still. and you talk about vietnam. and i'm wondering, do you see any lessons from, from the vietnam war that we can apply -- >> i think there are some real lessons, and that is you don't back away from commitments you make under domestic pressure, political pressure. if you do, you invite all kinds of problems in the years to follow. in vietnam -- this has nothing to do with how you get into an engagement once involved. you have essential interests to protect those you went many to serve.

you went in to serve. we ended up signing the paris accords. in the paris accords -- and incidentally, we got a hot of people to go -- lot of people to go in with us. in reliance on american determination, american strength and the belief that the united states would accomplish its goals. towards the end all american troops were brought out of vietnam. we signed the paris accords which were supposed to settle the war. and in those accords undertook the obligation to keep the south vietnamese military supplied sufficiently to offset onslaughts from the north. the communist bloc continued to pour in weapons and highly

sophisticated ones into the north and at a certain point the congress voted to not send another nickel to vietnam. at the time, incidentally, the south vietnamese were doing a very good job and of not only holding their job, but even gaining some ground. but once they couldn't have the fuel to run the tanks and planes, couldn't buy more ammunition, so they collapsed. as a result, the soviet union was so emboldened that it had a dramatic expansion of the areas where it assumed not physical control, but brought people within the communist circuit. namely, the horn of africa, ethiopia, yemen. they went into, jumped into the southern part of africa in the angola and, ultimately, the western hemisphere and nick

nicaragua. if -- i believe we should be very careful of what commitments we make. but if we are perceived to withdraw from afghanistan under domestic pressures before meeting our minimum requirements that we believe are required for our own security, then we can trigger that same kind of more aggressive expansion of the jihadists on the one hand and a shying away of others who had been relying on us to get the job done. i think there are serious consequences. but it's also suggests that we should never take on commitments beyond those that are necessary for our security. democratizing afghanistan should not be one of our objectives.

>> we, you talk so much about -- and properly so -- about federalism. and you did make reference to the tea party movement. do you see that, i think we're trying to -- i'm trying to come up with some more optimism here perhaps. [laughter] do you see that their success and the recent elections shows that the american people are still for limited government, they're still for individual freedom and responsibility and that they would like to have their congress follow in that same way? >> you used federalism earlier. you didn't end with federalism. first of all, there's no tea party. the swelling of the grassroots in constructive ways in some areas, less constructive in others, but i think it's a tremendous sign of hope because the underlying themes are less

intrusive government, less expensive government, and for god's sakes, don't saddle the next two, three generations with levels of debt that can't be paid off. i think where federalism comes in is that the easiest way to achieve the three objectives is to restore the concept of a viable federalism in which the federal government is excluded from intruding into, and telling the states how to run their own affairs. >> perhaps we could have a couple of questions from the audience for our program? please. >> [inaudible] >> thanks. my name's derek, senator scott brown's office. you talked a hot about devolving -- a lot about devolving power back to the states and about the federal government being too large. i think one of the areas where

republicans typically differ with that approach is in regard to drug policy where the republican plan has been having the dea have a one drug policy for the nation. and i was wondering how you, how you settle those two things, where you were on allowing states to differ on drug policy? >> i think you pinpoint one of the dangers, and that is you're sitting here in the capital of the united states, and you've got all of this power and all of this authority, and i said, there's something that's got to be done, and i know how to handle it. i'm going to do it. and let's forget what the constitution requires. so even though i would agree, tend to agree that this is such a national problem etc., etc., etc., i think in terms of the overall health of the community -- and why should we deny the state of delaware or

the state of alaska the authority to decide on their own what is best for their people? they're closest to the problem, they're not going to have one program fits all sizes. i think there's much to be said you're going to get far better approaches to the drug problem, and there's something else. there are a lot of people, including conservatives, who believe that the legalization of drugs will prove less costly and less damaging to the individuals than the present system. and if a state is allowed to follow that policy, the whole country will have the benefit of understanding how it works. >> yes, please. here? yeah, thank you. >> i have a question about

federal regulations, and as a d.c. circuit judge and as a former senator is the vast regulatory state of administrative law, is that -- do you think that that's unconstitutional or that it should just be, congress should just reassert its authority to be, you know, the legislator and not just delegate today the executive branch? -- delegated to the executive branch? >> it is not unconstitutional, it's extraconstitutional. i don't know if -- [laughter] i always have a problem as to whether something's extraconstitutional or unconstitutional. my guess is never having had the issue presented to me that there's a lot of examples even back in colonial times to understand that certain responsibilities -- there must have been an agency in the first congress created by the first congress. it must have been given some authority.

the, but there is a point, and never having studied it, i don't know where that point is, where there is an unconstitutional delegation of, essentially, legislative authority to an agency, and i suspect -- again without knowing -- that multiple examples of that will be found or could be found in obamacare and in the new bill, the dodd-frank bill regulating the commercial market. put it this way. in reading the articles about the consequences of obamacare, time and again you run into an analysis that says we don't know today how this bill will ultimately effect x, y or z

aspects of medical care because the regulator hasn't yet come out with the regulations. it seems to me that congress should never enact a law without knowing what is the impact going to be? >> thank you. i just wanted to ask about term limits because i had initially supported term limits, but then i've seen how it has been enacted in some states, the particular example that i'm thinking of is ohio which i have some familiarity with. where the, they've had term limits for a number of years, they've had -- what happens is people take their maximum in the lower house of the legislature or the upper house, wherever they were when they started, then they run for the other seat in the other house of the

legislature. pretty soon you've got 20-some years in there. and then the others aspect of it is when people first come in, they're often reliant on the non-elected staff members to, to do things. so this is a kind of continuing legislative bureaucracy. so could you address those points? >> yeah. first of all, even in the 12 years i had in the house, 12 years senate which means some individuals might end up with 24, but that would be a tiny minority most of the time. in terms of staff, if you're lazy, you can be run by staff. i wasn't run by staff. but i had a marvelous staff. i had, i think i had the brightest staff in the senate at

the time, but i came in as kind of a phenomenon. i was the conservative event of the year. and so all kinds of people gathered who have gone on and independently done all kinds of things in the years since. if you know what you want to accomplish, it seems to me you get your own staff. but it doesn't mean p that there -- mean that there aren't elements of truth in everything you say, but i do feel that the greater burden is that you have people so, the way i put it in my book is they persuade themselves it's more important to the constituents that they be reelected than that they be honest with their constituents. a weighing of alternative benefits. >> yes, gentleman --

>> thank you, mr. buckley, for coming here today. my name's travis with the heritage foundation. you have talked today extensively about federalism, and given the willingness of the federal government to force states into submission as with arizona, with the immigration bill and the extensive web of red tape and financial dependence of states on the federal government what would you say is the first step that an individual state could take to reempower itself and assert federalism again? >> they can always go to the supreme court which i -- i speak with great respect of the supreme court. i have to. i'm a member of the federal judiciary. but when four out of nine justices of the supreme court agree with me on case after case, i don't feel totally out of, out of harm's way. i think that what we need to do is to get people in congress, a majority who accept the premise

that the federal government has gotten so unwieldy that it cannot effectively do very much. constructively. that it's over, that it's distorting the whole system and threatening our freedoms. but we have huge amount of money going from the federal government to the states with the strings. if i were emperor for one session of congress, i would confer -- convert all existing grant and aids programs into block grants. one education, one road and so on, and phase them out over ten years' time. it's going to take about that much time for the states to reengineer what they want to do and you know the rest of it. >> yes. please. yeah. >> [inaudible] i was on your staff in the

'70s, handled a lot of your commerce committee work. when you were in the senate, you got involved rather deeply in the deregulation movement for transportation. and after you left office, all the deregulation took place under the carter administration. talking about airlines, trucks the railroads. and when carter left office, there were people in the reagan administration who fought deregulation tooth and nail. and my question to you is what happened to the republican party in that era so that most of the deregulation was done by the democrats? [laughter] and why was the role of the parties reversed? [laughter] >> the corruption of power. [laughter] no, i don't have the answer to that, and, of course, that's just the problem we're facing with the new congress now.

we have -- gingrich brought in a bunch of great people. the contract with america was observed in the early years and then over time we found ec pendtures accelerating and so on -- expenditures accelerating and so on. so i think that the pressure, what is required is that the pressures brought to bear in the last election cycle be sustained year in and year out with constant vigilance over how the newly-elected members are, in fact, operating. >> yes, please, in the back. >> [inaudible] >> in your defense of freedom, is it based more on f