when you listen to the adulation on martin luther king day, you hear about the racist alabama sheriffs. well, gains were won after many years of hard struggle. there's a long way to go. the criminalization that glenn talked about is, basically, kind of reinstituting what was done in the, right after, not long after the civil war, criminalizing black life and pretty much restoring the conditions that existed. ..

to turn it in to something that will be long-lasting and enduring and face the inevitable failures and go on to overcome them which is a hard, wonka course to follow. >> two three minute and a few more questions to go. thanks. >> i would be interested in what you think of this taboo subject. the u.s. attorney scandal, the bogus acorn scandal, the current redistricting efforts, making photo it -- total id requirements and early voting

seem part of concentrated work on the right to vote. what is the likelihood jeff >> reporter: i will address this question in a second, whether or not it is significant economic involvement can coexist with politically quality. or whether or not want there's a small faction that can gain so much power through its wealth then political equality or democratic institutions cannot possibly resist it any longer or remain vulnerable to it.

there are ways -- the problem that if you are going to allow the danger that it could become so concentrated that it -- political and legal institutions do not make a difference and yet we have seen periods of time in american history where there has been income inequality and political and democratic institutions have been able to act meaningfully against the most powerful oligarchs. standard oil and j. p. morgan were broken up. franklin roosevelt was able to create redistricting and social programs, lots of social progress. it was empirically proven that you can have significant income inequality and political equality contingent upon subject in the most wealthy and politically powerful to the same rules and limitations to which the rest of us are bound and which we democratically impose on them and once that starts to

happen you get the kind of corruption that seeps into all the other institutions. as far as control of voting machines and the like all political processes are subjected to corruption and coercion and the like. i haven't seen evidence that there is systematic fraud on the part of our electoral process from voting machine control and at the same time i am not completely convinced anyone has an overwhelming interest since all parties seem to serve the same interest anyway. not really sure who would be motivated to care enough about that other than the two parties themselves but certainly there are instances where there are irregularities but more important is what you talked about which is restricting the right to vote more, return to the era where people who have certain political views have huge impediments for and in the

way and that is part and parcel of the generalized trend of using what is supposed to be a law and political equality to achieve exactly the opposite. last question. >> all the hassle of trying to get me to ask this question and reflective of how my civil-rights and the civil rights of all the people with disabilities are violated by the elite of cambridge who also exempt themselves from the basic civil rights of access. for 20 years i have had the right of free front door access

of rebuilding the country but the elite of cambridge who examine this elite by using the term historic which is an ideological term meaning looks good and keeps property values up. by that process there's a special entrance for me that i got to go in in which the elevator fell an inch and a half when i got in. when we got to the top of the elevator we ran into a handcart and boxes blocking my way out and the door into the auditorium was locked and when i came in after knocking to get in no one knew what to do with me or where to put me. i call this bullying. it is really a constant on going humiliation. the burden that would be placed by making it fully accessible through the front entrance would cost a lot but maybe that money

is being used to put the torturing read sidewalks on my way to get to the front entrance which everyone knows torturous people with disabilities and anyone pushing any wheels and yet they are all over this area because the elite have exempted themselves right in front of everyone and unfortunately you end of participating by coming to an event where people who are believed all the time. i was in the street most of the way to get here and i hope in the future that you would not speak in a place that didn't have every single person who could come in come in the front door because coming in the front door used to be something that was seen as a civil rights and itself. thank you very much.

>> obviously i wasn't aware of this building ever before. there are laws that require steps to be taken to provide access to people who are disabled and i have litigated those cases before. whether there are issues and historic designations and the like is something i am not aware of. i am appreciative of your bringing this to my attention and to the attention of everyone here. it is something i will certainly give some thought to. >> if i could just add a word to that, it is quite legitimate but it also bears on the preceding question of can we do anything about it and the answer is yes we can. it is different from what was four years ago. those changes which are part of general civilized -- civilizing of the country that trace back to many things that in

particular to the activism of the 60s and its aftermath. a large part of the civilizing effect of the 60s began later. the feminist movement for example was a huge change. support for access of disabled people. that is pretty much post 60s and it shows what can be achieved by popular engagement, recognition of serious issues, pressure to do something about them and progress. progress still has big gaps. we shouldn't overlook the fact that there has been progress and that progress has not been a gift from above but has been achieved through popular engagement and struggle. that is a lesson for the future. [applause]

>> for more information about glenn greenwald visit salon.com/writer/glenn greenwald. >> "uncompromised" is the book. and nada prouty is the author. "uncompromised: the rise, fall, and redemption of an arab american patriot in the cia". first of all, nada prouty, when and how did you serve in the cia? >> i started working for the fbi as a special agent and worked with them for five years and transferred from the fbi and worked with the cia in 2003. i worked a number of high-profile cases for the fbi like the uss cole the additional the bombing in riyadh, assassination and murder of florence coli, the u.s. agents.

i was exposed to working with cia offices overseas. that valued the culture and linguistic ability and transferred from the fbi to the cia and i was dispatched to work in baghdad. i was involved in the hunt for saddam hussein that was a successful operation. i detail lot of other cases i worked for for the cia. >> when did you leave? >> five years little less than ten years government service. >> the subtitle of your new book "uncompromised: the rise, fall, and redemption of an arab american patriot in the cia" 11. why in that order? >> my career skyrocketed. i was being assigned cases that seasoned agents with years of experience and the same thing. given a lot of smithson's that -- missions that were very hard. after i returned from baghdad i

was accused -- falsely accused of being a supporter of terrorism. eventually i was exonerate it. i am here today telling my story. >> tell us about that accusation. >> it involved a terrorist group hezbollah. the fbi thought -- i passed intelligence to hezbollah. obviously that wasn't true. the evidence against me was labeled secret. the evidence was not shared with me that the cia conducted an investigation and a federal judge and they got rated me publicly. >> were you arrested? >> i was not. i pled guilty to the charges because i was threatened. basically with death threats. the government said they were going to support me to lebanon and denounce the lebanese government but i worked with the fbi and the cia.

so i pled guilty to these false charges. >> you detail that all in "uncompromised". >> i described a number of cases. i was involved in three renditions for the fbi and i described the false accusations and finally the exoneration. >> nada prouty, as an arab american woman in the cia did you face situations that a white male would not? >> given my cultural background, at out of the green zone and collect intelligence. my weapons -- i was able to collect intelligence that others may not have been able to but a discuss these cases and hope you get a chance to read it. >> did the cia have to bet your

book? >> my manuscript to the cia and they had to approve it. >> why did you leave the cia? >> it was part of the plea deal unfortunately. people ask me all the time would you ever go back to government service and i tell them the same thing. i am living proof that the justice system works because the truth was told in the end and i am happy to have served my country and i will serve my country again at the trough of a dime. this is not pessimistic. this is an optimistic story. in any other country had been accused of these horrendous charges i would have been executed. only in america do you get the chance to tell your story and to know that justice prevails in the end and that the truth always comes out. >> this is booktv and c-span2. we have been talking with nada prouty, former cia agent and author of this

author of this book, "uncompromised: the rise, fall, and redemption of an arab american patriot in the cia". >> next jeffrey clements argues the supreme court decision was flawed and argues to reverse it. this is about 40 minutes. >> thank you for your leadership. i have a guy who gets to warm up the crowd for jeff. i am happy to do it because i am proud to be here. you have a real battle on our hands. saturday was the two year anniversary of the gas leak - a --gassley citizens united decision and upheld it was the deck at which the court went too far and will provoke a public reaction that we can take advantage of to try to prescript

the extraordinary explosion of corporate power that the court had been stepping with smaller steps toward so many decisions along the way. the citizens united decision was really extraordinary. it basically encapsulated by mitt romney's, and corporations are people. no. corp. are not people. they don't have sold. they don't have consciences. they're a mechanism by which people organize their behavior but they are not people and the way in which the court has given them power creates immense imbalance because they can use their corporate treasury and if you have corporations like exxon mobile that are making billions of dollars a quarter it is pretty easy to drown out regular folks in the media market that we have.

the other thing is it takes everybody's money and put it under control of the ceo which is a person often from the 1% who doesn't believe in that distinction. you're giving an enormous amount of power for that minority to perpetuate itself. we have a lot of work to do. we are seeing it in action right now. one of the federal commission is called the evil twin of committee of -- political campaigns, the super pac. evil twin is an honorable name to describe them. they're like a campaign only supposedly independent. somebody -- same people running it. message coordinated without being caught at it. you can pretty much see how that works but in terms of the evil side of the evil twins, and limited donations restricted to a campaign, and identified donations required to be

reported in the campaign and if you get really down and dirty and why, who cares? nobody's accountable because it is not a candidate doing it. there's no ownership. it is an awful appearance in the political system as many people said on both sides of the aisle. we have a bit of a battle ahead of us but it is a really good battle to fight. if we are right and if we're lucky, the citizens united decision will go down in history with plessey versus ferguson as one of the truly awful supreme court decisions which later supreme court would come to regret. i will close with two quick points. one is i think as a lawyer who has done a fair amount of appellate practice, that was my thing when i was actually practicing law, their it -- there is a weak underbelly to the citizens united decision and

that is its findings of fact. people who practice up long know that supreme courts are not supposed to be finding fact. that is what the pilots court does. the supreme court looks at it and take effect in the record and determines that the law applies. the supreme court made findings of fact. they made a finding of fact that unlimited corporate spending and elections does not create corruption or even the appearance of corruption. that is a preposterous finding if you have been around politics. you have members of the supreme court who never did that before but it was an ulterior motive. that critical finding of fact as wrong as it was was the linchpin for the rest of the analysis. if that finding of fact isn't there the decision falls to pieces. we need to be careful about attacking that finding of fact.

the previous case had plenty of findings to the contrary. legislative hearings developed plenty of findings to the contrary and experience tells you the contrary and whether it is the company that comes in and got $4 billion of negative trash at the last minute of a race against one candidate or another and they are supposed to show there's no allegiance between the candidates and the company that did that, it gets worse when you take it to the next step which many think citizens united overlook. what corporations will do under citizens united, what it will threaten to do. one of the most dangerous thing under citizens united and the lobbyists -- i want to recognize tom allen who did a wonderful job representing me. [applause] they will say step into my

office. i want to show you something. look at this ad. it blows me to bits. they say we are going to put $3 million or $4 million behind that ad and do it through a company that we will make up the name, and you have a real problem on your hands. you vote with us on this, you vote against us on this and $4 million, next august or whatever. when you open the floodgates, we have to be talking about how wrong those factual findings are and build that record. we have one brave supreme court, the montana supreme court, very

clear decision and we have a record at using strong language like clearly unlimited corporate spending interferes with the election. inevitably it drowns out the voices of regular people. they reject it. the citizens united decision. it is interesting when you have basically the supreme court fighting back. i am going to take the liberty of having you here as an audience because you are interested to make one final point and that is unrelated -- juries are an incredible important part of the constitutional structure. they are in the constitution and bill of rights not once, not twice but three times. is one of the core constitutional elements that protects us from tyranny as a central part of the american system of government. in the other attacks on the

system and other decisions that supported corporations very often the jury has been the target. very few people think of the jury as an important part of our constellation of rights and government structure. i urge you as you think as an organization how many organizations are represented here-forget the jury. every time they make a decision that diminishes an american right to a jury their diminishing one of the core elements of our constitutional structure of government. nobody knows this better than jeff who has written sensibly on this in such a wonderful way. it is a great book. he is a great voice. without further ado, i give you

jeffrey clements. [applause] >> thank you, senator whitehouse and michael and caroline. before he goes too far, i have here -- already got a book already. this doesn't cost as much but it is clearly more valuable. it is the constitution. free speech for people and includes the declaration and the gettysburg address. [applause] senator whitehouse saying he was warming up from a leader like the garage man who comes on after bruce springsteen. i'm just going to waive for a minute here. i don't usually do readings of my book because it is not that kind of book. i will talk about that in a minute but near the end, a out the history of where citizens united came from and this corporate doctrine came from and

how it came up in the chamber of commerce, very select group of the largest corporations in the world to literally transform our social/political and legal structure and i end with quoting senator whitehouse. i'm not sure he even knows this unless he read page 142 already. because he went to the senate floor after the bp disaster. disaster is not the right word. the golf still is much like the killing of 29:miners in western japan and many other things we call a accidents or disasters. their consequences of unchecked corporate power, unbalanced power between people and corporations. the biggest in the world and a cutting of the connection between our government and the people.

several investigation reports about what happened in the big branch coal mine explosion explicitly linked it to massive political contribution and activity in west virginia. they had 65,000 violations in the mining safety act that has not been changed to. they ran two sets of books. bobby kennedy, criminal enterprise. a railroad out of control corp. as a result. on the larger national scale that is with citizens united is about. part of the end game of what happened in west virginia and other cases but senator wychehouse took the floor after the bp disaster and it came out that bp and other oil executive flaps were literally in bed with government officials who were supposed to be regulating them and this is what he said. a reading from the book but actually his words. i couldn't find any myself that were better than this. this is what he said. have we learned what price must be paid when the wealthy tentacles of corporate influence

are allowed to reach into and capture our agencies of government? i pray let us have learned that lesson. i sincerely pray we have learned and this will never happen again. let us not just pray. in this troubled world god works for our human hand. grow the more perfect union through our human heart. create a loving community through our human thoughts and ideas. it is not enough to pray. we must act. we must act in defense of the integrity of this government of ours which has brought such light to the world. such freedom and equality to our country. we cannot allow this government that inspires people to risk their lives and fortunes to come to our shores. we cannot allow any element of this government to become the tool of corporate power, the avenue of corporate influence. the puppet of corporate tentacles. senator whitehouse is right about that. he inspires people not just to pray or bemoan the citizens

united case but to act. thank you for that. [applause] we know what citizens united was about. if you are here tonight and many folks in the room as we work closely together over the last couple years to overturn citizens united i know we're going to with a constitutional amendment or a change in the course driven by the constitutional amendment campaign. it is true outside this room too. if you go around the country and look at the polling and any sort of measurement, americans are not going to put up with corporations messing in our elections or this notion that corporations have the same rights as people. it is a visceral reaction. whether you are a conservative or progressive or anything in between to that proposition. it is the opportunity. in some ways citizens united is

the opportunity to push back against a doctrine that even before citizens united has not done so much damage to the country. my book if i can say a few words about it tells how did this happen? if this is such a reaction of the american people and we have seen it everybody knows this is wrong, how could it have happened? just a bad day on the court? what happened here? unfortunately it wasn't just a bad day. i begin the book in 1970, twenty million americans came out because rivers were literally catching on fire. the air was literally killing kids and elderly because it was so polluted. the land was being destroyed.

essentially the ex fertilization -- corporate costs into the environment was totally out of control. twenty million americans -- didn't matter their politics or otherwise said this has got to change. with richard nixon in the white house, there wasn't a partisan response, almost within months, literally, after that and a few choice years we have the clean water act, the clean air act, the safe drinking water act, eastern wilderness act. original endangered species act created for the first time in american history. a total recreations of the relationship between we the people and how corporations are going to operate. so democracy was working well. we had two amendments too. the poll tax was eliminated which discriminated against poor folks and people of color voting and the voting age was lowered

to 18 so 19 and 20-year-olds could vote. we can't buy this idea that amendments don't happen. americans have always taken to the amendment full and when democracy is on the line. in virginia lewis powell, chamber of commerce adviser and executive on the board of directors of philip morris and a dozen other large corporations reacted a little differently than my reaction to what i see as a flowering of democracy working. he called it an attack on the free enterprise system and he wrote a memo in great detail to the chamber of commerce saying the free enterprise system is under attack. he cited ralph nader by name because of the consumer protection issue and laws that were coming into effect and he called for what he said using

activist minded courts to create a corporate rights doctrine in effect. corp's come together and fund over many years of liberal not just short-term effort but over many years a campaign to transformed american social, political and legal structures to be more favorable to the largest corporations. six months later president nixon appointed him to the supreme court. the same day he appointed a conservative, william rehnquist. interesting how those two ended up being ended up writing four cases in six years that created something that never before existed in american history. the idea of corporate speechwriting. first time in 1978 in massachusetts first national bank of boston, gillette and digital script corp. struck down the law in massachusetts that helps corporations from spending

in citizen referendums. with a preview of citizens united. lewis powell wrote the 5-4 decision. william rehnquist wrote a passionate defense saying corporations do not have the same rights as those who owe their allegiance and existence to something higher than the commonwealth unlike corporations which are creations of the state. of course you had a progressive defend as well but corporate rights doctrine for the first time was put into our first amendment striking down spending laws in elections and referendum votes in massachusetts. he went on to write an opinion from new york that prevented utility corporations from promoting energy functions because that would help share this. the policy of the state with energy conservation struck down. violation of corporate speech act. he did four more of those and the doctrine was passed into law

and became for the first time a corporate speech. corporations were like people. you go back and i quote some of them. washington legal foundation and new england legal foundation, chamber of commerce national litigation project. all these foundation that stood up in response to the memo didn't exist before. they were created and funded by what he called for and they said corporations are persons, quote, corporate speakers and other terms had never existed in the lobby for. corporate speakers and corporate voices over and over and lewis powell -- this doctrine was set and it struck down -- before citizens united. public health laws and environmental laws and financial regulation laws, disclosure laws and ingredients in your food genetically modified bovine growth drug is illegal in every

democracy in the world except ours. it is illegal to use it at all. partly because of the money issues we see and domination of big corporate power in washington. it was legal. vermont passed a law. i told a story about environmental work. 65-year-old dairy farmer named dexter randolph put together a food -- they worked and worked. they got a lot in vermont that said milk, butter, cheese comes from cows treated with genetically modified bovine growth hormone that is illegal everywhere else in the world because it helps disclose it. small disclosure on the label so people can decide if they want to use that. struck down. violations of corporate speech. this time not just to see. they didn't want to say -- didn't want to disclose where the dairy products come from.

that was struck down. i talked to dexter randal. to see how this hollows out and undermines and breaks the spirit of democracy. the court opinion that says vermont's while was unconstitutional, trampled on the rights of other people so this is about a power struggle. a struggle of people against big organized corporate power. and citizens united -- i is sometimes called it -- they are doing so well -- really a end zone dance for this corporate power grab. it is a celebration. they said right out loud what has been going on for a long time before citizens united and not just in campaign finance which is corporations are just like people and we can't

regulate them differently than we regulate people and that is catastrophic to american democracy. interestingly it is catastrophic to the american economy. we have 1,000 business leaders working with american sustainable business council, business for democracy calling for an amendment because they play government -- pay to play business is not good for competitive, healthy and innovative economy. it is used by the biggest corporations in the world to corrupt the political process to get a favorable policy that is the opposite of innovative -- the old well from the last generation of fossil fuel corporate wealth rather than the new business of trying to start out. that in so many ways -- i know you know that so i won't be labor that but that is the toxic doctrine behind citizens united that needs overturning and because it is a constitutional

doctrine there is no debate among the american people about should we give corporations the power to invalidate our laws? there was never any debate about that. it was worked over 30 years into our constitution by activist minded courts. in a different way than we hear it sometimes today. and so the way to respond is the constitutional proposition. the proposition that do we accept it or not? corporations are people. if we accepted we are going to turn over a broken democracy through the next generation. i don't think people accept it. those are the stakes. it is a constitutional struggle. we have had them before in our history and it is what we have now. the way we resolve these things, article v of the constitution. the amendment process and the constitutional amendment talking about people rights amendment. several versions of that.

people for the american way of additional a good ally on this and many others. to build this campaign across the country for a constitutional amendment that reverses citizens united and the notion that corporations have the same rights as people and the notion that our elections are just marketplace where the richest get to play and everyone else is a spectator. that is the kind of national debate and cause that we have to take on. it is hard. we need two thirds of congress and we 3-quarters of states to ratify it but it is no harder than the twenty-seventh amendment. the question is we will succeed if our bet is correct that the country is ready, willing and able to do this in this time. i look back at my kids and the

next generation and they will be fine. it is long term that is going to be a test of whether we survive as government and people but i think backwards a lot about where the other ones came from and people -- the democracy that works. there's a lot of hard work. in the progressive era much like ours in some ways coming out of the gilded age. an activist supreme court created the so-called lock her doctrine used for process clause with corporations to strike down things like child labor laws and maximum our laws and republicans and democrats came together because it was about the public interest and overturned those doctrines. took on the supreme court and won. they did four amendments in the space of ten years. we think ten amendments are hard. they did four in ten years. one was prohibition.

think of the other three. women got the right to vote. we take that for granted. that was really a struggle for decades and they won when they got the right to vote. we got senators elected the first time. senators used to be appointed by backroom increasingly corrupt process in the state legislature. senator is directly elected. think this one is hard? they got progressive income tax. imagine carrying the campaign for a constitutional amendment saying we want an income tax and they won. we reverse the supreme court which held but congress does not have the power to have a federal income-tax. it was overturned by the people in a constitutional amendment campaign. i hate to say it but we have no experience because they have done it before and if we don't do it shame on us. if people want this done we have

done polling. 70% of the american people support a constitutional amendment. republicans and democrats and independents to overturn citizens united. people for the american way, a great page on there website shows all these resolutions all over the country from l a to new york to portland, oregon. we have had ten town meetings in new england, massachusetts, and ten came together last year and passed by an overwhelming margin like the other resolutions, 75% condemning citizens united and calling on congress -- we have the business community calling for it. we have everything it takes to get an amendment done with american consensus that something is deeply wrong and can't be fixed with tinkering. it is a structural problem. it has been injected into the constitution and need a renewal of democracy with a set of

amendments. one amendment or two one going after corporate power and the other after the idea that money is speech. i think we can do it. many people in this room have done a lot of work on it and wants to be doing that. for those who aren't convinced i hope you will join us. for all of those -- oh yes. thank you. read the book. [applause] my publisher thank you. so read the book. it is intended as a pamphlet. not a big fancy hard cover. it tells the story of what happened and as tools and lynx and draft proposed resolutions and thing that can actually use. feel free to show it to your neighbor and get a resolution moving. free speech for people.org web site. check out united for the people. there's a number for it.

constellation of all these groups doing their work and are now we will win. i will be quiet so we can open up and have discussions and questions. thank you very much. [applause] >> the large banks have five lobbyists for every congressman to -- two lobbyists for every congressman. they could do that with out a supreme court decision. where does this -- where do you see -- what does this do -- clearly the american people are the only group that doesn't have a lobby group in washington. >> really good question. the question is we have a huge lobbying problem but in between elections you have billions of dollars on corporate lobbying

and military-industrial complex. what does the amendment do for that? the amendment alone does not do much. the question is whether we will be like the progressive era or other era when the amendment carries the conversation about the underlying proposition and with that i think we will have a wave of reform because we make the argument that we have a structural problem we need to fix. government of the people is losing. we are not going to get it if we don't do a set of fixes. i don't propose the amendment is the only thing that will fix it. it -- the lobbying problem is number 2. you have a constitutional amendment. we need campaign finance laws and lobbying reform. even jack abramoff is calling it bribery. it is legalized bribery. if we try to fix that now we would get an argument that

corporations have speech rights. we need -- reasserting that corporations serve the people. it is not vice versa. they get corporate charters and state laws and privileges like limited liability, a set of advantages we want them to have for economic purposes but comes with burdens and responsibilities and rules that we can make including corrupting politicians and politics so we would need a set of statutory clause. the constitution is not a code where we can fix out of statutes but if we win and carry in this campaign to the country we have those debates and when those debates too which is why we need to clean up the slobs in washington that were lobbying everything out. >> you did a nice job said

nothing -- synopsising the politics involved. we know corporations are creatures of the state, we define that as you said. explain the legal theories that enabled the supreme court to tell states what they intended by writing their laws. >> a great point. miss caroline had gone away. there she is. thank you again because i get a ton of that in an issue brief that i did. in my view how the supreme court did it is by asking us to accept a bunch of metaphors that are not true and it is the corporate speech metaphor and corporate speaker and corporate voices. if you read citizens united remember for the sake of citizens united congress has a set of rules for corporations and for human beings. the wooley issue was the rule about corporations. that was the question. is congress allowed to

distinguish between human beings and corporations? you would think the starting point for a judge looking at that question is what is a corporation? you won't find it. there is no explanation what a corporation is. no examination of why congress made a difference of rules for corporations that people. instead you get this government can't discriminate against different speakers. government can't punish what justice kennedy called the disadvantaged class of person. we win if we just dismiss and say we don't want to talk about metaphors but the real thing. what the corporation is is a creation of the state so it comes with a rule the state create. states have the authority to decide what you get when you get a corporate charter. this is an old story. we use to do better at keeping an eye on these tools are were

handed out. they used to have 20 year limits and after 20 years you say what did you do for the public if you want the privilege of a corporate charter again. they have chartered laws still in existence. we petitioned free speech for people asking joe biden to revoke the corporate charter that i talked about a few minutes ago because of their illegality. that is the standard. if a corporate charters abused, even a moral purposes. the charter is supposed to be revoked. it is preposterous the supreme court can tell the states that these things the state created that they use to make rules about somehow the state can't make will about any more. i was glad to see montana pushing back. we agreed with the montana supreme court case. if you haven't read the supreme court case in montana it is wonderful. of 5-2 decision upholding the

corrupt practice act which bans corporate the vetting in elections. you are wasting your time, citizens united will be side -- the court can't go against citizen united but the court did. as senator whitehouse said showing of factual record, is corruption due to corporate money but the two dissenters who said we have to follow citizens united and went on at length to say how bad and wrong citizens united was ending with the irony that unlike people corporations can't go to hell. the straight talking montana push back. >> are there states honoring laws still in effect? >> you can't get -- >> it has been used. >> any corporation -- many of them come out of delaware. they get a corporate charter.

you mean charter replication laws? the last time was in the tobacco litigation. didn't revoke the charter. the new york attorney general revoked the charter in non-profit corporations that were used in the tobacco -- the tobacco research institutes. those charters were revoked. in the end was litigated with regard to part of the settlement of the state. in the progressive era which i would cite as our example of robust democracy and people doing our job as citizens the ohio attorney general went after this charter at standard oil co. and got a decision for the court to revoke it. the new york attorney general went after the sugar trust corporation monopoly, the sugar companies. problem -- you can go to another

state. the problem led to corporations like delaware in the end. >> 100 years ago. >> exactly. i am not saying those are the same tools and responses we just off and used again. we need to be remembering that we need to realize we are in a new century. we have these nineteenth century structures of global corporations. they were chartered out of state. we should be reinventing not just renewing our democracy but reinventing effective corporate entities that work well rather than work against the people. there are things like benefits, seven states have done that. j.d. read and carried it in maryland. there are a lot of interesting alternatives to the old corporate charter system that is used to take privileges and

rights without any responsibility. >> you can hang out afterwards and we will sign books. >> any other questions? heard enough? be ready to join the amendment campaign. thank you very much. [applause] >> you are watching booktv on c-span2. forty-eight hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. >> next on booktv john barry recounts the life of roger williams whose thoughts on the separation of church and state were deemed revolutionary in seventeenth century america. it is a little under 1 hour and 15 minutes.

[applause] >> i was in washington where i hang out in bookstores and i figured out rising tide and i asked who is this guy? to make a long story short i got in touch with john and came to find out when i started saying -- he actually wrote the best book about washington. it is considered one of the best books ever written about washington. then he wrote which is my opinion not the best boat -- maybe the best book -- came to find out -- don't know how many of you knew this but john was assistant coach of lsu in 1973. [applause] here is this guy with real passion for history and real passion for football and real

passion for new orleans and the louisiana coast, just like that and myself here almost. separate l s u for you. as long as you can't get out of new orleans, the 50 yard line mark around the city. [laughter] to note john and his sort of passion for the truth in many of his books and i started reading this one. always the back story. always the other stuff. picking up and i will find out everything about the flood and you find out everything about that and you find out everything else like a history of medical history. what they were doing in austria and what we were doing and johns hopkins and this and that.

just one of these -- like a good new orleans meal. it keeps going off in your mouth and things happen. of everything we have an advocate for our city and our region, john volunteered for everything you can, probably knows more about the core, knows more about flood protection, knows more about what we are doing and things that are so vital to us and that kind of citizen. with this talent and passion, is remarkable. it is a pleasure to bring not just one of the great writers, people who when you write the book, the pages jump up and smacked him in the face and read your attention but somebody who's a real advocate for these things we care so much about.

please come up. it is a great honor to have you. [applause] >> thanks. thank you for that introduction. the year we beat lsu at tulane lsu only lost one other game. no. one alabama. anyway, now we are talking about this finally. i didn't start out to write this book. i started out to write a book about the home front in world war i. i was going to focus on several figures who collided in 1919. one of them was billy sunday, the first jerry falwell figure. the model for the great novel and movie elmer gantry. i wanted to look at him to

examine the role of religion in american public life. just doing my due diligence of research i started going back and back and back and i ended up at the beginning of the argument over church and state in this country and that argument has not changed at all in almost 400 years. we need to understand that the first amendment of the constitution and the constitution itself didn't come from fear. it didn't come from the imagination of the writers of that amendment. it came as a specific responses to specific historical events. and this is the history from which the constitution came and as we know the argument has continued. the argument began with john

winthrop who was governor of massachusetts and roger williams but it involved all english constitutional history and all of our constitutional history. when for -- john winthrop gave what the new york times called greatest sermon in 1,000 years and it has been quoted by presidents and others. he said we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. the eyes of all people are upon us. went on to say as long as they kept their covenant with god we shall find that the god of israel is among as. when ten of us shall resist a thousand of our enemies. when he shall make as they praise and glory so in the future men shall say of other colonies the lord makes that of new england. john winthrop definition of american they knew chosen people is informed american culture ever since and inf