the rigorous testing programs that manufacturers to. they have a small batch exception. and i have to give credit to our small-business ombudsman. he just spent hundreds of hours with small toy manufacturers and small businesses. he took our rules, he wrote it in plain english so everyone could understand it, he did workshops, he's invited them seminars. we've had seminars at the cpsc and invited him to come in. we try to do everything so they understand what the rules are and help them learn how they can comply and be in compliance with the cpsia. >> well, we are without any more questions. >> i appreciate all of you coming. thank you again, the national press club for this invitation. we really appreciate it. thank you. >> it's an honor to have you.

..

the persian world needs in the arab world, where the shii meets the suni. i cannot think of a tougher place, so if you're going to go into a tough place to do it by doing a little homework. i feel that we should have done an awful lot more homework about, you know, when you look at a dictator, the first question should not become how do we get rid of them. the first question should be commanded to get there. once you figure out how person likes about got there, that will help inform the answer to how you get rid of them. clearly iraq has to be ruled by some combination of those three communities, sunni, shii, and

the kurds. that has to be hard works. to go in and think that it was akin to the next vacation in 1945 as opposed to giving -- getting sunni out and replacing them by teefor, i don't think we understood the fall lines of dictatorship and democracy. it was to rate -- we were right to rectify that. the sunni-shia fall line has been there for a thousand years commend you might want to pay a little more attention to how you're going to deal with that. i must say, it was a very hard thing. i agree with jim that it is filling in the right direction, and i would put myself on the glass half full side. and, i know president bush will take a lot of grief for the rest of history about the invasion of

iraq, but i don't think anyone can say that he did not have the guts to take on the toughest problem and then released. i hope that we can stay with it. i hope the obama administration will stay with it. we do have the world's largest embassy. peruvian guards they're still. you've gone this. albanian gardner's. a regular tower of babel. my albanian, macedonian. it was great. a very unusual situation but at this point i think we have to sort of stay engaged. >> and you can see all of the ambassador's remarks tonight at eight like eastern on that c-span and that our website, c-span.org. >> i do not envy the dressing

harmony of the republican party. [applause] they squelched debate, we welcome it. they denied differences. we bridge some. they are uniform, we are united. [applause] >> said choices this year are not just between two different personalities or between two political parties. there are between two different visions of the future, to fundamentally different ways of governing. a government of pessimism, fear, and limits or hours of hope, confidence, and growth. >> c-span has aired every minute of every major party convention since 1984, and this year was a republican and democratic national roentgens live on c-span starting monday, august

august 27. >> nasa scientists say mars looks similar to the california desert in photos be in town by the curiosity rover. nasa has a briefing on the mission tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. eastern and you can see it live on our companion network c-span. today's briefing on the curiosity rover was 50 minutes. >> welcome to the nasa jet propulsion laboratory. the rover has just completed its date three activities and has sent as back postcards of another picture perfect date on mars. here to tell us about all of that in an update on all the at to the we have michael watkins, the msl mission manager from the jet propulsion laboratory. the principal investigator for the camera on the curiosity, at

dawn summer, science team member from the university of california davis. and in the midst -- in the michigan, team chief from jpl. and dougie ellison, visualization producer at jpl, and we will begin with michael watkins. >> a very good morning. we had another fantastic day on mars. curiosity continues to behave basically flawlessly. and executing all the planned activities successfully and phenomenal yesterday. a good time for me to point out that the team operating curiosity is performing basically it flawlessly and completing of planned activities. this is really just a great day

all around. so the activity consists of a couple of different things. we are about to -- it would like to upgrade our software on the rover, just like we upgrade our uprighted system under on computer and laptop. we're going to do the same thing. we need a fellow that is optimized. we landed on one that is optimized for lending. but the same token the surface does not have the land the vehicle. you want to switch to this new flight software that is optimized for surface operations, and we're going to do that starting tomorrow. so a little prep work for that activity. we're going to check out the back uplight computer and make sure that is healthy and fine. we also set up files to get ready for the transition. and the other thing to do is check out more of our instrument to do more health checks on their many instruments. so we checked out the instrument

. ap excess and dan, and they all passed those checks successfully and are in great shape as far as we know. the test that we have done, and that is a great sign. nothing -- no anomalies showed up at all in any of those tests. we also took a whole lot of imagery around us, so we took a panorama of what we did in the net cams of that train around the rover and looked back at ourselves and to close above the deck. we also took the first 360-degree panorama and color and started to get the first bits of that now. so let me start by showing this cause of those images. okay. this is our -- this is our deadpanned, and now we are zooming in year. we see the instrument.

you can see a few of these large pebbles on the surface. those were kicked up by the lending event. a centimeter in size on top of the rover. and they pose no problem for operations. we do move the black thing there that will pivot around but can easily go over our crash or not even had them at all and go on top of them, so we don't see any operational constraint, but is expected that it is there. the e. deal team, when they analyzed the landing before landing, i did not think it would take up stuff this large. so i think they are off looking at that. maybe these are lighter materials than they expected. but they have this to do now. [laughter] you know, they need a problem to your start working out, right?

this is something for them to do. as i mentioned, we don't see any impact. no instruments seem to be covered and it's affecting science observation. we think that all of that is in pretty good shape. let's go to the next slide. this is just kind of a context shot. you can see the height gain antenna. behind it, that thing sticking up is the low gain antenna. you can see the rim of the crater off in the distance there. and we also acquired some color pens of this area. mike malin will talk about those. >> here i am again. only i'm wearing another difference at this time, principal investigator of the mast camera. before you see me here, said damaging, and we got a 360-degree panorama into the sequence from yesterday.

we got our thumbnails back, and i need to tell you that the full friends are now stored inside the camera, and we do have to get those images out of the camera and stored in sioux the rovers memory in order to bring them back, but what we're planning for now is the last we have until after the software activity goes through to get them cued up, so we are going to cue up a few of the full resolution images. again, what i'm showing you are thumbnails. you should remember back a couple ago when i showed you the thumbnail of the heat shield that i faded into full resolution. that is the kind of difference you should expect to see between what i'm going to show you know and what i will show you when we get some of the full resolution friends back. so for now, the animation please this is the full 360 panorama.

it is the color, as it was transmitted, except the brides and up. it was pretty dark to begin with you see they're going off to the right now the impact, the impact site of the rocket plumes. we are now panning across the base. we see this as the of some of the river itself. reason and because there is a big gap of places we did take pictures, so this gives you a better view of the tier of images. he will pick up the ramp up at the very top. hayes shows up pretty well in the culvert. you can see a slightly different color. hello, a light layer there. we zemin here again to look at the -- this is the area that has been discussed, shot last time i was here. talked-about better rock and the material by the rocket plumes. so if we can keep going now i

think we can back out from this and show you the full mosaic again and zoom in to the other plumes and then zoom right back in. you can see, like thailand. that could be a contaminant. we do not know and won't know unless we go over and observe these things. other than that, this is a very low resolution image. the images are only 144 by 144 pixels. 130 of them in here. like an hour and six men stepped pace the mosaic. >> so we have these beautiful images. my guest and i nice job describing some of the interesting features that you can see. we are really looking forward to the full resolution images. we can also see the main reason we chose this landing site.

if i could have the first. so we have -- this is a navigation camera. in the upper right you can actually see the main target area of where we want to go. so in the hills, between 190 and 200, the degrees of the top, you see these beautiful rolls and letterbox. that is those layers what is recording the history of gail creature. they are one of the reasons we chose the main reason to study those rocks. so, we can see, the distance from where we are. and it is very exciting to think about getting there. but it is quite a ways away. and we also want to be able to take the science that we can do where we landed and integrate that into the mission as well.

so next slide. i have been coordinating and mapping effort. and so you can see -- in this image you can see the landing outlined in red. and we have lit the area up, 1 mile by 1 mile quadrants or squares. we have volunteers from the science team map each. and what that means is looking at the different textures that you can see in the images and mapping the boundaries between those. so if we do that for geology on earth to mark where different types of rocks are outlined. and curiosities landed in quarter and 51 which happens to be one of the ones i mapped. so i'm sure that that was intentional by the navigation team. and so what the science team is now doing, we have these individual maps that we started integrating to get the broader

picture. and also, investigating the rocks and craters and patterns around where curiosity is now. we will use this map to find a path where we landed to the main target at the base of mount sharp which is south of where we landed. we will drive on the northwest side of the dunes and go through a break in the field. but on the way we're going to have a lot of interesting geology to look at. and so the team will be balancing observations and scientific investigations on our drive, but also still get said at the base of mount sharp. if i could have the next slide, this is 51, where curiosity landed. you can tell by looking at this image that we have several different textures of rock and surfaces in this, and that team

is focused on what are the key observations we can make your that will tell us about our landing site and then you will go from those and choose the path to the base of mount sharp. doing the best science that we can along the way, but also keeping our eyes on that beautiful layered rock at the base of mount sharp. >> okay. well, great results and images coming back and what they mean. i am here not to talk about those, what we're doing all they in our mission operations in order to enable getting those results back. and my team is the team that does the command sequencing and integrates things coming from the science team. it's a challenging issue to do the operations. we can't joystick the rover.

we have of very highly resource constrained vehicle. the on a power that we are getting from the rgg is of little bit more than you need to power a 100-watt light bulb you might have in raleigh at home. we need to also deal with the data volume and basically make sure that we can fit the data that we get into the next available opportunity to get dated down through our orbiter relays. in addition, we have to make sure that we can actually achieve what we want within the time that is available for the rover because it can only do things so quickly and get that done in time for that downlink. we can only communicate with the, you know, with the rover a few times per martian de and we have to fit testing send. and in addition, we also have to deal with the conflicts of

trying to manage all of the different types of activities the members of the science and engineering team want to do so that, for example, we don't try and point amassed cam images in one direction at the same time that we want to be pointing to take engineering camera images. there are hundreds of those that we need to manage, and all of that takes time. our solution to dealing with the challenges is effectively writing a software program every day that has to run the first time when we send it up to the vehicle that is going to operate to tell the rover what it's going to do over the next day. and that really involves a combined team of engineers and scientists who are working together over the course of 16 hours, basically every martian. if i can get the graphic, this is just a brief summary of our process.

one key point, all of this that is going on is pretty much when the river is asleep. so that is why i call it the overnight timeline from the standpoint of the rover, doing all of our work when it is not really doing much activity except for maybe some briefly cups for nighttime operations or communications. and in this process we have got starting point and the time line where we get one or another orbiter pass bringing it down, data from basically the rovers afternoon and getting that on the ground which has some, you know, data mind that will very. we produce the products that we need to in order to be able to see the images that have been constructed in the other telemetry, and then we, you know, engineering teams and science teams are assessing and making sure that the rover is healthy over the course of a few hours and looking at the results so that based on that you can

decide what you want to do and what the next steps are up for what will follow. at that point we end up in a meeting where we end up addressing those items and bringing the key issues to the four which involves about 20 folks at that point in parallel with all of that size teams and is airing teens are looking in activities that need to be constructed into a coherent plan for an ex all. that is put together in the conflicted and make sure we are not violating hundreds of constraints we will review that. we will review that. maybe about 40 people. really stick to this timeline businesses the command opportunity. we turn those into command sequences which is effectively the software of up to the maybe

1,000 commands that will be executed to govern exactly what the river is going to do over the next martian de. prove to ourself and haven't created in the issues and everything will execute properly approve that and you can see on the graphic the deadline are we have to drop that deadline for we have the communications opportunity. the one time to tell the rover we wanted to do and get that up there. then it operates on its own until it can communicate back in the afternoon the results and what has happened. so that is the basic cycle that keeps over 100 people busy over that 16 our time line and really running as brand everyday to make sure that they can beat that mark and keep the vehicle productive and gathering science .

>> exactly a week ago i was introducing you all to the eyes on this whole system which lets you ride on board with many of the space system. in particular the modules particularly may for curiosity descent and landing. that did not want to spoil the surprise at that time. that did not want to spoil things, but the surprise worked. i would come back just to give you an update on how that went, how accurate we were, how many people are watching and how many other things we can still do. exit it -- yesterday jennifer reported are touched down time, ten, 17, and 57. three seconds. navigation team, they give us that trajectory three weeks at the touchdown. 1057 and nine seconds, six tenths of a second out. very pleased with that.

most people will tell me more in accuracy based on the clock on their own computer than the trajectory we had. and also want to thank steve collins, one of the control engineers it was in the dark room during landing. we get that and before the big traffic arrived. about 9:00 in the evening. between saturday and monday we had 973,000 visits. lending at a lonely at 7,309,000 visits. twenty terabytes of data over the weekend. the amazing experience of on board the spacecraft. some of those visits actually kind of double forward. there were using eyes on the solar system. hundreds of people were watching

there. he was trimming its life into the hang out. museum, the museum of science and industry, museum of sark -- science and arts in georgia, all using eyes on the solar system to let people see what was happening to the. in total we have reports of 55 different than the events which were using nice. we have statistics on half of those. this massive. six seconds off with a reconstruction some point in the future once the team has had a chance to digest the stated it will be getting back. look at that. we will let you know when you can actually see the actual series of events. turns out where about one quad away from the actual landing site. i think we are in quad 64. i don't know how interesting

that is, but once we get the new trajectory we will put that in. in the meantime there are still things that you can find, some interesting things. we have people sending in some of their favorite things. we can get. one of our favorites was this one. it is the donut shop. people putting the camera right behind the vehicle. you don't need to talk some more. and we have people sending is different screen shots of the kind of things they're doing. one guy had a triple white desktop machine and wants. i was going to skip through a few of the things that you can still have a look at. mike was here yesterday talk about the balanced impact that was caught by the camera. here is that. the trajectory was given to all six. and the pictures at the back of the room there. the impact site was to my belief, somewhere around this place down here. again, when the get the

reconstruction we will put that back in here as well. touchdown was of little bit of. the actual landing site is not far from here. as resume now we can show you how far off we were. the real landing site is about here, so we are not too far off. we are moving this beautiful to remodel to bring it up today when we actually have the proper location. of course, we even have the sky crane fly away that just by good fortune happens to be in roughly the same trajectory. and there is even more. if we go to a -- pointed in the red direction. we're taking a moment time when the mast was deployed on the afternoon. i will fast forward because stand-up takes about a minute. there is the stand-up. turning around, the anti some

position. of course, he conceded to beautiful cameras. and this is now live in isolation, of course. if we leave the module you can see the whole of the solar system. and the present moment in time, which is right now, this is where things are right now. you can see caria city in the landing site. it is nighttime raid there now. so a few days ago, like the table. communication. if we fast forward through time, you can see as the planet rotates underneath, the to orbitz going overhead. communication. ..

>> if you want me to answer what the camera sent back i just brightened it up because the elimination was less than we were concerned to make sure if there was something that we didn't saturate the detector, so the images were underexposed for normal photographer so i just write him out and that is what

the filter gives you when you look at mars. some texans use simulated the flyaway can you estimate the ingalls that is struck the surface cracks >> i'm sure they will be on the panel tomorrow that can give you a better answer then. something around 45 degrees i would have guessed that is just kind of a guess. >> let's see, we've got one question up here in the front. then we will go to one on the phone line and then come back to do. >> jongh from dtc for mica again. can you compare what you have got with what you will come just a sense of how much bigger in terms of scale with this other image is. will you sort of fell in the top as well? >> of the party will be 64 times larger because these are one

down. the resolution will be eight times better so they are extremely reduced versions of what we are getting. in the sense we originally proposed the zoom lenses, so i'm basically give you a slow-motion zoom. as we have a low resolution, then we are granted a high-resolution camera and eventually will use 100-millimeter lens and that will get even closer but for now this is interesting enough that we thought it was worth sharing with you guys. we haven't felt in the top coming and you actually saw some gaps in the bottom as well. those are not really in the plan right now. this is the first. we hope we will get many others and we hope at some point they will be guided by science and not by just taking it random sector. the sun had to be planned.

was planned in november of last year. so what you see is what i thought was completely independent of for the vehicle was pointing and it's a random shots where you turn the picture around and land uterine the tripod and take a picture it's probably not the best pointed we are hoping as we move out of the characterization activities. most of the activities we executed in the activity phase recall what we uploaded to the vehicle a couple months ago in cruz and that's partly because we want to check them out and make sure they are 100% guaranteed to work in the early days of the mission there are

unusual activities we want to check them out. we know what to look at and we didn't know where the amount was going to be and things like that. but in addition, and he talked about his team working on this technical timeline and it's very pressings we wanted to reduce the workload. we are trying to flex our muscles on the rover so we want to have more stuff pre-built so we didn't have to write as much of that program as andy was saying so as i indicated these are the activities we can optimize we know where we are and we can do more of tamil targeting shortly. >> i can end that in the intermission which we have heard about him and i think we have a question from the audience we do have some of mosaics you're going to do a little bit. but we have a place holder

decision and after the software update which is critically important to us as well as running the vehicle we don't have a 100-millimeter camera and a jet and there are not yet precluded to the vehicles there is the instrument that needs to be checked out and we will try to shoot out sharp with that. >> we are going next to the phone line. go ahead. >> caller: thanks for taking my question. i think this is probably for either mike or dawn with the color panorama are there certain features that you are better able to see with the copper as opposed to black and white, and are there things that you didn't notice at first that came through the color shots? >> do you want to take it or do you want me to? >> why don't you take it.

>> because color and brightness on mars are often very closely correlated. i don't see anything personally in the culture that i didn't see in the gray scale image. but i'm trained. i know what to look for. the importance of this mosaic at this point is it can show everybody can see the differences, and the color, the disk authorization -- discovering that you see a round of the areas and the color and brightness of the rocks and mount sharpnel, those are indicative of real differences. we don't know the differences are there are real differences and they are much more easily seen in color as human perception systems can discriminate something on the order of a thousand different cultures but only about 60 different green scales -- ed

gray scales. it's a factor of information. >> the one to try? >> the engineering team was easier to see on but rover in the copper image than it was on the black and white. >> we are going next to leo. >> irish television. the breeding stock price just as the evening newscasts are going out in europe, as a timing is important for us. could you -- i have in my mind this would be available tomorrow, but that doesn't sound correct now. so i wonder could you be specific as to when you think into earth days when you think that would be available in also when you think we might get a response in short in terms of birthday and if i could supplement out all is the rim of the crater that we are seeing?

how high are those cliffs? >> there's lots of parts of the few in which to try to address some of them but i don't think i can do them all. i don't think we are going to see more than a couple dozen of the full resolution images from this panorama until after the software upload, and it really depends -- that all we are putting -- the idea is if you take pictures with your camera what you do with them? you take the card out and put it in your computer. well i can't do that with my camera. so i have to ask the grover to get them and we only put in a request to something like, 2524 images to pull them out of the card and today is the last that we have to be up linking commands for that.

so that's fine with me. we get past that point and now we get in to get some more back. we are also limited by the end of it. these are -- the full images are going to be for megabit speech. they are two bits per pixel so that is a large volume 130 of those with several hundred megabits. some of the things are going to run into the gig of its -- gigabits. we don't have the bandwidth like dsl or cable so there is that issue. what was the last part of your question about? >> [inaudible] >> height above the crater walls. two parts of the problem with the crater wall.

the number crater walls is actually lower than the peat of mount short, and there are in northern wall which we can't see because mount charlotte is in the way is probably about at a level with it. so, we are obviously below the height of that wall because we are not seeing a lot from it, but it's probably -- my recollection is that it is only about 2 kilometers higher than where we are right now. >> okay. we are going to go to the phone next and then come to a question. go ahead pity if >> question for michael watkins or anybody else the augment of reality tag that look like little pixilated versions and the future apps with the smartphone. two questions. is there an application under development, and if so when are you going to release it?

second of all parties going to be close to where they just get pushed out or are you going to make these open like google or so forth some people can take the data and add on to it and create their own versions. >> i can tell you that one. i'm not sure the specific timeline. it's something that is in progress. you are probably best putting your question to that. but there are other experiences already online. there is a freak drive online experience by curiosity to see what it's getting up to and want to learn about as well. and the haft is already open sores and i believe it is a work in progress to the open source and the other ones as well >> okay. in the room here we are going to go through the middle. >> when martha color pattern and the images that you are showing? these were taken?

>> fees are taken at the 1:00 last night. it's been a glut checks were done in the same time to amend the same day you said you checked out a number of instruments. at this point what instruments have been checked and you have seen them so far to be okay, they are operable furious but the first question is everything i listed was the activity the online checkout and the test and health checks and the 360. there's also the three activities.

if i turn the circuitry on this electricity flow? is it basically working? there are some mechanical checkouts that can move things around inside mechanically booze haven't been done yet and then the scientific characterization the calibration and full performance hasn't been conducted yet so we are kind of just starting out slowly making sure they all turn on and either get their first level functionality and in some cases we are getting images from mike's cameras so we are starting to enroll so there are more advanced modes. we'll come back now with discovery news >> the question the back of

curiosity. first why wasn't it anticipated that rover and will there be any follow-up studies and also, will these pieces of remain be on the deck the remainder of the mission? >> it was not predicted because the proportion tokes and the team tried to figure out how much the pressure exerted would be on the surface and they took a guess at the range of pravachol sizes and felt it wouldn't take up the things this big so that means the material was a little stronger than expected or closer to the ground than the expected but let's let them look at it for a while and come back with a full explanation. we don't think they have any impact right now.

there was some potential things that could have landed on top of the instrument and detector for example. but you saw the results yesterday and they look fine to there is no indication. there's a problem we look and we don't see anything like that. so, some of our other instruments could have been impacted by one of these pebbles but we haven't seen any evidence of that. so far we know what the instruments checkout they didn't hit anything and mechanically obstructing any of the things there's no problem with that at all. >> back of the room here. >> i think when we start tilting around some of them will move around and fall off. >> mark with "washington post" geographic. you said that on a daily basis you're sending a thousand commands or so up to curiosity.

have there been any anomalies or is this something that is just reading it in the near perfect way? >> i will say that in this early set with some of these things that are already on board, the commands being actually uploaded a free fall is a little bit below that and that is actually represented of the combination of the things we are uploading and some of the things that we have on board and we anticipate and we will have something of the order when we are fully in the nominal process where we don't have any of this pre-built stuff, but we aren't really having any trouble getting things on board. we've had some small shake down issues just related to getting in the habit, but we haven't had any serious issues getting our command on board. >> in the diagram he showed that

odyssey was being used in terms of transmission. how about the european satellite. is that something that can and will be used? >> we do have plans. i'm not sure will work with max. the first is for family. kind of downlink data rates are you achieving and when are you going to be able to ramp up to the two megabits per second that we are talking about? >> you know, we have been to a few hundred cade data rates so far. we started off a very low and then we ran out those up slowly as each of them is proven successful. probably khanna a week or so

they will continue to increase those data rates at the question was adaptive data rates. so the radio on nsl they can dynamically adjust the rate so the link is strong when the rate is high in the sky you come up it to about two megabits per second. as we continue to progress through the data rates we will in a week or two. we are being a little bit cautious here because the transition. but, you know, we were talking about the backlog of data and it's important to check out the telecom system very carefully and very fully so we can up the data rates and get it cleared out of the camera buffers where they can store the gigabytes of data and so we are trying to get them up as fast as we can, but we are kind of pausing during the transition. >> my impression from both

images is that this is a much more colorful place than we had several land before. is that incorrect impression and can you speak to what that means scientific the? >> that is my an impression as well but i have spent almost no time looking at the camera and i just saw this when i came in very early this morning. some of the cooperation we are seeing has to do with the sand dune. you see the field is dark and in this kind of camera will books looks sort of blue. there's the dark sand and the red dust and the rock which is ten for a light tone of some type. those are all the basic elements that we have known from telescopic observations from the 50's and 60's all the way to the

recent missions. just looking at culbert can't tell you enough about the composition. what also be a factor of texture where we thought we were seeing the early years that have different compositions, yet generally the same composition certainly nothing you could tell obsequy would be different. i can't say if or diverse in terms of the basis of the fed, trade. obviously it is a very diverse place and i would expect we are going to see what patterns from that. >> if i could add something to that, we have been looking at the high rise and when you start

looking in detail there are a lot of variations in the texture, and one of the things we are going to be looking at is mapping these images we see in particular on to the high-rise want to see with that diversity is, and we were very excited that there were a lot of things to look at and we don't know that they are the same whether they are the same or different compositions but they certainly have different textures and we are hoping the color can help us guide to some variations as well. >> usa today. i am wondering if you can tell us what you are going to be doing in the next 24 hours. sounds like you are going to start the software upgrade, and i was wondering how long that takes and whether you can do anything else during the upgrade

or if that's just what you have planned. >> it starts on four or five rather be rid of those flights after transition five, six, seven and eight were pretty much i voted -- devoted standing to the scientist has indicated some and the reason is we have the to computers to upgrade your own computers we have a couple copies of the flight software and backup copies and so you sort of load it into one and another and load that one on and verify each of the intermediate steps and sometimes you are stuck in this mode you have the software on part of your computer and the old software on part and we don't want to start executing other complex activities in the middle of that. we would be back to science the day after that. >> this is the first time i've

heard mike refer to this as a change of software. i sure hope he does better than what i've done on am i machines. [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> quickly and then we have five more minutes. >> can you clarify birthday? >> it starts on saturday. >> let's do one of the front of the room. we've got about five minutes left to get a couple questions. >> this question is for dawn. in your quads you showed us on the panorama i don't know if you could show us which one that is. estimate it's actually not in any of those that we have mapped, so it's -- actually is. it is about 120, 121, 134, 135.

so, down towards the bottom is the area that is pointing to. estimate the second part of my question was has there been any discussion in the science team about using the laser or is there so much contamination it is just not worthwhile? >> there's been a lot of discussion and there is an awful lot of eagerness to know what the composition of the rocks are and to use our laser. [laughter] >> and mapping of this area that you had available, does it look like what you expected it to? deposit, whatever.

>> almost none of the rocks and deals that we can see are visible from the orbiter images. and so, this area we identified as being smooth, and we sort of have a number of units, and this was one that in compiling the maps it's very difficult to interpret what it was and so the images have given us our first sense of what this is like, and we are now discussing what it means in the broad context ways it might have formed house -- what observations we can make to understand how it formed. okay. any more questions here in the room. all right. i will be it for today but i want to remind everyone we will be back tomorrow at 10 a.m. pacific time. we will have a longer format

conference of that time and have our daily update but we will also have the gentry descent and landing team come back to present their reconstructive landing in a lot of details about that so please join us again tomorrow and think you for joining us today. broadcasters please stand by for the replay of images. >> we have another briefing on the curiosity rover tomorrow what 1 p.m. eastern triet >> i think we have a myth that it's two guys in a dorm room the crack the code and it all falls into place and you end up with facebook. you don't see friendcaster, myspace, the twins' leading on the side of the road not having achieved success.

spoke at the national press club in washington earlier this year to mark the girl scouts 100th anniversary. she talks about efforts to increase the number of women in corporate boardrooms, in congress and another leadership positions. >> many people here girl scouts they immediately think cookies, finance, tagalongs and my personal favorite samoas. but for our speaker, girl scout cookies mean bowles, money-management and people skills. training that helps young girls think about business. when she was growing up in delroy arizona, she joined the girl scouts and went away to camp at age ten. that was a moment of revelation for the young but enough remain

not very wealthy small town. as she tells the story, it was the first opportunity she had to go away by herself without her family. she was with girls her own age from all over the state from many different backgrounds. that can experience gave her the sense that it was cool to be a cruel and that there was a bigger world out there than she ever thought about. that is exactly what juliette gordon low had in mind when she established the girl scouts. that was 100 years ago. before women had the right to vote, were expected to go to college or to participate in the business world. lowe was the product of the turn-of-the-century of bringing a found her true calling bringing the girls of all backgrounds together to learn about self-reliance, diversity and effectively participating in civic life. in fact, the first girl scout handbook was called hall girls can help their country.

we would be pleased to know that two-thirds of the female members of congress have been gross accounts, and all fleecy female secretaries of state, condoleezza rice, madelei albright and hillary rodham clinton as well as sandra day o'connor, venus williams, lucille ball, and the list goes on. and putting future leaders right here in our audience. elie deal from 1327f with rage virginia. becky townson and members of troop 4006 from open virginia. yesterday the president honored her with the presidential medal of freedom. and today ana maria chavez her journey brought her here. she had a full scholarship to yale, then a career in public service, counseling benner is on a governor janet napolitano on urban relations, latino matters and community services. ..

understanding online safety and are venting cyberbullying. transfer hopes to make her mark in a very big way. she is launched an ambitious program to close the leadership gap between men and women within one generation. we look forward to hearing all about it. please welcome, anna maria

chavez. [applause] thank you. thank you, chorizo for that wonderful introduction. my mother appreciates the fact use the official bio. she does take credit. i want to do ahead table. thank you for making this happen. my colleague i am really grateful for the national organization, but in partnership with 112 girl scout councils across the country. thank you for being here to our national board, represented by our national president to bring her good wishes to all of those in the audience today that are here to support us and also girl scouts who by the way we work for everyday wear so proud of you. >> i wanted to start my remarks talking about a girl, a very

special girl but grew up in china. a little girl if you imagine your hand in her hand however she didn't have fingers readjusted pulmonary thumb. there is a family that travel to china to adopt hurt in an orphanage and they brought her to georgia, where they left her and cared for her, but even the daily task of tying a shoe or picking up the toy was difficult for this young girl, whom they named danielle. danielle has lots of aspirations, but the parents wanted to figure out what they could do for her in her life. if anybody does these days, they googled a solution and they found a whole community out there of people who wanted to support this young lady, but they found a group in particular, a group of leaders who wanted to investigate a process to help this little girl named danielle. saturday went out of her six

months investigated different options. they visited a new fracture implants. they were to craft stories and after six months and 180 hours of research and work, they developed a prosthetic hand made out of molding, sort of things they could figure out how to use in a craft store and velcro and they put it on her hand and i were them for the first time, danielle was able to write her name. well, these amazing individuals are called the flying monkeys. really, truly, that's what their names are. it is a girl scout troop from ames, iowa. yes, they are amazing. so amazing that these numbers went on to many global competition, beating out almost 200 other teams and cream in a $20,000 prize to pat mair device they call bob one.

now it's a great story because it not only inspires me. think about six intrepid middle-school girls sitting there, figuring out, how do we create a hand for his little girl. and so, thinking about this gross i get really owlish, given the fact the gross out there that have incredible ingenuity and not only that, they're thinking about other people and how they can help. as the chief executive officer for the girl scouts of the u.s.a., i had the privilege and honor of seeing these girls across the country. they have a good ending, but unfortunately there's another side for this, which i will be very honest distresses me. but distresses me because i know remarkable crows trying to do great things, but enough of them

grow up to realize their full potential because the leadership positions across the country at this time. if you look at congress, only 16% are like that officials are women across corporate america, women occupy only 16% of boardrooms and just 2% hold a top job at a fortune 500 company. when they managed only 3% of all hedge funds and 10% of mutual funds, get women own a fund significantly outperformed funds in general, even during tough times such as these. women hold just 16% of the top position with the studios and on fewer than 6% of tv stations in the united states. currently, women think of only

6.5% of the science advisory board members by u.s. high-tech firms. so let me give you another image. imagine this. imagine a classroom in an elementary school with 50 k., evenly divided between boys and girls i met mast every single girl to leave the room except one and asked a group of 25 boys and one girl to take on salt a challenging problem. well, that's the situation we have in the united states. unfortunately, we are making progress. jake young women are going on to college. they are earning a degree. nearly half of all law students are girls, are women. but as i've noted in too many cases, we are not getting girls from aspiration to action. especially when it comes to science, technology and math.

it's a vicious cycle. you can't buy something you can't see. there aren't enough successful women in engineering. gross can't sit back and go i can do that. i see myself there. so the game. i travel the country. it's the job i'm sitting in today. i get to guitar to girls age five to 17 and they also say, by the way, that's what the girls call me, it eco-one, how fast because this is about reality is for us. you know, i go to school and i'm really psyched about math and science in a run for his great people are like, girls don't do math and science, so they opt-out. then they go want to go to high school me thinking about student government and make it up and do

things and unfortunately some of the remarks are they say that's too bossy and they and they go on into careers and sometimes they don't see the female role models in the firms and companies that want to work out. so what they say to me is the gross honestly say hopeless. help us change the message is grosser giddiness society because unfortunately a girl scouts we have a research institute that brings out some unfortunately negative data. right now, research says that nearly 90% of girls say the fashion industry in the media places a lot of pressure on them to the same. the fact is that 42% of girls in this country are growing economically disadvantaged in those rates are higher for hispanic and african-american for this country. eight out of 10 girls are interested in interact team, a majority of them, 60% say they

haven't been offered a chance to visit the workplaces of successful women in their communities during the last school year. now, is it any wonder why 60% of girls say leadership is neither important to them or say that they don't want to be leaders? so i know you're probably taking a pause with me because again, we've got to get beyond the data. looking at girls, particularly at stem, on february 14 on valentine's day republish a report that said if you asked most girls, over 74% say i love math and science. what they want is someone to say mentor them around these issues. and talking to girls, we want to let them know it's a career option because again, we can't have gross out teen out because they can change the world.

you know what, it's not just about girl scouts. it's just about all girls. this one girl in particular come to angela saying, amazing girl. she's at the ripe age of 17, invented nanoparticles. one that kills cancer cells is the price and that she won $100,000 grand prize recently in math and science competition and coming up right next to his mariam who is also 17 and she had done some research i'm very bland lands the world. so she wanted to do something, so she went out and created actually an alternative, a device that actually goes out there and identifies where these mines are buried. she won a $25,000 fellowship. people can produce it at a cheap cost another country. so the point is this, that when

you inspire girls, when you support them, when you mentor them, though that on their journey because they truly know the past. sometimes adults fit stereotypes, negative images. but if you're truly sitting there with the girl and start taking this out of the way, full jump to where they need to get to. you know, i'm very fortunate. i've a lot of people in my life been mentored me from a very young age in arizona, where apparently i was born. didn't know what because we were rich in love, but i remember thinking the only thing i wanted to be was a girl scout. when i had the opportunity to become a member of this movement, i moved to san antonio, texas, my husband and my son moved to work for the girls and southwest texas. i remember sitting there at again about girls. and you know, for girls it's

very simple. they see an organization. in girl scouts. we still work in partnership with school districts around the kanshi and we do the brochures, take it to the schools to recruitment event and hope it gets into the teachers boxes and take that form and put into girls backpacks and hope he gets home and peer kinds of form. all that worked monday in san antonio, texas. a little girl, eight years old had the form in her backpack and she showed up to one of her recruitment events at an elementary school one night. after everything was done, my staff and volunteers looked and there is one person laughed. a beautiful little girl. you're like me, wish her parents? she said i can by myself. there's my bicycle. they're like honey come and play. like 8:30. i know, i forgot my way. can you take me home?

what we found that as this, this young lady is under their father,, single parent working two jobs. descriptives. it is only $12 to be a girl scout, one year, $12. they looked under sofa cushions, under the refrigerator and she found $12 change. she brought a change in a bag and put it in for my recruiter and said, you know, we may be poor, we may be alone today, but i want to be a girl scout because i know i'm going to be able to change the world. i've got to sell you, she changed my life because i knew at that time it wasn't about just girl scouts. it is about girls changing their lives, the change in the world. it's up to adults.

it's up to adults to step up and say can you know what, let me play that $12. on the bayou that sash. let me give you the opportunity to integrate with amazing women and an want to support your journey. come on now, go out the flying monkeys. go ask rachel or mary ann. whereas, we sit here in the nation's capital, where innovation and creativity in governance have been. can you imagine if we doubled the number of girls and a pipeline of leadership here in the nation's capital? right now, look at our roster. to resubmit the last and it goes on and on. imagine if right now we only serve 8% of girls in this country. imagine if we doubled the percentage. you know, in our study, recently we found that if you compared girl scout alumni to non-alumni,

they'll perform in almost every single masher. they're making more money per year. they had a higher educational payment and non-alum. they were happier and they were contributing to their community. they were volunteering and voting and they were voting often. and what we also discovered is that currently we have 59 million living alumni in this country. approximately one in two women have spent time in their organization during their lifetime. and what i'd love about it is that it is going to give us the opportunity to connect with that alumni, to bring them back in to mentor others because it is simple. it's worked for a hundred years. it's called discover, connect and take action. allow a girl to discover issues around her in her local community around the globe. connect her to other people

interested in a project and allow her to come with her imagination to take action to make a difference. so what works. 100 years. julie gordon i would tell you if you state here today that it works because again, we are not only in every sip but in this country, but 92 countries in the world in a different not only for girls, but it can for their communities. but i need your help because they can't do it alone. so we're going to create an opportunity for you and it's called to get her there. as the largest, oldest advocacy campaign for growth in the nations history. what we are trying to do with your help is to create balanced leadership in this country in one generation celebrity single girl because we need are smart ideas. we need her to sit next to voice in the classroom and can

tribute. it's not about boys against girls are not against women. i'm a mother of a 10-year-old, beautiful boy. but what is about as this great country. it's about this girl scout movement that needs to continue because we need to help more girls. the issue for us to scale. it will take every government leader, every business leader, every parent, every notch but miller to invest in girls because unfortunately today, only 7% of the philanthropic dollars go to great cost this country. that's not enough. we've got to testing fails because i'm convinced someone out there across this beautiful country dizzy girl sitting there with a cure for alzheimer's. as a girl figuring i'd how do i make of their lives better, like

danielle. but the question is, will we get her there? will be? do we have enough passion around these issues? will we dedicate the time to sponsor a girl, to mentor her? and will we be strong enough that our moral fiber to stand up and say, today, not on my watch, will you make a girl feel last? and when people start casting aspersions against an iconic organization can you stand up and say that is not true. you know, i am going to add, just with a simple story. the fact that the matter is they stand before u.s.a. product of product of this great organization, but for girl scouts i probably perhaps would've been on a different path. from some of the indicator this, right? in platina, agricultural community, my parents had gone to college. but you know what, somebody, an

adult in a rural community reached out her hand and said he matter. today in my watch uniter. along the way, my pad was still to an adult who understood potential of a girl. i ask you today with the country watching makes you invest in one girl. it could be your neighbor, your daughter, your niece. it could be a daughter of somebody in foster care on child protective services. just take the time because there's a girl sitting in memphis, tennessee, ames, iowa or birmingham, alabama the need for and i am convinced that when a girl succeeds, the country succeeds. thank you. [applause]

>> you talked about reaching out to just one girl. if you could speak to younger girls and convince them to stay in the, what would you say and what does being a girl scout etu aquatics >> wow, there's a lot -- i'd love to share with girls and again i have this great opportunity. but i would tell them honestly is to be a girl. you know, i've the great opportunity to work for two great governors in arizona. one of them gave me the opportunity to work in the child protective services, so were girls unfortunate had issues

that impacted their lives. i met this young lady 15 years old and she had lost her years. i said to her, if you contact to other girls, what would it be? what she said estel girls to be girls. stop being a such a hurry to be an adult. enjoy life. you know, go wow, create friends. create positive environments. don't let the social pressures bring you down because still have a mortgage monday. don't worry about that. [laughter] it's okay. just be a girl and enjoy life because that's what really is going to make you happy. >> what do you think are the two or three biggest barriers to gross become the girl scouts? is a different urban versus rural areas? >> surprised that what a lot of people don't realize is the barrier is financial. it's only $12 a year to be a girl scout. that's two octaves.

but where i came from, we had about 20,000 girl scouts, half of them were on scholarships. that meant that i sunrays every year to pay for half of the girls and girl scouts. so again, that can be a barrier, but adult can obviously step in the hope that. i think between rural and urban, it's just an experience. i grew up in a rural community with one girl scout troops. we were very tight. we did everything together. and urban community, they may have more opportunity to do field trips are on different things. what is great about girl scouts, once you enter whether you're in san antonio, texas are here in the nations capital, you're answering a national movement so your experience will be the same because it's the same girl scout leadership experience with 15 outcomes. >> can people contribute record

to pay a gross $12 students and how did they do that? >> absolutely. absolutely. [laughter] we can start today. you know, our website, girl scouts.org. you can also go to her cause campaign site called to get her there.org. you can contribute. there is a button. without free to invest in the future of this country, invest in the promise of the girl. they're going to do great things. >> the girl scout gold award is comparable to the eagle scout rank, yet no one knows what it is. will that ever change? >> absolutely. a little history. in 2016 the cold war will turn 100 years old. but what i think the issue is as a branding issue. we changed the name of the gold award. the gold award is the highest award a girl can achieve it are

a. he used to be called the golden flood, first-class data. so over the decade, there's women out there to earn the highest award, but it does mean different things. so you're going to see in the next few months a ramp-up of the campaign around there were, so we're going to show the country all the amazing women who earn the award of girl scout them are going to honor them and show them as if the eagle scout award that girls like him at the resume and it says gold award recipient and their hired on the spot. would not be great? we can tell people again at the grove received this award, she only represents 5% of girls and all of girl scouting, so save penna: we should support them. >> audis encourages debate and

girl scouts will help women achieve leadership positions in all sectors and levels of society? >> for girls than girl scout name, it is an opportunity to learn different things, whether it's about educational issues, whether a societal issues and community run homelessness issues, domestic violence and 310 community service, they're constantly giving back. they're constantly raising funds to the cookie program to fund other nonprofits. i saw community issues. so i think you can with girl scouts in being a, you can really expand their horizons and help other people. >> speaking of the cookie program, how does that turn in to modern girl scouts? >> well, you got to meet some of our amazing cookie sellers. they are hard core. they go out there and they've got a goal. what i'd love about the cookie program, first of all, a lot of people don't know its largest

entrepreneurial program for girls in the country. i meet women in the highest positions of corporate life of government and the first thing they'll tell me as i learned business skills making a pitch signed the girl scout cookies, setting goals, tracking inventory. and by the way, i volunteered my mom to be a cookie mom, so i dragged her into girl scouts and my dad had to hope. all of a sudden the family was involved. but what the cookie program does for girls is allows them to set a girl as early as five years old. our littlest leaders are called pcs. they are a size. they're out there in a cell cookies and they get a percentage of the revenue. they get to decide what they do with that. a lot of them travel internationally to visit other girls. a lot of them signed it with her bronze, silver or gold work projects to help other people. and ultimately gives them self-confidence. how many of you have done a business?

how hard is it to knock on a door? for girls have also told us is, come april 1. rewrite technology site of the cookie business because they're online. they have technology background, so they want us to integrate our traditional cookie program, which is iconic, with the future of business. the future of business has an e-commerce platform, so just a preview, you may see some them in the future around technology advances that girls are going to help design around the cookie program. >> what percentage girl scout cookie sales does a girl scout attain after deducting expenses? >> again, it depends on sort of where you live. a little trivia question here. there are two companies from a girl scout cookies in this country. so depending where you live, and you may buy from a particular company. segments are iconic, sold by both companies. in some states a samoa is a

symbolic sum states as caudate caramel delight. long story short again it could be $3.50 per box. eighty cents goes directly to the cookie baker to pay for the product and a girl gets a percentage in the other piece goes to the troupe are again to the local council to fund their camp, programming during the year and really provides a support number. what is most important and what i want to say to you today is thank you. thank you are supporting the girls in the cookie program. all the money that they raise this not come to headquarters. it is actually invested back into local communities. as a thank you for him. >> i was a top cookie seller come with a mother that was a cookie mom and dad that haul them around, so my family appreciates that. on the other hand, the level of

child of the city, does the girl scout program have any concern that the program is cookies? >> i always say everything in moderation. but i have to admit, because our cookies are only sold one fear, people get very excited. i'd also like to tell the story about get your piece about healthy living, very important. but again, the cookie program. we started making girl scout cookies in 1917 and that's how it started. over the years actually, a lot of the cookie revenue is donated to the chirps pierce a person can walk up and say i'm not going to buy cookies today, but i will donate cookies back at our girls will ship these cookies overseas. some of the amazing pieces that i get in the mail our letters and e-mails for men and women serving overseas who are hunkered down in a bunker in the middle of battle in the mail

comes after two months of waiting and what they get is a care package. in a care package of girl scout cookies and all of a sudden they are transported back to being 12, sitting in the grandma's kitchen, eating girl scout cookies and for them it's a piece at a time where they are connected back to this great country to say we're there to support you. were supporting military families. and then we think about healthy living and it's all about moderation. again, we're about a holistic view of girls. we want them to ensure they are living, physically act ever very involved in creating programming around exercise. that is a critical part of our working girls. >> when girl scout here today said what she's enjoyed most about being a girl scout as the many opportunities and experience as she's

antimodernist women of girl scouts around the world are getting the same opportunities. >> we are very honored actually to have girl scouts in 92 countries because again, the girls are living with their families and their families may be an attorney serving overseas, stationed overseas or they may be living abroad, working for an american country -- company. so the girls are girl scouts, part of our girl scout family and learning the same journey books, working on the same badges. you were doing out of our national headquarter office, insurance rate was to connect the girls coming domestically in the united states is girl scout counterpart here we are recently in houston in cinemas are girl scouts all over the world coming together and it's a great site because the governor girl scouts are part of the same family and they're having fun together. >> what is the organization doing to recruit leaders who are actually willing to go camping,

even if it rains, hills or snows client [laughter] >> a lot of people ask me, come on evil one, i want to help, but i'm not a camper. i get that, but we have tons of volunteer opportunity. talk to the table of girls here today. if you ask them, every single one has a different arab expertise. one may be musician. one may be a budding scientist that one may be into drama. so we need to volunteer to support. so if you're not a camper, based on your expertise, and maybe if you're a judge and i've recently recruited a judge in southwest texas said come on now, how can i be a girl scout? i said this is how you're going to help me. first of all, you're the juvenile justice, don't you judge? yes i do. if you volunteer with me in a more girl scout, we're going to

divert girls. whichever of the girl scout? no, you're right, eagle one. i've never had one on my bench. so you know what he did? how he volunteered he wrote a check to become a member that day. repent him and since then he sponsored a series, illegal series recirculate local lawyers in his rural community and they are literally tehing girls about the law, professions of the law for being a per prosecutor to defense attorney to judge and showing the process. so again i fear for the age of 18, male and female want to volunteer, we will find a way even if you're not a camper. >> as children become increasingly connected by devices like tablets and smartphones, how does an organization like the girl scout suggested not only keep pace, but attract new members and interest and interest profont

interactive team and personality that makes scouting the developmental tool that it is. >> long question. while they can come is speaking from a mother's perspective, a he tangled with has every device manageable, i understand that connection, but i also realize interestingly enough this is the first generation that spends most of their time growing up inside. but as a girl scout, my mother was sure saddam seko play. we'd be playing in the cotton fields and running around. so is this balance in making sure they're technologically savvy, interested in all those things that come online and through computers so they can compete in school and in their careers, but also understand the environment. i think again of the benefits of being a girl scout if it is about the environment for us. greenwood school way before it was cool about the country. we own green.

so gross i was in the girl scout experience connects back to the environment. particular camping, horseback riding. we have camps where they can go when understand about earth and where that stands another stars and galaxies. we constantly bring out into the nature, that connect back to science and technology so again in context of their lives, girl scout and make sense for them. >> with your new project, to get her there, how do you plan on not only been girls excited to return his features, but making sure they stay on the right path to get there as they get older? >> for us, it's very clear. i would say a lot of people say that's an audacious goal, changing the leadership landscape of this country in one generation of girls. but i said, you know, it's time.

how could we wait for another generation to pass by without getting those opportunities? and my mother was growing up, hers was limited compared to mine, but she did everything in her power to kick down the stories and barriers. i think it obligation as adults to engage my girls and make other people aware. i hope everyone here now that she know about, to get her there, you will educate colleagues at work. you'll set them down and say have you heard about this campaign? it is powered by girl scout, but everybody's involved. and did you know we need to invest more girls and girls need mentors? our goal is to engage adults, become aware, advocate on behalf of grossman said this is that crows need and donate to the cause. again to a girl scout organization or an organization that empowers crows because it's not just about girl scouts.

it's not every single community organizations coming together. >> the girl scouts have one history been inclusive to people who don't believe in god. the boy scouts of course are a different organization about those respects. how is that inclusive shape of the girls that organization is today? >> you now, all organizations have always been, you know, i recently was able to go to georgia. march 12, 2012 we turned 100 years old, so i was there. actually at juliet wardlow's house. i was sitting there reflect and then assess reading her diary about the challenge of creating an organization around girls. imagine, this was before women had the right to vote. she treated scandal for a

savanna because she is a gross marching through the street and bloomers because they were going to play basketball. so for her was how do we engage all-girls? during my visit there, i actually got to meet with the leaders and the rabbi at the local synagogue and they showed me and their historical archive letters from juliette gordon low thanking them for the support of the synagogue has some of them were actually to members of the first troops. so again, you look across the country from the beginning of girl scouting, troops were diverse. all racial backgrounds, all geographic locations. i believe that is our shoestring because again, we create opportunities for girls to know we all matter. >> the u.s. conference of catholic bishop recently acquired filed an inquiry of the girl scouts have problematic

relationships with groups that planned parenthood. what is the girl scouts relationship with planned parenthood? >> well, thank you for the opportunity to set the record straight. i think with social media and opportunities to pose things, there are certain myths and misconceptions about her organizations. again, we're an inclusive organization. we stand in a place where again we serve a broad demographic of girls in this country. imagine, girls in the recent code from all backgrounds. all states. we are working to answer questions they have that they've received from some of their members and so we look forward to answering some of those questions, obviously bringing the facts. but we've been very clear. again, we do not take possession on some of these issues that we are being alleged to take position on because those issues are clearly with an a family

decision making. again, we are a leadership development program. that is what we been found to do. that is our mission to create gross of courage, confident character to make the world a better place. we're looking forward to work with the conference of bishops and again at the end of the day, clarify any misconceptions about our organization to set the record straight. >> to the girl scouts have a relationship with planned parenthood? >> as we said before, girl scout u.s.a. does not have a relationship. we are focused on what is important to girls and that is what we've been doing for over 100 years. >> there are many medium recommendations that were posted to media play and what is your view of how girls and women are portrayed in the media today? >> you know, we have a lot of

settings that have come out to her research institute that talk about the issues impacting girls. we've actually hosted media panels throughout the country and i would stand recently to talk to some ladies in the media who are girl scouts and they came up and said anna, we want a house somehow some weight to show that it's okay to be yourself and your right to do computer generation to change the way you look here's the one female newscaster actually did something live on television with no makeup. and it created havoc. can you imagine? but it was her way of telling the girls, it's okay. we don't need all of this to be the professional person standing up telling them what we need to do. this is our job. so we've had some amazing media partners. i want to specifically thank your partners today and across the country have been working

with us actually turn her 100th anniversary to spread the good message of girl scout in the house. we've gotten over 70 million media impressions the last six months. it is because again our media partners understand at the end of the day we are one community. they have a powerful voice. they get to the girls through tvs, magazine, radio and they can help spread create messages that encourage the girls to stay in susana pass. >> the boy scouts have been talking publicly struggling with numbers. what are you doing to keep it up and the state? >> well, i am very pleased to say for the first time in 10 years were actually at the membership. we are very proud of that. you know, i've spoken actually two other major national and world struggling because of the

economy. we've just got a card. or a parent loses a job, so they come back to the basics. a lot of us did lose that membership. i will tell you part part of it too is girl scouts. the best-kept secret in the united states, you talk to anyone for the most part were attached by their organization. they are positive opportunity, but we don't tell our story. part of that is telling a story. they can't buy something they don't see. so again that if i were out there and you will see them you've probably seen in the last six months more stories about girl scouts another, talking about the great work they're doing, so for us it's about going external, sharing the external story that people invest in will advocate for them and sunk the girls. >> how realistic is that you

expect to achieve gender equality and leadership in my generation would've taken centuries for women to get where they are today? >> well, it's an economic imperative. it is. i used to work or the sba, great organization. i learned theory that one of four people there are employed by small business. i only think about economy and really were the job is regenerated. they need employees. they need skilled, trained employees. so from a business perspective you've got to investigate them on a path. if we sit back and say, were going to pass a whole opportunity that these girls are going to give back to communities in this country. and that's sent to step up and said we want to support girls. makes sense for government to invest in programming run leadership development for gross. i also think with 59 million

living alumni of girl scouts, by spreading the message though not say how can i help? i can't camp, but you know, i'm a business owner. or i can can't then i'll take the grocer palling. so i think everybody's going to get involved. >> are girl scouts were to build girls on their own terms in their own rights rather than simply get into the same benchmarks as their male counterparts? >> i think you're right. so it's a discussion that entering these roles. we recently looked across the top 10 job sectors across the country to the military, nonprofit, academia. we found only 70% were held by women. why is that? completely goes back and this is just my personal opinion of being a leader of the national organization but again it's about what you see in front of you. for my mother, she was so wise

because she wouldn't tell me what to do. she would kind of just lay repackages layout yoshio and walk me through, what are you going to do about that? are we going to make a difference? i figured out how to get there. girls need the same opportunity. they need adults to stand up and say, well, you found out there's no recycling program in your school. what are you going to do about that? at the girls dream about that. as we engage more grossness opportunity and more adults in the opportunity, we will start seeing it. but again, sort of the balance of leadership, which created over many decades. we can't do it today, can't do it tomorrow, but in one year we can create awareness around these issues and we can get on our way to make a difference for girls. >> to get her there gets younger girls involved in scouting. as it expanded to include

graduating grossness tend to look at every? >> we serve girls all the way to the age of 17 actually. a lot of girls think they can't join because they're in high school. actually the girls i've spoken to love being a girl scouts come even as they grow older codes they then see the connection between what they want to do as adults. so for girls working towards their silver and uncool to work, they're involved in issues impacting community and figure out okay, maybe that's what i want to go to school to study. they be allowed to be a lawyer or an engineer and then they get in the career field and figure out wow, there's a lot of girl scout of him working in this company. maybe i can sit down and will help me. the older girls are very sophisticated round issues impacting them and what they want to work on. what i've learned, teresa, honestly is i've asked some questions. as the national ceo, i sat down. when i was a local ceo at a

cabinet of gross and literally the bills they cannot come you got to do this and not because that's what we've always done it. if you thank you three much. i agree with that. and then i'd sit with the the growth and say okay girls, there were 10 of them, all teenagers. it's a-ok, what he wanted no? i say how are we recruiting? is not working for you? the doors shut and we were allowed and they were like okay, what, it's not working. first of all if you think of going ahead in school and the table with a green thing on it with a box of cookies, that's not to work for me. tell me how this can help me. tell me how i can give back to my community. so sitting with them, literally we created a program because i was told older girls would not join girl scout spirit girls are not interested in becoming girl scouts when they get older. i was told by a hold group of

girl scouts that they liked it and we thought we'd get one high school in san antonio. so we sent out a message. 25 rows of one high school, literally almost overnight we got every single high school in san antonio, independent school district to become girl scouts. so 10 schools, 25 gross tonnage school became girl scouts. we actually had to add extra girls and. and you know it happen? it was amazing. they started getting involved and then they ran for student government and diamond grove recently actually through that experience and girl scouts in san antonio when she told me that girl scouts who changed her life because again, a lot of people told her come you should be involved in this or girl scouts or not. she joined and all of a sudden she had girl scouts friends and sisters and they started doing community service projects and started joining student

government. i sign-up this young girl named irene had been homeless all her life. she had been like 10 schools. she immediately was grounded in girl scouting. she went on to speak nationally on issues impacting teen homelessness in the now gone on to college in fall right speaks eloquently about how, just in one year as a junior in high school girl scouting completely changed her opportunity. so it's never too late, girls. it's never too late come to paris to join girl scouts. >> when you think we'll see if you know president and will she be a girl scout? >> was reset, the odds are she's going to be a girl scout. the odds are there. even if you look at the current cabinet, president obama again, hillary clinton, secretary of state, kathleen sebelius, girl

scout. so they are in leadership positions already. progress is a community, of course would love an opportunity or a woman to serve. she will serve as a leader. she will serve as somebody who wants to make a difference. the fact that she's a woman, added bonus. but again, a lot of people say how can you do that? we're make in our way. we are in schools, making grades, doing the internship, taken the hard jobs, making the sacrifices. so give them a chance to fill the critical need in this role and in the white house. >> getting into the last questions here. a couple announcements to make. first of all, my terminology about her upcoming luncheon speakers. june 4 we have gerald r. ford journalism award with guest speaker chris mathews, host of msnbc hard with chris mathews. june 9, an important day for the girl scouts, before you head

down to the mall we have our 15 annual meet the deadline 5-k race that benefits the national press club journalism institute antonio horton found neither of p90 x or you can come, run a 5-k, eat pancakes and hit the mall. i'd like to resent her guest with our and pc coffee mug. [applause] a couple last questions here. have you learned the flash mob dance for the rock the mall? >> i'm a little stressed about that. but you know, i've been told i have a beat, so i'm going to pick it up. i'm a little scared i'll break out on stage, but i'm ready for the challenge. >> i hear you're a good dancer. what is your favorite cookie?

>> you saved toughest question for the end. all right. i will tell you what my answer used to be. but after i gave the answer, it's a little political. i love all cookies. in that day, my husband rob happened to be listening to the interview and i get home and a sister and three, stop it. you've got a cookie, save the cookie. select from everybody through embrace it. here's the thing, girls get to choose their favorite cookie. and we actually have an iphone app that will tell you that based on your cookie, we can tell you a little bit about your personality. >> how about a round of applause for a speaker today. thank you for coming.

thank you for the national press club for the broadcast center for organizing today's event and as a final reminder, find out more information about the national press club at www.press.orc. thank you all, we are adjourned. [inaudible conversations]

>> look at the games we have made. i won't repeat those. i think the audience is sophisticated enough to note the baseline of 2001 in afghanistan will take going forward. i think the transition strategy outlined by nato, by the united states sanctioned by the united nations is risk-free, no absolutely not. there's challenges of pakistan right now. pakistan is not on the site so to speak here this transition becomes much more problematic in terms of treasure and more lies. there's challenges of the afghan national security forces with

sustainability and capabilities. there's challenges on the economic domain that is a level of international or just starts to decline over the next several years will have a very severe shock effect of the afghan economy and forth and finally, problems with afghan government. problems as accountability of the government. but to say at this point that we need to continue to double down on our efforts, steve, i think were to point a point in the united states now in our own economic problems. some in that struck me coming home from so much time overseas is our economic problems. we've got infrastructure problems, education problems. i don't think the united states can afford to continue to invest in campaigns like iraq and afghanistan as we have over this past decade. the transition has a reasonable

possibility of success, but we use reached a point now in terms of her is available and frankly in terms of the transition to take place, ron turnouts washington life. i came across as he's talking about now dealing with the french, the american revolutionary, sandefur going to win liberty, we the american revolutionaries, we have to be the one to win the battles. we need the french, but it's ours to win. so yeah, i think we've reached the point where we've done a lot. there's a good foundation. we're going to continue to do more, but it's over to the afghans at this point. >> and you can see all of that event from the aspen institute tonight on c-span.

>> well, the library of congress has a new exhibit called books that shaped america, eda books selected by the laboring for their influence on america and american culture. here's a brief interview about the exhibit and how you can join and i'm an online chat about the library's list and what books you think should be included. >> we actually collect books that shaped america as opposed to some of the other words we consider that changed america because we think that books though we have an impact on american society. so many books have had such a profound influence on american culture and society and indeed the very essence of what america is. ..

that kind of showed america as an innovative country, that used books and stories to inspire going to the frontier and that could be literally or the intellectual. >> if you would like to participate in an on line discussion with roberta shaffer associate librarian at the library of congress ones that be able been here on booktv. we would like to hear from you. e-mail us at booktv at c-span.org.

>> this week on q&a, josh marshall publisher and editor of talkingpointsmemo.com, a web-based news organization featuring breaking news, opinions and investigative reporting. c-span: joshua micah marshall how would you describe what you do for a living? >> guest: oim a publisher of a news web site, and i am also the editor so i am heavily involved in the editorial and publishing side of the operation and that is basically what i do. i publish a news web site. c-span: how long have you done it? jaczko i have done it -- it's been in existence for 11 years but in anything like its current form it goes back about five years and when i say current form, where we employ a number of journalists, you know it's a

full company with everything that goes with that for the first five or six years that i did it was just a one-man show so there is continuity, but a very you know a radically different enterprise. c-span: can you remember the first moment you said i want to do this myself, create this web site? guest code yeah. i think there were a couple of moments. there were a couple of moments where i had that where he didn't do it yet, sort of a false start. when i was in graduate school i was involved in web design basically to support myself, and i put together a newsletter that was about things having to do with the internet and stuff like that, and i liked it. i think i liked being a publisher. i liked putting something

together and then when i got into being a political journalist, i had an urge to do something like it and it only really came together at the end of the 2000 election, when the place i was working at the time called the american prospect, it was a biweekly. it came out twice, yeah, i always get confused. twice a month so a very different time pace and i had sort of an urge to do something like this and i was on vacation. what was supposed to be the week after the 2000 election, which as it turned out was -- the 2000 election was still going on down in florida and i started them, and i just was addicted from the beginning. c-span: around your early ears, you were born where?

guest: i was born in st. louis missouri. c-span: what year? guest code 1969. c-span: your parents did what? guest: it's complicated. my parents, mike father was a graduate student at the time and was getting his ph.d.. my mother, when i was born was working as an administrative assistant at the same school at washington university in st. louis. so they were sort of some mix of hippies and would-be academics at the time. c-span: and mom died early. guest: my mother died in 1981. c-span: you went to something called the web school. guest: it is a boarding school basically, a private boarding school in claremont california. it had a small number of day students and i was one of those. i was a scholarship student

there and it's a great place. it was great for me. it was a great place for me. it helps me sort of start to become who i was, a very important place. c-span: why? why? why? guest: why was it important? c-span: why -- what happened there and made it important? guest: it's a small place and gets, my family didn't have the means to send me there and i was lucky to get scholarships and stuff like that but a small private education, there is more attention they can give individual students especially if students who don't, maybe aren't kind of cut from exactly this typical mold, and i was

very interested in history and politics. not the politics that i now write about but political history and i think, although i didn't see it that way, i was even no, i was only a couple years away from my mother having died and there was probably you know, a little more community, a greater level of attention that was important for me. i didn't realize that at the time. c-span: your school is in claremont california. >> guest: 40 miles east of los angeles. c-span: flair flare was your death than? >> guest: at the time he had left being an academic. marine biology.

he was in photography and he was actually for most of that time he was actually working at and then owning a photography store in that little area so he was doing that. c-span: y., first a school principals? at trends in? and you know what it'd take to get in there? guest code you know i am not sure. i think when i was, when i was in, when i was in high school, i grew up in southern california, and i think i have this thing that you should go to one of these east coast schools that have been around for a long time. i had never been to the east coast literally, never been to the east coast. i don't think i had ever been

east of the mississippi river. maybe to west virginia once. i think as often is the case with colleges, the reason you go there have very little to do with -- at may turn out to be a great thing and you don't know what you you're getting into. i was very ambitious. i wanted to go to the best schools i could. in schools like that sort of prep school kind of things there is a lot of you know there's a lot of emphasis on that. i think i was, i think i was beguiled by the image i had in my head of the east coast school and stuff like that -- c-span: how did it turn out? >> guest: i really enjoyed it. i think it was great for me. c-span: what did you study? >> guest: history. sort of everything. i remember that princeton was

one of the schools that you could actually on your application put down like i want to be evaluated and i'm going to study history. why they do that i don't know exactly. but yeah i studied history and that was until i was in my mid-20s. i wanted to be a history professor. c-span: we will come back, i know you have a ph.d. in we will come back to that in a minute but your web site, talking points memo, where did you get the name? >> guest: you know what's funny. the name actually came from people who remember the late '90s and the lewinsky scandal, they are part of the archon of that scandal that there were supposed to be this talking point memo that, make sure i get

the history right here -- that again the allegation was one of the president's lawyers and and and sort of his confidant had written this talking points memo sort of a list of instructions for how to respond to questions. and that monica lewinsky had given -- when she was deposed in all that legal whatever that was. and three that scandal, this was always -- so people who were trying to find the thing that would finally bring the president down because it had existed, that would have been the connection that someone directly tied to the president was trying to interfere with that investigation perjury etc., etc., etc. and it was never found and i think it is fair to infer that it never existed but it was at a minimum never found.

you know, you don't always, you don't always know what you are naming when you name it. so when i first came up with it, it was sort of an arch reference to that, a sort of you know, my take on the, my take on answers to important questions of the day. c-span: bill o'reilly started calling his opening monologue talking points memo? >> guest: i didn't know anything about it. i only realized that a couple of years later. i think he may have started using it a short time before i did. even now i don't know. c-span: has a cost of problem for you? >> guest: no, no. this is on tv. us as a web site. it's never been an issue. c-span: how long were you the only person at the web site? >> guest: i was the first

employee that we hired was in a think the spring of 2005, so that is five or six years. i had a couple of unpaid interns before that, who were incredibly helpful to me, but for unpaid and there was no office so they were just sort of people who agree to do you know little research projects for me. c-span: how many people come to your web site on a daily basis, different people? >> guest: in internet terms the phrase that, the method they use is -- on an average week day we get about 200,000 unique visitors to the site. c-span: how a-month? >> guest: upwards of 3 million. sometimes it's been over 3 million. it's probably an average at this point of 2.8, 2.9 million but it's growing.

the audience grew by 40% last year. c-span: how many people work for you now? >> guest: i believe at this moment we have 28 full-time staff. c-span: -based were? >> guest: our headquarters is in new york. about two-thirds of the staff is in new york and the rest is here in washington d.c.. c-span: back in 2002 we had a camera on capitol hill. we were the only camera that i know of, but after we showed this, a lot of things begin happening and i think it may have had an impact on your life. let's run this clip and see what you can tell us about his. >> is a great pleasure for me to be here with you today and i know you are enjoying every minute of this. and i knew the previous remarks would be just as they were. i mean after all bob dole received the republican party nomination and he was elected president of the united states telling strom thurmond's jokes. if he had just gotten new material for the end there he would have done it. i want to say this about it.

when strom thurmond ran for president we voted for him. we are proud of him. [applause] and if the rest of the country had followed our lead we wouldn't have all these problems all -- over all these years either. c-span: strom thurman 100 years old there and trent lott was the leadership of the republican party. bob dole was saying -- none of them there anymore. what impact did that have on you? >> guest: it had a pretty big impact on the evolution of the web site. the brief background is that that snippet was picked up i believe overnight on abc's radio and then that was basically it. the kind of you know, one of the million things that kind of goes on the news and is never heard from again. c-span: by the way we carried it

live in the afternoon and it wasn't even on an evening. >> guest: right, so there were a few times where it was no seek or that it had happened and it was out there. but it was one of these cases were a -- it was one of these cases were what he said right there just the background is 1948 the election that strom thurmond that trent lott was referring to, strom thurmond ran as a dixiecrat basically the southern democrats feeding from the national democratic party to run on segregation. jim crow, sort of the racial system of the old south, and in the 20 to 30 years after that, strom thurmond, maybe 25 years after that strom thurmond continued to be the person who

was most strongly identified with racial segregation and basically was the bridesmaid ushering the southern democratic party into the republican party. so the implication of that remark was that if strom thurmond had won, that segregation would have one and the wouldn't have had all these problems that we have today. now, if you tease it all out and say that this guy who was, who was the champion of segregation had one in 1948, what were all those problems? well it's hard not to infer that the problems had to do with racial equality in sort of everything that stemmed from it. and tpm, talking points memo, was one other thing just a couple of places that said wait a second. disc guy is one of the most

senior people in the u.s. government today, trent lott, the senate majority leader. what is he saying here? he sure seems to be saying that we took a wrong turn when we embraced racial equality between the 1950's in the 1970s. now, a lot of people basically said he was at a birthday party for a man who was 100 years old. this was a throwaway remark. you know, what's the problem? the problem for lott was that he himself had a history of identification with a lot of segregationists or neo-segregationist politics and anyway kind of everybody knew that, but blocked, whatever. and he had gotten a pass.

and people had known this more maybe in the 80's when he was starting out in politics. in 2002, it was a different day. c-span: who used to be a democrat and went to the republican party. >> guest: he was a democrat. again he was part of that democratic exodus. one of the a kind of iconic segregationists policies of that earlier era. that he was an aide for i think in the late 60's he kind of brought him into politics. and, it created this sort of tpm saying this kind of timeout. c-span: the dynamics though, where were you and when did you first hear this or did somebody call you? >> guest: i first word up -- heard about it from a reader the next morning to just -- because i believe it was

actually also picked up in abc's the note i believe. this was 10 years ago. it was actually mark halperin, who everybody knows today is one of the big clinical pundits of the day, he was charged with writing so it was an overnight cheat sheet for politics and someone sent it to me. and with my history background, i got it exactly. it was all kind of clear to me what that all meant and it went from there. i think it was a big thing for tpm because we were you know, we were kind of the sites that you know, sort of called timeout and made it a story. we weren't the only one. i think i had a pretty big role, but stories are always, the way the news works, there is always -- simplified at tpm made the story, started the sort of bonfire that really consumed

trent lott's career. so it was a big thing for tpm. in fact it had already been around for two years and had an audience or whatever but it's it sort of took up a big level. i think also it was a big thing for new media because one of the things that new media, and when i mean, the internet and all the media today that doesn't work in the old traditional news cycle, 24-hour weekly news cycle, is that a site like tpm and a lot of sites they are able to say weight, this needs a little more attention. and can really focus in on it in a way that the more ordered and cycle-based media that existed at the time wasn't quite able to do it. c-span: let's run some video that you put together about this whole story and we will ask you about that.

♪ ♪ ♪ >> this is josh marshall from tpm media. it's tuesday november 22. that was trent lott along with senator craig during happier days when they were members of the group the singing senators. as you may note yesterday senator lott came forward and said he would be resigning. it looks like probably a big lobbying position before the new rules come into effect in 2008. so in honor of senator lott's departure we are going to take a trip down memory lane today and

as you may no tpm actually had something of a history with senator lott back in 2002. tpm along with another site was in flagging the importance of senator lott's comments about senator strom thurmond. you can actually see right here this was a segment on "pbs newshour." a few months after that there was tpm and this new phenomenon. here is that wonderful moment with senator lott when he revealed his nostalgia for the states rights segregation in the south. take a look. >> when strom thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. we are proud of him. and if the rest of the country would have followed our lead we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years. >> it took senator lott it week to swirl down the drain into political oblivion in 2002.

c-span: first of all, what do the video for and do you still do that? >> guest: we actually brought it back. we did it for two years, 2007 in 2008 and it was a daily, four days a week, daily web show about five minutes of different topics every day. everything from kind of breaking news of the day to bringing stuff you know stitching together stories that have been moving over the days and weeks and we are actually going to bring that back in the 2012 cycle. c-span: now the thing about that particular event that you are talking about, our cameras were there and we were the only camera in the room and i think "the washington post" did a piece on it that you are the one that sent it viral. trent lott would not have had to step down. >> guest: i think that's true. c-span: how often do you see new media doing that kind of thing today and how often have you done that? >> guest: you now, the media,

because it's such a different world today than it was. is hard to believe that was 10 years ago. i think things like that happen all the time now. i know that there is certainly many big stories that tpm had over the last decade. more and more now we have an editorial staff of 20 people so we are breaking stories right and left. i think the thing is, it's almost become, at it's at some most become commonplace. it's not nearly as surprising today as it was back then. c-span: i want to show you some video of a man named henry copeland. see if you can tell us about him. >> everybody here knows he has been around since 98, 992,000 early days it was about authentic i'm going to write my stuff and no one else is going to read it. over time people started to

write about stuff that interested them and said hey 1000 other people, 100,000 other people, 1 million people and some breached 10 million people and many get to be that big a become a media player. you are no longer some little person writing a diary. you are a big media player so what we did back in 2000 was we said well these guys have these incredibly excited audiences. would like to connect as advertisers with these audiences. c-span: what impacted mr. copeland have on tpm? >> guest: a big one. henry owns and still owns, it's very big now a company which is an advertising network that places ads and today like i said we have almost 30 employees. we have offices in two cities. we have a very big presence, a

big business presence in washington. we have been all sorts of national advertisers kind of highly influential audiences and we are a full-fledged news organization. when i met -- i first met henry back in 2002 or 2003, and at the time, i eventually wanted to sort of do with tpm what i have since done. but i didn't think -- i didn't think it was ready and there wasn't the apparatus for the demand to start doing advertising. the first few times that henry contacted me, i said we should do this. i think i kind of blew him off and i was so focused on building a site and i was so focused on the stories that i was working

on, that it took him some persistence to finally track me down and get me to focus on what he was proposing. but he finally did, and i'm very glad that he did, because in pretty short order, we went into business together. you know, we were partners and started bringing in revenue for tpm, and the immediate relevance of that in short order i was dedicating all my time to growing the site. and because for the first, when i started tpm i was still a washington editor of american prospect. three or four months later i left the prospect, and after that, i was -- and if you remember back to early 2001, the economy wasn't doing great and particularly the

publishing economy wasn't doing great. it was a terrible time and i was spending most of my time trying to build tpm for no money. so i was barely getting by, you know, and if you do freelance journalism about politics is not a big growth factor. it's not a way really to make it money. so you know, henry allowed me to make him into a viable business and that is really a critical thing that i would have never been able to get it to where it is now. had he not kind of provided the apparatus that made it a viable business model for a number of years. at this point we still do some business with blogette. it's not a primary part of what we do but again, henry tracked me down and force me to pay

attention so that he could again sort of set me up with the business a business model that allowed me to make a big move forward for tpm. c-span: can you give us any information of how much -- a year? >> guest: sure. well, i'm trying to think of what i can say. you know, a company like tpm can bring in millions of dollars of revenue a year. private companies. c-span: for-profit. >> guest: registered in the state of new york. c-span: i found in the american journalism -- >> guest: to be precise, there is a company like that can do.

i will say we bring in multiple millions of dollars. a lot of things. c-span: but it's growing. i want to read this paragraph from the american journalist and to break it down. tpm, tpm's origins as a left-leaning political blog could affect its credibility for some. tpm, this is in quotes, is really an advocacy operation that is move towards journalism says tom rosenstiel, director of the project for excellence in journalism. let me just stop there. do you agree with that so far? >> guest: not really. i think that there has always been something called opinion journalism. it is what the new republic has done for almost a century. i think that professionally i came out of opinion journalists. that is what tpm started out as.

i was the one running it and that isn't what i was doing. but it definitely was rooted in opinion journalism which is, which is its own unique piece, where you are coming from having, having certain points on the issues of the day, not putting yourself forward as disinterested observer. we are different from that now, so i would quibble a little bit. pop. c-span: tom rosenstiel goes on the amount of shoe leather is a small part of what they do. he distinguishes traditional opinion reporting from what he calls journalism of affirmation where writers "preconceived notions unquote. pundits such as rush limbaugh and rachel maddow see themselves as agents as a movement and many feel the same way rosenstiel says, final sentence. remains to be seen as tpm

evolves in the space further whether they are going to be the journalism of opinion or the journalism of affirmation. >> guest: you know i would quibble a bit with that. i think that if you look at what, if you look at what tpm does, if you look at who tpm is, we are people who -- like i said we have an editorial staff of 20 people. we hired those journalists from places like -- we have hired people from places like the washington times, the hill newspaper, "national journal." we have people who have gone on to work at "the washington post" and "the new york times," at "the wall street journal." and some people who are professional advocates for journalist. i think that you know, like many

news organizations, we divide up what we publish between a news section and in opinion section. for us, there is a news article we publish every day. there is also what we call the editors blog which is kind of what tpm originally was. in the editor's blog, much of it is opinion. and daree openly so. just as you might find on "the washington post" editorial page, "the wall street journal"'s editorial page. what we produce it in our news section i think is just as high-quality and just as close attention to accuracy as anybody else's journalism. c-span: here are some video from tpm tv on july 25, 2007 and it

is he reporting on roberto gonzález. >> hi this is joss marshall from tpm video. back on may 21 of our first episodes of tpm tv we asked the question, why can't president bush fire attorney general alberto gonzalez? our answer was, he can't and the reason he can't, the reason he can't now is because as soon as he fires alberto gonzalez or let him resign he would have to appoint a new attorney general. there is no one in the senate is going to affirm another attorney general. yesterday offered a gonzález went for another round of hearings and it was such a -- so many lies he was caught in so much ridiculousness, again this guy is unviable because no one else can -- after a performance like this. c-span: how did you get into the story and what impact did you have on this? >> guest: this was the story that tpm actually one a polk

award, one of the major journalism award and the first on line news organizations to win one. this was the firing of a number of u.s. attorneys across the country for an unprecedented firing that was later revealed to be for political reasons. it led eventually to the resignation of alberto gonzalez. we had -- tpm had a big role in breaking and uncovering that story. it was a reporter named paul healed who now works at propublica who actually did the reporting on it and it was a case where a lot of this is good shoe leather reporting. it was also a case though, two things allowed us to do it that i think are sort of things that

are unique to new media. one is, we used our audience as part of our reporting process. one of the ways that we were able to put this together at the beginning, because what happened was, there were a number of u.s. attorneys who just resigned or seems to resign across the country at around the same time. i believe there were eight. but no one put it together because there was sort of nothing that -- together but there were things that were suspicious about a few of those cases and one particularly was the resignation of u.s. attorney who has been involved in the major a major corruption case in southern california. leader started tipping us off and saying because we have not -- that relationship with their readers and their relationship with the readers always has been and still is

that the editorial process that we were able to see a pattern that others weren't. and we kept at the time, again there were only two reporters that we had, pm paul healed, working on this. we were able to see patterns that others couldn't because we were using our readers. the other thing is that we couldn't focus on the story -- we could focus on a story the way that other organizations weren't able to. we weren't the only news organization on the story by any means but we stayed on it consistently and what we were also able to do was do our own original reporting and take nuggets and pieces of information from other news organizations and-them together into one narrative where it started to come together and make sense. what we were doing was a mix of reporting and what in what i call intelligence aggregation which again, which traditional news organizations weren't kind

of able to do. so it was one of the stories that i am most proud of that i have ever worked on. so you know, i think back on it fondly but i think also again, it was important to the evolution of the media. c-span: do you remember where you got your first tip on that story? >> guest: yes, i remember because i was driving back with my family from -- i was driving out to long island and i got a call from a long-time reader who referenced the firing of karen lamb down in san diego. c-span: she was persecuted with duke cunningham? >> guest: right, and we talked about it. this was the source, the reader in the source who was knowledgeable on him.

and we had also been pretty involved in reporting the duke cunningham story. and i knew something wasn't right about that. and that was the first thing that made us focus. that is where it started for his. c-span: you appeared at the new york public library and requested by john darden who used to be with "the new york times" and it looks like, tell me if it was or wasn't, a little testy here, the old journalism versus the new journalism. tell us what you think. >> opinion journalism so there is an element of advocacy to what i do, and an element of journalism and i like to think i do it in a way that there is not a strong contradiction between the two but there is deftly trying to make a point. there is no pretense of being disinterested observer to a lot of debate. there have been various times over the course of a guest six years that i've been running the sites that i do that i have

moved further into the direction of what basically is advocacy on a particular question. c-span: actually john darden wasn't there. i got confused with another clip but have you found along the way that people get traditional mainstream journalism are opposed to what you do and has it changed any? >> guest: yeah, i mean there is definitely some of that. i would say by and large. been surprised at how much support there has been. not always public support. but support nonetheless and there was -- there was a point at which right after i got -- after the 2004 election, i got very involved in one story which was when president bush was trying to privatize, the big

push to privatize social security and that was, that was probably, i think this was around, around then or probably 2006? c-span: that was actually 07. >> guest: i think that was probably what was in my mind at that point. that was probably the furthest i got in that direction of sort of something like advocacy. that was something that was so important to me. that was also the time now is trying to think, what direction my going to take this? and it was not long after that i basically said tpm up. the company started hiring people and since then, our focus has been on you no hiring reporters, kind of anchoring it into journalism. c-span: did you make a major decision back in 2005 or so to increase the size of your company and if you did or

whenever you did, where did you get the money? >> guest: i did make that decision. in 2005 and 2006, the initial -- i mean as i said, i was a freelance journalist. c-span: did you have a family than? guest coat i just have a wife. c-span: how many kids now? >> guest: i have two sons. i have a 5-year-old and a 3-1/2-year-old. i did make that decision. up until that point, tpn was just order my web site and it wasn't like a corporation, incorporated anywhere. i did that -- i did make that decision of what i did was i went to readers to raise money. i went to readers and they basically said each time, i want

to do x. i want to build this new site and i asked people to send small contributions, which they did, 20 to $50. the three times that i did that was what gave me the money to first launch tpm café and then tpmmuckraker at the beginning of 2006, and then finally tpm election central which evolved into our political coverage. after that, tpm was, we grew it out of just operating revenues and then in 2009 for the first time, i brought in outside factors and we have done to investment rounds. the second we are just finishing up right now. so we have outside investors. still by far i am the majority

investor in the company. c-span: go back and define tpm café and muckraker and election. >> guest: tpm café was a group blog, still is a group blog. basically outside contributors blogging sites. c-span: do you pay them? >> guest: they were all doing it for nothing. in some cases they were -- we were reprinting their stuff and other cases they just wanted a place to write short updates on the news of the day. tpmmuckraker was our first new site, a site dedicated to investigative journalism. it is done over the years, sort of has always been the one that is close to my heart. tpm election central was the site, a campaign coverage site, we launched in 2008 --

sorry, 2006 election cycle and it had gone through different permutations. it originally became tpm see for the 2010 cycle and now we have two tpm 2012 which is our current election syprett go. c-span: here are some video you put together were the 2008 tpm election coverage. >> hi, josh marshall from tpm media. today we want to give you an overview of our election coverage which we are actually going to kickoff at noon on monday. the first thing we want to tell you about in partnership with google we are going to be featuring an interactive election results map where you can follow all the election results life on election day through election evening. you can watch the presidential results as they come in state-by-state, the house races in the senate races. you can see what it looks like right there and we will be

putting that up on monday afternoon so you can familiarize yourself with how it works and so forth so you're ready for election night and the results come in. starting monday we will have our tpm crew, david kurtz and bancroft in chicago to bring you live reports from obama headquarters and the results on election night so on election day and night we will be having both video, tpn tv shows but live video reports that will be featuring on the front page right here at talkingpointsmemo.com. c-span: the reason he you didn't have a camera at john mccain headquarters? >> guest: purely resources. in 2008 we still had, think we probably had seven in place and it was a major capital investment to go anywhere outside of new york city. c-span: at this time of your existence and doing all of this how expensive was doing those videos and how did you do them and what kind of equipment did you need to ask how many people

were involved? >> guest: you know what the time we were doing things really play the -- of our teeth. we had a basic program video camera and we were doing it in our office in new york city. we were editing it on final cut on a computer. and we were doing something similar to that where we sent people remote to chicago, so you know, i am looking right now at this date for fictional video camera, which at the time probably at the time would have been vastly more. we were able to, we were able to do a lot with very little money. some of it showed in the production quality but it was good enough to get across the basic information we were trying

to. c-span: does anybody ever complained to you about your video blogs? >> guest: . [laughter] the there were many comments about her video. c-span: do you think in the end it matters to the people that follow you? what does matter? why are they following you? >> guest: i think they follow us because of the core quality of what we do. we have a false a lot into an organization though. we now are for many of our readers we are one of their primary sources of political news and hard national news so as we have grown we are actually more attentive to production quality, the aesthetic quality of the sight. we always try to keep pretty focused on that it's a set of values, it's a fundamental -- for readers that really keeps her audience type to us.

c-span: on your tpmmuckraker site you say the kind of reporting is more honest, it's more straight than a lot of things you see even on the front pages of great newspapers like the times where the post. >> guest: yeah, what i mean by that is i think one of the great problems in journalism as it has a false in the 20th century was that frequently, there was a war between balance and accuracy, with balance often winning. i think many journalists will tell you they have -- they report stories where it's pretty clear that one side is telling the truth and the other is obfuscating. but the canon of journalistic objectivity as a default didn't

give journalists a lot of ability to say that. and our model again, what we think about again and again and again is fundamental honesty with readers. we don't want there to be things we know, things we know are the case but we are not able or willing to share with readers. now, that is a different approach to journalism. but i think in many ways, it's a better one. c-span: when did you decide to get a ph.d. from brown? and what is it in? >> guest: it's in early american history, basically the colonial period of american history and the revolution. i think i decided when i was in high school that that was what i wanted to do. i went to brown because my

advisor there, gordon woods, a very famous colonial and revolutionary war historian, i was there studying with him, actually ended up studying it period little distant from his core area of focus and my dissertation was about 17th century new england. and their relation, economic relation and violent interactions between indians and settlers. c-span: when did you finish your ph.d.? >> guest: i actually only finished it in 2003 after a lot of the stories we were talking about that already happened. i was basically a full-time graduate student until until 97, 98 and i had gotten most of, most of the dissertation written. by the time i got my first

journalism job and then it kind of just sat for i guess four years or so, what seemed like an eternity at the time, and eventually i realized that if i didn't do it soon i would never do it. so i set aside basically here to kind of focus on it and finish it and get it done for myself, for my father, who has since passed away. and he wasn't -- he was already not healthy at the time. so i set aside that year and not too long after the -- but i got it done and i am very glad that i did. c-span: did you ever talk to trent lott about what happened? >> guest: no. it has just never come up.

i mean, it's funny, i have often heard tpm referred to as like that we got alberto gonzalez fired. and we probably contributed to it in a real way. i never said that he should resign or that trent lott, and that is not just, that is not reticence. i don't really take, you know, certainly in general i don't like the idea of people losing their jobs and it's never something -- i don't think if you look back at tpm you will ever see we pursued many corruption stories

extremely aggressively. because we think they should be pursued aggressively but i i don't think any lesser of people going to jail or people losing their jobs or people's careers getting up-ended. c-span: here you are on, in 2009, on the steven colbert show. >> you are one of america's most preeminent bloggers, why aren't you wearing a bathrobe? [laughter] >> that is her game in the last two years. >> now you will look like an iranian politician. >> no, look we run a new site. >> what do you mean new site? what do you mean new site? [inaudible] >> well we have professional reporters at a staff of 12. we have an office and we cover the news every day and i call that a new site. c-span: at the time you had a staff of 12 and now you have a staff of 28 and that is just too

enough years ago or so. >> guest: right. c-span: how far you going to go with this and what his goal now? >> guest: we want to go a lot further than we are now. we want to be one of the countries preeminent news organizations. we have a very ambitious growth plan. we don't -- we are not trying to move into everything under the sun, our basic focus is hard news and political news and we think we do it well. we want to keep refining it and we want to keep -- you know in the last years we have doubled in size and the next two years we will double in size again. we don't want to stop there. c-span: you started with one. in the very beginning it was just you but what did you happen the way -- how much expense to do have the first-year? >> guest: you know what was great about it was it cost me almost nothing to start. i have had a web, a web site

account that i think cost me 50 bucks a month, maybe not even that. and that actually got me -- you know now there is tom burr and all these different services. you just set up a site and there even templates to have this and there was a little of that then. i didn't know anything about it. i had this experience with the web site so i started, even in my premier state, it was still nothing. it was 30 bucks a month or something like that and that really got me through the first couple of years. i really didn't spend much more than that so it was just me and a laptop and that is kind of one of the great things about the internet and what has happened to journalism. not just journalism but communication over the last 15 years or so.

you know, i had no money to invest. luckily i didn't need it at the beginning. c-span: where did you meet your wife? >> guest: you know i met my wife in college and then i didn't see her again for 11 years and then we have reconnected in 2002, and at the end of 2002, and then we dated for a year and a half or something like that or two years. i was in d.c. and she was in new york. and then when we decided to get married i moved to new york. c-span: what did she do? >> guest: at the time she was a securities -- she worked for dow jones. now she, she left dow jones after they were bought out by news corp. a couple of years ago. she worked for tpm as our general counsel and just a year

ago she went back to school to get an msw, so she is going to become a therapist, and i think think -- c-span: msw stands for? >> guest: masters in social work and it's a degree that many people who do counseling and talking therapy. c-span: i have to ask about her last name. >> guest: well, she was born in israel. her parents were both born actually in pretty israel-palestine. her father -- her father's ancestors were from russia and i think that their russian eyes name was something like israili out or something like that.

as you know, many jewish who immigrated to palestine sort of hebrew eyes to their name and this is a pretty easy one, so that is how she got the name. c-span: joshua micah marshall editor of talking points memo at tpm.com. >> guest: talkingpointsmemo.com. at tpm.com is owned by an industrial firm down in south carolina so i don't think we will be getting that domain. c-span: thank you very much. >> guest: thank you, i really appreciate it. for dvd copy of this program called 1-877-662-7726. for free transcripts or to give us as your comments about this program visit us at a q&a.org.

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