matter. now interlink which has been stated, and a guarantee to start bringing our positions closer to each other. nobody said it will create a threat for anybody. it is designed to tackle a couple of practical objectives. . .

was that of the decisions haven't been made do not concern you, but they do not create a threat for you. our position is somewhat different. it is that these decisions concern us. this is somewhere where we will probably have to find and reach agreement on. especially those coming from medium-range missiles and ballistic missiles. we, together, have to think about that this is something i told my colleague about. time is running out. just one more question. network number one, please. >> this is a question for both presidents. a lot has been said about the

concern of the situation in afghanistan. could you be more specific on this area. what do both presidents think about the situation there? it is quite complicated, and the contra terrorists operations in afghanistan seem to have run into obstacles. how can we be helpful in terms of overcoming the situation and the problem? the subject of cooperation is extremely important which is what we have spent so much time discussing this issue and which is why an agreement has just been signed regarding transit. this is an important area, and we will definitely continue cooperation with our american partners. as far as the current situation, the situation at hand, if indeed it is not a simple situation. i am not trying to say it has

been deteriorating, but many areas progress is either ephemeral or there is no progress. however, we do value and appreciate the efforts being made by the united states of america and other nations towards preventing the terrorist threats which has emanated and unfortunately continues to emanate from afghan soil. in this regard, we're prepared to engage in full-scale cooperation with both our american and other partners including in the area of transit, we're prepared to provide assistance in all kinds of directions and avenues. i do not know how quickly it will be possible to change the situation. the thing is that, to a large extent, it depends on how quickly the political system in afghanistan will evolve and how successful the economic development and the afghan government policy and economy will be. again, this situation is not

easy there. we will continue to work with our afghan partners. recently, i had a meeting with the president of afghanistan and with the president of pakistan because both of these problems have to be looked at it a solved together. if we are able to focus our efforts in both the peaceful economic area in terms of giving support to the counterterrorism operation, success will be hours sooner or later. then success will depend on how much are the afghan state is and how ready the afghan society is for change. >> well, as you may be aware, as soon as i came into office, we undertook a thorough review of our afghan strategy to that point. in consultation with not only our nato allies but all the forces internationally that have

contributed to the efforts there. we concluded that we had not made as much progress as we should have given the direction in which we have been in afghanistan, and we can improve it. so our approach as been to say that we need to have a strong security system in place for the afghan elections to be completed. we have to train afghan nationals for the army and police so that they can effectively secure their own home. we have to combine that with more affected diplomatic areas. and we have to focus on development so that, for example, the people of afghanistan do not have to grow poppy but have other crops and goods that they can make a living with. we have just begun the

implementation of this new strategy, so i think it is too early to gauge its success so far. i think by the time that we have completed the next election and either president karzai or another candid it has not taken his seat, then we will be able to, i think, do an additional review and see what other efforts we can take in order to improve this situation. i will tell you that russia's participation and contributions to this effort could be extraordinarily important. obviously, russia has its own concerns about extremism and terrorism. russia also has deep concerns about the drug trade and its infiltration into russia. and russia has extraordinary capabilities when it comes to training police forces, a

training armies, and so our hope is that as part of the broader presidential commission structure that we put in place, that we are going to further discuss both the military efforts in afghanistan but also the development efforts in the diplomatic efforts so that we can make progress. president medvedev is right that it is important for afghanistan but also important with respect to pakistan. we are going to have to think regionally in terms of how we approach these problems. obviously, there countries along the border of afghanistan and central asia that are of deep strategic importance. it is very important that we also include them in these conversations about how we can move forward. i want to thank russian government for the agreement for military transit. that will save u.s. troops both time and money.

and i think it is a gesture that indicates the degree in which, in the future, russian/u.s. cooperation can be extraordinarily important in solving a host of these very important international issues. thank you very much, everybody. >> thank you. see you again. [applause] >> today's joint news conference with president obama and medvedev will show again tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern right here on c-span. on this first day of the moscow summit with president obama and medvedev, a look at missile defense, nuclear weapons, and disarmament at a forum back here in washington with a member of the open society institute and the head of the arms control association. live coverage at 1:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. tomorrow in moscow, president obama joins the russian prime minister for breakfast. later, talks with former soviet

president gorbachev. president obama will also speak of the new economic school and meet with russian political and business leaders. on wednesday, the president travels to italy for the g8 summit. it has events through friday. also at the vatican and in rome. on saturday, the president flies to africa for a visit of the capital of ghana. john updike, the two-time winner of the pulitzer prize for fiction died in january at age 71. he was remembered at the kennedy library by fellow officers and friends. this is just over an hour. >> good afternoon. thank you all for coming. we apologize for our late start. i am the director of the john f. kennedy presidential library and museum. alli want to welcome you all and

thank you for not giving up if you were stuck in traffic. obviously, we're talking about john the kind today. but i think the literary form filled a little bit more bitkafka. but we have arrived here. thank you. let me begin by acknowledging the sponsors of the kennedy library forms including bank of america, a boston capital, and our media sponsors, the boston globe, and others. in what was his last visit to his home state of massachusetts, john f. kennedy traveler to amherst college to dedicate a library to robert frost. a nation rebuilds itself, he stated, not only by the minute produces but also by the men and commerce -- honors, the minute remembers. we're here today to honor and remember john updike. in the words of president kennedy that day, the contributions of artists like john updike are not to our size

but to our spirit, not to our political beliefs but to our inside, not to our self-esteem but to some comprehension. for artists and writers that establish the basic human truth which must serve as a touchstone of our country. i want to thank all of the speakers for being here today, members of the updike family for their participation of support of this event, to a mcdonnell bed conceived and organized this event, tusis been for a broadcast to a this, our colleagues in new england on their collaboration on even such as this one, especially to their director. and to the master of ceremonies. the rock his career, the master of ceremonies has been a distinctive voice and print, television, and a radio journalism. over time, he is covered presidential campaigns for the "new york times," anchor the nightly news on wbgh, and founded the connection on national public radio and is currently the most of an

internet radio conversation based at brown university's watson center. if it is fitting that we gather in this library which is sung to the papers of another great american writer, ernest hemingway. an introduction to a collection of his early stories, john updike wrote, might mean that which may not be amended is to hemingway. he showed us all how much attention and complex elite and elite dialogue and then faded, poetry lurks in the simplest nouns and the predicates. in 1957, updike left new york city, describing it as the demimonde of agents said the would-bes, and with it, nonparticipants that he found a nutritious. he enjoyed setting hemingway's description of literary new york is a bottle full of tapeworms are trying to feed on each other. settling in massachusetts where he was a neighbor and friend to many including some who are gathered here today, he once told the paris review, when i write, i name in my mind to a

vague spot a little east of kansas. i think of the books and the glittery shelves without their jackets, years old, and a country boy finding them and having them speak to him. i recall giving my own introduction growing up in a small town of the state of maine to both hemingway and updike. we read the classics story "soldiers home in," and then the music school by of that. a remarkable gift for this country boy to discover a larger world through literature. updike included the introduction to his earlier story connection this way. my stories written on a manual typewriter and beginning in the early 1960's in a one-room office i rented in ipswich between a lawyer and a beautician. of a cozy corner restaurant. around noon, the smell of food would rise through the floor. but i tried to hold up another hour before it tumbled downstairs, dizzy with cigarettes for a sandwich. i gave up cigarettes. after i gave up cigarettes, i

smoked nicholas cigarillos to lay my nurses of the majesty of my calling the intricacy of my craft. the and the boxes were the comforting image of another writer, robert burns, piled up. there were useful for storing little things like foreign coins and a pair of wings, but the caustic are of cigar's disparate visitors. i felt i was packaging something as delicately pervasive as smoke, one box after another, in that room where my only duty was to describe reality as it had come to me, to give the mundane its beautiful due. today, we pause with family, friends, and literary colleagues to give our due to john updike. i thank each of you for coming and ask you to join me in welcoming christopher leighton for opening this special tribute. [applause]

>> thank you all. it is a great honor to be here. it is still hard to believe that john updike, the great notice are of our lives, is gone. i mean, why else do we notice things that all except to play a little game in our heads of comparing notes with john updike on, say, barack obama and michelle obama and their lovely night out or the struggles of adjacent bay, for example? well, my own day, it is harder to play that game anymore. and we miss him. it is harder, in fact -- are in fact, it is really impossible not to believe that in some dimension of his spirit, that he is not in this room today with the sort of stuttering chuckle and that infectious, furtive, ironic, and ever dismissive air of pleasure in almost everything. it makes something of this

state. for me, on want to say it is a little hard to account for why i am here it all. i am not in updike scholar by a longshot. i did play one hugely fun round of 18 holes at myopia with our connection producer whose big brother chip will testify today. i presume to call him john, close friends by any means. in truth, what i am is that dreaded character known as the fan. i started a little late with the books. i was a young husband and father went couples into the universal conversation. the truth is, the book scared me. in my 30's and 40's, i came to adopt john updike as a sort of guide to being an american guy. in this mysterious, sometimes disconcerting, world. i marveled at his prose, of course. but i wrote to him once that i thought he might have over- praised for the polish of his

sentences and not praised enough for his courage. the guts of a burglar, in fact, in exploring this strangeness, the power, the beauty of sex, for example, the longing of art, the thirst for a living god. then it dawned on me at his death that i loved as john updike much the way he loved ted williams. for that are in blue glow of high purpose, for holding out, as he said about ted, for a level of care taken with work and himself and his art. when the only thing at stake was the tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and it thing done ill. along the way, it turned out that john updike was, of course, a dream to interview on television or on radio. in his backyard in georgetown one time, we were talking about the white evans and the red sox right field.

once upon a time if on a beach, we celebrated the day of his pulitzer prize for "rabbit is rich." there were many other times like at a gallery filled with charles adams and other cartoons and covers from "the new yorker." often, in an interview with updike, the refers to the playful, incredibly smart consciousness of the man himself. a model of the nerve -- of the learned, as burke's of human being. then afterward would come often a post card wondering whether his jacket was to blue or some other bit of television remorse. it is a privilege to be introducing updikeans of much weightier authority than my own and to share in this collective noticing that life is a little less interesting with the john's

said an absence. nicholson baker is up in galt -- is the novelist of "the mezzanine." if there was any question that he was beyond category, is a big book, "human smoke" answered it. it is sort of a documentary history of the use of weapons of mass destruction and one of the great iraq warburg's for me. "u and i: a true story" was a book like none other i had read about what really happens being a reader and writer. it is funny, sexy, and incisive, but it establishes the fact that nicholson baker is that rare right to the consent of himself, but his subject, tell the whole truth and make you love everybody more than you could have imagined. nicholson baker. [applause]

>> thank you. i heard a little chirp, for my computer. it was like the beat of a hospital heart monitor except that there was only one of them. it was software telling me that an e-mail had arrived. is it the leader there appeared fading in it will closely rectangle down on the right hand corner which named the center of the e-mail and gave it a subject line. it was from a man i did not know very well but who had sent me many e-mails about his own dislikes and his health troubles and his political opinions. but the subject line which appeared in of the faded, my eye. it said something incomprehensible, that was not in english. it was in some horrible language of euphemism. it said, "condolences on updike's passing."

and i thought, passing? what does that mean? are we talking about death, about the death of john updike? he is not dead. he is very much in the middle of things. he has just had a book out, as always, and that would always be true. but i checked to know is said is said he had been sick and apparently had very politely and without making any sort of public scene, without any forewarning to people outside his closest circle, died. and sitting there at the desk, i did what you do when you have lost your glasses are your wallet or some crucially important document that you need like a note to the principle. i felt around on the desk top of my mind for what i had of john updike. but i could substitute for the living as of the man. and i did not have anything that

was served because the tremendous thing about him was that he was alive and writing and revising and reviewing some big -- headed biography into releasing another small piece of his own remembered past. perhaps slightly disguised and fictionized. he was in the midst of being a right-wing person. as well as being a human being, of course, who has a wife and i former wife and children and editors and fans. that is what i wanted from him, and that is what i did not have, evidence of his ongoingness. the computer started jerking again, and their editors to wanted me to write something about him immediately, and remembers, an obituary. a long time ago i published a book that was about him, sort of. therefore i guess i was thought of as an expert on updike. when i was not, i was just a mourner, like anyone else.

so i said no, i am sorry. i am just said. that is all i have to offer, just my own sadness. what i think of now, though, is a time when i saw him in the boston public garden more than 20 years ago. it was a cold, overcast late afternoon in the '80s, and there was a man walking toward me on the path. it was a narrow path, and i knew who it was. it was the famous john updike. we were over past the statue of george washington in the part of the garden that has fewer trees. it is always colder and when you are than other parts, and i had to figure out what to do. he was wearing a tweed jacket, button up tightly, and a scarf and hat. he obviously had somewhere to go, as i did not, really. if i stopped and i said, mr.

updike? he would have politely stopped and we would have had every conversation. i would maybe said that i like his writing, that he had signed one of his books for once and i had sent a fan letter but i had not put a return address on it because i did not want to compel him to answer. in the letter i told him that my girlfriend who had since become my fiancee had dug out of a wicker basket a story of his and given it to me and i had read two-thirds of it and decided, walking under the awning of a tuxedo shop in a moment of passing shade, that i wanted very much to write him and to tell him how happy it made me to know that he was out there working, but i could not stop him on his path and tell him all that because he was on his way somewhere. so i decided, instead, that i would just nod. i would pack everything i knew about him into my nod.

[laughter] everett memoranda had about packed dirt and the harvard lampoon and the drawing class at oxford and the office upstairs at ipswich, all that knowledge of him i would cram into one smiling, knowing nod. and that is what i did. and he nodded back, little and certainly, i think. he was not sure. maybe he knew me. then later in a letter, he said , didn't we meet once on arlington street? he remembered mine nod. what a memory on that guy. his very best book is his memoirs, health consciousness. he was best when he was truest, and the most amazing thing about

his truthfulness is its level of finish, of polish, because we all have faults. they are slumped on the couch and they are not at their very best. in fact, they are not completely shapen and they are not all that clean, necessarily. they are living in a halfway house of what you have to say. what updike does is he sends them an invitation. it is tasteful, understanding it -- understated, but beautifully engraved. he says, the favor of a reply is requested. please accompany john updike to the official writing of his next piece on whatever it is, on the car radio, on the monument to the united states, on william dean howells, who he said served his time to well. please attend this essay. at the bottom it says very quietly, black tie.

formalwear. that is what you want from an essay. you want these thoughts to have done their best, to have at least rent their outfits and present themselves to the world in their best guise. in not come as you are, updike said. come in black tie. -- do not come as you are. they obliged him repeatedly. they said ok, rsvp, we will be there. again she could say we had a correspondence over the years in that he wrote me letters and i wrote him letters that began, dear john. i once wanted to have a cup of coffee with him, and i think he'd prefer to have -- he preferred to write a letter. and who can blame him? there was one thing that i really wanted to write him about four years and never did

-- for years and never did. i wanted to write him that i had read one of his stories aloud to my daughter who was then about 13. i read her story called "the city." it is about a man who is on a business trip and he has a spot of in digestion and then turns out to be worse than in digestion, excruciatingly painful. he goes to the hospital, and it is his appendix. the whole story is just a very simple but well described account of his hospital stay in a city that he never ends up seeing. as i was reading it to my daughter, i came to the moment in the story that are remembered from when i first read it. the man is lying in his hospital room in the middle of the night, and he hears people moaning on either side of him. then there is a son of -- the sound of tiny retching, and then there is a sentence, carson was

comforted by these evidences him that at least he had penetrated into a circle acknowledged ruin. the word "ruin"there is so amazingly good, so well-placed. maybe it was that i gave a special inflexion as i read it aloud, but i do not think so. my daughter said, that is good. right at that moment, she liked, and she was excited by the very same phrase in the story that i had been excited by. it seemed so reassuring to know that there is sometimes an absolute moment in a story that many people will independently discover and remember, even across generations, and that this may have been one of those @@@@@@@ @ @ @ @ @ m@ @ @ @ @ @

and now i will never get to do that. so i tell it to you with sorrow. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, nicholson baker. the next person is a richer and recovering basketball star and was a golf buddy of john updike's for many years. under the name samuel shem, he wrote the turley bustling story of medical school called "house of god." god." he also, with his wife, wrote a play that will never die, i think, about the founders of alcoholics anonymous. his newest book is a novel called "the spirit of the place

,"and it has won awards. jocks know things about jocks, i look forward to what steve is going to tell us. >> thank you. this is a short story of a long friendship. john was the second writer i ever met. it was 1979. my personal had come out. he was 46, i was 34. we met at the house of the two riders. my first impression was clouded by nervous awe, but it was summer, and our conversation turned to golf. a week later, i was out on a public golf course packed with beer swilling guys whose wings

were converted from hockey. there had been a mistake and we were able to buy some, a six sum, actually. another young -- we were a fivesome. one couple would walk along with their arms around each other's waist, a true updikean touch. you can tell everything about a person by the way they play a sport. last night i calculated that in 30 years, john and i spent at least by thousand hours playing golf. we had a regular force and an often played with his son, david, now also a dear friend. -- we had a regular foresome. john was meticulous, are scorekeeper, cherishing the little yellow golf pencils. he was cruel, picking up pencils and tees all along the ground. for an uncontrolled and deviance

into the raw sensuality of woods and briars and swamps and lakes and sand traps, reliable to a fault on the greens, capable of astonishing flights of golf poetry and sudden crashes into a golf trash, and really funny. once when we were teamed up against the other two and i complained of a bad back, he said, steve, i wanted to know, if it is a choice between helping the team and hurting your back, i wanted to hurt your back. -- i want you to hurt your back. >> we would always talk about his medical questions. we always had our literature and career chat, what we were reading and writing, the folly of both popular literary taste, with the gossip was. often he would repeat something i said and i knew i would soon see it in a book or short story. he had an astonishing i and gathered details.

he made sure he knew the name of the last three to turn color. harry's condo in florida in "rabbit at rest " was my parents', whom john state with in order to be sure he got it right. janet and i became another foursome, celebrating christmas at their home with their mixed families. soon there start arriving book after book and private editions as for their presence, as well as cartoons and drawings such as a set of four golf balls on each a cartoon of the face of a member of our foursome. one night genet insisted that john and i take the myers briggs personality inventory -- janet insisted. i came out as a writer. he came out as an office worker or clark. [laughter] so much for psych testing.

we went to a fortune teller who came out with the same conclusion. every book he sent had an inscription, often blaming me "for steve, during this novel by suggesting it an inquiring after it constantly and making me talk it's lovely essence away." 48 niago for steve, without whos piece would have been composed with much less distraction." but to each of these, he added with affection, "john was the most loyal friend i ever had. he would always show up for events and listen attentively to my publishing was. if we had not talked on the phone for a while, he would always call. imagine a man who would call. when my publisher asked him if he would write the introduction to an addition of my novel, to

my surprise, he said yes, and included it in one of his anthologies. in postcards and letters and half joking inscriptions in the books, he pointed out my strengths and weaknesses as a writer, always in an encouraging way. i never saw him beyonyawn, and e never lost his temper. once at dinner at home when he was so angry that he pointedly left his napkin dropped a full 5 inches from his hand to the table. he was the most generous of critics. only in the last few years that i ever hear him voiced irritation at a writer. one in particular, who shall remain nameless. he talked freely with me about the craft. i learned an enormous amount from him. we had a secret joke. in "the witches of eastbrook," he wrote "the new young editor of the word slipped on a frozen

state outside the barbershop and broke his leg. " in my next novel, -- when i receive his last novel, sure enough, there toby bergman was again. the last few years of our friendship, because of various orthopedic surgeries on my part, were not on the golf course. we would meet for lunch at the harvard faculty club. he timed our lunches to his librium boxes of his personal papers to the library. john was always wonderfully humble. he was modest, but with a rock- solid confidence. once after a novel had gotten pan, i asked how he handled it. they are talking about my novel, he said, not about me. last summer we had a belated

joint birthday lunch at a hunt club where he never seemed quite comfortable. i noted his old man's wrinkled and scarred face, but when i looked into his eyes, those eyes, i recognize the signature of boyish joy of being alive and at play for another great day. he and i, too small-town boys sitting there in a grown-ups exclusive club, eating our sandwiches o bone china on a starched white tablecloth. the sun shone hot on the 18th green, lighting it up as if it were made of crushed emeralds. over lunch we laugh hard, happy to see each other again and delighted with their good fortune in live, talking about everything as best friends do, and in parking, he with his general handshaking slight stammer. i turned and saw him walking away slightly stooped, snowy hair shining in the sunlight, but with a bounce in his step as he swung his putter along, heading toward the green to

practice. that is the last time i ever saw him. there was the last post card in november. he told me about his diagnosis and a few other things about the care his family was showing him. after that, he drew back into himself. i knew that the sadness and aggressiveness of his cancer had been a shock to his self-image, and into that simply does not happen to those who, despite their bodies, phil young, feel in touch with in his transcendent line in one of his points, are having at the start but not the end of life. -- our heaven at the start. i kept in touch through david and the notes i wrote john. they are all different kinds of love in the world, and john wrote brilliantly about most of them. he taught me a lot about the love and friendship, and i find myself thinking about him most

days as if he is still around. and then realizing he is not, missing him pretty bad. when you did not get to say goodbye, there is a hole in your heart, sometimes for a long time. so i just want to say goodbye, john, i love you. you will live with me and all of us here today for the rest of our lives. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, steve. charles mcgrath, known as chip, is mary mcgrath's big brother, she being an exemplary radio producer and formidable golfer. ship is a writer at large for a good the new york times," but he is known for his service as editor of "the new york times"

book review as a kind of definitive literary editor. john used to kid mary about him, called chip the custodian of american literature. he reminds me a little bit of that wonderful cd of bill evans entitled "everybody loves bill evans." everybody loves chip mcgrath, and writers are generally inclined to distrust their editors, but they love chip mcgrath. he was a friend of john updike who read a lot of his work before it went into "the new yorker." he got extraordinary chance to deliver john updike's last book of points in the audio book. it is a great pleasure to introduce chip mcgrath. [applause]

>> i sometimes think that john updike is responsible for much of the happiness and satisfaction in my life. it began when i started reading him. it has always been a pleasure of his writing. i started in high school, and i even sort of imagined i was the updike characters. i think i prefer his adolescence to mind. by the time i was in college, i was such an idolater that it seem to me that the great man needed to know about me. so i made a pilgrimage to ipswich. i took the bus from new haven to boston and then the trains to the -- the train to the north shore. i got there about dinnertime, when it occurred to me that the great men would probably be sitting down and his family. what i say to him? i did not have a clue, so i got back on the train and went home. [laughter] i often think from that and characteristic act of restraint

so many of the blessings in my life. i actually got to know updike, to work at the magazine he wrote for, even to edit him on occasion. like so many young writers and editors, i got a couple of those magical postcards with john's address rubber-stamp in the upper left corner, offering some generous words of encouragement. john lived far removed from new york, the so-called literary capital, and yet in many ways he was still the one man center of literary life in this country, reading, reviewing, carrying on extensive correspondence. he was a foremost literary critic. writers everywhere cherishes example and long for his approval. but i would like today to talk about a part of updike that is less often discussed, his poetry, what he called the thready backside of his life's tapestry. i am ashamed to say that until just recently, i took this part of his work a little bit for granted and tended to undervalue

it. almost everyone did, except the poetry community, and they were mostly annoyed. you have your novels, your stories, your essays, the official attitude seemed to be. why do have to do this, too? i remember that even howard moss, himself a very good poet, used to take a certain satisfaction in pointing out the flaws in john's work. that was professional resentment, but with so many of us slow to appreciate john's verse? he was particularly self- he was particularly self- effacing about his poetry, the use to send his poetry submissions to the "new yorker" with a self-addressed envelope. he used a rubber stamp again, and it is not hard to imagine he was a sort of literary tradesmen, stamping his way every morning and launching on the mail and waiting to see what came back. he loved the minute -- the

mechanical part of publishing, the correspondence and a last- minute weeks. long after he became famous and successful, he still thrilled to a letter or phone call of acceptance. i think replacing poem sometimes to build him even more than replacing a story. in a preface to his collected poems, wrote the idea of verse, of poetry, has always stood at my elbow is a standing invitation to the highest kind of verbal exercise, the most satisfying, the most archaic, the most elusive of critical control. another resents his poetry may be undervalued as he began as a practitioner of light verse that now has all but vanished. he never entirely gave it up. he was often a light verse raider. much of his poetry in habits the end of the poetry spectrum that inhabits bright, clever, sophisticated, funny rather than the earnest and on the board as the fashion sometimes seems to

prefer. it is no less serious because of that, especially since he often slides invisibly from the playful and back again. nothing, of course, could be more serious than the openings with of poems. poems in "end point," the last book of poetry. it is his last surprise for his loyal readers. possibly it was a surprise for him, to, this book of heart breaking, beautiful poems written as he knew he was dying. as henry james would have said, nothing was wasted on john. all of experience was material waiting to be transformed into art, and he did it right to the end. in some ways he resembles thomas hardy, who at the end of his life turned away from fiction and dedicated himself solely to poetry. updike wrote fiction almost to the in, but who would have guessed his last testament, so to speak, is a volume of poetry

so great that it would have a claim on us and on austerity even if he had never written a word of prose. i do not want to dwell on the heart wrecking candor and self reflection of his last points. i will in by mentioning something else, the music. that he was a great descriptive poet goes without saying. it may be another reason his poems were sometimes undervalued. in his prose you always find passages with an ability to transcend. he was not a show of. sometimes you have to listen carefully to hear this music. i did not begin to hear it properly or appreciated until recently when i was asked to read the audio book version of "in point." i thought i knew his poetry greenwell, but sitting in a booth -- i thought i knew his poetry pretty well. but i heard things going on that i did not know were there.

echoes of frost and hopkins, language as dense an evocative as the world he described. here i would like to read a point that in many ways reenact exactly what he talks about, which is basically the ark of our lives themselves, an attempt to break free and soar in the inevitable fall back to earth. >> bird caught in my dear netting." the head must have seemed as ever, small edible matter, only a bird's eye could see, mixed with a brownish red needles and earth. a safe, quiet caves such as nature affords the meek, the featherhead alert to what it sought, bright eyes starting everywhere, but above, where net had been laid. then, at some moment, mercifully unwitnessed, an attempt to rise higher, to fly, met by an all but invisible women, beating

wings pinned, ground instinct and 9. the freedom of impossibly clothes, all about. how many starved hours of struggle to resume in fits of life's irritation did it take to seal and sew shut the very bright eyes and untie the tiny wild on of the heart? i cannot know, discovering this wad of fluff in his corner of netting gear cannot shoot through nor gravity defined bird bones and break. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, chip. and bearnaise had a head start. she is the great niece -- ann bernays. she is the great niece of sigmund freud. she has written non-fiction, some of it with her husband he,

like "the language of names," and "back then." she has also been a leading lady and guardian angel of letters around boston and cambridge ever since she arrived from new york in 1959 around the start of the new england era of john updike. she and john were friends from the 1950's. ann bernays, please. [applause] >> i am not going to read a talk. i am just going to make a few small, personal statements and do some remembering. there is a tendency, i think, a temptation to make a god out of a man who writes like a god, and i hope that will not happen.

i hope that all these wonderful people today, with their memories and their anecdotes, will help us keep in mind that this was an incredible man as well as an incredible writer. my relationship, as chris said st,, started when i moved to cambridge in 1959. we met him the first year we are in cambridge at a party. i was absolutely dumbstruck. i was all stricken and i could not talk to him. i think my being that tongue tied in his presence kept our relationship will like this, so that we never became real buddies. but i worshipped him. i think, on his part, it was amused toleration of me, that

is, because i kept asking him to do things all the time, and sometimes he did them and sometimes he did not. one time he came onto a panel that i had arranged á@@@@@ @ @ r twin my husband and my, we had maybe a couple of dozen post cards. only one of which i could find.

they used to have a rubber stamp here. this one has his name printed on it. that was 2000. the first anecdotes' concerns might teaching at the harvard extension school. i ask john to come in and talk to the students. and he said yes. so he came in. it was in our living room, and he sat in dallas. there were all looking at him expecting wisdom, which she eventually delivered. he turned to each one of them to say, and now i expect do not to make workshops the way of life. [applause] -- [laughter] the second one is, when my husband and i went away for the weekend in the came back on sunday, our daughter, who says

she does not remember this, but i have my husband to prove that it actually happened. it was between marriages, and the lived in a little apartment on beacon hill, i think. and he did not have a television set. so she heard as coming into the house, and she ran it to the door and said, john updike is in the kitchen watching television. he is watching golf. [laughter] so we went in there and had not seen him for while. he turned around and went shh. [laughter] and the last one is so adorable it makes me cry now. it was again in that little apartment on beacon hill. and he said, i have a very serious question -- he called me. i have a very serious question

to rest the. there is some bread in the icebox, and there is a little bit of green on the outside. he said, is it alright if i eat it? [laughter] and here is the post card. is that you were very 17, 2000. not so long ago. the arab anne, i -- dear anne, i miss you and good show. but to spare me -- i had been asking him several things. but do spare me a -- galas. b, black ties. c, literary trails. i look forward to you and your husband's memories of new york in the 1950's. i was there from 1955 through

1957 and remember loathing norman mailer's fulminations in the village voice. [laughter] now i love him. the wonder is that time works. all best, john. thank you. [applause] [applause] >> thank you, anne. william pritchard it is a professor of english. he has been teaching novels, plays, and points for more than 50 years. he did not exist, john updike would have invented him, i think. it was womb pritchard who was first -- william pritchard who was first in the field with a sweeping, critical review and appreciation of john updike, american man of letters, which i just reread. it is judicious, enthusiastic,

meticulous, and profoundly understanding. it is a great comfort to us fans. william pritchard. [applause] >> thank you, christopher. 36 years ago, i'd rather john updike with a couple of pieces i had written in which he was quoted were reviewed. his quick response emboldened me to continue bothering him periodically. when i asked if he would accept, if offered, an honorary degree from amherst college, he said yes, provided no speaking, speechifying, was involved, and suggested that just as a nation should conserve its fossil fuel, a writer should try to conserve his face and voice. he did know speechifying and the commencement of that in 1983, but had to deal with to speech challenges, both mentally and

gracefully. the first occurred as we ascended steps to the college presidents garden, whererinks would be served. at the tops of a friend, the wife of a pack of a colleague whom i introduced to updike and martha. without a pause, the friend informed and novelist and her mother is very much dislike his latest a " rabbit is rich." doubt was for its sex. a small, a twinkle, and, "i trust she will not be here tonight? " i introduced him to a thickheaded trustee whose business success has left small time for literary matters. he asked updike, what do you do? >> "i am a freelance writer," was the reply. later that evening we had a small party at our house, and among those in attendance were to novelists -- two novelists.

when updike wrote to thank you for looking after him, he noted, your post dinner party was a lot of fun. maureen howard had panned "marry me." but knows what other slights had been perpetrated, but we sat down cozy as kindergarteners on their first day, determined to be good, a steady and craft loyalty. [laughter] in anticipation, he had pictured the commencement ceremony itself held outdoors as sun drenched held outdoors as sun drenched the only music consisted of consistedhymns, and a steady rain began to fall. he was not always a genial host of a solicitation. for win over-eagerly i sent him a letter written defending against this person a reviewer cast on his recent work, and in the midst of another otherwise friendly reply, he noted, he

credit me with a couple of dozen engaging, sometimes moving short stories. one night -- when i published well more than 100 that i hope door rather more than engaging. . engaging" looked wore shabby to me. he was a teacher of fiction. when i published a book about my life as a student and teacher, mostly conducted at the same institution, he reminded me that he was not a teacher. i found your gracious me more about all those m. hurst year slightly harrowing in the way i fine colleges harrowing. everything is so dear, the neo- everything is so dear, the neo- goth buildings, the intelligent and witty faculty, and the shiny eyed students looking up and being fed. all celebrants of the golden days of college. he was careful not to sentimentalize his own, not unhappy years as a harvard undergraduate.

about a seminar i once offered divided equally between his work and bill roth's, he professed to being made nervous by the syllabus. just looking at it aroused letters in my stomach. thin >> we leave this recorded in to take you live to the carnegie endowment for peace in washington. today, president obama and pres. medvedev reached and a joint understanding on the agreement of allowing the transfer of u.s. military supplies to russia to afghanistan. now, a forum hosted by the arms control association and the carnegie endowment. it is live on c-span. >> this is an independent organization dedicated to prep call solutions to the most global security challenges. -- to the most serious global

security challenges. today, we will be talking about some of the world's most dangerous weapons, which of course, is the u.s. and russian nuclear arsenals. if you are like me, you just finished watching the moscow summit and the fireworks that were happening over there in whamoscow and it is sometimes ey to forget that the nuclear arsenals are there, given the lack of attention that has been paid to these arsenals in the last few years. but the moscow summit certainly reminded us that they are, indeed, there. and at the end of the coal world -- the cold war and the bush to the administration -- the bush two administration, this has left a lot of unfinished business. they have been left off the pages, but not off the firing line. that is what we are here to address today. mr. b. was first signed sinceç-

in the bush treaty in 1991. there have been a lot of missed opportunities since then. in many ways, these talks between president obama and pres. medvedev in moscow are really about unfinished business. but more than not, these talks are a bridge between old friends and new. start, as you know, was designed to manage the cold war arms race and today, we are more concerned with the spread of nuclear weapons to other countries and to terrorist groups, a threat which president obama has called, "the most immediate and extreme threat to global security." so as i said, the start treaty really bridges the gap from the old to the new. stretching back, if these negotiations succeed, this will be the first verifiable support our nuclear weapons arms reduction agreement completed since 1991, 18 years ago. really, making up for lost time.

on the other hand, this is the first step in president obama's april 5 pledge in prague to "seek peace and security in a world without nuclear weapons." this is the start of what we hope to be an ongoing arms reduction process. and this resumed process serves to rebuild the u.s.-russian relationship on arms control and non-proliferation. and this, in turn, would build an international support, we hope, for dealing with iran and north korea and nuclear terrorism and other proliferation challenges. this will also strengthen the non-proliferation treaty which is up for review next may. since the treaty calls for greater progress on our reductions. and since today's global security challenges are, of course, global in scope, we need international cooperation to succeed. so, the start treaty follow on process is thus, an essential part of dealing with nuclear

threats of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and is an essential bridge from the past to the future and as president obama said today in moscow, we must lead by example. that is what we're seeing the u.s. and russia do today. today, we will cover the status of the talks, the results of what happened in moscow, review the key issues of contention, including missile defense and discussed the importance of further nuclear reductions that we hope our forthcoming. to help us do that today, we have two of the most prominent experts in the field here in washington to help us understand what is going on. first up will be morton halperin, senior advisor at the open society institute. he was a member of the congressional commission on the strategic posture of the united states, which was released in may. he also served in the clinton, nixon, and johnson administrations working on nuclear policy and arms control. next up will be derrick

campbell, director of the arms control association and publisher of the aca's "arms control today. and he is a leader in his field and where the quoted on start and other issues. without further ado, morton, the floor is yours. >> thank you very much. it is a great pleasure for me to be here and i want to thank the arms control association for arranging this event and asking me to participate in it. as you all know, robert mack amera died this morning and it would seem to be remiss without -- robert mcnamara died this morning and it would seem to be remiss without taking into account a critical role that he played in this agreement that he would have been pleased about. when he became secretary of defense in 1961, the official policy of the united states was that nuclear weapons were conventional weapons and would

be used in any military conflict. when he left office seven years later, nuclear weapons were considered a weapon of last resort. that is still where we are today in this policy. he played a major role in that switching policy. he played a critical role in the change in nato policy which moved nuclear policy from that we would use nuclear weapons at the start of any conflict to, again, the notion that we would fight a war with whatever means necessary. he played a critical role in the -- in the decision of the u.s. to start the process that has come to be called a start. that is, to engage the russians in serious negotiations in the agreements to control offensive and defensive weapons. he fought hard against a ballistic -- ballistic missile defense deployments, which he believed would makeç it much me difficult to negotiate such

agreements, as we see even today. and he played an essential role in the non-proliferation treaty, persuading president johnson over the strong objections of the state department to begin the process of negotiating a treaty that would prohibit any additional countries from getting nuclear weapons. this treaty, which the two leaders reaffirmed the commitment to today, is, i think, in many ways a tribute to mac amerrobert mcnamara. it is a tragedy that he will be remembered more for the vietnam war than the positive role he played in this issue. as i said, the agreement announced today for a treaty is an important, positive step forward. it reaffirms where we were eight years ago, that is, that the two sides would have binding -- legally binding, legally verifiable agreements controlling their strategic weapons.

we came to a time of eight years in which the american administration rejected that notion, withdrew from the abm treaty and refuse to negotiate anything with the russians but a symbolic tree that had numbers in it that were not legally binding and had expired at the end of the treaty time. we now have a commitment from the two leaders to reestablish a system of legally binding agreements to apply both to numbers of deployed warheads as well as to delivery systems and to back up with an effective verification process and the effect of accounting rules to determine how many delivery vehicles there are actually could be. this is a very modest step with just -- with members to slightly below than what the bush administration was contemplating. but in my view, it was the right

way to complete the process. -- to begin the process. the commission recommended precisely this, that the first step should be a modest one, but that it should include weekly bonding -- binding limits on both delivery vehicles and warheads and it should be verifiable, and that it should then lead -- as one hopes and expects this agreement will -- to future treaties that will involve much deeper and deepe substantial reductions in forces. i think it is also notable that the two sides found a way to bridge their differences on ballistic missile defense. as i read it, the russians have agreed to go forward with this agreement on offensive forces without a binding agreement on ballistic missile defense. at the same time, the u.s. has committed itself in a more formal way to a process of seeking to find a solution for

the ballistic missile defense problem, which is cooperative with the russians and does not seem to pose any threat to them. there are still a lot of details to work out and i think we cannot assume that we will have a treaty by the deadline, which is the end of this year, but certainly, the steps today make it much more likely that we will have that agreement by the end of the year and i would anticipate the senate will overwhelmingly ratified it. it would pave the way for a much force -- much more substantial reductions that are appropriate, given the current strategic situation. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> i'm derrick campbell, director -- executive director of the arms control association. i would like to join mort in recognize the contributions of

robert mcnamara, one of the founding members of the arms control association back in the 1970's. his contributions were huge. he will be missed. i'm going to be describing a little bit more about some of the issues that the two presidents need to deal with as they move forward in this negotiation on this start follow-on, as it is called. as mort said, this summit marks progress, negotiations between the two sides on this follow on agreement just began in april. there have only been four rounds of discussion, so we are in the beginning phases of this. as we have heard today at the press conference in moscow between the two presidents, would they have issued a joint statement outlining the parameters of this new agreement. they have said that the reductions that the new agreement aims to achieveç will create lower limits on the number of strategic delivery

systems, that is, the missiles and bombers and a launchers -- and of the launchers below the start limit of 91,600 launchers. it is going to move the limit down to between 500 and 1100 each. i will come back to that. that is quite a range. i will discuss a little bit more what that means. keep in mind, currently the united states has about one tauzin 100 strategic delivery systems. -- has about 1100 strategic delivery systems. the reductions they're talking about our modest if they're going to be in the upper range, but could be more substantial fare in the lower range, around 500. they also said that a new agreement will achieve limits and the number of deployed at strategic warheads that may be on those missiles and bombers. they said that the new agreement will move the ceiling down from about 2000 -- 2200, which is

where we are roughly today with both sides down to about 1500.org 1600. roughly, a one-third reduction -- about 1500 or 1600. roughly about a one-third reduction. the exchange rate is based on the 1991 start treaty, the star system that had been in place for almost two-two decades. it should be simple to carry in this new agreement, but there may be some issues that the two sides debate about in the coming months. before gone to that, i will talk about some of the key issues that they need to resolve. ì(lc@&c+ this should be seen as an interim agreement. as morton said, this is a stopgap agreement that consolidates the approaches that were pursued under george bush the first in 1991 under start,

and the approach pursued under george of the bush in 2002 in the so-called moscow treaty. the start treating delivered -- limited delivery systems. the moscow treaty of 2002 limited deployed warheads. the current president's are seeking to negotiate a rate -- an arrangement that limits but deployed warheads and strategic delivery systems. this is very important because if start were to expire without a replacement in december of this year, the two countries' nuclear weapons arsenals would be virtually unregulated. because the 2002 moscow treaty establishes a limit that only goes into place in december of 2012, which is the same day that expires. it is very important for the two sides to conclude this interim

agreement. what is most important about it is not the size of the directions -- of the reductions. these are born to be very modest reductions. but it the fact that is regulation -- continue regulation of about 95% of the world's total nuclear stockpiles. given that it is going to be a modest agreement, if they can work through the issues, the arms control association thinks that is very important that u.s. and russian leaders not stop with starch. at the end of this negotiation, which will hopefully conclude by the end of the year, that they begin work on a new round of more comprehensive negotiations that include not just the deployed warheads and delivery systems, but also the non deployed warrants -- warheads. both sides retain a sizable numbers of nuclear warheads in

storage but give each side the capacity to reconstitute its arsenals. in addition, there are large stockpiles of large tactical bombs which were created in the '50s and '60s to fight a land war in europe between the u.s. and the soviet union, something that is no longer likely at all. these arsenals are clearly weapons of a dead conflict that should be reduced and regulated by both sides. so, there needs to be a new round of more comprehensive reductions that substantially reduces all of the arsenal, the total arsenal of both sides in the coming year. another thing before i go to some of the details of the negotiation, doing nothing, as some would2suggest, as some anti arsenal ideologues would

suggest, is not a realistic option. to allow the agreement to expire in the -- in december would add to the already difficult u.s.- russian relationship that in addition to arms control, involves issues awaiting the possible expansion of nato, forced balances in europe, energy issues as well as missile defense. we need to move forward with this agreement. not just to send a signal to the world that the u.s. and russia are reducing the number of xmñnuclear weapons, but it is important to restore better u.s.-russian relations. there are several tough issues that they're going to have to resolve. as the joint statement today noted, there is a range of strategic nuclear delivery systems that the negotiators are looking at, between 500 and 1100. the u.s. has a relatively large

nuclear delivery system stockpile -- a relatively larger nuclear delivery systems? how then does russia. russia is putting a priority -- delivery system than does russia. russia's putting a priority on its ability to theoretically take its warheads out of reserve and put them on its strategic delivery systems. that can be achieved by reducing the number of overall missiles and bombers. it can also be achieved by finding ways to limit the number of warheads that may be placed on those of delivery systems. we will have to see how the two sides resolve their differences on this issue. one limiting factor for the u.s. is that the obama administration is in the middle of a nuclear posture review, which has been mandated by congress to be completed by the end of this year. it is going to be difficult for the administration to make any radical changes in this nuclear force structure before that

nuclear posture review is completed. i think it's likely that the u.s. side is not going to want to make deep reductions or to commit to the productions and the number of missiles and bombers until that is -- the nuclear posture review is completed. in addition, there are differences that have been known about for some time. the president did not mention this relating to the possible convention of nuclear delivery systems to conventional payloads. there has been talk in the u.s. for some time that some of the nuclear-armed submarine launched missiles might be armed with conventional payloads which would certainly make them more useful in terms of dealing with 21st century threats than the nuclear payloads. but that is of concern to russia because russia believes that these missiles, which have very -- they are capable of striking very accurately -- could have

the potential to knock off their command and control system. there were about these conventionally abouticpm's. one solution would be to count those conventionally armed missiles under the overall limits in this new start agreement. after all, the u.s. is not moving ahead with this approach quite yet and if the united states were to armed with conventional warheads some of the missiles that are now armed with nuclear warheads, the numbers we're talking about are very low. it would not affect the overall u.s. force. another issue that is going to be a challenge is, which of the start verifications provisions to carry over. the good thing is that both sides have a lot of experience with the monitoring, on-site inspections and information exchange provisions. but they have different views about which one of these is most important. we did not get too many clues

today about what the possible areas of disagreement or agreement you were. finally, a couple of thoughts about missile defense and we can get a little more into this on discussion. as you heard today at the press conference, the question was heard about whether the old plan from the george of the bush administration to deploy a handful of interceptions in poland and the czech republic might interfere with or be a stumbling block for completion of this negotiation on a start follow on. i think it was clear from the exchange that this will not and does not have to be a stumbling block to conclude this agreement. the two presidents issued a joint communique on missile defenseç that makes it clear ty will continue the dialogue that has been taking place on and off

over the past several years about a joint early warning system for third country missiles that might threaten both the u.s. and russia. they also are likely to be continuing off and on discussions -- discussions that were on and off utilizing some of russia's regard on the southern frontier, which could be helpful to the u.s. in during over the horizon to see whether there is an iranian missile coming over verizon. and they're also going to continue to discuss -- over the horizon. and there also would continue this -- to discuss joint issues. russia hasid been saying that there are no long-range missiles that can hurt the3>r u.s. and they have a point. i think is very useful for the united states and russia to threats that might face the united states in europe. the president -- and in europe.

the president did not make any commitments about whether he would or would not go ahead with that so-called at third sight for strategic missile defense in eastern europe. he did note that there is a missile defense policy review that is ongoing. he mentioned that it would be done by this summer, which i would assume to mean by the end of september. i would not expect the u.s. to even then commit to russia and one way or another about what is going to do with that third sight. but what the u.s. and russia can do, and we have to remember that given that system has not even been tested, the u.s. is in a position to move ahead with deployment of the third side. testing will not be completed for several years. the u.s. and russia have time to discuss cooperative approaches.

and a joint assessment, and even to find ways to overcome some of their past differences and cooperate in building a joint missile defense architecture, if necessary. so, missile defense should not, need not become an impediment to these ongoing discussions right now, but it will be something that the two sides need to clearly resolve before they move on to the next round of more comprehensive, deeper reductions on all types of nuclear warheads, which we hope that they will move toward by the end of -- by the beginning of next year. we will stop there and take your questions. >> morton and carol, thank you very much for doing an excellent job and looking at the issues that have come before us. i would love to take your questions. i would love to enter with any media and the room and if not, just general questions.

anyone who has questions out there. yes, right here. >> [inaudible] >> there is a microphone coming around. >> you both mentioned this was a modest agreement. do we need an nuclear posture review to be done before we ratify this in the senate? and if not, does this mean that we might have more time for the nuclear posture review so that -- for the follow-on agreement after this we can really get down to deeper cuts? >> the nuclear posture review is a congressionally mandated executive branch review of the u.s. nuclear policy. my understanding is that the administration's explanation of where we are is that the nuclear posture review reached some

interim conclusions of which enabled them to begin negotiations with the russians and reach these numbers. so, these numbers have been approved, as i understand it, in the nuclear posture review of an interim set of conclusions. since they are very modest reductions, they did not require any fundamental rethinking of our nuclear posture. i think the timing is actually good. i do not think we need to slow down the process. the intent is for the nuclear posture review to be completed by the end of the year. one of the things that is explicitly designed to do is to provide guidance of the next round of negotiations with russia about further reductions in strategic forces. i think is important that we begin those talks as soon as this treaty is completed. çit but i also think that politically in the united states, it is important that those talks -- not begin until

the nuclear posture review is completed. you will hear criticism from senators that even this agreement should have waited until the nuclear posture review is completed. and i think the administration's answer is that it did weight, but that they were able to conclude an interim, a quick round of the posture review which reached the conclusion that these very modest additional reductions were consistent with any notion of what of their weapons might be used. but i think it is essential that before the next round of associations that the nuclear posture review be completed, the president had approved it, and that it be publicly describe to the congress and the american public so that people can see that the follow-on agreement is consistent of what we have decided -- is consistent, but we have decided on our own is in the history -- interest of the united states and our allies.

>> i'm sorry i missed morton's tock. but i assume that you did not talk -- raise this issue that i'm going to raise. you wrote a book called nuclear fallacy back in the '80s in which you said there is no military function for tactical nuclear weapons. we do not need them. we just want to get rid of them. apparently, after reading your book, george bush the first did exactly that. in this posture review book, i do not find any persuasive argument for any of our nuclear argument -- weapons, including the strategic ones. i know that we worship nuclear- weapons and we cannot just abolish them. but it seems like we should raise the question of, do they

actually serve a function." it seems that all of them -- all of these solutions that we have come to our totally insane. -- are totally insane. >> that is a good question. what are nuclear-weapons for? we are in a different century. the u.s. and russia have a different relationship than they did during the cold war. the nuclear posture review, which was the subject of the last question, is important because it provides the president with an opportunity to review this question. the current requirements -- and more, you can correct me here -- are that nuclear weapons not only serve as a deterrent for other countries, but they're also there in the event of an overwhelming conventional attack on the u.s. or its allies. they are there to counter the possibility of chemical or biological threats and to

dissuade other countries from building up their arsenals. in my view, and the view of a growing number of other people, the only defensible position today for u.s. nuclear weapons is to deter the use of naqoura weapons by other countries. if the u.s. and other countries reduce their -- of the u.s. and russia and other countries to reduce their arsenals, we can move towards a discussion about much lower levels of perching zero nuclear weapons in the years ahead. the essential part of this is that the u.s. and russia and other countries need to adjust their view of what new corlette -- nuclear weapons are for. these weapons were created to fight a land war in europe, the tactical weapons.

for the u.s. and russia, that is no longer a valid mission and for the -- is important for the u.s. to press russia to begin negotiations on first accounting for those warheads, and for verifiably reducing those warheads. that is going to be difficult and is something for the next round of negotiations, i think. you have got to remember that the u.s. has several hundred battlefield tactical warheads, but russia is believed to have as many as about 8000. not all those are readily available for use, but is still a very large number. they pose a different kind of risk today, which is -- it is a low probability but high consequent risk that they could be lost or sold to a third party or terrorist organization. we need toç get to a point at which we are negotiating or reducing those stockpiles, and that begins with a fundamental reassessment of why these weapons exist, which has

changed. but president obama gave a very important direction and guidance to the nuclear posture review. he said the purpose of it would be to reduce the nation's reliance on nuclear weapons. if an means anything, has to mean what he just said. that is, eliminating the ambiguity that you maintain a clear weapons possibly to deter chemical attacks or biological attacks or to deal with conventional attacks. and to say affirmatively -- and i hope the nuclear posture review will lead the president to state clearly and affirmatively that the u.s. maintains nuclear-weapons to deter their use by others, period. i think that is inherent in the president's statement that he looks forward to a world without nuclear weapons and believes that america's the security needs can be dealt with in a world without nuclear weapons.

it must mean that we believe we can deal with all of the threats, conventional, biological, chemical, without resorting to nuclear weapons and that the nuclear weapons resist for only that purpose. i think it is -- the new weapons exist for the purpose. i think is essential that we say that. unfortunately, even if we do, it is not clear that the russians will follow suit. they are tempted with the same policy that i was writing about that the americans had been tempted with before, which is, the fallacy that the weapons can somehow make up for a conventional inferiority. the russians' view themselves as conventionally inferior or around their borders and they are flirting with the notion that this tactical nuclear arsenal can somehow make up for it. i think it cannot. everywhere it has been fought since hiroshima and nagasaki has been settled on the basis of conventional and nuclear power.

those nuclear devices are simply not usable weapons. let me say work -- a word about the tactical nukes. i think this has been harder than suggested. in my own view, we probably can do one more round, and should do one more round with the russians after this one before we get to the problem of tactical weapons and non-deployed weapons. i say that because i think the problem with dealing with those weapons is extraordinarily difficult. we do not know how many tactical nuclear weapons the russians have and we do not have a clue as to how to verify an agreement to limit or exclude all tactical nuclear weapons in the american and russian arsenals. but moreover, we do not know how to do with non-deployed weapons. there are two substantial problems with not deployed

weapons. one is, verifying how many each side house and monitoring the agreement to limit them to whatever number you want to. and the of the question is, what is a non deployed within as compared to a weapon earmarked for destruction -- for destruction? both countries have large nuclear-weapons that they have taken out of their arsenals that they have earmarked for destruction. this is only a slight exaggeration to say that what distinguishes a non-deployed weapon from a weapon earmarked for destruction is the label put on it. so then when we tried to destroy a weapon, which is a label from non-deployable weapon to weapon waiting for destruction and we do a little good, but not much. it is very hard to know how to verify whether those could be redeployed. these are extraordinarily difficult problems and unless

you simply decide that it does not matter, which i think we are nowhere near ready to do, is going to be very difficult to reach agreement on those weapons. that is why i think it may be worth considering one more round with the russians, more than the numbers talked about here, which i think we can safely do before we deal with the question on the non-deployed weapons and the tactical nuclear weapons, which we clearly have to do as we move onto variable numbers and ultimately to the elimination of nuclear weapons. >> yes, ma'am? >> i'm from george mason university. the purpose of naqoura funds is to deter other states from giving nuclear-weapons and you are relying on a jury thatç haa lot of flaws. deterrence sometimes breaks down. i think it was george kennan who said that deterrent to such a great idea that it has become

contagious. and lieutenant robert green said deterrence is making a war less likely by making it more likely. if our purpose is a theory that is what, then -- flawed, then what about alternative strategies? it works best when it is accompanied by drastic attention reduction, so we may want to switch to a policy of mutually shared survival. can you comment? >> well, i think those are useful thought. as i said before, the u.s. and russia and leaders -- military leaders in each of our country's need to reassess the role in light of changed circumstances. we can argue about whether deterrence worked or was flawed.

i happen to think that it was more flawed than worked in the cold war years. looking ahead, nuclear weapons do not have the value that they once were thought to have. we need to recognize that today, nuclear weapons are more of a liability than an asset in most situations around the world. the u.s. and russia need to move past the old dynamics and work together to deal with the 20% 3 threats. -- 21st century threats. we saw -- president obama's remarks that he plans to eliminate by the end of this year and that is going to be working on countries that have nuclear material, nuclear facilities that pose a threat, a proliferation threat trying to find a way to consolidate the

different initiatives that have been launched since the end of the cold war, to secure those materials. that is an equally important initiative that he has launched an that russia needs to fully support. i am looking forward to more details about that. we have not heard much about it, but it is important. >> i think we need over the longer term to move to a different basis of dealing with the russians on these issues. we are still locked in in this whole discussion. and the moscow summit was based on the notion that we are potential adversaries that might threaten each other with nuclear weapons, and i think that is not the right fringe bork. -- the right framework. i think we need to try to gauge the russians, and i think the president was doing that -- to engage the russians, and i think the president was doing that. the ballistic missile defense

talks about what countries might threaten to use those weapons. but i think that is going to be a long process, and one that is going to require both countries to get past old habits and old prejudices and old ways of thinking. we need to move parallel on these two tracks. one is taking arms control as it is and moving down as low as pecan and seeking to use that to string -- low as we can and seeking to use that to strengthen the non- proliferation. and at the same time, strengthen the russians, and the chinese, in a fundamentally different kind of discussion about what mutual security really is and how would cooperate in dealing with common threats to our societies. -- and how we deal with common threats to our societies. >> as you have both noted, the

announcement includes a range of numbers for vehicles and warheads. i wonder what you it is a paid about the factors going into whether the two sides and on the higher range -- higher end of the range rather than the lower. >> the question was about how the two sides are going to address the question of selling on the ceiling for the total number of strategic delivery vehicles, which is the jargon that she used to describe the missiles and bombers that carry the warheads. clearly, the starting point here is that the u.s. has a larger number of submarine land-based missilesç and heavy bombers to carry the warheads. officially, the united states has roughly 1200 strategic delivery systems.

in reality, about 100 of those are phantom systems. they really are not -- the missiles are not deployed. but according to the current accounting rules, they exist. we're really closer to 1100. russia has a smaller, mainly land-based missile -- missile force of around 800. officially, probably not all of those are in good working order. the starting platform of these negotiations is a considerable difference in the way these forces are going about this. in part, because of the way these negotiations are taking place in the midst of the nuclear posture review, the u.s. is going to find it difficult to significantly reduce the number of systems in this round of negotiations. russia, which as i said before, is concerned about the theoretical possibility the united states is capable of redeploying from a larger number of is reserve warheads,

again wants to chop the missile and bomber force down substantially. and they're facing budgetary and problem -- programmatic problems. they are racing to try to replace some of the older cold war systems with a newer missiles. they said they cannot keep pace. independent estimates are that with or without a new arms limit -- limitation treaty, russia probably could not field more than about 1800 strategic nuclear warheads by 2012. there are differences in the positions coming in. i think it would be very smart for the two sides to eventually reduce the total number of strategic delivery systems. i think that is probably going to be something that they can do in the next round. i think one of the creative ways in which they might settle this is that the u.s. might simply

agreed to field out of some of its submarines, its trident submarines with a smaller number of missiles loaded on them. currently, these submarines can carry as many as 18 strategic missiles. if there were under this treaty, there would only be allowed to carry 12. that could be easily verified and that could substantially reduce the total number of u.s. deployed warheads as well as the number of delivery systems. russia would have to agree with that. that is not an irreversible approach to this problem, but that is one with the two sides could creatively split the difference. i would not be surprised to see that in the end they have to have a ceiling that is a range. i don't think that would be the ideal approach, but they may in

the end have a range that the trudi specifies -- that the treaty specify its one country has an upper range and the other has a lower one. this could be an interim coalition should that sets up a much more substantial and comprehensive reduction in the next two to three years. >> i agree with that. i think you have to understand this number in two contexts puree. the administration does not want to be in a position of agreeing to a number which it cannot say was certified by the nuclear posture review. so, it would take the two numbers separately. if you look at the war had number, the current agreement of the moscow treaty is 2200 to 1500 deployed warheads, but it is not legally binding and expires as soon as it goes into affect. we are now going to have a real number, and i think that the political imperative was to get

down below the 2200 #, but to have a bit of a range so that the u.s. can say that it's number was still justified by the nuclear posture review. my hope and expectation is that by the time this treaty is being ratified by the senate, a posture review will be completed and the administration will be able to say that they can go to 15 under because it is justified by the nuclear posture review. on delivery systems, the issue turns in part on how you define delivery systems, that is, what accounting rules are under start. my guess is that what the administration has said to the russians -- if you want to get agreement on the floor number, you're going to have to change accounting rules so that what counts as a delivery systemçó enables us to get closer to the 500 number. if you do not want to change many of the accounting rules, --

although, he would probably have to change a few of them -- then you will be at the higher number. the negotiation will be the trade-off between those two, with accounting rules are, and therefore, how low the number goes. but there will still be a range. again, my guess is that the lower number will be where the russians expect to be. the higher number will be what we can justify based on the interim nuclear posture review with the notion that when we complete the review we can announce that we will actually go to a lower number. and >> yes, sir, in the back. >> do think russia and the u.s. view the nuclear power of pakistani descent -- in a similar way and does this agreement affect their cooperation in afghanistan and their approaches and responses to terrorism?

>> that is a good question. i think pakistan present a different kind of problem today. pakistan is one of the three countries that has never signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and a data arsenal of about 60 to 80 nuclear bombs. pakistan represents a proliferation threat in two senses. as we know, from the 8 uconn story, -- h ucona.q. kahn storyt pakistan has been of the powerful -- proliferation with other groups. and with the war going on, there is the tir reddick possibility that their nuclear art -- the theoretical possibility that their nuclear arsenal could fall to the wrong hands. i would guess that both governments recognize the on the

ground risks in pakistan. i think they may prioritize them a little differently. since the u.s. is so committed to pushing up the insurgency in afghanistan and pakistan, i think what the agreement today that was announced about u.s. military transit rights to bring in military equipment and supplies over and through russian territory to supply u.s. forces in afghanistan is a sign that the obama reset button approach of emphasizing the positive rather than the negative in the u.s.-russian relationship is producing some modest results. i think this is assigned that there is better feeling between the two. to the extent that russia, i think for the first time i believe, is allowing u.s. military transit rights over its territory is something hard to

imagine 15-20 years ago. but i want to make a couple comments. first, about a statement that the russian president made in the press conference was quite extraordinary. as i heard him, he basically said, we share a common interest in dealing with the terrorist threat from afghanistan and we are pleased to cooperate with the americans. and yes, we will have transit rights, he said, but we are also willing to talk about other ways to cooperate in dealing with the terrorist threat. and of course, the russians are as concerned about muslim extremists terrorism as the u.s. is. on pakistan, i think there is a common interest and a need for a common approach, but one that needs to include the chinese as well as the british and french. and it is in the context of the text van and the ban on the for the production of nuclear weapon. -- weapons. we have a common interest with the russians and the chinese and british and french, which i think was not engaged in this

summit because i think they're just was not enough time to do it. to talk about, first of all, american non-proliferation, but then the cooperation between iran states and russia and china to put pressure on india and pakistan to adhere to the treaty and to commit themselves to a moratorium on fishing and more -- material production. that is something i would expect them to -- to begin to cooperate on. we also need russian cooperation to get this test ban ratified in the u.s. because there is an allegation that somehow the russians have a different definitionñr of what is banned y the nuclear test ban treaty. i do not believe that. i believe we do have a common interest. but i think russian cooperation in making that clear to the

senate and to the american people will be critical to getting the treaty ratified in the senate and then enable the two countries with china to work together to try to persuade pakistan and india and altman the, the other countries that are net -- and ultimately, the other countries that are needed to get that agreement into place. >> today's announcement about the results of this summit and the obama-medvedev talks, as president obama said in april in prague, u.s. leadership on nuclear disarmament, u.s.- russian leadership, is critical to the global non-collaboration -- non-proliferation system. that argument has been supported in washington by saying that the u.s. peter does not have an effect on iran and north korea. that is a misreading on what the president is saying. and the importance of this kind of action on by the u.s. and russia on the global non-

proliferation effort. in may of 2010, the u.s. and russia and other countries are going to be convening for once every five years conference to a value of having a clear non- proliferation treaty of 1968 is fairing. -- on how the nuclear non- preparation treaty of 1968 is fairing. the u.s. and russian need to get the non-nuclear weapon states to work with them to improve safeguards, to clamp down on those countries that do not comply with their safeguards, like iran and north korea, to find ways to work together to limit the spread of technologies that could be used to make bomb material. the only way they're going to be able to build that support is by fulfilling their disarmament obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and moving ahead, once again, on verifiable reductions in their bloated arsenals is the

first and best way to do that. that is another way of saying that without this agreement we are going to have an extremely difficult time at the review conference trying to deal with other types of nuclear threats. this question about pakistan brings this to my mind, and that is another important reason why this agreement needs to be completed by the end of this year by both governments. >> last question for steve gagnon. -- from stephen young. >> you talked about the peace start is the range of delivery vehicles. what is behind that? there are only 136 missiles

[unintelligible] yet we are saying that we need 1100 and the russians less than that, 500. there's a big question about that. i cannot figure out or was going on there. -- figure out what is going on there. >> i get a headache every time someone starts to explain it to me. but under the current start treaty, we now have about 5000 deployed -- the start treaty did not limit actually deployed weapons. it limited warheads deployed by accounting rules that link them to deployed delivery systems. and under those rules we have something like 5000. we're going to much lower numbers than those and i think we do not get credit for that here because of the way they have this -- they have structured the description. but i think the u.s. government

is saying that even though the warheads are actually deployed that under the old stars, -- start counting rules, lots of things count. and therefore, the number is closer to the top limit here than it is to the 500 number, but that if we can change the accounting rules so that they more accurately reflect what is now actually deployed, then we can go to the lower numbers. my hope that is all out -- my hope is that it is all that is. the u.s. can say, we know we do not need more than 1100 and the russians can say, we do not want to go below 500 and they agree on, if not aç number, then a smaller range of the accounting rules. and if the russians are willing to be relaxed about only counting things that are actually deployed or deployable,

then we will be able to get to a significantly lower number. >> stephen, thank you for the correction on the trident missile numbers. but as more it said, this is in part confusing because we are in a phase when the u.s. and russia are trying to integrate of a very different approaches to strategic arms limitations. we're going to have to, all of us, a very attentive -- careful attention -- paid very careful attention to the reference points in this discussion. i would agree with mort, what matters here is the number of operational in deployed warheads. we have got to pay close attention to what the final accounting rules are, but we have to also pay close attention to the fact that there is a huge number of non deployed warheads as well as tactical

numbers. today in a joint statement, and the 1500 range. there are many more weapons that the u.s. and russia need to deal with and that is one of the reasons why we believe that they should not stop with this start follow-on agreement. they need to move to a more comprehensive and transparent report -- approached to irreversible reductions. >> thank you very much. we are out of time. before we thank you and we thank our speakers, just two notes. the arms control association website has a lot more control -- information on all of this come out armscontrol.org. and number two, we will be back here for a press briefing on july 21, 10:00 a.m., to talk specifically about technology threats and implications for the start treaty process -- july

21, 10:00 a.m., right here. with that, thank you for joining us and please thank our speakers. [applause] . . >> we will re-air the joint news conference with president barack obama and dmitri medvedev tonight at a clock on c-span. tomorrow, president barack obama joins russian prime minister vladimir putin for breakfast. later on, he talks with its

former soviet leader mikhail gorbachev. he will also speak of the new economic school and meet with russian political and business leaders. on wednesday, he travels to la quila, italy. on saturday, he flies to africa for a visit to the capital of yangon not. --ghana. a review of the supreme court term this afternoon. it is live at 3:30 p.m., on c- span. the organization of american states or oas suspended honduras on friday. that occurred about one week after the elected president of honduras was removed from office by the military. the state department spokesman talks about the situation in honduras and other topics for

about 35 minutes. >> welcome back, mr. lee. we missed you. i hope you have some good photographs of an exotic region. welcome on monday, to the briefing room. i hope you all had a relatively relaxing three-day weekend. i cannot say mine was entirely relaxed but it was a good weekend. i want to make a couple of updates to the secretary's schedule. let me read some remarks at the top. the secretary is in the office today. she stopped by deputy steinbergs meeting with the chinese deputy

foreign minister. she is also going over to the nsc this afternoon for a small group meeting. a few words on the dramatic developments over the weekend with oas. as you know, on july 4, the u.s. joined other oas member states in unanimously deciding to suspend honduras from participating. our goal remains the restoration the democratic order in honduras. we renew our call on all political and social actors in honduras to find a peaceful solution to this crisis we regret the necessity of this measure. we look forward to the day when circumstances will allow the measure to be lifted and honduras is' participation

resound. this suspension does not mean the end of oas diplomatic initiatives to resolve the situation. it does not relate honduras of its legal obligation to its organization, particularly for respect to human rights and fundamental freedoms. we deplore the use of force against demonstrators in recent days. we call upon the defect to regime and all actors in honduras to refrain from all acts of violence we want them to seek a peaceful and lasting solution to the serious divisions in that country through dialogue. we call on all oas member-states to act collectively and individually to enhance the well-being of of the honduras people by insuring continued out reach of the honduran society,

maintaining be effective flow of humanitarian assistance and rejecting the incitement and use of violence to affect political change. with that, i will take your questions. >> when you say you seek the restoration of democratic order -- have you figured out exactly what that means? >> in the most immediate instance, it means the return of the democratically elected president. >> why don't you say that? i guess you just set up but why don't you just say that you call for his return? >> we do call for his return. >> have you guys made a decision yet on a determination on whether a military coup has transpired and therefore whether u.s. aid would have to be cut off? >> as i said on thursday, we decided that no aid that would

be subject to termination under this law, that none of this kind of aid is now flowing to the defect -- de facto regime. we are in the ongoing process of whether the law applies. we're not inclined to make a statutory decision while of diplomatic initiatives are ongoing. >> there are people on the hill who feel strongly that despite concerns -- despite uncertainty about whether or not this is a military coup or not, their view is that it is. he was arrested in his residence. he was detained and put on a plane by the military. i suspect you will have explained to do if you do not actually make a determination

one way or the other on this. it could be weeks or days or months. will you put this decision which is legally mandated in abeyance until all diplomatic efforts have been exhausted? >> there are couple of points -- most of our activities are excluded under this particular section of blog. -- law. that is humanitarian law to support democracy-building programs. what we have decided to not continue our funding of is those programs that could be construed as directly aiding the government or what we are

calling the de facto regime of honduras. it is a complicated process. we recognize that we may make this determination to terminate and that is why any programs that could be construed as aiding the government -- none of this aid is flowing through the pipeline now. >> i thought that the language only specifies -- only exclude a bed is democracy-related. i did not think that it excludes humanitarian, as well. >> we will double check that. >> how much of it has stopped? >> i don't have that information. i can see if we can get it. >> presumably, if you stopped

it, someone has an idea of how much it is. >> that is a fair assumption. we will see if we can get to that. >> both the ambassador and the delegation are coming here? >> we don't know about a delegation coming here. if the delegation is from isde facto regime, the state department would not meet with them. this is a regime we do not recognize. we do not have any affirmation about a delegation coming here. we have heard that there may be a delegation going to san salvador but that our -- but those are reports we have heard. president selaya, as i understand, understad it, you sd

probably check. you should project of his office in san salvador. he tried to travel to honduras yesterday the flight was denied clearance to land. the plane first went to nick occoquan and outsell the door -- nicaragua and el salvador. we understand his plans are to remain in san salvador today and come back to the u.s. tomorrow. we are very focused on the need for a dialogue to restore him back and restore the democratic order. >> does the administration have

any plans to meet him at a senior level? >> we have not made any set plans. i am sure we will meet with him that day senior level. there are no plans yet. >> will that be above the secretary? >> i cannot give you that information yet. >> are you the only official who was talked in recent days? >> no, a couple of other u.s. officials have met with him. yes? will go here and will come back. >> we understand that roberto flores, who used to be ambassador to the white house before selaya, he is backing

honduras. we were told that he is backing honduras to tender his recognition -- his resignation. now they say he is coming back to the u.s. as the ambassador of their de facto government. do you have any further information on this? >> no, no i don't. i would venture to say that somebody who is representing a region that we do not recognize would have a hard time getting credentialed. >> isn't he still a formal ambassador before the white house? >> i am not sure. whatever the reverse of a credential is, i am sure he's not presented a letter informing

the white house and the staple more -- and the state department that he was no longer acting as ambassador. i do not know if that has been done. >> do you know who is behind this coup? >> i do not have any information about any external factors. we're very focused on our common goal which is the restoration of the democratic order. >> to have it information about anyone being caught? >> -- do you have any information about anyone being caught? >> on thursday, or even wednesday, the southern command has minimize contact with

honduran military. >> i mean monetary. >> in terms of assistance programs? the only contact we have is what ever is necessary to conduct activities of american personnel there. i think it is being reviewed on a case by case basis. >> do you have a considerable deployment there? you have a base that is controlled by the honduran government. >> that's right. >> what is that situation? >> i would have to refer you to my colleagues and the defense department on that. -- in the dupont's -- in the defense department on that. >> was there any information on the plane landing? >> that would not be our decision.

that base is controlled by the honduran authorities. it is not up to us to allow landing rights or anything. and it builds on honduras? >> -- anything else on and doors. -- on honduras? my duty officer over the weekend gave a reaction. we saw reports of the short- range missiles being launched from korea. these launches are provocative but they are nothing new.

we continue to call on north korea to refrain from these kinds of provocative actions that aggravate tensions and do not contribute to regional security. our focus is on the implementations of our two un security council resolutions. they require north korea to send all ballistic missile-related activities. -- to suspend all ballistic missile related activities. >> will you discuss the missiles or is it about the u.s. navy ship turning back? >> a i understand that there will be a new bill set a new. when the vet as of 4:00.

they will discuss the missile launches. i will refer you to the un or the u.s. mission to the un for the details. after the meeting, there will probably be some press availability. yes? >> on china, there was a major riot in the north yesterday. there were press reports that as many as 140 may have been killed. do you have any comment on that situation? >> yes, we see the official chinese media are reporting a death toll of 140. that is as a result of a violent riots. we are afraid this figure could increase and we deeply regret the loss of life. we also understand there have been a number of arrests. we do not have become promotion

-- any confirmation as to what sparked the unrest. we can speculate but i don't the want to on what may have caused the violence. we call and all sides for calm restraint. >> this is not the first of people have been fighting for their human rights. they are calling on the u.s. to take a position. do you think the u.s. will take a position on this? >> as the president and secretary have said, we will always stand with those who are calling from for a restoration of personal freedoms.

the chinese deputy foreign minister is in the building today. i am sure we will raise some of these concerns that we have about the violence in the northern province in china. >> you said that steinberg met with them this morning. did it come up? >> i understand that a camel. i do diabolical readout the viking did you lie well. is he still here or does the of other meetings. ? ? >> do you have any comment on who sparked the event?

>> i have any comment on that. -- i don't have any comment on that. >> [no audi[unintelligible] somebody had to stand with them. >> i think we do stand with them and we do speak out when we see the fundamental human rights like freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, freedom of religion. i think we are very forthright about speaking out about it. we also -- our concerts in general are well known. -- our concerns in general are well known, not only in china, but in other parts of the world. we speak out with human rights are being violated.

>> have human rights been violated by the chinese authority? >> we do not have -- what we have is press reports. we see this terrible loss of life. >> wonder 40 people dead, you don't think there's a problem there? >> -- 140 people dead, you don't think is a problem there? >> no, i do think there's a problem there. >> what about the issue of the prisoners from guantanamo dec? >> i will get you an update. >> human rights in asia -- as you may know, the second trial of the former malaysian deputy prime minister is scheduled to

begin on wednesday. i wonder if you have any comment on that. >> we just saw this today. we have a reuters story all i can say is we hope that the malaysian government will result was an with builds confidence and impartial rule of law and the proper poaching of democratic institutions in malaysia. we do not have more details right now. >> as this unfolds, does the u.s. government have -- since i don't know that it came up with the malaysian foreign minister -- has the u.s. government made any representation to the malaysian government?

have you raise the question with them lately with malaysian authorities? >> we will check that. >> to have a readout of the mitchell meeting. >> that happened today. i do not have a lot but i have some. "on may 2. it is a big world out there. they discussed a wide range of issues. we are engaging in continuing intensive discussions with all parties. our goal is to create a context for negotiations. we are pressing all parties to honor their obligations under the road map. it means for the israelis to start -- stop all settlements. we want the palestinians to end

incitement against israel and demonstrate an ability to provide security. we think the arab states should take meaningful steps with israel. we remain committed to bringing this process to a point where we can start investigation. >> do you think that to be permanent stop? >> we mean exactly what it says that the road map. their survey stop to all settlement activity, including and mental growth. -- national growth. >> can you tell us if mitchell has met with president barack obama? >> i do not have any information on that. we will not now going to negotiate the details with any

-- any deal for the medium for this podium. >> you are negotiating with the israelis, right? it is not you who needs to negotiate. >> we me with the palestinians, we more me with the arabs. have you gotten sidetracked on this? >> it does not mean that we're working in other areas, as well. >> will the mitchell-netanyahu meeting be rescheduled? >> i don't but so. >>

>> this administration's approach to the middle east peace process is a comprehensive reason it will approach. we would expect all players, all partners in the region to contribute towards that. >> [unintelligible] >> iran has not very -- played in a constructive role. we would like to see them do more to contribute to middle east peace. >> is up to israel to determine whether they will strike target -- targets in iran? will the united states know if israel will let them -- will israel at the nine essays know if they will strike?

>> we don't know. our goal is to prevent iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. my say our, and not mean only u.s.. -- i do not mean only the u.s.. this is the international community. our approach is to engage with international partners to get iran to fulfil its obligations and responsibilities to fully cooperate with the iaea. israel is a sovereign country. we will not the cab -- dictated sections. -- dictate its actions with

share israel's deep concerns about the iranian nuclear program. >> he said israel is a sovereign country and we will not not dictate their actions. your words made be interpreted as a green, light. i would not >> i would not to give -- i would not want to give a green light to any military action. our policy is that israel is a sovereign country and we will not dictate its actions. >> what you have to say it? >> because it is whether there

is. [laughter] yes? >> can you give us a more firm schedule on the vice-foreign minister's meeting? i am aware of the meeting that he had with deputy secretary steinberg, assistant secretary kurt campbell and the secretary dropped by that one. he also have up -- has a meeting with the six-party talks before it if there are other meetings that the asthma's building, we will let you know. >> the president of mexico lost

control the congress yesterday. that was a huge loss. some say this could endanger many of the reforms that directly affect the u.s.. what is your view on the subject? are you worried about whether you could be in danger because of this? >> yes, i know that we have many cooperative efforts with presidents calderon to promote our shared prosperity. we work with him across -- him in the oas. we also want to work with him to reduce drug-related violence which spreads mexican people if

i can get you more information, i will be happy to do that. >> does the israeli statement indicate that the administration is changing its attitude toward iran? >> i would not read into it. we respect israel's sovereignty. we share israel's concerns about iran's nuclear program. our focus now is getting iran through this multi-lateral process. to adhere to its obligations and responsibilities to the

international community. that is the stage we're at. >> president barack obama suggested today the idea of nuclear talks for a summit being hosted in the united states. is this a new idea? >> i have seen a lot of the reporting out of moscow, all the different initiatives. i know that they signed a kind of a framework that will lead us to a successor agreement. that is to reduce nuclear weapons to a lower level. i am not aware of a summit in the u.s. is this the non-proliferation treaty?

>> to have anything i meeting with president mogabe? >> i have seen those media reports. i have tremendous respect for assistant secretary carson. he is our most experienced diplomat in african affairs. he is one of the most talented people we have. i do not see why anybody would have -- could use those kinds of care relations. >> mogabe said that the hopes that

carson was not speaking for obama. "n i told he was a shame, a great shame of the average murder of her. >> our concerns about mr. mugabe are well known. >> forget about what he says to his own media. what about the actual meeting? >> all i have seen as the media reports. >> you don't know if carson was in libya? is there. -- he was there.

>> can we go back to north moat -- north korea and malaysia? there have been reports over the course of the weekend that several malaysian entities may be getting a single better targeted. is that the case? was the purpose of this meeting to secure information about suspect doing business with north korea in contraband? >> yet, i have seen this q&a as well. he is on his way back to bed.

i think the best thing to do is to see if we can talk to the man himself. we want to get a more thorough readout. thanks. callerc-span2 [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2008] the deal with president barack obama and russia would expire this september. we will reader the joint news conference in moscow with president barack obama and president medvedev at 8:00 eastern on c-span. tomorrow in moscow, president barack obama joins russian prime minister vladimir putin for breakfast. later, he will have talks with

former soviet leader because he also speaks at the new economic school and will meet with russian political and business leaders. on wednesday, president barack obama travels to laquila, italy for the g8 summit. on saturday, president barack obama flies to africa for a visit to the capital of ghana. coming up this afternoon, is a review of the supreme court term that ended by lawyers that are did some of the high-profile cases, including the fire fighters reverse discrimination case. that event is live at 3:30 p.m., eastern, about one hour from now on c-span. house energy and commerce committee chairman henry waxman joins us on the washington journal to talk about his new book "the waxman report."

host: we're joined by henry waxman. he has, with a new book entitled "the waxman report: how congress really works." how does congress really work? guest: government can make decisions that are so beneficial to millions of americans. there's a lot of cynicism about congress and government. there is a lot of reason for it. people should realize that what they do not hear about are the things that are going on behind the scenes, often on a bipartisan basis to work out legislation that will make a real difference. you hear about the scandals, you hear about the ineptitude, there is a long line about how government cannot do anything right. i have worked on bills that have made huge difference, like nutrition labeling, which gives people the ability to know what nutrients they're getting when

they buy their and food products. it empowers them to follow a diet of their own choosing, for their own health. that was a huge fight and was taken for granted or smoking warnings or and no smoking in their plan. when that was passed, it passed in the house by one or two votes. we were told that would never work, that smokers would go crazy. this was no smoking of flights of two hours or less. we did with the expectation that might not work. there have been other bills like the clean air act, very controversial. that is now taken for granted. bills "what we intended and sometimes better than what we intended.

host: we're talking to congressman henry waxman of california. you write about eight separate piece of legislation in the book. why specifically these bills? >> theshost: these are bills tht i saw through into law. -- guest: these are bills that i saw through into law. we adopted the ryan white law concerning hiv aids. in early 1980's' we heard about the disease affecting gay men in new york, los angeles, and no

one knew what was going on. the centers for disease control told us it was multiplying geometrically. we had a good idea from the beginning that an epidemic was going to hit us. many people said it was about a gay man. maybe they deserve it. there was a low interest in this disease until rock hudson turned out to have aids. i remember being invited to send a news show and they asked me to be on on less raucous and does not have aids. it took a lot of time. it was a historical moment. there was a difficult ranking republican who was homophobic and wanted to make the dealings with the disease a social issue, fighting back against homosexuality, rather than recognizing it was a public

health issue. it took awhile before reform the past the brian white act. it is the main legislation to deal with this epidemic in the united states. it provides drugs for people who are hiv-positive, it provides information for stopping the spread of aids, it is an important piece of legislation. host: what are some of the lessons in the book? guest: good laws are created through some things you do not respect someone with tourette's san drum called me and he uses a drug enand he could only get in canada. that led us to a situation where we could examine this disease.

the drug companies looked at it as very little profit potential. they did not have a big group of people to buy the drugs. after a series of hearings, we said we would like to give encouragement to the term orphan drugs for organ diseases. it has meant the doors between life and death. the drug companies realize that it is probable -- profitable for them to focus research and development of these products. host: apply what congress thinks about health care reform and reform. guest: there are exaggerated --

there are exaggerated claims as to what bills can do. you have to put it in perspective. people are saying the energy bill will be expensive and will destroy the economy. we were told the exact same thing when we were trying to deal with sulfur emissions coming from power plants in the midwest, poisoning the forests and streams in the northeast and the interest to said not to put limits on sulfur emissions, that will cost so many billions of dollars, we would have to go out of business. we put in a cap and trade system. we figure out the most cost- effective way of making the reductions. the reality was that it was 1/10 of the cost that we were told during those hearings. i heard that over and over again.

when we work on issues like the energy bill now, you have to keep your perspective. some of the cries of a special interest groups are exaggerated. 10 years from now, if we pass the energy bill which has a goal of trying to make us more independent as a nation on foreign oil, it certainly affects our national security, it produces more jobs because of the technology that will be developed. it reduces the carbon emissions that cause global warming and serious consequences that the scientists tell us. i think 10 years ago, people ask what the fight was all about. same thing on health care. we have an unsustainable situation and health care. we pay more for health care in this country than anywhere in the world and we have $46 million of -- 46 million people uninsured.

the system is increasing costs so rapidly that it is bankrupting the federal budget because we pay for the medicare and medicaid programs. president barack obama has stated that we need to reform the system, hold down the costs, and make affordable, high-quality health care insurance available to all americans. we will do that in the not too distant future and people will eventually say," what was that thought -- what was that fight all about dax?" host: let's hear from our callers. our first call is a democratic call from mclean, virginia. caller: what a pleasure. i am one of your biggest fans. i listened to your theories, particularly when you're grilling the lady from gsa. undoubtably, you are a great american.

my question is -- i think the democratic platform for the new century is obviously health care. we have to reduce the cost and create jobs in green jobs. can you clearly, for all republican listeners, your one of the few men who could do this well, can you please explain how health care energy and education is the right formula to bring this economy around and position america much better for the future? guest: people are asking why we are doing these big things and we are faced with an historical recession, maybe depression, in our economy. what president barack obama says is this is the time that we need legislation in these areas.

people are losing their jobs. this is in record numbers. as they lose their jobs, they lose their health care coverage. while we have 46 million uninsured, we are closer to 50 million. it is a problem we have the health care tied to our unemployment. people work hard and do not get health care available to them. that is because their employers can avoid it -- can't afford it. we cannot afford the system. it is hard to hold down the cost of health care if people show an emergency room. you have to take care of them. you have to shift those costs. if we had everybody covered, it would hold down costs. if we had a system where people

can choose between competing plans, the private or public, a choice, choice and competition is good. when need to reform the way health care is practiced. it is not very effective to pay for every test that every doctor wants. a lot of that is unnecessary and wasteful spending. host: we had jeannie, from atlanta. caller: good morning. i would like to say that a lot of people that listen to "the washington journal" by radio, they may not realize that the

hostess on today, susan davis, she works for the "wall street journal accokeek -- my question is -- i am your biggest fan. guest: i like the competition. caller: i want to ask you about the country of label labeling for our food? where does that stand and is it not in effect yet? guest: i think consumers ought to have information and ought to know the ingredients. they need to know nutritional information. they need to know where the product is coming from. it may be relevant or may not. people want to know, they're

entitled to it. we are working on a bill on feud say bay -- a few -- on food safety. the food and drug administration has all lot of things in place. the fda has been hampered by lack of resources. they do not have full authority to do the things that we expect them to do. they have not had the leadership they have needed. there is a new leadership there. this new safety bill will get of more money to the fda to do the job of making sure that our food is safe. we want to make sure that the food producers check that there are no harmful substances in our food. i think it will be a plus and labeling is worthwhile because i

think consumers are entitled to know. i believe in the concept of the right to know. host: from new york, the republican line -- are you there? caller: i have two issues with you. first, have you checked out vauxhall, the general motors family company, where their cars get between 50 miles per gallon and 60 miles per gallon ta --? what is the bill doing to get us off of oil? guest: want the largest use of foils for a motor vehicle. we have strong incentives to produce cars that use less or no oil. we're trying to produce electric

cars, hybrid cars, and all the innovations that will come about. the president, with the auto industry, agreed to tighter emissions standards. the emissions are based on fuel efficiency of these automobiles. the whole country is not covered by what california had. we need to go further than that. we will be giving strong incentives and loan guarantees to produce the next generation of motor vehicles. some of our utilities are oil burning. oil and coal are two areas where there's less fuel. we recognize that colin is in the united states. we do not imported. we want to be able to use it.

is the cheese or a coach is the. we have to develop a way to develop call so that the carbon is taking out of the call and it becomes benign for the environment. we are investing billions of dollars to accomplish that goal. we said we will give utilities the allocation for the permits to pollute that they will need so that they can hold a great- payers harmless from inside. they still have to achieve the reductions. they can look for offset. many foreign companies produce offsets. they produce carbon and that is what we need to do. we will continue to use coal for quite awhile. we are trying to make call bible as a source of energy. it is better to use coal then to

have to bring in oil. it is better to burn less oil in our vehicles as well as our electricity and it would be better to produce oil in the united states. that will not be enough. we as 25% of the oil now. we produce only 8 percent of it. we are clearly in a pattern of being dependent to import that oil from many countries that are high style. caller: good morning, mr. waxman. i have watched c-span for 30 years. this medium gives me a chance to actually speak to you whereas if i called your office, i would have to leave a message. anyway, i want to talk to you

about health care. i have a petition where if people go to google and type in search for a change got com, "prescription drug benefits, "you will see a petition for people to sign that they demand a revamping of medicare part we want a prescription drug benefit that covers 80% of all medications. i wanted to pass this on. we want a prescription drug benefit that covers 80% under part b of the pavement and deductible under part b for this

benefit. a vote in the rose -- why should people pay for the medications when it should have gone into part be in the first place? without any coverage gaps, without any means test. remove that test that the republicans put in and remove that late-sign up penalty. they should have not put this late-on a penalty into for seniors and disabled people to have to sign up for that. they should remove that.

i'm disgusted with those who have held office and block for the last 30 years. if people go to google and tight been chained .org/single payer, battle of the insurance companies a chance to sell all kinds of insurance. they should be put out of business. we should nationalize the insurance companies and not the doctors. guest: i agree wholeheartedly with your statement about pharmaceuticals. i have been trying to get pharmaceutical coverage under medicare for the longest time. in fact, one of the reasons why this is called "the waxman report" is that we produce a lot of reports. many of those reports were about the high cost of prescription drugs.

people were angry at having to pay so much for their own drugs. we reported to more the congress and they found the exact same thing. seniors were paying the highest price for other pharmaceuticals. if they compared those prices to what people pay and other countries, we were paying twice as much for our drugs. this gave the republicans a political idea. they decided to do with prescription drug benefit but to reward the drug companies and reward the insurance companies by making people have to buy an insurance policy. we never had insurance policies for drugs. they created that. youths -- they said you could buy an insurance policy. when you by medicare, you don't buy a special policy from the government for hospital care.

you might buy a supplemental policy. we did not have a separate insurance policy that you had to buy. .

increase the amount of money to pay for the same drugs for the same people in the amount of at least a couple billion dollar windfall for the drug companies. no explanation for it, just a windfall for the drug companies. rebates from different drug producers -- they don't pass the rebates on for the customers. then when you pay a certain amount for your pharmaceutical coverage, if you have a high amount of drug cost you are in with the doughnut hole -- you have to pay all of the cost of the drugs until you get to a certain level and then you get the federal government to help. that is all in the course of the year. a very inefficient way to cover pharmaceutical coverage. it should have been and medicare benefits and people should have had it covered under the medicare program itself and it would have been reflected in

your copiague -- copays and premium and we could negotiate the price. millions of people covered by medicare and you are buying drugs for the population -- you would think there would be a buyers' discount as opposed to you or i by a drug. if millions of people were buying the drugs the government could negotiate a lower price. instead, that republican bill prohibited the government from negotiating prices. that meant the only ones negotiating prices would mean insurance companies which did not have a strong enough incentive to hold down the cost and the drug companies, the made a bundle -- the idea of was to pay for drug costs, not just make the drug company's richer. host: on independent line, ray from texas. caller: three questions real quick. number one, we've got oil

everywhere and we are not going to drill? number two, how many of the people being covered under this health care plan, the 47 million that you all claim, are uncovered, how many are illegal , signs it, don't really want insurance because they don't think they need it, and the third question, who was the idiot that hired -- guest: as to the drilling, there is no prohibition against drilling. we have a prohibition against drilling offshore the united states, and that provision expired and present bush refused to continue it. so, the oil companies want to block the coast, they are free to do so. i think there is a problem doing that, because they are beautiful resources and they should not have oil tanks and oil rigs

spoiling the natural resource of the ocean. but put it into perspective. we as a country used 25% of the world's whale. we now produce eight%. -- we now produce eight%. if we drill more, maybe we can get to 10%. it seems to me the sensible thing is to use less oil, and we have to figure out ways to do that. we need more domestic production, but more importantly, we need vehicles that would use less oil in the future, and that we will become less dependent on those countries from which we have to bring in the wheel. the second question about the millions of people who are uninsured. most of those uninsured people are working people. if you are under poverty and not working, you are more likely than not in medicaid, which is

the health care program for the very poor. but if you are working and your employer doesn't offer coverage because the employer can't afford it, then you have to go out and buy a policy on your own. if you have a pre-existing condition, forget it. if you are elderly among the private insurance companies will charge exorbitant amount. so the people for the most part who are not insured are working people. now, a lot of those people are no longer working and those people had insurance and then along working. they lost their insurance. you talk about 46 million or 50 million. a lot of people have insurance that does not cover their needs when they get sick. so we have a problem for the uninsured, and we have a bigger problem with health care costs continuing to go up and up, which means when we are paying for medicare and medicaid under government expenditures, we are going into deep deficits to do it. so, we've got to bring the

system together and hold down those costs. you asked about a speed reader -- there is a procedure -- there are a lot of procedures in the house, things that are relatively unknown. but one procedural way for an opponent of legislation to stall it would be to insist that the bill be read. i think it dates back to a time when this country, when some of the congressman did not know how to read so each member has an absolute right to have a bill read to him or her. and because of that absolute right, any member can insist the bill be read by a clerk. well, we had a bill in the energy area -- we had a bill last year to try to provide child health insurance to the states, and it had such strong bipartisan support and was finally passed this year and signed by president obama. last year when president bush was in charge, he said he would veto the bill.

why would he be to the bill? two reasons -- one, why should we provide health care coverage for kids, they could also go to an emergency room in the hospital. that doesn't make sense, because that is the most of the other argument he made was to me so astounding, he said why should taxpayers have to subsidize children was parents can afford to buy them a private health insurance policy. think about that for a minute. what if somebody made an argument, why should taxpayers have to subsidize the public education of a child whose parents can afford to send them to a private school. it is really quite amazing. as if we as a society don't have an interest in children getting an education or we as a society don't have an interest in children getting health care when they need it. well, we got that child health bill passed, but when we tried to get it passed in committee of the republican leader of that

committee insisted the bill be read, and it took so long to read the bill that we finally said, we can't complete the work in the committee and so we went right to the house floor without the committee acted. we feared that will happen on the average bill because of any member can insist on their reading. and we knew it would take a long time to read this bill. so we hired a speed reader. the speed reader said he could do 100 pages in an hour, and to read and 900 page bill would take nine hours. i did not think that is a very good use of congressional time. i told the republican leader, let's not go through that and offer amendments and debate the amendments and to get into the policy and not just try to delay. he agreed. he did not have to read the bill but we hired a speed reader just in case. we were both furious, joe

barton and i incurious, joe barton and i, how he would do. we asked him to read part of an amendment, because not only can you require a bill to be read but every amendments. some of the amendments can be 900 pages, 1000 pages. so we said, we will not make a revolt amendment but let us start off to see how well does. this guy was terrific. he read faster and clearer than anybody i had ever seen before. that is a skill that i wish i had. i wish i could throw my voice so people did not know it was i who was talking but, we did try him out for a while and we were pleased with the job. i was even more pleased that we did not have to require him to read the bill. thank you for your question and i hope i responded. host: we have a health care from the twitter page -- why don't you pass a bill for less expensive prescriptions?

guest: i think we should require that the government negotiate better prices with the pharmaceutical companies. and then, as a result, both the government and the consumer will pay less for those drugs. and i think we ought to have less prices charged by the drug companies to the consumers who often individuals or businesses, and the best way to get lower drug prices is to have generic drugs competing. that is the result of a bill that orrin hatch and i offered in the 1980's. to provide for generic drugs. generic drugs are the same drug as of the brand-name drug except when the patent is over they can compete. and when you have competition, it lowers the price. now trying to get an approval process for these biotech drugs. we did not even know about the biotech drugs and the 1980's. but some of these are so

expensive -- they can be $100,000, to enter thousand dollars, $500,000 a year. remember -- could you imagine if you do not have insurance coverage. it could mean the difference between life and death. if we get competition -- it would not be the exact same as the biotech but the fda can assure us it is just as safe and effective as the original drug. and i think it would help bring down prices. that is the best way to hold down prices. negotiate good prices for a large group of population and get competitive drug so that you can say, i will go to your competitor and pay a lower price and that will guarantee both will lower the price in order to keep the business. host: into california democrat henry waxman. i next call from judy on the republican line from columbus, ohio. caller: good morning. a pleasure to talk to you. i am really pretty nervous. i don't get a chance to talk to

anyone as powerful as you are. i have a question about this monstrous captain trade bill. -- capt. trade bill. i hope you will tell me this is not in the bill -- if i want to sell my home or anybody in my country wants to sell their home, they will have to have it inspected and brought to a certain energy code before it can be put on the market, and even if i start that process and they decide that they want to change the code, that i will not able to sell it until i pass that code. i want to know if these are facts or not. guest: these are not facts. and i would agree that they would be very burdensome and intrusive. what we have done is give tax credits for people who want to make their homes more energy efficient. if you want to, we help you do

it. we also have a rating for new homes that are built so that there is a rating of how efficient is -- it is. we don't require it, but if you want to buy a new house that is more energy efficient, it would have a rating to that effect. just like some of your appliances have some kind of goldstar of some sort that tells you how deficient that product is. people are interested to know when they buy something new, it is more efficient. but we don't require people to buy more efficient washers or driers, but we do require new or appliances to meet a tighter standard so that if you go out and buy that you would reduce the amount of energy that goes into it. but no one is going to tell you you can't sell your home, that you have to do something to make it more energy efficient. that is just not part of the

legislation we adopted. host: the next call is from miami, alex on the democratic line. caller: thank you for having me. congressman waxman. i just wanted to comment on the health care option. i know a lot of republicans complain, you know, they are afraid that there is going to be no choice and that people will not have the option and they will be forced into this government-sponsored plan, which i don't think is really the case. there is going to be competition in the market, which is natural in economics. i personally see nothing wrong with it and i commend you and the democratic party for actually doing something about@d

guest: 4 traditional medication, have a patent for 20 years. they get additional time for the fda to get it approved because they cannot market the drug until it is approved. they get some of that time restored to them. if it is a new breakthrough drug, they can get as much as five years' exclusivity. only after all that time is over can a generic drug go to the fda for approval. after they are approved and we have an abbreviated process, they just have to show they are the same as the other drug, they can then go on the market. we save billions and billions of dollars with generic drugs. people would rather get generic drugs because it would save the money. benefit managers are encouraging people and pharmacists and coverage people to use generic drugs. it is a good deal for the

consumers. and the brand name companies have their marketplace because they have been out there with a monopoly for quite some time. that is traditional medication. but these biotech drugs have no competition. they have a monopoly now. if they don't face generic competition at all. that is what the legislative fight is all about in that area. we suggested that they have five years as well of exclusivity after the patent is up and the time is restored for the fda approval process. at first they said, you can't make a generic, it is impossible. then it finally came around and said, yes, you can make a generic but we should get 14 years after all the time -- an additional 14 years of exclusivity, which means a monopoly. and we've got a monopoly -- you can charge the highest price,

whenever the market will bear. if that is the only drug that can keep you alive, you have to figure out a way to pay that monopoly rights, if you can. we want generic competition for biotech drugs. it is not going to be the same because they have to get through a process to determine that the generic version of the biotech drug was just as good. it is not just going to be the same drug but it will be just as good because oftentimes these biotech drugs were dealing with the process itself and the process has to be duplicated but then you have to establish with the fda scientific established approval that it is just as safe and effective. but it may not be substitut able -- like traditional, small- molecule you -- molecule drugs.

it is a big fight going on now and billions of dollars are at stake. you talk about people being frightened about change. i have found that people are often frightened about changes, especially when interest groups come in and tell them to be frightened. they hear the cry is of groups that like the status quo and they get are worried about what change will bring. in this book that i hope many of the viewers of this program will want to buy and read, "the waxman report: how congress really works, " we talked about some of the fights we had. they are not much different than the fights we are having now, where there was a lot of controversy and a lot of people objected to the changes. but once the changes were adopted and we looked back at it, it is as if, what was that i know about? why should we not even take for granted that we can get different labeling information

on the products we buy? people cannot understand, why was it ever a controversy about stopping smoking on airlines. as a mentioned earlier, it was a big struggle to adopt a bill by literally two or three votes on the house floor to experiment with no smoking on airline flights of two hours or less. we tried it for two years to see if it would work. but a lot of people said, it won't work. that change is too big, too radical. smokers will go crazy. we heard all of these things. and the clean air act, we wanted to stop acid -- acid rain from power plants and we were told it would bankrupt the industry and hurt the economy and instead it was accomplished at a 10th of the prices we were told would be the cost of achieving those results. keep in mind, when you hear about health care or energy legislation, i believe when we pass these bills people will

say, what took us so long to make sure that every american had access to reasonably priced, high quality, insurance coverage. just as they do in other countries. they will say, what is the big deal. why is it the united states spends more money on health care and has a system where the costs to going up and up and people -- people going without needed medical care. people don't understand it in other countries and some day we will look back and say, isn't that a peculiar time in history and i am glad we are not there anymore. host: lewis on independent line from raleigh. caller: how is it going? i just wanted to start out by saying it is all polished -- politicians do is try to please people to get reelected without doing the right thing. my question is, how can a congressman from a state who is in a fiscal crisis advocate increasing federal spending and our federal debt?

guest: first of all, i would disagree with your premise that all politicians are refusing to the right thing because they are facing reelection. in our case, and how come every two years. there are some who are afraid of their -- in our case, in the house, every two years. there are some who are afraid of the shadow. but at the most members of congress wants to do the right thing. they want to pass laws that will help their constituents. they may disagree on how to do it, but i think most people want to do the same thing. republicans want everybody to be insured, as the democrats. we have a different approach as to how to accomplish that goal. i hope that the end of the day we will be together. we may not be. but oftentimes what you don't see when you hear about the scandals of politicians is that oftentimes these politicians are talking to each other and trying to work things out and often to work things out, but it is not a news story. when a bill is worked out any

compromise is reached, unless it is a big fight, democrats versus republicans, it usually does not get attention, especially when you have some bodies low-fare to cover. -- somebody's love affair to cover. asking how i could be for an increase in taxes. i think and california what we need more than anywhere else and just as anyone else is jobs. we will not get jobs by staying still feared we are going to get jobs by trying to go into the future and deal with the concerns that we have for our children in directing a planet that will not be polluted by carbon and offers a tremendous opportunity to produce millions of new jobs, billions of new investments in energy efficient technologies. it is the kind of thing that you have to recognize, you just can't stay where you are, you've got to move forward. and we want to accomplish three things. tell me what it is worth doing

-- being less dependent on oil from saudi arabia and venezuela and producing it market that makes iran rich enough to produce nuclear weapons. we want to reduce more jobs by transforming the economy and giving incentives to the new technologies and jobs. and ideas that not even new -- that would not have been done unless you provide economic incentives. thirdly, reduce the carbon emissions that are doing harm to our planet. our scientists are telling us, there is an overwhelming consensus about global warming, it has causes, because of man- made pollution and it has consequences that are dire in some ways and very serious if you just want to minimize it, but very, very some -- serious. those are the goals we are trying to achieve and i am proud to be working in those areas as a californian and an american.

host: another question from the twitter page -- ask mr. waxman if he doubts electric rates will double. guest: electric rates will not double. we worked very carefully to make sure that in the electricity sector, we will provide the allocations to the utilities so that they don't have to pay for them and therefore they will not be able to pass on those costs to the consumer. and they will have to produce the reductions in carbon, but a lot of those reductions can be done fairly cheaply by buying offsets. a lot of the offsets in the agricultural industry -- the agricultural industry is looking forward to because a lot of these offsets are in the farms and how they produce more efficient ways that will reduce carbon that can become a market for those who have to make sure that they are achieving the carbon reductions. host: our next call from the republican line, somerset, pa..

caller: good morning, mr. waxman and c-span. i first want to congratulate c- span on this fantastic program. probably the best program on tv, " washington journal." i listen to it every morning. despite what your earlier callers said and criticized, i think they should be very thankful they live in a country where we can discuss these issues objectively and have on a minute guests like mr. waxman. guest: i agree. caller: -- host: i think we may have lost him. gillian from maryland. caller: i hope i can get my comments and my question. it appears to me, even with the fights between the drug companies, they had that fight over -- let me go over to the

next thing. no, the vitamins. the people who used vitamins, they wanted to outlaw that and said that they were not good for people. the fda had not checked the beard that is not be here nor there. what really bothers me is how doctors were of the pharmaceuticals are advertising their drugs, whether they are good or not, via@@@@@@@@" i'm wondering is that going to continue, where they will be able to advertise their medications and the airwaves and make money that way? when you stop other people from doing things like going overseas are going to canada to fill

prescriptions. host: if it were up to me, i would not allow those advertisements on television. let them inform the doctors of the virtues of their medicines which they spend even more money trying to do. but to get the public trying to see these happy people using pharmaceutical products is increasing the market because all doctors [unintelligible] when the patients ask for those drugs. sometimes people use the medicines they shouldn't use and their suffering from the side consequences. there was a situation where the drugs are heavily advertised as soon as they are approved. sometimes as soon as they are approved, we do not know the full consequences of large numbers of people using the drug. i suggested, let's at least if the fda has a suspicion that a

drug that is widely used because problems and they will be monitoring that post-approval time, they ought to be able to restrict advertisements. the reality is the prevailing view is that the first amendment allows drug advertising to consumers. i do not believe that. i think commercial speech is different from political speech. i have a different point of view, but i'm in the minority. certainly, when a new drug is being approved for three or six months, let there be a restriction on the amount of advertisement. there was a drug promoted so happily which turned out to be so harmful and people were using it in massive numbers before we realize the harm it did. i propose that. i had drug companies against me. newspapers and magazines because they want the advertisers, the

broadcasters -- nobody wanted to entertain the idea of any limitation on spending money to get consumers to buy drugs, even if the possibility it could harm consumers. we will continue to push that at some future time, but right now does not look like the best time. if it were up to me, i would not have the ads to make it look like you are really happy to be using a drug. in fact, last week, i had a medical problem. they still don't know what it was. i'll is hospitalized and when i came into the hospital, i was barely awake. somebody said why is your the jerking? i doubt there are making a joke. i said i have restless leg syndrome. i don't think there is such a thing as restless leg syndrome and now i will probably hear from all those people who have it. but i thought it was a disease we created by a drug company wanted to sell a drug for a disease they created. i was making a joke and when i

got out of hospital, i looked at the record and it said he claims to have restless leg syndrome. i don't know if there is such a thing or not, but i don't have it. a lot of people start thinking they have medical problems because they have seen too many commercials. i cannot think that's doing the public a lot of good. it's certainly making drug company's richer. host: -- >> we leave this portion of "washington journal" to take you to a forum on the supreme court tossed 2008-2009 forum. it includes the u.s. deputy solicitor general and other lawyers to argue prominent cases before the court this term. this is live coverage just getting under way now on c-span. >> i would like to take a moment

to recognize our sponsors. thank you for their support. i would like to invite you to a discussion after the events appear. for more than 30 years, the quality legal *" has been covering law in washington. i don't think there has been a moment when covering washington has been more critical. it's such an important aspect of all our lives, not only washington, but across the nation. it's one of the key reasons that in the last year we have merged "legal times" and the quality national law journal." we felt that providing coverage to the legal community across the country was important and -- important in everybody's daily lives. that's especially true of the supreme court, which is at the

center of our coverage. we have been writing about the courts subtle shift that seem to reflect the priorities and personalities of the chief justice and his more conservative colleagues on the court. we also been covering very closely the nomination of sonia sotomayor to the court. i would like you to follow -- i would like to invite to follow up our coverage on nlj.com, or we have daily updates and archived news continuing threat the confirmation and selection process. next week, senate willing, we will get live updates from the hearings. our coverage of the court is led by one of the best and most distinguished correspondence and the country. he will be leading our discussion today. with that, i will turn it over to townie who will introduce the panel. >> thank you. welcome to our eighth annual supreme court review panel.

thank you to our sponsors and our publisher who is here from new york. i would also like to welcome a number of bristol follows from this with your general office and in turns from that office and the supreme court as well as those who are attending today. this has been a very significant term at the court, with decisions on issues ranging from title 7 to the seven of for some. from the federal effort is ms to fleeting [unintelligible] and the departure of justice david souter, which is a very big deal. one week from today, the senate judiciary committee will begin hearings on the sonia sotomayor to replace him. in short, we have a great deal to talk about and a terrific panel to do just that. what makes this panel different from all the others around town and country at the end of a

supreme court term, each one of the panelists has argued at least one case before the court. in the term we are discussing. nothing focuses the lore -- the lark -- the lawyerly mind than the prospect of standing before the nine most important judges in the nation. we are guaranteed everyone in front of you has thought very deeply and at great length about the supreme court in the last year. we are especially lucky this year because the cases our panelists have argued are among the most important of the term, including the blockbusters that came out in the final weeks. the voting rights act case and the new haven firefighters' case and the case on post-conviction access to dna evidence. or were they blockbusters? they have been analyzed in many different ways either as self- like, narrow, kicking the can down the road, or very important or all the above.

i hope our panelists can tell us what they think the decisions tell us about the roberts court. we have also had lawyers have argued major cases decided earlier in the term. the major business case of the term on state versus federal regulation of drug labeling. then there is the case which asks whether a city that allows the 10 commandments monument in a public park must also allow a seven aphorisms monument in the park as well. it's a varied diet, so let's begin. the plan is each speaker will have some opening remarks and then i may follow up with some questions and we will encourage panelists to engage each other with comments and questions and then we will encourage questions from you in the audience. i'm going to briefly introduced the speakers and there is more information about them in your brochures. our first speaker is pamela

harris is getting familiar with these environments. just a few days ago, she began a new job as executive director of the supreme court institute at georgetown law which has helped hundreds of advocates prepare our view -- prepared to argue before the supreme court, including many if not all the other panelists today. before this new job, she was a council where she played an important role in the system the criminal defense bar in its advocacy before the supreme court. she represented an interesting religious group in a variation on the recent theme of cases involving 10 commandments displays in public places. then, we will have the deputy solicitor general of the united states who was the first to plant the new administration's plan in the solicitor general's office on january 21 street he was on this panel three years ago, having argued against the government and very successfully in the landmark hamdan decision.

he said he had done 15 practice sessions for the case and i [t'eivó[oçó[o to pt extensively. but he did hit the ground running and argued to make your case for the government on post- conviction access to dna evidence and the landmark case on the constitutionality of section 5 of the voting rights act. next we will hear from gregory coleman, who was one of those rare lawyers who has been able to develop a very successful supreme court practice from outside the beltway. austin texas, to be -- austin, texas, to be exact. he argued against neil on the voting rights case, voting for those who want to get out from under the preclearance divisions of the act. he also argued in the new haven firefighters' case, challenging the city's refusal to certify the results of a promotion exam because no african-americans did

well enough on the exam to comply. last, have a member, david frederick, from the texas panel. he is based here in washington. he was with us on this panel four years ago and had developed something of a niche practice representing consumers to challenge the concept of federal pre-emption, the concept of federal regulations preempt states from regulating in the same area either through a state statute or lawsuits in state courts. he won two major cases this term and he also advises the supreme court clinic of his all modern, the university of texas law school. it goes without saying that all four of our panelists have served as law clerks to justices

of the supreme court in their pasts. i was hoping that pamela could start us by talking about the case which certainly seemed like an establishment clause case but was not handled that way. your thoughts on the term over all? >> that's an interesting question, whether the case was handled as an establishment clause case or not. the was no establishment clause claim being raised in the case. nevertheless, a lot of what was driving the justice and a lot of the strategy in the case was playing out against this kind of shadow establishment clause background and what helped claim result in the case. i thought my clients had a very sympathetic free-speech claim. they were very sincere and at the end of the day, they just wanted to express their own religious views in a public park that was already home to different religious views in the

form of the 10 commandments monument. while the seven aphorisms were certainly unfamiliar to most people and struck people as quite foreign, there is nothing offensive about them on their face. it's a contradiction, but there were mayor -- there were a very mainstream, new age religious tenets. sort of emerson and thoreau but dressed up in new age religious garb. on their face, there was nothing outrageous or hateful and really nothing offensive about the speech they wanted to engage in in this public park except, and this was the crux of the case, their proposed monument would have been placed very close to the 10 commandments monument. so it might have conveyed the idea that the 10 commandments were not a singular or the only religious truth. i think people were very deeply and very genuinely offended by that the implicit message. some people found it quite literally blasphemous to put a

different religious monuments so close to the 10 commandments monument. this raised what i thought was a fairly compelling set of free- speech questions. over the last 25 years, there has been a consistent move toward opening the public square to religious views and religious speech. i think that is all to the good, but it raises difficult questions like who's religious speech will be included? if you want to bring your religious use out of your religious community and into the public square and public marketplace of ideas, do you have to be prepared for the give-and-take of that public marketplace? do you have to be prepared for the idea that there could be different viewpoints expressed as well? when you think about the case that way, it does present a fairly compelling free-speech claim. it is not without problems, the question about it. monuments are different from other forms of speech and maybe

the government needs more latitude in regulating monuments. but there was some thing sympathetic there which then leads to the question of how did we manage to lose this case 9-0. this is a 9-0 case. i think the problem for us was that the court did not think about it as a free-speech case. they thought about it against the background of the establishment clause. that was what was playing a strategically and made it hard for us because the more liberal justices who should have been sympathetic were actually very concerned about calling a monument in a public park, even if it were privately erected like the 10 commandments monument, about calling the private speech, which protected under the free-speech clause that makes it harder to challenge under the establishment clause. to show that it is conveying a government bill religious message and not a private message. so the justices who should have been our allies were against us because they were very worried

our free speech position within that insulating religious monuments under the establishment clause. the conservative justices had a mirror image problem. on the one hand, they did not like our free speech claimed. they sought as an end run against prior establishment clause cases that had approved the public display of 10 commandments monuments. they thought this pieces have already approved a right of singular or preferred access for the 10 commandments and not equal access for everyone gets to put up a monument. they were worried that as a practical matter that if we run this case, cities would take down their 10 commandments monuments before the would open parks to other crazy religious monuments. on the other hand, the justices were very are rare as where the liberal justices, that once you call and arguably religious monument government speech, you make it much more amenable to establishment clause challenge. i think what is most interesting about the opinion in this case

is how justice toledo tried to thread the needle -- how justice alito tried to thread the needle. he tried to minimize the establishment clause exposure for that kind of monument. this shadow establishment clause green that is where this case is being fought out. for us, as a strategic question, we knew that we were losing the case going in and we could see what was going on. the question was how did we want to lose the case? that was driving our litigation strategy. our clients first choice was they love the idea of what 1000 flowers views and we will all expressed our religious views in the park. but if they could not get that, their second choice was losing in a way it would be helpful under the establishment clause, specifically losing with the ruling we actually got that any monument in the public park is going to be reasonably seen as

conveying a governmental message as a kind of government speech. in that sense, to bring you to full closure, it was a huge victory. we had just wanted and we will get them next time under the establishment clause. where this case will matter most is a one-off for free-speech purposes. we will not see something like this under the free-speech clause. monuments are different. that's the bottom line. where this case will matter is under the establishment clause and these display cases and possibly in the case next term, in a case that involves a religious monument, a christian cross, erected by a private party, the veterans of foreign wars, on government land. it will be very interesting to see how this case plays out and how successful justice alito was and planting an establishment clause defense.

>> i want to ask you about your transition from private attorney to government attorney and the different pressures and expectations that involves. more specifically, if you could talk about the voting rights case. during oral arguments, it seemed the corps was ready to declare the law unconstitutional, but it did not turn out that way. >> let me start by thanking the quality legal *" for posting this event. my transition was frankly pretty rough. it's an enormous privilege to represent the government of the united states. with that privilege comes certain responsibilities. when responsibility is the responsibility to not ever make any news. sorry to disappoint you, but i will try to avoid making news here today. anything i say is in my personal capacity.

when i got to the department on january 21, it was an enormous time of transition in the government in terms of the executive branch. but the solicitor general's office is different than other parts of the government. one thing that is different is the structure of the office. i am one of the deputies. there are three others who know a lot more about the supreme court than i do. then there is the solicitor general. that's different than the office of legal counsel in which all the deputies are political and a change from one administration to the next. there is a lot of continuity in our office and a great premium placed on stability and the positions we take from one administration to the next. that creates no amount -- and untold amount of frustration on the part of activists in the party and otherwise. but it serves the government quite well because, after all,

we are not simply the administration's lawyer, we are the government of the united states lawyer. we defense lot -- we defend of laws of congress enacted into law. that's not to say we will not ever change our position or think about stuff in a new way. one example in a high-profile case this term is the fourth amendment case involving the strip search of a 13-year-old girl. traditionally, at the justice department, we take our responsibilities as prosecutors more seriously than virtually anything else. we generally do not side on the side of saying there is a fourth man a violation. in this case, i can only think of one other example in memory in which the government has come in and said yes, there was a fourth amendment violation. what we argued in that case was that the girls rights had been

violated, but there was a qualified immunity defense available to those officials and ultimately that is what the supreme court concluded eight- one. for me, it has been an enormous personal change. when i did cases before coming into the government, i basically did students with -- i basically did cases with one of my students. one of them spent a long time working on hamdan with me. she was writing drafts of race and so on. it was a ragtag group of people. i was doing the table of authorities and contents myself and things like that. i then come to our office, which is amazing, their 69 attorneys and four deputies and a staff of about 20 paralegals and assistance in the print shop and so on. the quality of the work product is breathtaking.

my first weekend there, i got an assignment which was very complicated. it was high sensitivity and i said to one of the assistance, can you look at this. on monday, i got a 24-space so -- a 24-page single spaced memo that was far better than anything i could have written. they do this with a budget of $10.4 million for the entire year. we participate in about 50 supreme court cases and review every decision made in the united states by the government. there is an enormous amount of work done all for that amount of money. when i was doing cases privately last year, i was involved in a case where one side spent $10 million on just one case. we do that in our office for the entire year. it is quite remarkable. in your opening remarks, you spoke of the timing. when i was teaching here, i had the ability to think big

thoughts or small thoughts as they may be. then have the time to practice arguments. i practiced hamdan 15 times. when i got to the government, by dna argument which was on march 2, i think i was able to read the brief one week before the argument. i had the customary two moots in the office right after i got to read the briefs. it's a very different pace and its remarkable how quickly briefed get britain and europe there are giving. it's nothing like i ever thought before i got n. maybe i will do the voting rights in the next segment, but i want to talk about the difference in transitions between being a private litigant, particularly one going up against the government and

then being on the other side. i look at the gentleman to my left only for geographic purposes here, greg coleman, and i watch what you did and i had enormous respect for how you conduct yourself in the litigation throughout this. i know what it is like to be up against the government and your client sometimes, i'm sure this happens to you, your clients are upset you are taking these cases and your family is upset you are devoting all these times -- all this time to cases where there may be no money involved and the media is upset. these are all things i've dealt with and i'm sure you had some of these experiences. what you do is perform a valuable service in making us more honest as government officials. i think it is enormously powerful, this great thing about our country, that we allow private litigants, little utility districts, to come in

and challenge the most powerful people in government. i remember when been judge roberts was at his confirmation hearing to be the chief justice, he said the great thing about the supreme court is on the one side of the court room you have a little guy -- you may have a big corporation with all law firms and lawyers on one side and the other you have none of that. you just have a little guy with an argument. if the little guy has a good argument, then, judge roberts says, in the supreme court, they can win. >> i almost need to say nothing more except to turn it over to you and ask you to talk about the two cases you argued which were scheduled within one week of each other. how did you prepare for those

and what the think they stand for? >> thank you for having me and i appreciate the opportunity. if i can hold back my welling up from the complement. [laughter] he speaks as one who knows. he has shown that most of graciousness in all he has done in my interactions with him and it has been a pleasure to get to know him better through these cases. you asked about preparing for two arguments within two weeks of each other. it's not a pretty sight. we have attempted to see if we can arrange to get them one month apart, but that was not going to happen. the clerk's office had other things to do, so essentially we decided to start early. we began the mooting process in

march. i had done both cases before the first of april. duke university was extraordinarily gracious in having us down and allowing us to moot cases before a panel of profs. georgetown was extraordinarily gracious in allowing us to come here to moot both cases. i moved up from a suites hotel just after the 10th of april and bid farewell to my family and holed up in a hotel and sat in the hotel room and read. when we had moots, we would do that for half a day and then we would go over the notes and keep going. we tried to keep going. i was here for more than 2 1/2 weeks, hardly seeing the light of day except to come out and go do moots.

it was a difficult process and not one i encourage others to do. but we had to do it to get to the cases. >> which hotel? [laughter] >> i stayed at a place called the virginian suites. it's across the river near the eulogy memorial. -- near the iwo jima memorial. it did fine for us. we had a good time. my colleague said something that was important. it was not by design that we had two cases come up in the same year and not by design we had two cases that involve raise issues which does create emotional context. it's interesting to see people's reactions. some people have very strong reactions. we have tried throughout process to keep a dialogue

going about both of these cases. obviously, i feel the position we took was the right one. we are extremely happy that we won. this section 5 thing is something we have struggled with for quite some time. the remedy the court gave was a remedy we had been pushing for. many commentators have asked if we were disappointed we did not get section 5 of the voting rights act struck down. the answer is no. yes, we ask for it and the argument is right, but this is the first case the supreme court has had in quite some time where any part of section 5 or the apparatus surrounding it has been challenged. for years ago, nobody was talking about section 5 or whether its application to various parts of the country might be unfair.

people were talking about the now. commentators on both sides of the philosophical i'll have been suggesting congress ought to rethink some of what it did in 2006 and maybe it should make some changes. the idea of opening up the statute to allow bailouts, which frankly have not been permitted, really since the 1980's, is a really good thing. it allows political subdivisions to go before the department justice and ultimately the jet -- and ultimately the district court here and say we have been committed to living up to our obligation under the voting rights act for 10 years or more. we don't have any violations and one has accused of discrimination. nobody has objected to our pre- clearance submissions. we have done all that has been asked, so let us out.

the interpretation that had been given the act is, for nearly all political subdivisions, is you are just not eligible, so go away. the court's opinion allows the process to go forward and i think that's a good thing because it encourages small political subdivisions like school boards and utility districts and small cities in others to say this is meaningful and we have something we can work toward. we can show we have lived up to our obligations and at the end of the day, there is some reward for us and that is the federal government will recognize we have lived up to our obligations and we can attain a bailout and move on down the road. so i view this opinion as a good development. i also think all to believe that it's a warning shot to congress and the department, if the system does not work in these entities cannot bailout four or

five years down the road, we might take another look at the constitutional issues that have been raised, but for the time being, let's see how this works with a full and effective bailout. . >> first, let me thank you tony and legal times for having me

again. the last time i was here, i represented a group of texas peanut farmers whose crops had died by a pesticide that had been improperly tested and warned against. and the pesticide maker brought the case to the support arguing that farmers -- to the supreme court arguing that farmers could not claim negligence in the warnings for their products. we prevailed in that case. that case really thrust me with itingly or not into this whole emmings that was fought out in this term. altria v. good, which i argued for the persons argue against it. argue that the controlling could not preempt state enforces efforts.

wyeth was a case -- all of these cases i got into after sir was granted. wyeth was one i got called and asked whether i'd be interested in helping out diane levine. she came into my office and we met. it was an extraordinary meeting. i don't want to go into all of it because of attorney-client privilege issues. but one thing that was really striking was the sense in which she still viewed the case as about her and i tried gently to suggest to her that now that the case is in the supreme court, it was no longer just about her and that she needed to be a spokesperson for all persons who had been injured by drugs, that had been negligently warned, and that i, as her advocate, had the responsibility to represent all of those people that were similarly situated to her. and that created a very awkward moment in the first meeting between an attorney and a

client, because up until then with the trial and the appeal and the state supreme court, she knew that it was about her claim and whether or not she was going to be recompensed at a level that would enable her to get on with her life. this is a musician, a professional musician, whose arm was amputated just at the elbow point and she could no longer perform or record music and she was a musician who delighted in exchanges with students and young people to get them involved in music. and so this was her life. the judgment she won would enable her to fix her house up in ways that would enable a one-armed person to live a life, to refit her car so that she could drive safely, and to do things that would enable her to be above what, in essence, was a sub sis answer the level where she had been con tined

after losing her career as a musician. i felt very deeply the responsibility to do the best i could for her and i think those who helped me with the case felt that responsibility keenly as well. the court rejected the claim in preemption that the industry -- the pharmaceutical industry had argued for a very broad preemption principle that whenever the f.d.a. approves a drug level that would preempt a state law failure to warn claim. for decades, the food and drug administration had essentially and tacitly taken the position that these state law claims provided information that facilitating the government's regulatory mission of ensuring safe use of drugs and that imposed on the manufacturer the duty to ensure that their labels were up to date with the most recent information. the bush administration had

changed that view. and in a rather radical position, which i think the bush administration overreached, argued that the f.d.a.'s approval of the drug label negated and preempted the rights of people to bring claims for negligence and the drug company's failure to warn. so there was a special, you know, difficulty, as both -- all of the folks up here can attest. when you go up against the government, it is one thing. when you go up against the government with industry and changing position, there's a special dynamic at play. we were quite concerned because the government had never lost a case on implied preemption in which it asserted that there was preemption through a governmental action. so looking forward, one of the things i think will be very interesting is to see to what

extent the obama administration in carefully reassessing the preemption position taken by the bush administration will hew to the line that the bush administration took or to reassess and evaluate in light of the changed circumstances, changed policies, how far a preemption should properly go. there's no doubt that there is room for federal sprem sy. when i was in a case i argued, one of the main cases, united states v. law, there also needs to be an appropriate balance in ensuring that there are mechanisms for recommend dig where appropriate and where there's a proper balancing of the role that the federal government ought to take in displacing in court and state laws and principles.

>> ok. well, we'll go back to neal and to greg. and a general discussion about the voting rights case, perhaps. and the firefighters case, if you like. but, neal, greg was saying that this decision was sort of a challenge to congress and to the justice department, and i just wondered what you take from the case, and also, the point that both of you can ards about the oral amplingt it really did appear to many people that the court was going deal with the constitutionality issue and the oral argument. and yet they stepped back, and eight justices joined in an opinion that was really quite critical of the voting rights act but didn't quite pull the trigger. i think that still has a lot of people mystified. what are your thoughts? >> well, one of the remarkable things i think about chief

justice voting rights decision is it aloud -- you heard greg declare victory, the attorney general right after the decision, also praised the ruling. it was remarkable act in which all sides are kind of in agreement that the decision was wise and wonderful. and you know, i think that the factors behind that decision are probably a couple of things going into the mix. one is, as we looked at the indication, we're coming off of an extraordinary narly powerful court of appeals opinion and an extensive record in congress. i think it was 21 different hearings over 10 months with something like 16,000 pages of evidence documented, the need for the voting rights act. i think that -- sure, there were lots of tough questions and oral argument, which i think we both appreciated as advocates, to hear what the court's concerns were. but at the end of the day, one thing that might have happened

is simply that that extensive record put to -- when put in front of the court really put a kind of concern in their minds about judicial activism and about really should they reach that ultimate step? it would be really something extraordinary, i think, to strike down the voting rights act, which has been kind of a modern pillar of legal landscape for 40 years. that having been said, i think many people were surprised that the statutory bailout decision was the way in which the court dealt with this. i think that's a fairly tough argument to get to from the text of the statute. i think one of the interesting things that people will be debating and talking about in the years to come is really what is the appropriate model for judging. here you have chief justice roberts' model, which i think one could think of in terms of chief justice marshall. or you can think about it in

terms of bill brennan, cobbling together majorities of people for positions that don't -- that aren't always intuitively obvious as a legal matter. but in some sense, have this real underbelly of pragmatism and politics in the best sense of the word, in terms of making people of all sides and all persuasions come together and celebrate the decision. and there are some costs to that, of course. a cost in terms of fidelity to the statutory text and a precedent as well, but there's a multimember of court. maybe a real strong case to be made for it. on the other hand, you could say, well, there's the view of the true intellectual, the frankfurter, or the then judge rehnquist -- justice rehnquist, writing these lone decents in the 1970's, which ultimately become in many cases the law of the land. there justice thomas i think is really staking out a bit of that territory and not being

afraid to be the lone decenter in the voting rights act case or in the trip search case. it's unclear to me which is the right way to be. but i do think that that is a really powerful question that is set up by the voting lineups and the opinions written in these case. but i think the very interesting thing about chief justice roberts' decision is that it does allow everyone to come away feeling very pleased. >> one thing i've never understood since the moment that the decision came out is some of the commentators have said, well, that statutory interpretation just doesn't make any sense. my friend and former colleague heather wrote a blog saying i must be a mad genius for getting them to go along with that. neal is correct. the statutory text does not seem to apply. but there's a series of cases

going back into the 1970's where the court said, that limitation on the definition of political subdivision doesn't apply because it would too limit the act. so in case after case, that definition was set aside in favor of a broader definition. so our argument was simply, well, there's no reason here. every other provision in the act except for one has used the broader definition and not the narrower definition. so you ought to do it. tony, you asked about whether the court really was stepping back. there's another way of looking at that, and that is my experience is that most of the justices have already pretty much made up their minds before they get into oral argument. and there's some question in my mind whether the commentators are correct in suggesting they got scared off after oral argument or whether they had already pretty much decided the way they were going to go and

simply felt free to use oral argument to plum the depths of a variety of arguments, including the constitutional argument, even though they already decided that that's not the way that they wanted to go. >> can i just jump in? i wrote a brief in the case on behalf of some texas districts. we were on neal's side of the case rather than greg's. i just want to say these two and the naacp lawyer who argued did a terrific job at the argument. it was one of those cases, a landmark case, where all of the advocates did an outstanding job. but to me, the case came to this kind of basic met that level common sense. you've got a utility district that had not any evident history of doing anything wrong and they, you know, were simply trying to get out from the -- what they perceived to be the structures of preclearance and

there was a common sense to that. and maybe this was case collection, greg, been approached by the right client at the right time. it was at that level that i thought the government's side, our time, had a hard time persuading. and it goes further to pam's point about supreme court advocacy that the advocacy proceeds at a number of different levels. there's a meta-level in which your case has to have a certain level of common sense it to. you have to find audio way to communicate and transmit ideas at all levels of details from mid-level theory all the way down to the details to seal up a way to get to five votes. the cases we've been talking about here, i think a loss can be attributed in some level to not having all those different pieces fit together in the proper way, because i was on the side that thought that the statutory reading was a bit of

a stretch. but the level of common sense, there was obviously a view that these small districts ought to have an opportunity to be free of the voting rights act. >> just a word about the argument in that case, which i found really interesting. what i do see is something of a disjunction between the argument and the final opinion of that case. i'm very intrigued by greg's suggestion that maybe the justices really knew what was going on before they got to argument, because otherwise i was actually a little bit buzzled by the tone of argument. and the chief justice's tone in particular. because i thought if he was trying to sort of woo justice kennedy, bring justice kennedy fully onboard for invalidating the voting rights act, to do that, i thought, you would have to persuade justice kennedy that you could do it in a way that was actually respectful of the act, that respected what it had done, what it had achieved,

what it meant to this country. and that was not the chief justice's tone and argument at all. and so i almost had thought that his tone was somewhat counterproductive and that it might have cost him justice kennedy's vote. but another way of thinking about it is maybe he already knew how this was coming out and it didn't really matter and this was almost his chance to, you know, a little catharsis. up to me, we'd get rid of this thing. and i'm just going to vent about that for a few minutes. because i was very surprised by his vote. i think he is a very, very gifted -- as neal said, politics in the best sense of it. a good politician on the court. very good tactician. brings people together when he has to. and i did think his tone in that argument was more divisive than political. in the good sense. and that it might have given people cold feet about what this would look like if they now start the voting rights act.

it would make a lot more sense if it was a done deal going into argument. >> if i could say a word about that, because i've read these things about tone. something in some magazine, the new yorker, i think it was about the chief's tone and argument in that case. in standing five, six feet away from him, i didn't perceive that at all. i did not see a hostile tone. i found the typical chief kind of, you know, get to the heart of the thing. but i never felt hostility to the act in the question. but i do know that other folks have. and it's very interesting. i don't know if there's something about the dynamics of that courtroom that make it different, the kind of very close interaction between advocate and justice or not. but just being so close there, i didn't feel it and trust me, i'm perfectly used to feeling it in other arguments. as to greg's point about the possibility of the justices knowing ahead of time.

i guess i think that's probably unlikely on the notion that it would be hard for them to all get information about everything pre-argument, about the way the other justices were thinking. i'm not saying it's impossible. but in general, my guess is that it would be hard to have that amount of information sharing at a time, particularly toward the end of the term when they've already got so much other stuff backed up. were that the case, irguess i would have expected more than -- i got no questions at all about bailout in my part of the argument. the other gentlemen on my side, the intervener, got i think two questions and maybe greg had a couple as well. but it strikes me as a fairly unusual circumstance if they really thought they were going in with the idea of going for the statutory bailout that there would be so few questions directed at to that particular matter. >> i think some people say that the crucial question -- i think was it justice souter who asked greg, would you be happy with just -- with bailout and you

wouldn't have to go all the way to the constitutional issue. when you said yes, you sort of gave them permission to have a more -- to rule more -- in a more limited fashion. am i remembering that right? >> there was that question. i'm not remembering exactly who it was. it might have been the chief. i don't know if anybody remembers. but essentially it said if you went on bailout, are you clients going to be satisfied? and we told them yes. several commentators have suggested once we said that, it was over. our briefs, by the way, made that perfectly clear. and so it wasn't anything for moral argument that wasn't clear, shouldn't have been clear from our briefs. >> i was going to use that as a segue. and maybe it's an imperfect one. a question i want to ask generally about justice souter

departing the court. will you miss it? are you glad? what role do you think he played on the court? it's open to anybody. >> well i -- all my opinions before the court have been before justice souter. i'm going to miss him greatly. he had a way at the argument of asking a question in a way that he really conveyed wanting to know the answer to the question in a very deep, and insere way. he asked questions in a balanced tone with a question of curiosity, but they were questions of great sophistication and depth. and you avoided answering them at your pearl, because he was very quick to follow up if he thought you hadn't answered the

question directly in the way that he thought an advocate should do. but i thought -- and i will always admire the civilty and the tone and the decency that he brought to his role as a supreme court justice. i think that he has an understated manner about him. and is not out there. and so people probably who don't follow the court so closely will maybe not appreciate his many really incredible intellectual and judicial capabilities. i think the supreme court is going to miss him a tremendous amount. i think it's exciting that judge sotomeyer will be replacing him. she's going to bring totally newalties to the bench. but it's a shame that they couldn't have both served together, because i think it would have been a very interesting dynamic to watch

the two of them at argument and to contend with issues. >> one of the kind of really interesting things about justice souter is how funny he is. it doesn't always come across on the bench. but there's a great story about him. he drives up to new hampshire every year in the summer to spend three months in his cabin. he stopped at a rest stop in massachusetts and a couple was following him and said the man says, hey, hey, hey, you're on the supreme court, right? and justice souter nods his head and says, yes, i. a and they talk about what it's like to be on the supreme court and so on. then the man serks wait a minute, i know you, you're justice breyer, right? and justice souter nods his head and doesn't want to embarrass this nice gentleman in front of his wife and so on. and they talk more about the court. and then the man says to the justice, he says, you know, justice, what is the best thing about being on the supreme

court? and justice souter pauses for a second, and says, well, i think probably the best thing about being on the supreme court is the privilege of serving with justice david souter. from my experience, there has not been a more incisive questioner in so many ways than justice souter. i remember when i was prepping the hamdan argument, one of the things we really wanted to do was get the court to have a line of questioning about habeas stripping and whether or not it was violated. we spent weeks trying to figure out how can we bait justice stevens into asking this line of questions. didn't really get justice stevens to do it at the argument. but justice souter really got that argument. and i've never really seen him in such powerful terms attacking the government on this whole suspension line of questioning.

a three- or four-minute colloquy with paul clement. on the other side in the d.n.a. argument which i did in march, there was a line of questioning i was really worried about getting. sure enough, justice souter was the one to launch that volley of questions. and his opinion in the d.n.a. case, i think, is a really moving opinion. it's a kind of ode to conservativism. it's worth everyone's study because it's a really interesting way of thinking about substantive process and about the need to go slow. that is not something that we have traditionally seen a lot of in the supreme court from both supposed right and left of the court. but justice souter is really staking that position out in that case. i think it will be one his great leg sis for the court. >> i also -- i will miss justice souter so much from watching the court and arguing in front of it now.

it was an incredible incisive and dogged in his questioning. he grew as he stayed on the court more and more dogged and persistent in his questioning. but always polite, always in a very decent way. always actually wanted an answer. it wasn't for show. he wanted to know what you would say. i did think in my case, in the summum case, he was the justice that was right on top of this intersection between free speech clause and the establishment cause, the one most up front in talking about it. i really felt -- i'm a little bit bitter because i felt we had a deal, where he was saying very nicely, pam, we're not ruling for you on your crazy free speech claim, but you come back here with the establishment clause and i will be here for you. at the end of the term, he disappears and i'm a little bit put out by that because i thought he really got it and we had an understanding. >> it's a few days too late to get him back. >> one thing i'd like to say about justice souter is when i was clerking, since i knew i

wasn't going to be staying in washington, i tried to come downstairs for every oral act whether it was a case i -- oral argument. and one of the case justice souter -- and you've already heard this from the other panelists. his questions are very insightful, incitive. he does have a nice tone about him. and one of the problems that advocates had is that questions sound so nice that they wanted to agree. wouldn't your argument be better -- and they'd say yes. and doubtedly to this. and they'd say yes. and then he'd say, therefore don't you lose because of this? and it's that old picture of somebody getting painted into a corner.

one of the things i went back to texas with, which was a strong feeling that when you go in front of somebody like justice souter, you can't let yourself be brought over by a friendly smile and a nice tone. you need to be very clear about what you agree with and what you disagree with. in fact, this term, you know, i think justice souter early in the firefighter case asked me a couple questions. i said, well, no, i disagree with that, justice souter, because i have such respect for his mental powers and where he goes with the questions. you just have to know where he's going, where you're willing to go, and where you need to draw a stop. and in the firefighters case, you know, he asked the one question really that got reported in the media, which is the question what is the city supposed to do? you're damned if you do, and

you're damned if you don't, which got to the heart of, you know, this intersection because disparate impact and disparate treatment in title seven. how do you define a rule that allows these employees to be fairly treated but doesn't unfairly prejudice the employer, the city at the same time? and he was looking for that. for that test. something that would allow him to do that. >> and did the court come up with the right answer in your view? >> yes, they did. [laughter] >> but was it a full loaf? >> this strong base is an evidence test, that was the test that we put forward this our brief. in many ways, we had told the clients, you know, to expect it

to speak out on some tests. we weren't sure whether the court would say strict scrutiny applies on the protection claim and off you go on remand, that the court said the strong basis and evidence test would be the test for title seven and then ruled as a matter of law that the city was liable under title seven. i think was something we hadn't necessarily thought was a strong expectation on our part. i'm not sure why the court wenlt that far, but i think it wanted to make a clear statement in terms of where the law was. maybe that they wanted to make a statement with respect to the individual petitioners who had been waiting for promotions for six years. >> well, before we go to the audience for some questions, i

just want to pick up on a few things. neal was mentioning earlier the idea that this -- that roberts was sort of a pragmatic leader and calling together coalitions. a lot of the analyses after the term, more that the roberts court this year was more incremental and more interested in smaller steps and compromise, perhaps. is that a theme that all of you agree with or not? >> i'll jump in. i think i'm not fully onboard with that account yet. part of it is, we just don't have enough information yet. in a few more terms, we'll have a much fuller picture. when the papers come out, we'll obviously know a lot more about what really happened this term. to my eye, there's another equally plausible account for a lot of the decisions this term,

which is that the chief justice is going just as far to the right and he's going there just as fast as justice kennedy is prepared to go along with them. and at least to my mind, it seems at least fairly clear that in some of the court's decisions, like the herring case, the very early exclusionary rule decision from the beginning of this term, that there are four votes including the chief justice for really getting rid of the exclusionary rule pretty much altogether, and that is justice kennedy was sort of holding them back, was not quite there with them. again, with the voting rights act case, it's very hard to tell what really happened there. but my hunch, at least, based on prior opinions and argument and things like that is that it was probably justice kennedy who had the cold feet about invalidating the voting rights act altogether, which takes nothing away. i really want to be clear about this from the chief justice's ability to make the best of not quite having five votes for exactly where he would like to

go and to nevertheless put together these opinions of very strong conservative principles and that will move the law perhaps more slowly than he's prepared to. but i'm not quite ready yet to say that it's the chief justice setting an institutional integrity that's stopping the court from going any further. my guess is that it's really for want of a fifth vote and that it's justice kennedy who is still -- to the extend that is incremental, because it's still kennedy's court, not quite the chief justice's yet. >> it's certainly borne out by the statistics. justice kennedy was in the majority of 18 of them. by far pretty clearly the largest number. the coalitions that formed around most of them were the predictable ones. but there were some outlier cases, four or five where justice scalia might peel off and form the fifth vote.

or justice thomas might form the fifth vote. but i think that -- i agree with some of what pam says. i also think that they're still feeling each other out. i think one of the things that to me one of the interesting things to be watching is the extent to which an axis forms with justice kennedy and justice alito. because there were a number of separate opinions that one of the other wrote that they each joined and i think there's a very interesting dynamic going on there at the court. justice alito has a very quiet, highly competent way about him. he writes extremely well and very thoughtfully and his questions and argument are superb. and there seems to me to be something going on there that is an interesting thing to watch. >> i totally agree. i think justice alito is very

interesting to watch this term, both for his incipient alliance with justice kennedy and because i saw him in a lot of case this term slitting off from the chief justice and moving right to the chief justice. actually voting differently in a few cases. i think he has in the criminal context where i spend a lot of my time, he is probably of all of the justices, he's the most interested in the criminal cases. he has the most background. he's very interested in criminal procedure cases, which the rest of them really are not. and it's giving him a lot of authority in that area. i agree with dave. he writes very, very good careful, solid opinions in that area. i think he's really a force to be reckoned with. i think this term saw him coming out a little bit in that area as well as some others. >> i think about the chief not necessarily controlling

everything is a good one. two years ago, it was a very divided court with a lot of 5-4 decisions. last year, not so much. everybody was saying, the chief has iranianed everybody in and he's now driving -- has now reined everybody in. this is more 5-4 decisions with kennedy on them. one little anecdote i'll share is during the firefighters argument, justice breyer started asking me a series of hypotheticals. and i do mean a series. not one. but multiple ones in the same question. i said, well, justice breyer, those are justice kennedy's hypotheticals from his con insurgents in paris. he said, well, precisely. which he obviously was aiming towards justice kennedy. in terms of his questioning.

when i attended the fifth circuit judicial conference a couple of weeks after that when justice scalia came down and gave a speech, during his presentation and the question and answer session, somebody asked him about that, asked him about the number of 5-4's, and was he struck at how obviously people are playing to justice kennedy's vote during oral argument. and he acknowledged that it was true and even had some discussion of his questioning from the richie case. and kind of tried to be humorous about it. say, you know, there are several others up there on the bench. it doesn't have to be all about justice kennedy. but i think that some people going in on these cases are counting up the votes and thinking that maybe it is.

>> ok. i'd like to open it up to questions. there are microphones on either side and some roaming microphones as well. >> hello. i'd like to ask the panel about the gross case. it seemed that the court came down with a decision that wasn't briefed or argued and had fairly far-reached consequences, or at least potentially in changing how the ajacket is construed and

litigated. just wondered what the panel thought. >> it is pretty -- >> if you could summarize what the case was. >> it was an age discrimination act and we see in a lot of title 7 cases where you have mixed motives and the argument is, you fired me because of my race and the employer says, no, i fired you because you're an embezzler. the case has to go to trial. and there's a series of questions that are put to the jury that emphasize to the juries that as long as they feel that race was in fact a substantial factor, that they still have to find liability. even if maybe there's something to the embezzler point. and congress had amended title

7 to include and recognize -- and that wasn't done with respect to other forms of -- or other acts that the outlaw discrimination, including the age discrimination employment act. and the court -- an opinion that surprised quite a few people, actually, said that because it's not in adea, and we have some questions about whether we were right in the first place when we read it into title 7 before the act, that you're simply going to say we're not going to extend it to other acts. in the firefighters' case, it was suggested that this makes the case. we had held it off like the plague. but it was quite a shock. i think far-reaching. i'm not sure if people were really expecting it. oral argument clearly was hostile towards mixed motives,

but before that i'm not sure people were really strongly thinking the court would go that way. >> what might you say was an underrated case of the term, something that's going to have long-ranging impact that's not really getting a lot of play in the media? >> the case about the student against the attorney general john ashcroft and the f.b.i. director, robert muller, about the juice of discriminatory motives in bringing about post-9/11 decision making. and saying those suits could not be brought. the court applied a pleading standard, a rule of pleading what can be in a complaint, what needs to be in a complaint, to survive a motion to dismuss. they took it from the antitrust area and imported it from the

area of official immunity. it will probably be the single-most cited case excite wyeth v. levine. i say that because there were tens of thousands of drug cases out there. it's going to be cited a lot in kind of determining whether or not the most basic requisites of pleading a complaint have changed in light of standing where the court announced. that's my view of the sleeper. >> actually, i agree with dave in terms of the practical import of the cases. another case i think didn't get enough attention is the monteo case in which the court -- it's a criminal case about the consequences of evoking sixth amendment right to counsel. the court, even though nobody asked it to, the state had not asked for this, used it as an occasion to overrule michigan v. jackson, was a case

construed invocation in a very protective way. it's not the outcome that i think the really so significant. it's that the court on its own, again, without the state having asked for this decircumstances dtsed, you know, let's just get rid of michigan versus jackson. it's not that big a deal. i think that to me, at least, indicates that this is a court that -- at least in some areas is going to move very aggressively on criminal procedure cases, criminal cases, and will be prepared to overrule and -- prior precedent and gets where it wants to go. >> i had no idea monteo would come up in this discussion. one of my first cases i ever argued was a case called texas v. cobb. we had asked the court at that time to overrule michigan v. jackson. we could not get the assistant general's office to go along with it at that point. but i'm told they have much smarter people there now.

[laughter] >> so we have so much to blame you for, greg. >> we did get a three-judge concurrence from kennedy saying, i just don't see how michigan-jackson adds anything to the mix. adding to your comment, though, of course, one to me the most amazing developments in the term, which is the first term in i'm not sure how many where the court didn't actually finish its work. set the hillary movie case for reargument next term. in scont with monte owe and your comment there, part of the reason appears to be there's some number of people in the court who are wondering if they should overrule austin or parts of mcconnell. and that itself is a pretty substantial move on the court's part.

>> yes? wait for a microphone. >> thank you. i'm chief council for the lawyers committee under civil rights under law. we opposed greg on two major cases and i would like to acknowledge, his very skillful advocacy. fine results. one case that struck me the most the case that overruled the prior precedents on search of apartments and automobiles by justice scalia. is that the liberal side of the justice or is civil liberty side or is there any difference between those two concepts? >> i have thought for several years, we're seeing something very interesting. i find this endlessly fascinating. it's like there are two courts when it comes to criminal procedure. there's the scalia court, which is triggered when there's an originalist argument to be

made. you see it in the sentencing cases. you see it in the confrontation cases. and you see it in gant, which is the case overruling prior precedent, the belting case. well, the majority says it's not joseph ruling. but reconfiguring in a way that really narrows it. and in these cases, justice scalia and justice thomas really to their credit, there's an originalist argument there, a serious act it takes to a place that might not be their preferred political position, but they follow it along and you get this very ub usual voting lineup where you have this kind of -- you have these two very conservative justices on the pro-defendant's side and you have some justices people think of as many liberal but very concerned about the pragmatic impact of these decisions in decent. i think gant just falls right in that category of cases. and really, to the credit of these justices, they will follow this originalist argument when it points them in

that direction in these cases and it's one of the reasons why as the court has grown, i think over the last 10, 20 years, more conservative, the criminal defense bar, there have still been real openings for that bar in front of this court. >> melinda diaz could end up being a hugely important case for the practicalities of how criminal cases unfold. 5-4 when a lab examiner has done scientific analysis in a case. produces a report that's used by the prosecution. the defense has a confrontation clause right to cross-examination the lab examiner who did the actual lab work. historically, lab work in this country has not always been done by the person who testifies. in fact, the f.b.i. for decades had a tradition of somebody who knew something about science doing the work and then a very handsome typically white male

agent would go testify. and lots of people were convicted, even though that agent didn't know anything about science and had no bachelor's degree or masters degree or anything. so one of the interesting things about this diaz decision, thankfully that practice has been changing in the f.b.i. but some of the state and locals have not yet caught up to these more modern practice and diaz really throws down the gauntlet to the prosecution to ensure that there is absolute fairness in providing a mechanism for defendants to cross-examination the actual people who do the actual work in the science lab. >> that was scalia. >> that was the scalia argument. scalia wrote the majority in that. >> any other questions? >> with justice sotomeyer

possibly becoming justice, do you anticipate advocates will have to change their litigation and argument strategies? and how? >> anyone argued in front of her? >> i did some years ago. my experience was that she was very well-prepared. she has dead-on, insightful questions and did so pretty forcefully. she wasn't going to allow her questions to be evaded in any way. some other panel members may know some areas where her ideas may be different from those of justice souter's. i've had some people tell me that they think justice sotomayor will have some different views on punitive

damages than justice souter had. but i'm not really aware of a lot of different areas where there will be many differences. >> i would say that it would be unusual for a highly skilled advocate to try to change an argument just because of a new member of the court coming on. it's hard enough to come up with a really good argument that enables you to answer the hard questions that come in from whoever -- from whatever the source. what i think will be interesting to watch is the extent to which the second circuit's docket, which has got a very heavy business component to it, a very heavy finance component, will end up causing justice sotomayor to look at the long ways that may be different from justice souter simply because they have different backgrounds from their legal work that they bring to bear to the supreme court's problems. and so i would expect to see

some key departures start to emerge within the first couple of years of her time on the court. and that may well end up affecting how certain arguments get postured. i don't know that it would be a stylistic thing so much as it would be just -- we start to see where she fits within various alignments on certain areas. >> one thing that i think i'll be watching for, and it goes to david's point about experience, unlike justice souter, judge sotomayor has been a prosecutor for a number of years and it will be interesting to see whether that will influence the direction the court takes in some of these criminal procedure and criminal law matters. i don't anticipate -- my guess is much difference in terms of the overall tenor of the arguments. i know there's been some stuff in the reporting about her being really tough at arguments and so on. i'ved a the privilege of sending clerks to her almost every year for several years.

they uniformly rave about her skill in argument, her hard working, just how hard she works to get it right. and i think that she's not going to bring a change, necessarily. she's not going to change to the type of arguments that we're all accustomed to. i think in a few substantive areas of which criminal law is one, we might see some changes. >> i'd say also justice alito has spoken about how hard it is to get a word in edge wise now during argument. really have to jump in even if you're taking a tack that's not on point with the last justice who asked a question. and chief justice roberts, the fourth circuit just a few weeks ago talked about how he's been thinking that the supreme court really needs to notch it back a little bit in terms of the intensity of questioning. unfortunately, i think -- well, we'll see how justice sotomayor handles that, but my impression

is that she's not -- she won't have any trouble jumping in to argument and she isn't going to decrease the intensity level. at least that's the impression people have of her. yes? >> the topic was broached about whether there'd been any changes when judge sotomayor becomes justice sotomayor. i believe there will be one topic that's drassically different. there's a series of case over the turn of the last century called the insular cases in which the supreme court held that basically, particularly puerto rico, was not incorporated to the u.s. so therefore, people of puerto rican background didn't have certain rights that other people who are born in the mainland of the united states would have. and because of that doctrine, right now, they have statutory citizens. they are not necessarily natural born citizens in that if congress were to aend in

statute which grants citizenships, anyone born after that would no longer be a citizen of the u.s. so that's a very controversial doctrine. and i guess appropriate now that the doctrine was developed about puerto rico and now we're getting a person of puerto rican background to be on the supreme court. maybe that would rise the status of puerto rico might be affected by her decisions. i wanted to see your thoughts about the insular cases. >> i have no particular belief that just because she's from puerto rico, she would approach a case a certain way. i would say the insular cases are now not just about puerto rico, but about a whole big difficult legal question, which is the applicability of the constitutional provisions extraterritorially. i would imagine any justice would approach it with that in mind without the specific narrow question of the origins of one of the cases -- obviously the insular cases that wasn't puerto rico. it was if philippines and other

places as well. regardless of the answer, i would imagine it's not going to really be determined by her background and interest in puerto rico. >> i think we're about to close. i just thought i would ask -- >> i had one more question i wanted to ask. >> ok. >> in this case, the strip search case, the supreme court basically -- in the strip search -- in the strip search case, the supreme court basically held -- unreachable search and ss -- see sure. the first question is isn't that kind of contradictory? the second part of that question would be what the

supreme court is basically saying is that it's more a fundamental right than the right of freedom of speech? >> i don't think it would come out that way. i don't think the decisions are contradictory, though. i thought this most recent decision -- it just had a lot to do with sort of setting -- you know, the court giving plenty of discretion to schools and school administrators, but setting some very outer bound riss beyond which a school really can't go. i thought the facts of this case were shocking enough that it lent itself to that kind of decision. i would not have anticipated the 8-1 lineup on this case on the underlying fourth amendment issue. i think it was made a little bit easier for the court by the fact that they had a very strong -- as neal said, the government's brief said it violated the fourth amendment, but there was a strong case for

qualified immunity in this case. i think that made the court probably a little more comfortable than it might otherwise have been with finding the underlying fourth amendment violation. i thought it was drawn there a little bit by the u.s. brief. i still wouldn't have seen the 8-1 coming. i have questions about whether argument in that case might have affected the outcome as well. i think the argument in that case was widely considered at the time and certainly by the time justice ginsburg was talking about it, argument in that case was pretty widely considered a bit of a debacle for the court. there's a real sense, at least from where i was sitting, that some of the justices were not taking this claim remotely serious. they were telling jokes about it. and that that put people off. i think it embarrassed the court. and i think it may have ended up in a very positive way, to spin this in a much more positive way, helping to educate some of the justices about -- i think these fourth amendment cases are hard for them.

they really do either explicitly or implicitly have to figure out something about social expectations of privacy. where is this country in terms of its expectations of privacy in i think because that argument became so controversial in that case, the justices probably heard more from the people in their circles than they otherwise might have about how people did feel about the privacy of this girl's body. and that they may well have been educated by the whole process. i think the argument in this case was a bit of a wild card. it may help to explain the lob sided nature of the vote in that case. but i'm not sure i see it as inconsistent with their other school cases. >> it was also extraordinary that as you were alluding to that justice ginsburg made public comments about the oral argument while the case was still pending. she said her male colleagues didn't get it. how embarrassing. -- how embargs a strip search was for a teenage girl. we just have a minute or two.

i just thought we could maybe go down the line and ask for your thoughts about next term, either in terms of how judge sotomayor may change things or a case or two that you're watching. >> well, i'm watching this salazar v. bono case to see how the sum money case -- summum case plays out. there are two big cases on the docket right now. a case from maryland which raises cases about the fifth amendment miranda rule, invocation of the fifth amendment right to counsel and how protective that rule will be. there's another miranda case about how explicit the warnings you get under miranda have to be in terms of explaining the right to have counsel present at questioning itself. and my guess is that both cases will be decided on fairly

narrow grounds. but they also are the first opportunity for the chief justice and justice alito to really weigh in on how they feel about miranda. and although i think the vetting is pretty solid, since the dickerson case, which reaffirmed miranda -- you know, miranda is pretty much on strong footing. those justices weren't there when dickerson was decided, when miranda was reaffirmed. people also thought the exclusionary rule was on pretty strong footing until they joined the court. so i am interested to see whether either of those cases will provoke any separate writing by those justices that will give us the earliest read on where they are on miranda. >> next term is shaping up to be enormously interesting. the constitutionality of peace coming up. the things i'm watching most closely are the united states v. steve