so that subject will built up under the spell. that is a national indicator that for taxpayers this is not a winner by the loser. thank you. >> many thanks. is this might live? maybe i should go up here and introduce you. it is? okay. can everybody hear me? i know some people were laid. we did such a program on time because we are being web cast. apparently there is a very big traffic jam in virginia. ..

. you always want a trial attorney on your side. he is the resident fellow at american enterprise institute dealing with health policy issues. he previously was senior health economist for joint economic committee and director of health policy studies at the cato institute too hand chief economist with the competitive enterprise institute and also served on the national advisory council. we are glad to welcome in tom miller who was a former broadcast sports broadcaster,

wildcats and college wildcats. [applause] >> thank you very much, gin, bob and all the folks for making this wonderful project. i would like to thank the obama administration for making this necessary but i don't want to. let's continue our collective hy >> maneuver to dislodge would is stuck in our throats. books written to give you a firm foundation understanding of the serious consequences of the and affordable care act. for americans, various slices of life. we do that in a clear and excessive manner at least my co-author is did. there is a bit of the bill murray groundhog day experience wondering how to keep repeating the experience with many of the

same basic policies year after year. this lot tried hard to extend the scope of collective fell years to come. this comes to be 1997 episode of seinfeld involving the celebration of the holiday alternative to the overcommercialized christmas season. festive this for the rest of us was the refrain. it was violated by the airing of grievancess in which each person tells everyone else all the ways they disappointed him or her over the last year. you can review our book chapters in categories of the favorite ones involving president obama and the last congress. emt boxes or proverbial lumps of coal for clean energy. the broader airing of health policy and health care is in this station's political discourse inconsistent and contradictory and blundered with

the common denominator being it is always someone else's fault. we keep stepping on the gas pedal and hitting the brakes. and high political office. we shift gears and move in another direction. it cannot conclude without the head of the household being brought to the match by a challenger in a wrestling match. we are moving in that direction on capitol hill in the 2012 campaign season within the appropriate limits of secret service protection and federal law. looking back over the last year, the final enactment of the public nuisance we see various acts in a five tuned -- ring circuit with contortionists and their doubles and aspiring lion tamer is. public opinion has remained skeptical about the overall virtues and benefits of this law

with plurality and majority has refused to buy what the law's proponents hold for many months. it has been much less than its parts and a pretty deep hole when use their into the abyss. in the legislative rain we see many of those in the previous majority given the hook, please step up. the reviews are not in on whether to repeal or replace or disembowel. we will get to the final act but it will hopefully sooner rather than later. in the cloudy economic rings they continue to flounder in the face of slow job growth and massive government debt. the health law is slight from double entry bookkeeping and evidence based assumption that incentives leaving even more americans ages, in secure and uncertain that offers any season--toward higher value and more productive health care. we are running just a little bit

short of resources with hon. -- other important priorities like health care spending. the new health law is temporary with the employer based private insurance. it is contradicted by its steady drip by drip political water torture of plan sponsors. with job growth and job creation. the coverage arrangements, and unpredictable regulatory schemes. the only uncertainty is they will continue to produce massive uncertainty for firms which sort through important business issues. the next circus ring nearby we find promise of amazing feats of administration who have never been witnessed before. the ac age should have carried the warning some assembly required. the law did seem to rely heavily on a toolbox of hammer's

designed to square around human peg into regulatory square holes. you know what i meant. a lot of yelping from folks with implementation when they get their fingers. remember items like the medical loss ratio rules phasing out annual limits. and destructive regulation. those were supposed to be very easy early tasks. the wires not only don't connect in the overly ambitious scheme of centralized regulation. welfare state redistribution and data flows. they can create a more explosive fireball from the health-care system. federal planners assume state government, fall into line without a whimper as junior associates assigned messier jobs of making healthy exchanges and medicaid expansion and insurance

regulation. work better in local practice than they were designed to. the last circus ring, the courts might have a real showstopper. almost the entire cohort of constitutional law reflects -- dismissed any challenge to the new health lawyer go. there was an older vintage of the constitution and the exile for the last century. and the commerce clause. the constitution, don't leave home without it. we are in the first amendment lounge. that gets the law--that is always a good start. the final -- judge had demanded judge jensen which we discussed in our book. there is substantive well reason, and several lower courts disagree and another round of appeals after another round of

appeals we may see a far reaching final decision. or we may not. but the initial litigation is fleshed out on how the ac a reach far beyond fundamental american principle of limited government and federal structure at the constitution. to learn more, read the book and since we are working on sales, will these and part-time riders, by one if you can. the big message is not just how bad this is or can't work and must not be able to pull, hard to do in part, we overlooked the political system. distressed our struggling e. economy and misdirected the future of health care decisionmaking about what is no longer believable is that the future implementation of obamacare is inevitable. our political discourse revitalized with millions of

grassroots americans more in gauge and still confused. repeal is not enough. it will provide a good start. we have to clear a heaping pile of recent and older health policy debris before -- to replace side of long overdue solutions to chronic preexisting health care conditions. the clock is running. we can and will do this better and we have to. [applause] >>, does not disappoint. our final concert, speaker is robert moffit, the current fellow in health policy for the center for policy innovation. he was director of the health policy center for many years. before that he was in the reagan administration in the department of health and human services and

the office of personnel management where we have a close look at a program we all have -- this people consumer choice. and purchasing their health insurance. robert moffit, i welcome you. one of our valued co-authors we are speaking to each other. we started out very much in the same place and proud to have worked with all of you. >> thank you very much. i would like to thank my colleagues for this wonderful collaboration. and wonderful staff in new york for the harpercollins publishing tuned. they did a truly great job. i would be remiss if i did not extend my sincere appreciation for house speaker nancy pelosi. she told us it was important to pass the law so we could find out what was in it. hands the book.

it was one of the most profoundly prophetic declarations in american political history. we are finding out a great deal. in the book, what we decided to do was look at a bunch of different things. one of the items we focused on reclaims being made on behalf of the new law. from the beginning of the health-care debate back in 2009, president obama, repeatedly made a series of high-profile promises that turned out to be rather extraordinary claims. here it is fair because in the book we go and detail some of the evidence behind these claims. is fair to repeat some of them this morning. the kinds of things we looked at when we examined the debate. you recall this president said if you like your health care plan you can keep it. he repeated this constantly in his september of 2009 address to

congress. the president declared nothing in our plan requires you to change -- extraordinary. mandates and regulations and economic incentives are hard wired into the law and will require millions of your fellow citizens to change or lose what they had their whether they like it or not. in 2010 the obama administration unveiled drafts and rules for plans that were to be grandfathered but draft rules require one half of all the time to change. beyond those rule changes when you look at the impact of the incentives on the wall the actuary medicare estimated that literally fourteen million americans will be transitioned out of their employer based health insurance. the former director of the congressional budget office looked at the economic incentives behind the bill and projected thirty-five million

americans will be transitioning out of their existing coverage. that number could be much higher and the disruptions to employer based health insurance coverage could turn out to be massive. you remember the president said at the beginning of the health-care debate that americans will see an annual decline in health insurance premiums. he said early on it would amount to $2,500 annually for the typical family at the end of his first term. this does not need further discussion. the congressional budget office says health insurance and individual market, you will see an increase between 10%, and 14%. the actuary says that taxes on drugs and medical devices and health insurance all of which will result in higher premiums. the president said the purpose of health care reform was to append the famous spending curve

downward. he promised that that would happen if we did the right thing. the new law will do exactly the opposite. the health care spending curve will bend upward. the cms actuary estimates over the initial ten years of the law enforcement of the united states will spend an estimated $311 billion more than we would have spent if the law had never been enacted. the president said you will see an increase -- you will see a decrease in taxation and middle-class americans will not see a tax increase, no family making less than $250,000 annually would see a tax increase. most of the tax increases that my friend james capretta sites will directly affect the middle class. tax increases on medical goods and services and insurance, all of these will be passed on to

you. these are middle-class tax increases. even the 40% excise tax on high-value health care plans, the cadillac coverage is largely in a middle-class tax increase. more and eight out of ten person that would be affected by that tax would be persons making less than $200,000 annually. you recall that during the debate one of the big concerns was how is this going to affect senior citizens. the administration and its allies in congress promised there would be no cuts to medicare benefits. anybody not remember that. this was a very key point largely because the senior population was critical and the politics of debate. and his remarks the president said i want to assure you we are not talking about cutting medicare benefits. we are talking about making medicare more efficient.

eliminating insurance funds cities. working with hospitals so they are changing some of the reimbursement policies. in the summer of 2009 the cbo director told the united states senate finance committee that indeed the medicare payment cuts would in fact result in cuts in medicare benefits. later on the actuary reported after the law had passed that the medicare provider payments cuts would result in a 15% reduction in 15% of hospitals would see reduction and make some unprofitable and quote mack jeopardize seniors's access to care. subsequent analysis by independent analysts indicated the medicare advantage cuts are going to result not only in a massive involvement of people at medicare advantage but also cut the benefits that are available to people in the medicare advantage program. heritage has been an independent analysis of that which indicate

by 2017 medicare advantage reductions will result in a reduction of $3,700. jim has talked about the fact that the law actually does add to the deficit. the president says it is worth reporting -- recording that he would not sign a law that, quote, ads one dime to our deficit either now or in the future. you can bet the proverbial farm that the cost estimates be including the official cost estimates of the congressional budget office will continue to increase in terms of what this law will actually cost. since its enactment the cbo revised its initial ten your cost estimate to at $115 billion. that is just the beginning. in any event under any scenario

$1 trillion addition in federal spending plus the creation of two new entitlement programs is hardly a formula for deficit reduction. there's one other that is a very important driver in this debate. that is the question of how we're going to be governed. it is an underlying source of a great deal of discontent in this country. the president and his allies have long insisted they are not proposing a federal takeover of health care because private plans and providers will still exist. where would anybody get the idea that this is a federal takeover of health care? under the law the federal officials -- not your employer or you or the insurance company will make the key decisions on health care. they will decide whether they will require you and your employer to buy federally

approved health-care plan, a federal fine or penalty if you don't, they will read the fine the content of your health care benefit package including the medical treatments and procedures you must have, the level of preventive health care services you must have, the level of coverage you must have, level of cost sharing and co-payments that are permissible and sh you get what officials say you will get you will be penalized. beyond that it is not just a question of the law. boat language transfers of 40 to the secretary of hhs to make all kinds of decisions with regard to such goals as the finest quality of care, securing about you and hospital provider purchases. in writing the rules that will directly affect your life, federal officials especially secretary of hhs, they will fill

in the degree details on the issues, be innumerable decisions congress either could not or would not make. his discretionary authority enable officials to make exceptions to the rules that they issue and grant waivers or apply them very differently. this is very sobering. very sobering. not just a matter of cost and quality and access to care. that is all vitally important. a great part of this national debate is how we are going to be governed. wins similarly situated americans are treated very differently in a large and growing administrative state demand by large numbers of persons that they do not know and will never know and who are not accountable to them and never will be we are living in a different world. with such a process you expect more arbitrary and highly politicized decisionmaking by

these officials. the bureaucratic politics that drive the decisions will profoundly affect your personal life. i doubt that the founding fathers really had this kind of thing in mind. certainly they did not want this to be the job of government. we are not to be covered by this. thank you very much. [applause] >> you can see from these talks, each of the authors breeds substantive knowledge to what we have done and written the book but also great passion. this is really about the future of our country. this is a hugely consequential

wall. it will absolutely as bill kristol said, will be a deciding issue if not the defining issue of the 2012 presidential election. this is not settled policy. since bob quoted the previous speaker of the house it might be useful to quote the current speaker of the house john boehner road and indorse but for the book that's why obamacare is wrong for america is carefully researched and they must read for anyone concerned about the future of health care. approves without a doubt that this law will bankrupt our nation and hurt economic growth. it is available on web sites everywhere. each the have several people

with microphones get the microphone so if you want to be grave, i ask you to bosh identify yourself. >> i am michael. in the preliminary discussions, recommendations for what you would do. can you outline them briefly? >> in the book we talk about a different perspective. a fork in road that bill kristol described, you can start from -- resources in the sector.

that is what obamacare does. covering more people or more efficient and bending the cost of the federal government really managing every aspect of resources allegation. and those which aren't, the government in charge of all of that. the way to improve our health system, at the center of everything. they take control over resources. they put them in charge of making choices for themselves. much more it that they do today.

more productivity, cost would be an issue. and limited resources, we make the recommendation in a chapter that we need to change existing public policy place, oversight of that marketplace, to aid in their choices. the consumer swiss-based on some wounded but equitable contributions from the federal government. >> that is the sheet brought -- sheet music in a broader move. in terms of competition that means something accountable health care delivery, you know what they're doing and pay

attention -- tour going to have to change the mistaken signal you are sending to the assistant with the financing -- not an end but a defined contribution structure. it won't be the same for everybody. you will make adjustments later ron but if you start it is pretty clear that the public resources are not unlimited. the resources you can upgrade into all kinds of wonderful things because you spend your own money. that is the start of getting the system oriented. not just for private health insurance that medicare and medicaid. powerful discounts the most. >> where is the republican plan? we don't think that. we really believe the way to change the health sector.

bureaucrats are making choices. and federal bureaucrats. by state and federal bureaucrats. employee health benefits that the private insurance from human-resources director than their bosses. people want their choices, what you need to do is move power and control back to the consumer. the market reorganizes itself around that. changing the incentives means changing resource allocation instead of losing power to washington. it moves it as jim and tongue in the past as well moved it to the consumer so that doctors and patients are charged with the decision and not washington bureaucrats. that is a resource allocation change in the incentive. i hope washington--republicans in congress don't come of with their own 2500 page bill.

we need a step-by-step approach to reform that does this right and allows the market to work and forces the market -- >> this is a huge and growing sector of the economy. they spend on health care very soon with one out of every $5 spent. it is absolutely incredible that congress could think they could overhaul that center of the economy with one single bill. what is happening now is we are wrestling with a consequence of that hubris. the president says he does not want to litigate this issue. the problem is the glove that he passed as implementation schedule of eight years. the minor things that have taken place are minor. the big changes take place, the

individual mandate and employer mandate and a mandate on the states and expansion of medicaid. these things take place much later. the president and his team have invited a long political battle over health care which has points that will be very intense over the next few years. what the white house and the administration's allies on capitol hill have done is guarantee that we will have a major battle over health care. it will be a titanic struggle over the next few years. there's something else that is critically important. we are a federal republic. power in this system is wisely divided between a national government to handle general concerns and particular governments to handle particular concerns. most of us, liberal and conservative who look at this

carefully. have made the fundamental point that there is no such thing as an american health care system. what we have is a third-party payment arrangement. as harry aaron points out we go from one state to another--the practice of medicine, they vary from state to state. congress should do what is its constitutional jurisdiction. there are two areas that make policy. it is fair and equitable and expensive to unbearable americans to get what they want and a competitive market. we cannot have competitive markets unless we address the tax redevelopment.

the other fact to remember is we have states that regulate health insurance markets. let them do a good job. some of them do not do a good job but congress could encourage that innovation and experimentation and we would start to see some progress. i don't know anybody, right or left or center who thinks we ought not to help low income people who can't afford health insurance to get it. the question is who at the end of the day will make the decisions in this system? our approach is as grace-marie turner pointed out to put the patient at the center of the decisionmaking process. >> please tell us who you are. >> i am with the foundation. ion and in turn. i was wondering what you thought about the best hope for undoing obamacare. is it going after particular

aspect of the bill like class act we have seen with the 1099 tax reporting or repeal in the courts which is most likely to be successful? >> this battle will be fought on all those levels. four different major press. certainly a major legislative challenge with the house not only having voted to repeal the law but taking a series of votes on individual provisions like the dreaded 1099 paperwork provision. the hearing and studies and asking the administration for more information on how it is implementing the law so the legislative front is important. the regulatory front continues with 6500 pages of regulations that have been written. many thousand more. congress will keep oversight of that. the american people have an opportunity to comment. the political front will continue to be an issue in the

election in 2012 and even beyond. then there's the legal front where the law is being challenged in a number of courts and cannot help but go to the supreme court. it is the likely decision in 2012. the american people have an opportunity for their voice to be heard on many fronts that there's not anyone that is more important than the other. >> we can try the death of a thousand cuts without blood clotting factors. that is a good way to nibble away at this. a legislative overturning of this by 2012 isn't going to happen but an effort should be made to i like, pick out whatever spots you want. don't worry about -- people like the bill, so much you can remove half to get rid of. on the court front i would like to be optimistic. we should never totally invest in judges who make decisions

about along body of bad presidents to get over to fundamentally transform a terrible line of precedent in regard to commerce clauses. they did a great job. you can be hopeful but that will not save us from everything else. we will win this one old school. you have to go and vote and for some people out and put some people in and we know who needs to be taken care of in this regard and this will happen in 2012 and we will review this in 2013. >> we have a chapter on what you can do to put the brakes on obamacare. we have a wonderful forward by congressman paul ryan. the lighted to have the current chairman of the house budget committee offer a forward. he has provided a vision for how to put consumers back in charge of decisions and choices and health programs of all sorts. we have a question up here.

>> i am martha lewis from maryland. i hate to be negative but i think the title is unfortunate because of many people who should be learning about this will look at the title and go no further. human chad putting the patient in the center of it but we can't fix that. how are you going to address the masses and persuade them that you have something else to offer because they won't read that chapter and also in regard to putting patients first the response which most often i hear from both in favor of obamacare is a i think everyone should get healthcare and they go no farther. how do you address those people who think you say it is wrong that means you don't want people to have health care.

>> there is a real misunderstanding about what this kind of proposal would do versus the alternative in that regard. the mainstream press doesn't report on this very well. win a john mccain proposed his health care bill in the 2008 campaign was widely reported at that time--president obama was against the individual mandate. it was widely reported that based on very speculative estimates that president obama would cover everybody and john mccain would not. that is completely and erroneously to report on this. what senator mccain proposed was to give every household in america a minimum of of $5,000 tax credit is to get health coverage and health services. it was a universal coverage plan.

if you didn't use it to buy health insurance you lost the $5,000 and you could always come back the next year and get it. by definition it was a universal coverage program that got everybody into some kind of system of insurance. the president's proposal that has been enacted has a series of mandates and coercion to get people to buy private insurance that they otherwise wouldn't want to get. to speculation doesn't work. these coercive tactics will be -- the irs will be fine everybody. this will get fifty million people into something they don't want. >> twenty-three million uninsured. >> just a rounding error. >> the alternative to this could cover everybody and make sure everybody is in good health care

and do so in a way that is better than what we passed. >> i hear what you say about the title. there are a lot of people who are upset about this and we are among them and we wanted to tell people where we were coming from. the next book we right would be how do we get to patient centered healthcare. thank you for suggesting that to our editor. >> when you have a tumor you have to stop it from growing and cut it out. >> i would add that i think part of this agenda here with us is to explained in plain language but complex piece of legislation that has no precedent in american history. i do not recall any piece of legislation affecting three hundred million americans dealing with one set of the economy that has ever been like this where congress basically passed a 2800 page bill. i don't ever recall anything like that nor do i recall a

situation where we had 28 states in court fighting the federal government. regionally diverse states. we are living in a historic time in this health care debate. this is one of the great debate in american political history. what we have to do to broaden this conversation is we need more open air public debate. i am talking about the stuff that used to fuel political discussion in this country in another time and place and a better time and place where and we had real debates, opened debate the tween proponents and opponents of legislation. my view is the town hall meetings should not be simply just town hall meetings. if members of congress want to sponsor public debate we ought to have them and people should hear both sides equally. as far as the media is concerned

the media has done a pretty good job in this area in reporting the things. i don't want to single anybody out in particular but some of the columns written by robert care were absolutely tremendous in this area but he pointed out something i think is interesting. it has to do with section 1312 of the bill which requires members of congress and their personal staff to go into the health insurance exchanges on january 1st, 2014. what that means is despite the argument about keeping your own health care plan at least personal staff and members of congress are not going to be able to do that but what was interesting about this is it was apparently the leadership offices of the house and senate are apparently not covered by the provision. don't you think that is

interesting? the professional committee apparently not covered by that provision. for the members of the press and the first amendment lounge, i would like them -- trying to find a simple question. i would like to know the name of a congressman who drafted section 1312. that would be nice to know. nice to know what congressional staffers were involved in that. i think we ought to know these things because the fact is you have a law that is consequential. it is affecting so many people and they insist, i am talking about the previous leadership, insists that this is in the best interest of america. if it is they should be able to defend it in broad daylight. >> thank you. >> for more information visit the web site ronforamericabook.com. >> what is habeas corpus? >> it is not only a rich.

it was literally a scrabble parchment that a judge said to a jailer ordering that gender to bring a named president into his court and along with a return had to be on parchment that explained why it was that jailor was holding that prisoner. more than a scrap of parchment even free hundred years ago and certainly today hate to -- habeas corpus stands in our minds for the idea that no one shall be held, could street did anyway against their will by someone else without the loss supervising that could street. without probably the lot it the person of a judge be sure it is okay. >> how did the concept of habeas corpus develop? >> i emphasize the parchment because it is a legal device

before it is an idea that you and i associate with victor of a great writ of liberty and one of the fundamental needs by which we insure freedom from restraint. it is a very, ed for of office. if you stopped the thick of it courts are probably dealing with people that have to be different. [talking over each other] >> always calling people into court and there are lots of different instruments called habeas corpus to testify in a case because you owe somebody a debt. it is ironic that this very humdrum instead of daily court activity should be associated with ideas about human freedom. >> how is it used in blood? >> lots of ways.

the most interesting and the board feels about its history is a variety. much greater variety of can we associate with it today. people have been jailed for bothering a master child or not paying taxes or laughing it bowsher urged. anyone of these figures. your spouse has bid be. anyone of these might have been occasions for using a read of habeas corpus to bring someone in front of a judge to be sure someone was constrained against the law. >> wasn't it a right? >> really important point. the great list of liberty.

that you associate. 400 years ago they did have the same ideas about liberty. those of room was individual being. the way habeas works with not to address the claim of a prisoner of liberty has been violated. the lesser officer of the key, the daily did this a bear the canes's law. it was very important that the jailer and king's officer haj so interestingly one of the state that a written history of habeas corpus shows is the prisoner isn't the focus of a risk. the jailer is. >> how does the concept of habeas corpus develop an american society and how did it make its way into our

constitution? judge >> there are couple with stiffened of that. the first to the extensive experience we had in north america and the other british colonies around the globe in the eighteenth century and there was an extensive experience in the colonial courts and caribbean and canadian courts. we have to remember that americans are partaking of and experience of british colonialists having all over the global. finding the way into u.s. law through the practice, largely through the silent accommodation of english common-law board generally into english american judicial practice. the interesting way in which it finds its way into our law was in the constitution and so-called suspension because. that puzzles historians and lawyers judge and puzzled them

in recent years because in a lot of ways the suspension claus brings habeas corpus into our law negatively by saying when it is habeas corpus it would be available. it doesn't say it is part of the law. edge it assumes the presence of habeas corpus. >> who made sure that within the constitution? >> we don't really know. this is one of the things that has been so interesting in recent years as u.s. courts. the typical practice for u.s. courts when they want lots of history on a piece of the constitution you want to -- you read the diary and other accounts from the constitutional convention, there have only been a couple dozen lines total had two or three speakers and speak to the question of habeas corpus during the convention itself at least from the records we have. it is hard to lay this on a

particular person or particular impulse. a better way to fight about this and howard ends up in the constitution is it was widely assumed to be part of the common law that was going to be carried into american law simply by virtue of it having been part of the practice that colonial britain and american citizens were going to have in their own law. >> civil law, habeas corpus was suspended. any other time in our history? >> i can't speak to that. we will pull back a little bit. i have written strictly about the english and imperial history. i didn't want to write about american history in part because other people have written about it. quite extensively. and in part because they have done so successfully. my point was we had

misunderstood the english and imperial pre history. to answer the question, habeas was only formally suspended during the civil war. there have been other moments american history especially during world war ii when the way the rest was used or not used was controversial and continued to be controversial. one of the interesting things about recent jurisprudence on habeas corpus has been how american courts have generally, because those american decisions have run in other directions, wanted to reach over and passed those american experiences back into the eaglets' experience, that there was some kind of irreducible colonel of the rich's history that you could get at. >> the state that your 2008 virginia lottery deal. what kind of history do you

invoke in that? >> i certainly want to make sure your listeners know that i worked on that with a marvelous colleague at law school here -- let's get it out on guantanamo. that the. practice was eat enormous interest -- with my colleague ted we have to work together on this. and connect it to american jurisprudence and that is what we did and why justice kennedy in 2008 decision cited the

article because we were able to connect the kinds of ideas are just bad met the rich -- the unquestionable authority of the judge to question any jailor ending any person anywhere. that was the central premise half out of that review article and the corley -- corollary was that historically the risk not being concerned with jailers or where they were meant that the question about whether or not an american taylor was in guantanamo or philadelphia was less interesting than if the jail there was supposed to answer to you escorts and oversight. at that point the english history going back centuries,

the idea of answering to the king comes into play. >> what is the image on the front of your book? >> that is from the 1780s. it is lord mansfield's court. and a prisoner was being brought in. that is the image of a husband of a woman who had been constrained by him as well so in a way it is a doppelganger image of the with the court is to provide some constraint. he has now been constrained for having previously illegally constrain his wife. one thing i love about the an image as it ends on the cover is there you have the justices in london. and looking down at the jailers and they're bringing in the hapless prisoner who may actually be rightly held in this

case by those jailer's but that is one of the things you learn on habeas corpus pleadings is that often prisoners are quite legally held. it is not a get out of jail free cards. >> what do you teach at the university? >> i teach british history to undergraduate and english legal history. kind of a survey course to undergraduates. and graduate students in early modern british history particularly -- i do that as well. >> windier find time to write? >> i mentioned in my book festival presentation file is not proud or embarrassed that i spent ten years working on that book. i started it before guantanamo when those questions arose. it came out of questions

strictly from within what are the questions about the path which we don't have good answers. that is a way of saying you fit in the time to write and in this project, much more significantly. time to do the research. the key to this project was i literally went and studied the writ themselves. for writing a book about something about a topic that was written about before and come is very different insights about it. our eyes light up a bit when we talk about the archives but it was quite remarkable. when i was in the archive and i realized from the condition of the files of bundles of parchments. hundreds of them for any given year with writs of habeas corpus in them. the way they are organized, a

fin animals in new stringing together these rich and the courts would tie in off with a tight knot so bundle would be so tight that you could only read the one on top and hundreds of things under it could not be read. that was a sign that no one had opened these up in several centuries. when your historian and in an archive in you see that you realize here is an as yet unrealized opportunity. the real issue in terms of time was finding the time even after you come back to make sense of after reading thousands of these things what does it add up to? the time is between teaching and the occasional semester away from teaching. >> what was the earliest reference to habeas corpus? >> i didn't search out and the original moments because i knew

that would be probably certain for a timer i would never find. i did work on some fourteenth century and fifteenth century files but that was largely to established going farther back a law under trajectory that i knew is radically transformed. writer around 1600. it is in those decades around 1600 that much of the research in terms of the heavier focus got to work. >> if you were to sell this book to a general audience what is your selling point? >> to a general audience that judges matter. we talk a lot and invoke habeas corpus. we get into area abstraction the. moral claims about the nature of liberty that we think habeas corpus stand for and i love

those abstractions as much as mcpherson but this history fundamentally tells us that all those abstractions matter very little if there is not ultimately sound figure of authority with other people possessing tower are going to recognize and that a 40 has been the judge. i remember thinking about what judges were like four centuries ago. and whatever it can't do. >> paul holiday is the author published by harvard. habeas corpus:from england to empire is the book. >> you are watching 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books on c-span2's booktv. >> we are talking with james robbins about his book "this time we win: revisiting the tet

offensive". tell us about it. >> it is about the tet offensive and the vietnam war which was an outstanding victory for u.s. forces but was reported as a defeat and has gone down in history as a defeat so the purpose of the book is to clear that up. >> how do you go about that? >> going to original document and declassified things and talking to people who were involved with it and trying to show how some of the points made about test are run. >> could you explain how the media at the time in over history have gotten it wrong? >> iraq and afghanistan people use the 10 offensive as an analogy but they use it incorrectly. i'd start with a quote from contemporary sources and go back and friendly. >> can you list a specific thing that was your inspiration? >> other than my puis