the federal debt requires approval from a majority of the legislatures of the separate states. [ applause ] >> senator olafson, you know there is a lot of people of a italian descent in north dakota and he is one of them. the italian olafsons that had an immense influence in america. this has passed in a few states and you are getting traction in a few more. >> we have passed the national debt relief amendment in north dakota and louisiana and we have pry sponsors in 20 additional states. colorado is one of those, wyoming, utah, arizona, of course, all of the states that are fiscally responsible like the national debt relief amendment. so i would invite you to visit with me during the conference.

to learn more about the national debt relief amendment and also invite you to visit our website, restoringfreedom.org. this idea was proposed by a non-profit called restoringfreedom.org. james robison's last two words were restoring freedom. that's what we are doing. we are restoring freedom. we must exercise our rights under article 5 as our founding fathers intended and i just want to take the time to say this. is it amazing when you look at what our founding fathers intended with article 5 they gave states the unilateral power to propose and ratify amendments to the u.s. constitution. they did not give that power to any other entity of government. they gave no power to the president. they gave no power to state governors but they gave state legislatures the unilateral power to propose and ratify

amendments. we have gone too long without using article 5. the founding fathers had great faith in us. it's time we had faith in ourselves. >> senator curtis olafson, restoringfreedom.org, the national relief amendment. senator hang out up front here as we break into the luncheon time and come up and meet senator olafson and learn how you can be part of what they are doing. this week has reminded us in the arizona ruling and the obama care ruling those who thought that judges were some sort of magic savior to get constitutional government back in america it's not going to be that way. we're too far gone. we have to save ourselves from the bottom up. this magnificent effort will be part of it. now what about the path we go if things don't turn around in this election and indeed day by day not just on election day? what is america's future?

those who have lived under communism, they have seen america's future because it is their past. they fled it at great cost. they are amongst us as witnesses. martin dzuris is one such witness. he fled communism not once but twice. martin tell us briefly about how you not only fled communism not once but two times and what do americans need to have in mind and why do you hope summit delegates will seek you out in the next 26 hours? >> good evening. i would like to thank john andrews because he is the fist and only man with courage to give me a platform like this. after a short conversation on the phone, especially how i look. i'm not a cookie cutter anything. and there's a reason for it. i grew up behind communism. and not like most that

submitted, i became a rebel. and i'm still a rebel and i try to rebel against what's going on. if you think thursday was bad and bloomberg banning big sodas is bad that's nothing. it's just the beginning. if you don't wake up you're going to lose it all. it's worse than you think. but there is hope even though that word is profound to me after 2008's election but you have the power. you have to start exercising it. you really have to start working at it. you have to understand how dangerous the enemies of freedom within you in this country is. and in november, that's it if we don't prevail, we're done. >> tell us about your two escapes from the iron curtain. >> first when the russians

invaded my native country. this is my country i'm a proud american. when the russians invaded czechoslovakia in 1968 i was a four-year-old boy and my parents brought me here. i learned quickly the differences. in 1973 my mom asked me do you want to fly to seattle to see your aunt? i was nine years old and woke up behind the iron curtain again. and it took me ten years to escape again just before the fall of the berlin wall and i was at demonstration, the first in 20 years against the communist government, prague spring in 1989. i know the enemies of the freedom better than anyone. thank you for allowing me this

opportunity. >> martin dzuris the "d" is silent. >> i will ask you to clear the room and take your conversations outside. put your belongings on your chair but make it easier for the servers to get the room set up for lunch. the exception to clearing the room is come up front and meet martin dzuris or curtis olafson. we are adjourned the. doors will open at high noon, 12:00 noon for luncheon service. ladies and gentlemen, please exit the ballroom promptly and remember, take personal items with you as the room will be reset. thank you. doors will reopen shortly.

♪ we have great threats to our existence today as a nation. and i would think in my opinion

greater than any threat we've ever faced whether it's been our civil war, revolutionary war, whether it's been world war ii, whether it's been the depression, and that threat, it comes to us because we've spent the last 30 years in this country spending money that we did not have on things we did not absolutely need and the bill is due. >> colorado christian university held a western conservative issues summit featuring speakers from this country and the netherlands. watch the forum online at the c-span video library. still ahead here on c-span3 the ceremony for this year's polk investigative journalism awards and then the deputy director for the johnson space flight center in houston. wednesday morning on c-span,

peter moore on surveillance in cities across the u.s. data is being collected on closed circuit cameras, license plate readers and internet monitoring. mr. moore joins us at 9:15 eastern on wednesday morning to take your phone calls. shreveport in march, oklahoma city, may. wichita in june and this last weekend in jefferson city. watch for the continuing travels of the local content vehicles every month on book tv and american history tv. next month look for louisville kentucky the weekend of august 4, and 5, on c-span 2 and 3. long island university awarded the 2012 polk investigative journalism awards.

among the winners, the reporter who broke the jerry sandusky sex abuse study and a post humus award. it's extraordinary that and it's gained strength and stature over the last decades. this remarkable man who was pursuing a story and was murdered because of it and then, of course, was there a complicated second half as an investigation was launched as to who killed george polk leading to some of america's most distinguished journalists participating at the very beginning of the cold war. so we are proud and privileged

to keep his memory alive and to celebrate him and this evening's activity, i think we started, ralph and i were discussing whether it was 21 or 20 years ago. i think i may have said 20 years last year and i'll say 21 now and it's certainly in that universe and what we suddenly realized was that at a lunch which will take place tomorrow where everyone is allowed, i think, a minute and a half to speak and some obey and some don't. there is a sense of rush and so we decided that we would create a seminar for students, for members of the working press and others who are interested in the topic, to invite a cluster of topics several of the award winners to have a chance to talk about what they did, why they

did it, how they did it. what happened as a result of what they did. and this has grown and grown hand systemly. and i mentioned to ralph, this is the campus-based part of the program. we have students throughout the room and hopefully they themselves will take heed for you good people and go and do stuff of the sort that you have done. ralph just received the award for the crassnoff award for life scholarly achievement and his most recent book is on fred friendly, "friendly vision." . we have a major program in journalism. we are very proud of it and it is separate from the polk award, but integrally intertwined. i welcome you. i am thrilled that you're here and it is now my privilege to introduce the curator of the

polk awards, a man of -- himself, extraordinary achievement holding two polks and a pulitzer, and i think every job that "the new york times" published along the way, is that correct? you have been editor of literally every section known to humanity over the years. including some that didn't succeed. but that's another discussion for a another time. ladies and gentlemen, let me turn the program over to our good friend john darden. thank you. thank you very much, dr. steinberg and welcome to you all. this is -- at this seminar, the title is getting the ungettable story. first, i'd like to thank the center for communications for their support. a few individual people in the audience especially harvey simpson who is here who is a very passionate about

investigative reporting and has been a donor to the polk program. ralph angleman, my colleague. who shares more than half the burden of it. some judges are here, and i see sprinkled throughout the audience. we have our lifetime award winner, ronny duggar in the audience. the executive director of al jazeera english has flown over, john blair who is here somewhere and i'm forgetting some people, so, please, forgive me for that. now as most reporters can tell you some stories are just simply hard to get, and they may be hard to get because the very institution they're covering is premised on secrecy or they may be hard to get because, let's say, you're covering the crackdown of an authoritarian government and it wants to keep your footage off the air or it may be hard to get because

you're a war correspondent in the middle of libya or afghanistan and as churchill remarked i think he said the in war, the truth is so precious, she must be surrounded by a body guard of lies. how to penetrate that body guard? and nally, what if you've come up with a wonderful scandal, a horrible scandal that it involves people who are so revered that basically people don't want to pay attention to it. we'll be talking about these and other case histories today. we have a very strong panel. and let me introduce them to get the discussion going. to my left is jane mayer. jane is simply put, one of the country's most preeminent and investigative reporters. for the past 17 years, she's been on the staff of "the new yorker" specializing in politics

and especially lately, national security and jane went to fieldston right here in new york graduated from yale, studied at oxford and decided to go straight and began working for some small weekly newspapers in vermont. she worked for 12 years at the "wall street journal" who was the up front war correspondent and she's been a war correspondent and a foreign correspondent. somewhere along the way she found time to co-author two books. one on the nomination of clarence thomas to the supreme court. feel free to ask her any supreme court questions later tonight. the other on ronald reagan's second term. at "the new yorker" as most of you know, she is known for exposing a wide range of nefarious u.s. practices in connection with the war on terror, questions about torture, detention at guantanamo, the so-called extraordinary

rendition flights, flights to countries that torture people. the search in the cia and the top level of the administration for legal justification for what president bush used to call enhanced interrogation. all of these things and more, she examined in her best selling book of 2008 entitled "the dark side. the inside story of how the war on terror turned into a war on american ideals." to jane's left is may ying welsh who is journalist and filmmaker for al-jazeera english. may has worked for the pan-arab television news agency off and on since about 2003, i think it is. she's ventured into distant and dangerous parts of the world as a sort of one-woman hit squad.

she's reported on the u.s. bombing and invasion of iraq, the rebellion in the sahara. the rebel camps and janjaweed militia in darfur, mass killings in southern sudan and insurgency in northern yemen. may comes to the profession honestly, meaning in san francisco where she was raised her mother, lonny ding, was a documentary filmmaker, her works among other things dealt with detention and military service of japanese-americans in world war ii. her father who is here tonight has a fascinating background, he's a labor activist, a retired postal worker and at one point was a reporter for "ramparts" magazine. may studied classical arabic at berkeley and later at the american university in cairo. she's worked out of cnn's rome

bureau and also their beijing bureau as a freelance editor and cameraman covering everything, the seizure of grozny and chechnya, the 1999 earthquake in turkey and the nato bombing of belgrade. to her left is c.j. chivers of "the new york times." chris is simply put, the war correspondent's war correspondent. he is known for his courage, resourcefulness on the battlefield, knowledge of tactics and strategy and finally for his expertise in weaponry, in particular the ubiquitous ak-47 of which he has written a definitive biography, a fascinating and important book called simply "the gun." chris comes from a military

family after graduating -- excuse me, i'm getting a cold. after graduating from cornell, he joined the marine corps serving in the gulf war. he was honorably discharged as a captain in 1994. of journalism, and worked at the providence journal in rhode island and joined "the times" in 1999, where he was promptly assigned to cover the cops. part of his legend at the "times" is that on 9/111, he sprinted from police headquarters to ground zero, remaining at that site day in, day out for two weeks. abroad, he has had numerous assignments including a four-year stint as a moscow correspondent and a specialist in war zones. to chris' left is sara ganim.

and at age 24, she has won acclaim about the penn state sexual abuse case involving assistant head coach jerry sandusky and staying with the story when it spiraled into a national scandal. sara was born in detroit and went to school in fort lauderdale, florida, and she went to school there and freelancing for the south florida "sun sentinel." she went to penn state and majored in journalism, and graduating in 2008. she worked for the centre daily times the state newspaper in pennsylvania, and while there she began to hear rumors of sandusky's behavior, but it was not until she moved on to the

crime beat at the "patriot news" out of harrisburg that she could gather enough material for an exclusive front page story in march. then a strange thing happened. not much of anything. for the most part, the story was ignored and it was not until november when she wrote about an indictment that was imminent that the outside world began to grasp the scope of the accusations against sandusky, and the university's failure to act upon them. thank you all for coming here. i apologize for my voice, and you may have to talk amongst yourselves for a while. i'd like to start with you, jane, and ask, can you tell us about the story, "the secret sharer" involving thomas drake, a high official in the national security agency who ran into trouble?

>> sure. well, if it -- first i want to say i'm honored to be here with you guys because while you were facing life-threatening situations, when i reported on this story the only real threat was the high calories from the diners of the people i was interviewing. so i don't know if i belong here on this one. but anyway, tom drake was as you said somebody who worked inside of the nsa and the puzzle palace and the totally secret nsa, national security agency, and he had become a whistle-blower, and he had seen things that were wasteful inside, and we are talking about billions, and he was concerned that the agency was violating civil liberties in a huge program of domestic surveillance that he understood because he was a computer expert.

by the time i got to this situation, he had been charged for leaking supposedly or to a reporter at the "baltimore sun" about his concerns, and he was being charged under the espionage act with and facing the possibility of life in prison. so it is the kind of moment that basically any reporter knows that the lawyer for this man was saying, whatever you do, don't talk to a reporter. so, and he had not talked to anybody at least not on the record. so, my mission was to see if i could somehow get him to speak to many. and he, it turned out, he was not alone. he had a small group of friends who had also become disgruntled together, and they had all been raided by the fbi at gunpoint in the most incredible circumstances, and were all

certain that they were being spied on by the nsa among others, and that all of the e-mail was being audited or looked at, and they were afraid to make phone calls, and so i felt like i was dealing with a group of paranoids, only the kind that as kissinger said even paranoids have enemies and these guys really had enemies. so one of the puzzles was for me how to figure out how to communicate with him? >> and he did talk to you, and how did you do that? >> well, the truth of the story, i had help. there was somebody i had interviewed literally eight years earlier and i had stood on her doorstep and rung her doorbell and she was not home, and i left her a note who was a lawyer inside of the apartment, and she was also a whistle-blower inside of the john walker case, and she ran a center for whistle-blowers and she worked with tom drake. the reason i was interested in

this story is that by the time drake was prosecuted, obama was president, and we were supposed to be entering into a new regime with a president who had been a constitutional law professor and i was curious about whether some of the people who had been the whistle-blowers during the bush years about abuses of government in the war on terror, and if they would have a different, and be dealt with differently under obama, and his case was a test of all of this. so, anyway. >> mei, your documentary which is chilling and you can see it all on youtube and i suggest you do called "shouting in the dark." we have a segment of it here about a minute, and we will play it to give you the flavor of it.

bahrain, an island kingdom in the arabian gulf where a majority are ruled by the sunni minority, where people fighting for democratic rights broke the barriers of fear. only to find themselves alone and crushed. this is their story. and al jazeera is their witness. the only tv journalist who remained to follow their journey of hope to the carnage that followed. this is the arab revolution that was abandoned by the arabs. forsaken by the west and forgotten by the world.

>> i encourage you all to seek it out on youtube. mei, how did you manage to get into bahrain and i'm told you went in on a tourist visa. how did you get the footage and what were the conditions like? >> well, at the beginning, you know, we were allowed to come into bahrain as tourists, and we came in and started filming and following the protests going on, and there was a revolution in full swing just like tunisia and egypt and we started to follow around the protesters and everything was normal and then the crackdown started. the crackdown came in waves. they would crack down on the protesters and then pull back and crackdown and pullback. and then at a certain point, there was a defining moment when there was the final crackdown when saudi arabia was sort of invited into bahrain by the ruling family of bahrain, and they really did mass arrests and started arresting everyone who was ever associated with the

democracy protests, and torturing them and some of them were tortured to death. when that phase of the crackdown happened, that is when it became very difficult to work in bahrain. >> how did you do it with a camera? did you hide the camera? >> in the beginning i had the camera out and was working in public in front of everybody, and then when the crackdown, the really harsh crackdown started march 16th of last year, then we had to sort of start putting my camera in a feminine purse and go around wearing a hajab and i want to recognize my colleague in the audience tonight who is a bahrainian journalist. >> will you stand up? >> hasan risked his life and freedom to work on this film. and he would basically help me move in this environment which was nothing but checkpoints.