it takes about a minute. and use the same structure when the stations are doing a great job to tell them thank you and express your appreciation for the hard work and money involved in doing this very difficult work. i think when station managers see thanks, that's far more powerful than receiving our urging. i hope they're going to receive both and as a result we're creating a positive structure for them this says that viewers appreciates this kind of work and i think rating is expressing part of that appreciation. we would like to encourage to you go to the flakcheck web site. it's a way if you're a viewer to go to the ad watching web sites in order to see whether or not the facts involved in the issues that you care about might be distorted in this ad. finally, i would like to thank the panelists and thank the moderators and i'd like to thank our funders and i'd like to invite all of you to lunch.

>> thank you. [ applause ] >> i guess number one what would i ask is if people do have information, i want them to come forward to our office with the information, to our office of professional responsibility. the thought or the notion that this type of behavior is condoned or authorized is just absurd in my opinion. you know, i've been an agent for 29 years now. i began my career for seven

years in detroit, i've worked for -- i was on the white house detail twice. i've worked for a lot of men and women in this organization. i never one time had any supervisor or any other agent tell me that this type of behavior is condoned. i know i've never told any of our employees that it's condoned. so i feel as strongly now as i did as i did before i read that article. >> this week officials with the secret service and homeland security testified on capitol hill about agent interaction with colombian prostitutes. view the hearing online at the c-span video library. >> welcome to old cow town museum, wichita, kansas. >> we're here in the city of wichita and tray's waking up the city for 22 years. today the mayor will be talking

a little bit about the problem we're having in the city with taxi cabs. so 9:20. hang on to that if you will. >> june 2nd and 3rd, book tv and american history tv explore the heritage in the literary culture of wichita, kansas. >> this contains an alphabetical list of the members of the senate and house of representatives done in 1831. i believes it w it was issued f immediate use only. it would tell you exactly where everybody lived. coup go and button hole them and punch them if you didn't like it. on june 2nd and 3rd on c-span 2 and 3. >> there's an extra days of boom

tv this hold weekend on c-span2. h.w. brands on a different side of the new york politician and vice president. and on afterwards, the former director for asian affairs at the national security security council victor chaw on the impossible state, north korea. >> a dialogue with north koreans on human right is a ridiculous dialogue. we've had this conversation at the official level. their response will be you, the united states, have human right problem, too. that is not a comparable discussion. >> that's saturday night at 10:00. also weekend, marcus latrell details operation red wing from "service, a navy seal at war." three days of book tv this

weekend on c-span2. >> this memorial day weekend three days of american history tv on c-span3, saturday morning at tat 9 a.m. eastern, actors from "band of brothers." >> i said what is it, bill? you're giving me everything in the platoon to jump with. heap said we're jumping in, ain't we? i said, yeah, what's that to do with me? i said let me tell you something. how much you way? i said 138 pounds. >> how tall are you? >> i said 5'4" 1/2. he says you got to put that half in there. the reason we got that we don't want to go looking for you in spain. >> also this weekend, sunday

night at 9:30, woodrow wilson, teddy roos celt, william taft and eugene debs, the legacy of of the election. >> december 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy. >> tour the pearl harbor visitor center with dan martinez, chief historian at the national monument. three days of american history tv, this holiday weekend on c-span3. >> monday retired supreme court justice john paul stevens criticized the court's reent decisid -- recent decisions in --

>> let me tell you how i met justice stevens. many years ago in albuquerque, new mexico, justice stevens and his wife snuck in to play in a bridge tournament, and one of my partners at the time happily had been his clerk and invited he and his wife and barry and i to

dinner. i couldn't even imagine meeting a justice of the supreme court, let alone go to dinner. they felt quite free to tell him what they thought of what he had just played. but at the end of the evening there was a kind of uncomfortable silence and justice stevens finally said to his former law clerk, greg, don't you want to invite me to come to your firm to meet the lawyers in your firm and your law clerks? of course we couldn't imagine having been bold enough to ask him to do that. and so in albuquerque, new mexico, in the summer in a law firm of 21 people, our law clerks thought we were the smartest human beings on the planet.

but what happened was even more remarkable. when justice stevens sat down in our very small conference room in the old bank building most famous to that moment, because the movie "the muppets take manhattan" had taken place in that very conference room, he spoke for a few minutes and then he said, but i have questions to ask you. he spent the rest of almost two hours asking people what it was like to practice law in albuquerque, new mexico, what it was like then to be a law student, what it was like to come to a firm, what things people were worried about, what was important to them, what they saw as important and possible in the life of the law. that kind of desire to continue to understand what is going on in the lives of all kinds of people is when combined with this great scholarship, combined with his great intellect, and combined with his great

compassion has made him to me the very perfect person to sit on the highest court of the land. justice stevens, it's an honor to have you here, and we thank you very much. >> thank you. thank you, roberta. before i read you my prepared remarks, i have to acknowledge what a nice introduction that was because i remember that occasion very well, too.

and that's part of the reason that i was very happy to be privileged to talk at the american bar association convention in florida when roberta was the first woman chairman of this association, and it reminded me that's not particularly revel. it did remind me of the fact that i sort of specialized in talking at bar association occasions honoring first woman presidents because i had previously talked to the chicago bar association back in the 1970s when keegan became president of the association, and she was the first woman president of the major bar association. roberta followed up and as greg told me at the time, she was going to have a sensational career, which, of course, was an obviously correct prediction. but this afternoon i thought i would make a brief comment on bush against gore, because there has been so much discussion of the remedy issue in that case in which a majority of the united states supreme court issued a stay that halted the recount of florida votes in the presidential election of 2000.

the significance of the courts opinions reliance on the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment has been generally overlooked. as you may recall, in the 2000 election, florida used voting machines to count ballots on which voters had used a stylius to punch a hole in the small circle opposite the preferred candidate's name. voters who successfully followed the written instructions punched a complete hole in the ballots, and their votes were accurately counted by the machines. the voters whose votes weren't counted by the machines fell into two categories. so-called overvotes and undervotes.

the overvote category included ballots on which the voter had tried to vote for two or more candidates for the same office. the undervote category included ballots on which the voter had designated one candidate but failed to make a complete hole in the ballot. there were two subcategories of undervotes. hanging chads and dimpled chads. in the hanging chads subcategory, the punched-out piece of the ballot remained only partially attached, whereas a ballot with a dimpled chad contained an indentation but no hole. the florida supreme court ordered a manual recount to be conducted according to the vote -- intent of the voter standard

established by florida la. that court did not require a recount of overvotes presumably because of a re-examination of those ballots would seldom reveal the identity of the voter's preferred candidate. the question with respect to undervotes however was not whom the voter intended to support but whether the voter intended to vote for any presidential candidate at all. in the typical case either a hanging chad or a dimpled chad opposite the name of one candidate would both identify the voter's preferred candidate and indicate his or her intent to cast a vote. during the recount election, officials differed on whether the question to count both dimpled chads and hanging chads or just the latter. in other words, those for which light could be seen through the edge of the chad. in palm beach county, for example, the officials began to follow a 1990 guideline that

drew a distinction between hanging and dimpled chads. but they ultimately ended up counting both subcategories of undervotes. in the per curiam opinion the united states supreme court described that change in a way that gave the reader the impression that the officials had engaged in a standardless endeavor. the opinion stated, quote, palm beach county, for example, began the process with a 1990 guideline which precluded comments completely attached chads switched to a rule that considered a vote to be legal if any light could be seen through a chad changed back to the 1990 rule and then abandoned any pretense of a per se rule only to have a court order that the county considered dimpled chads legal, unquote. the paragraph is misleading in two respects. first, what it describes is switching to a new rule was, in fact, only a clarification of the original rule that

considered only hanging chads as valid votes. the "new" rule clarified that a hanging chad was one through any light could be seen, since that evidence that the chad was not completely attached. second, what the paragraph describes as changing back to the 1990 rule was just a continuation of the practice of not counting dimpled chads. of most significance, however, is the fact that the county ended up treating dimpled chads as valid votes before the united states supreme court ruled. while the court's per curiam

opinion is misleading in other respects, for example the implicit suggestion that the failure to reorder recount of the estimated 110,000 overvotes were error, despite the lack of evidence or argument suggesting how one could tell which candidate the voter intended to support. the principal point i want to make this morning concerns the absence of any coherent rationale supporting the opinion's reliance on the equal protection clause. the equal protection clause requires states to govern impartially, and as particular for us in protecting the right to vote. there must be a neutral justification for rules or practices that discriminate for or against individuals on the basis of identifiable characteristics including groups of individuals that are defined by race, by political affiliation or by the residence in a particular location. the one person one vote rule, for example, prohibits states from giving greater wait teight

votes in rumor areas than to votes in densely populated cities. if residents in beach county or perhaps members of the democratic party were more likely than other voters to produce dimpled chads rather than hanging chads, there might be reason to hold that counting the two subcategories of undervotes differently would violate the equal protection clause. but there was no claim by anyone in the case that variations in the method of counting undervotes had any systemic significance. the mere possibility that accidental and random errors might have occurred during the voting and recount process would not establish any intentional discrimination against preidentified -- a preidentified group of voters and would not even establish any unintended disparate impact on either candidates and surely nothing arguably discriminatory in applying a rule that counted

dimpled chads like hanging chads. perhaps the florida supreme court's opinion ordering a statewide recount of undervotes was flawed because it failed to state expressly that the dimpled chads as well as hanging chads should be counted as valid votes. if that omission was a flaw, it could have been remedied on remand by quoting the following two sentences from an illinois case decided a decade earlier. the objection that the chad should be fully punched out or at least there should be a hanging chad on the back side of the ballot would set two rigid a standard for it to determine whether the voter intended to vote for the particular candidate. many voters could be disenfranchised without their fault if, for example, ballots

with perforations on the chad could be regarded as the intent to vote, unquote. i have never thought that the florida supreme court's decision will be flawed however, so it seems obvious to me as it did i intent of the voter stand on which the florida supreme court relied was sufficiently clear to dimpled chads. my principal purpose for calling the attention on the eagle protection clause in bush against gore is to emphasize how that provision of our constitution properly construed would invalidate an insidious form of political behavior that remains popular today. if a mere defect in the standards governing voting recount practices can violate the state's duty to govern impartially, surely it must follow that the intentional practice of drawing bizarre boundaries of electoral

districts in order to enhance the political power of the dominant party is unconstitutional. in recent cases, however, members of the majority of the supreme court have written opinions concluding that the absence of judicially manageable standards precludes judicial review of even the most obvious political jerry manders. several opinions including one written by louis powell in 1986 as well as several of my own have identified such standards for reviewing partisan gerrymanders. even a majority of the court has applied manageable standards in cases involving racial gerrymanders. it has left a category of intentional discrimination against voters unchecked, as

long as against voters unchecked as long as the discrimination is predicated on the basis of political party and not race. for example, just last year a three-judge district court rejected a challenge to maryland's redistricting plan because the plaintiffs, quote, had not shown that the state moved african-american voters from one district to another because they were african-americans and not simply because they were democrats. even though the plaintiffs' claim that democratic politicians had drawn district lines to reduce the number of republican-held congressional seats was in the words of the court, quote, the easiest claim to accept factually, unquote. the court declared it the weakest claim legally because the supreme court has declared partisan gerrymandering. i will refrain from repeating the arguments i have made in my opinions on this topic, but it seems appropriate to remind the

members of this distinguished audience that both legislatures and courts have adequate power and should recognize their responsibility to curtail this insidious practice. the tools for doing so as a judicial matter have already been developed in the supreme court's racial gerrymandering jurisprudence and in a number of separate opinions by members of the court discussing political gerrymandering. thank you for your attention and for your continuing efforts to improve the law. [ applause ]

justice stevens very kindly said he might answer a question or two. i told him there might be some reluctance to raise their hands having listened to oral arguments at least on the radio. but if there are people who would like to ask questions, please stand at one of the microphones and identify yourself. yes, sir. >> good afternoon, justice. my name is paul from chicago. did you see this morning that the supreme court summarily in the case, another part of the gerrymandering case?

>> is there a follow-up question? >> i wonder if he -- >> all i can say is it's news to me. i haven't seen the opinion yet. >> more bad news. >> yes, sir? >> harvey, rockville, maryland. >> could you speak up a little bit? thank you. >> justice stevens, since your analysis of the supreme court's per curiam decision in bush versus gore indicates how seriously flawed that opinion w was, do you think that politics played a part in the majority's decision? >> did you hear the question? >> i don't know.

>> we'll ask if there are quick questions at the three microphones, three, five, and whatever microphone that is. four. yes, sir. >> john oakly from davis, california. for nearly 40 years since the 1974 decision in elman versus jordan, no matter who seems to come and who seems to go seems to have difficulty getting the law immunity right. in your decision of pin hurst state school and hospital versus alderman the court's law illuminates the character of an institution. i've always wanted to ask you to expound on that analysis. >> well, i've written a great

deal on that issue, and i'm sure i don't have much to add. i would recommend that you read a book called "five chiefs" that had a lot to say on the issue. >> good afternoon justice. jose anderson, baltimore, maryland. i was wondering if you have any thoughts on you think the direction that the eighth amendment jurisprudence is likely to go in the coming years, or at least the framework of how the eighth amendment would be looked at in the coming years of the supreme court. >> of course, that's a very difficult question, because it depends on the attitudes of who is sitting on the court at the particular time and the particular issue. i really think with regard to the death penalty, which is i'm sure at the back of your mind in this question, i'm not sure that

the democratic process won't provide the answer sooner than the court does, because i do think there's a much -- really a significantly growing appreciation of the basic imbalance in cost versus benefit analysis that the application death penalty does a lot of harm, really does very little good over and beyond the imposition of life without the possibility of parole and always includes the continuing risk of an incorrect conclusion by the jury, the death penalty having been rejected in michigan on the basis of the fact that two men had been executed and later it was established they were innocent. i think that the likelihood that the public generally will come to realize that it's a tremendous waste of resources in administering the death penalty, and they will on a state by

state basis reach the conclusion which i think the constitution would also demand. >> thank you, justice. [ applause ] >> michelle fields from washington, d.c. can i just get your thoughts on the supreme court's impending health care decision and whether you think it was good or bad for the administration? >> well, it's really an easy question to answer because i haven't read the briefs. i really make a very conscious effort not to try and decide difficult issues without hearing both sides of the case. [ applause ] >> justice stevens i wanted to tell you i finished reading "five chiefs" last week. what i hope everybody does is not only get the book and read it, but it's the perfect book for people who are not lawyers. it's the mos