nations does not substitute for at least trying, if you fail a motion practice, the motion to dismiss, are likely upstanding and i don't think it's likely that you will. it's still worth trying, to at least demonstrate that you take your constitutional authority seriously. >> i'm persuaded by both of these fine gentlemen. my only word of caution, if it's of any value at all is, i was very, very convinced by comments from the congressman regarding to the inappropriate invasion of the house's jurisdiction, as well as the senate's when the chief executives sought to define what was adjournment, what was recess. that is the balance that i would encourage the house to consider of because ultimately what this is is a separations of powers argument where the chief executive has plainly infringed

on the executive branch's authority. >> i agree with ambassador gray, i would add one other caution which is i think it's in actions between the branches or their representatives that the courts are most likely to invoke the political question doctrine and i think that's not likely to happen in the kind of lawsuit that we're talking about where there is a private party who's the playoff anding in the house or the members of the house and the senate appear. >> i am thoroughly looking forward to seeing that. because on this, i don't think the question is the same as the ones you've been asked up until now. >> and it won't surprise you that i agree with adventure gray on this. it's likely that the house will have standing, but there's no question at all that the house would be heard on that. >> what do you think about mr.

ripkin saying, but you ought to try? >> you could try, but i think that what the -- what think we see in the standing cases that the court's not recognizing any part of the house here. for reasons we have seen other cases in the past, in other cases where a recess appointment has been challenged, we don't see the house given an independent standing in that circumstance. >> but the executive branch often asserts independent standing. >> as litigators it's participating as -- it's not subject to the same constitutional analysis, it's important for you to think in

the robust voice. >> as chair, the challenge i have is the question we asked you all here for. which is the potential, near irreparable harm in the individuals in the execution of government. the cost of government in dollars is deminimus, even if it's in the millions, in businesses around the country who will assume one thing and if it's reversed will deal years later in a different outcome. it is what this committee will continue to try to evaluate. i would ask only two things and that is, as you look back on today's statements, questions and answers, we'll hold the record open for an additional five days or if i request a request from you all that you think would help us in our

deliberative process. seeing only shaking heads positive, we stand adjourned, not recessed.

coming up next on cspan3, a discussion on the 2012 elections. here's a look at the election calendar. maine's caucuses continue throughout this week, tomorrow there are caucuses in colorado minnesota and missouri. refers will vote in a nonwinding primary with only three of the current candidates on the ballot. later this month, missouri republicans will hold caucuses on saturday march 17 to apportion their delegates. later in february, there are primary contests in arizona and michigan followed by the washington caucuses at the beginning of march. you can follow our road to the

white house at our website cs n cspan3 dpom. >> use cspan 2012 website. see what the candidates have said on issues important to you. at c spab.org,/2010. secretaries of state from around the county threw met last month in washington, d.c. for their winter conference. this year's theme, the upcoming elections, next rock the vote president heather smith who says 2012 will be a big year and an opportunity to mobilize people to get involved in the process. this is about an hour and 20 minutes. thank you, secretary reid. our first presenter today is mr.

jane coup who i would say is a relatively new director of the nonprofit organization created by former u.s. supreme court justice sandra day o'connor. prior to his current role, he was a fellow at the berkman center at the illinois society at harvard, where he investigated the issue of technology on legal education and studied the intersection of video games and moral development. he holds a ba in social studies.

a number of teachers and others are using this curriculum in their government andive -- and our judicial system and others to advance the use of justice o'connor's initiatives. >> young people with the knowledge, skills and dispositions for intelligent citizenship and it's so

important for us as we're talking today about voter engagement to think about how do we prepare young people tomorrow's voters to be not just capable of voting, but being able to do so intelligently and in an engaged way where they're participating in democracy and they're working toward -- i don't think it will be a surprise to folks in this room who are really pay -- educated about how our system of government works, we have three branches of government and how they interrelate to each other or how many court justices there might be at any given moment in time.

40 of the state constitutions actually cite the state literacy in the constitution itself. and 13 identify specific education of the primary purpose of public schools.

so we have a very strong and storied history of civic education as the basis of our educational system and you can ask, well, what happened, how are we dedrived at the point where 8% of high school seniors are lacking proficiency? probably one thing is that we have taken civic education for granted. and so in the last 20, 30 years in terms of science, technology, math, english, as we all know, those are now the subjects that are being tested for which funding is tied and so other subjects in the arts are fallen by the wayside. but another thing has also been happening, and that getting edge

gauged in civic education is to get involved and to learn how does the national and state and local government pertain to you as a young person, as an adult and to be very practical about it. it's not just enough that we start testing kids on civics, although that's the kind of thing that's now starting to happen in states around the u.s. in states like florida. but to figure out how to make

sure that civic education is relevant to our young people. that they consider it as important and as exciting as all of us think it is, in a democracy that they can participate in and believe in. so as secretary ritchie earlier stated, our civics was founded by justice sandra day o'connor soon after she stepped off the bench. in terms of how we got started, she looked around and found out that there's really strong and often ungrounded attackings on the courts in the u.s. the courts don't have anybody to stand up for them, they don't do their own prk r or have their own outreach and she said that if this continued it would threaten the independence of our court system. so she began to look around and

ask people what she could do. and the fundamental reason why there was so much ignorance about what courts do or don't do. and asked them, well, if we're thinking about how go we educati education. where the kids today aren't at textbooks and worksheets. we took a big leap of faith and said, well, inns where civic education needs to be. and we did a callout for some of the leaders of educational

technology, educational videos games and said this is what we need to do. we need to make participation democracy as exciting as any of these games. and we did that. we created video games that are fun, exciting, engaging. i wish we could do the video screen here today because i would share some of the games with you but i encourage you to check it out. we now have 16 gaming that cover all of the branches of government, and of specific interest to this conversation, we have one that asks students to think about what value they care about in an election and then pick candidates that match those values. these are all fictional so that we're staying away from specific candidates right now. but then basically a testimony

that they are matching the way that they value specific policies would be voting for in a few years. there's another gain that we just released about how to run a presidential campaign which teaches how the electoral i think these games are. they're playable in a single class period, they include performance results so that the students and teachers can review how they're doing. they're tightly woven with a broader curriculum, so we just don't do video games, we also offer at least 50 lesson plans and teach almost an entire

semester's worth of civics. we worked really hard with game developers to make sure that these are bona fide games and not just pictures and lights and sounds to a make it seem more fun. these are games that we get feedback all the time and they exexploded to their games and schools in their classes. we actually get notes from parents saying they actually have to pull their kids away from the computer to make them go to bed at night. anywhere from.

>> and especially to think about doing it before high school. most of us, at least my experience with civics education was getting it at the last

semester of the senior year, in the theory i suppose that's right before you're going to go out and vote, but that's right before nobody's pay uing attention to anything. so it's much too late to get to young people. there's a -- we specifically work with middle school kids and if we could, we would work with even younger. there's kind of this prime age that those of you who have teenagers would know this. when kids are really, really considered justice and fairness, they're saying that's just not fair. it's a prime opportunity for them to get them to connect their community services to the state and beyond. at a point when they're not quite cynical about the way the world works and are open to learning about all these different things and our democratic values.

at a point when they're particularly open to learning about how all of this works. and also, of course, as secretary ritchie had mentioned, we have state leadership plans that include senior chapman. and thinking about how to advance civic education and specifically how to get more schools to be aware of the free resources that are we're offering to help teachers teach this subject matter in a more engaging and fun way. i'm sorry that i can't share with you some of the visuals of the games and i would be very happy to speak with any of you individually or to show you some of the games i have asked individually. i wanted to thank you you all for what each of you is going to advance democracy at large and also democratic education and how young people are learning to become citizens, and not only

citizens, but smart, engaged and active citizens. thank you. >> thank you mr. wolfe. >> i know there'll be a few questions and i wan to say in minnesota, our chief supreme court justice has been one of the drivers of this. and the international association of corporate councils has weighed in. we know it can be used for very wide range of our young leaders and young citizens as they'rear wolfe about i civics or in general? >> now so much -- i guess a question, from the standpoint, i'm secretary condos from vermont, and one of the things we have found and as former state senator who chaired the

education committee, we struggled with this issue and we actually tried to put the civics curriculum back into our department of ed. but a lot of their focus because of budget cuts or whatever over the years--i think there's some issues there that we need to relook at at a national level to try to get something reinstituted.

which is a party issue, it's really, we oaked that, and it passed overwhelmingly, 75% to 80%.

>> providing these resources to schools and i hope they would make it at least easier for systems that are looking at adding back civics to make it at least somewhat more cost effective to do so. we're not directly involved or partners, but we work closely with the civic mission of schools who is working out there at the state and federal level on questions of how to advance civic education more specifically. so if you're not working with that organization, i would also encourage that as well.

>> well, thank you so much for coming and being with us today and sharing that and helping us to help us do our jobs, thank you so much. >> i'm matt schultz, secretary of state of iowa. and i have the pleasure of introdu introducing -- a national organization dedicated to the political engagement of young people. under heather's direction and leadership during the past two election cycles. breast practices of continued edge gaugement of new voters,

setting the highest voter registration in both mid temple and -- prior to rock the vote, ms. smith founded and directed young voteer strategies, a nonpartisan strategist and partnership with the glooj wall school of political mblgt at the george washington university. in 2004, she served as national field director for the new prgs. it rocks the vote, and young voters, and before she comes up, speak more specifically about the departments that the state of iowa has put together with rock the vote w the caucuses we

had a great event called rock the caucus. we brought to it a high school in des moines. we had 600 kids there, we actually went out of our way to print t-shirts to make it a more special event for them. and i'll just show you, so all the kids got a t-shirt. we had michele bachmann, ron paul, rick santorum and the romney boys all come and speak. it was a great event and i think it was a great way to show h how -- incorporating it with our own iowa education, if you go to the secretary of state's website, www.s -- you'll see on our banner the promotion where we have teachers and home school

groups who can sign up and a member of our staff will bring this class to two different government classes in high schools and homeschool groups to discuss this. we personally really enjoyed this partnership with heather and i would just like for everybody to welcome us in joining her, thank you. >> secretary schultz, it was quite a way to spend caucus day this year, you can imagine, we actually called on teachers all across the state of iowa, together we promoted we started

20 years ago to be exact