and it blows up where we are having this discussion. guest: i would agree and disagree. i interviewed skip gates. as a matter of fact one of the few people in talk radio that went into great detail. . we now know the description was false because the woman who called said she went to great effort not to describe anyone because she did not know. you have asked a question, and i

have the police report, the incident report here. the officer has a real problem. it right now, he has to explain why he falsified his police report to include a conversation about the description of people who broke in, allegedly broke into skip gates house and he never had that conversation. that is a fact. that is a real problem. it is part relationship. i play a humorous pieces that richard pryor once did about relationships that african american people have with police. my point is, where i agree with you armstrong is that you are absolutely right, too much testosterone. the officer should have said to

mr. gates, once he identified that he lived here, sir, here is my name and my badge number, i apologize if we cause you any problem and if you need to file a complaint, do so. i agree, a professor gates, and maybe i would have settled down if my wife was with me, but i have been in many situations like this where it depends on how you are approached by people who are obligated to protect and serve. guest: i do concur with mr. matheson on this point. despite the comments by mr. gates with the issue of racial profiling. he should have taken a high road and not arrested him.

i do not think he should have been arrested. however, i think the larger issue is culturally how we as americans see ourselves. i do not see myself culturally as an african american. culturally i am an american. i can understand culturally why many american blacks identified them as of african american spirit and there is the african- american church. there are historical black colleges and universities. sometimes you are inoculated into the culture. for someone who grew up in american black church and attended a black university, my value system and the things that lead in as a conservatism -- as a conservative and republican, my values are different. i hang out with people that are

reversed. sometimes our job and our environment for the -- force us to interact with different people. you do not see people with different backgrounds and races in your home and on vacation but you. the problem is we do not get to know each other, because even though racism is over. barack obama has been elected president, we still elect to segregate ourselves. it is not just black people. what happens is we assume because someone looks like us, we get along with them and trust them better. that is not necessarily the case. we just do not take this time to get to know one another. until we interact with each other, we will always have this issue. host: let's put the phone lines up.

cspanwj is a twitter account. guest: we are americans. we had 9/111 everyone was to get there because the people who attacked us did not care if we were black or white. there is no question of that. robertson ticket does not wish you as an american -- your birth certificate does not wish to as an american. i think you are right, we do not get to know each other. one of the things that i say on my radio show is that in america we are culturally conditioned to

believe that one group is superior, one group is inferior. unfortunately, that is part of the culture. the manifestation of that cultural conditioning and this speaks to what you are saying, is that one group undervalues, underestimates, and marginalizes another group. what we have to do, and i think i understand where you're coming from, is we have to understand there is no dominance. we have a problem of racial dominance. we used to have this legally. we now have to factor appeared dead -- now have defacto. my daughter just got married and it is an interracial marriage. those kids were in the wedding and did not care who was what.

i have children who are african american who you can't tell them you can't do anything you want. we had changed. in large part, i agree with you. we do have to get to know each other, but i am not going to change my heritage. it would be absurd to sit here and tell frank sinatra, if he was a lot olive, you are not it- american. he would say you have to be out of your mind. he was proud to be an italian american as much as he was proud to be an american. guest: there is nothing wrong with saying you are an italian american. a jewish american. a long as it does not mean anything. it says nothing about you. as long as you feel you are

better than its rigid as long as you do not feel you are better than someone. -- as long as you do not feel you are better than someone. there is a part of society that because of what you look like it applies a certain class. guest: racial dominance. guest: children do the best jobs upbringing children -- children doing the best job of bringing their parents at the shackles. guest: with all due respect, from the beginning of the constitution of the united states, this has been a major debate. it was a natural progression. lawsw who are what creates a foundation. host: earlier this week, eric

holder making comments about race as well. let's listen to what he had to say and then we will listen to your comments. >> i was a young college student driving from new york to washington. i stopped on a highway and was told to open the trunk of my car. the police officer said he wanted to search for weapons. i remember thinking how humiliated i felt. al angry i got. >> have we reached a point where law-enforcement is color blind? >> not yet. i think we are certainly at a much better place than we were. i think work remains, but there is also work that needs to be done in community of colors. i think people too often want t assume that the police or people in law enforcement are doing the wrong thing. they see police policies as a misguided or directed only at

the people of color, when in fact, that is not the case. host: let me get a quick comment from each of you and then we will take calls. guest: police officers are human. unfortunately in our society when you think of a serial rapist or a pedophile, you think of a black man. when you think of someone who rapes, you think of black men. when you think of crime in this city and someone to stop, sometimes that is associated with being black. i think sometimes in police training they are taught that many of the culprits of the crimes are black men police officers are supposed to have the judgment and experience to make sure they should not stop someone just because they make assumptions. they should have real facts. the difference with me is that

if eric holder is thought by a police officer and a see that as rachael -- racial profiling, that does not say that that will happen to me. that is an individual act. i have not been profiled. i have not experienced this discrimination. just because the color of my skin i cannot say that is my experience. everyone assumes that is their story to. that is where i draw the line. that is not my story. it happens, but it does not mean it will happen to you. guest: i agree with 90% of what he said. armstrong was very fortunate that has not been -- that he has not been racially profile. stories.

the bottom line is that when it does happen to individuals over and over again from state to state, border to border, then the question becomes, what do you do about it? that is why i want to get to the point of truth and reconciliation. i do not think the assumption is that it happens to every african american. as a matter of fact, i know from people calling in to my talk show, but i say very briefly that we thank god that we live in a country where 50 years ago you could not do anything about it because of public policy. today we can respond to it to make sure it does not happen to an eric holder and hope that you will not have that experience at some point in your life before you get too old. [laughter]

caller: good morning. i have to disagree with mr. williams on a couple of points. when the officer -- if mr. gates did indeed do something wrong and the officer was doing his job, then i say arrest him and charged him with whatever he did wrong. the was no lock broken, and he also was not doing his job. -- if there was no law broken, then he also was not doing his job. also, the officer has the power. they have the power to arrest you and shoot you. they have the power to do these things. the average citizen does not

have these things. i think it is the officer who should show restraint. guest: i respect what the caller is saying. i do believe that. i emphasize that the officers should not have arrested professor dates. he should have taken the high road from his training and realized he was off to that of the home. -- he should have taken the high road from his training and realize that he was the occupant of the home. caller: congratulations on your daughter's wedding. guest: i am broke now but thank you. [laughter] caller: first of all, excuse my

ignorance, but i really do not know the purpose of the congressional black caucus. if everyone is working together, why is there a separat%@@@@@@@@$ -- why is there a separate black caucus? and how can you have a discussion on race relations without a white guy there? guest: i find that interesting, because when i interviewed the president of the naacp in cambridge, i found a very interesting she had only been invited on one national talk- show to discuss any complaints that have happened prior to the gates situation. i asked myself the same question, how could you have the discussion about cambridge and not talk to the head of an organization that probably beat received a lot of complaints? she also said to me that the

city manager, not the mayor, they have been pushing the mayor of more than anything, but that they were putting together a commission. to her knowledge, there had not been one person of color put on that commission. i hope that changes. the reality is that armstrong and i are very capable of having this discussion from a perspective that often is not heard. it should be heard a gimore oft. there are agreements and disagreements. the congressional black caucus is like any other caucus. there is a sedan darfur caucus that i work on. there is a women's caucus. there is a hispanic caucus.

there are public policy issues that we certainly have in common, but there are times when they are impacted with issues that are important to a particular group of people that have to be addressed. i forget how many millions of people that the national black caucus represents. they represent many white americans who live in their district. if unemployment is twice that of the general population, and they get together to discuss what type of legislation we will address. armstrong and i will just redid were just discussing about the artist tax or radio attacks. it impacts clear channel one

way, but it impacts minority radio stations another way. that is why you have caucasus, so that people can look at particular problems and then come out to the general body and make sure they are incorporated in any discussion. host: someone on twitter ask is that race or class more of an issue in the united states? i would ask if they are intertwined. guest: when you think of minorities you think the people who are disadvantaged and did this sort of synonymists this -- synonymous with black people. i think the issue is class. i think there is a grievance class that feels that they have not realize the american dream. we have many immigrants coming from abroad. and they have sunday immigrant song to the point that they are

successful. -- they have sang the immigrant song to the point that they are successful. i think the issue is certainly with class, especially in cambridge. i think something we do not talk enough about is the cap and gown issue where we have an ivy league school in the middle of a working-class community. if you have the cambridge police but you also have a harbour police. had to harvard police and call to the situation, you would have never heard about it. they protect embarrassing situations from the university. if you have someone who is a working-class person and comes in and sometimes there is an elite mindset that how dare you come in my house? how dare you arrest me, this

working-class person? i do think in many ways that it is more of an issue of class, and people do not talk about enough's. -- do not talk about tit enough. this situation had nothing to do with race. it had to do with class and had to do with the procedures of the police officer doing his job. guest: i would say the reason you heard about this is because it was a professor gates. this type of thing happens more often than we shearer about it. in a way, it had had been john doe, maybe even joe madison, we would not have probably heard about it. i guarantee you somewhere in america this has happened. these other kinds of calls that

i am getting. i disagree with you about a harbour police. there was an incident in harvard and we talk about it with a harvard police were they stopped a young teenager who was taking a walk off of his bike and harvard police pulled a gun on him and made him show identification. he had to pull out a library card to show that he lived in cambridge while the guns were drawn on him. that was the harbour police. -- teh harvarhe harvard police. cambridge police used to train their officers that people who were reduced to eating cayenne papeepper were immune to pepper spray. the police officers in cambridge

were taught this in training. we have a real problem here. the good thing that has happened here is we now have it on the surface. we should honestly look at it and discuss it to prevent these kinds of things from happening, whether it is someone with the prestige of the harvard professor who happens to be one of the most 25 influential people in the country. guest: i do not want to disappoint you. most people in this country could care less about race. they could care less. guest: i think he is absolutely right. at this point in the stage, most people are trying to figure out how to get a job, keep a job, get health care.

but there is a pocket that keeps raising its ugly head. i want to finish one other point, and that is, and i do not want to gthis to go by, and thas sergeant crawley has a bigger problem. that is, why did he interject race and to his police report when it was not there to begin with? that is the explanation that he has to have. it is right here. even the ladies who held a news conference is lying -- either the lady who held a news conference is lying, or the sergeant falsified his police report. if he did that and interjected to every zero black men with backpacks -- interjected two black men with backpacks, why

was that put into the police report? guest: in the beginning the person who made the call was not lying. it was not true. i have not going to be so quick -- i am not going to be so quick to further inflame the sergeant. there is so much we do not know. the problem is we want to know too much and we want to make assumptions. i actually believe -- i actually believe that he is decent, like most police officers. if you know his history as a police officer and the thing that he was involved in, he does not strike me -- and i could be wrong -- that his goal was to pick a fight. there is so much that we do not know, and until we know the rest

of the story, i am not going to say that for some reason he wanted to believe that these were black men with backpacks. guest: i am not implying anything. with all due respect, i am not implying anything. i am stating facts. guest: i do not understand where you're going with this. guest: do you realize this is an official document? this is what calls people to get arrested. i am saying to you, armstrong williams, if a police officer on wheels a false report that allowed you to end up in court, and you had to defend yourself based on a false statement -- guest: what were his intentions?

guest: they have to be reviewed by a court. now i am getting angry. i will tell you why. i am stating facts. do not interrupt me. a police report is an extremely important document. i have had police officers called me all week long to say the biggest mistake that an officer can make is to file a false police report. guest: all i am asking is why would he filed this? guest: if i was a defense attorney that would be my first question. caller: good morning, gentlemen. thank you for inviting me into this conversation. i think the question i asked

talk to the screen about has already been answered. i will ask it anyway and i have a follow-up question based on the police report. my first question is really simple for both of you, which is simply, once it was established that the professor lived at that address, should he have been arrested? this is a question that can be answered with one word, yes or no. guest: know. -- no. guest:no, absolutely not. caller: you have a police report from the perspective of the officer on why he was arrested. , if you are putting handcuffs and a police report is written on you and you are taken to a jail and booked, why aren't those charges taken to court or they can be reviewed?

why were charges dropped over something -- if it was justifiable to prevent cuts and taken down and put him, why did it charges disappear when it looks like the report may have been falsified? guest: i am not a lawyer so i am on dangerous ground, but i believe -- there is a 1976 decision, commonwealth verses richards. in which it states the supreme court of massachusetts states that an individual cannot be arrested for verbal abuse of a police officer. it says the jury instructions used by the massachusetts court spell out three very

important elements that must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in order to get a guilty verdict of disorderly conduct. i believe, i do not know this for a fact, but based on lawyers i have talked to andy superior -- and a superior court judge said that this prosecutor knew that this was not a good a rest. -- arrest. that is why the charges were dropped. as professor gates said, one of the reasons he did not come outside was there was no search warrant for the officer to come in, and his soon as he stepped outside there would be possible, probable cause to arrest him under disorderly conduct. it would not have held up in court.

guest: i actually think i answered the question i was trying to get my colleague to answer. while we're hearing is that this is not over. there may be -- there might be. or there may very well be a review. i had to police officers, you know how talk radio is, they called me and one officer from los angeles says that he suspects that sergeant crowley might end up resigning behind this. i actually do not know. host: gonzales, louisiana, the democrats' line. caller: how are you doing this morning? i do not think it is a race issue, it is more of the constitutional rights issue. a lot of people assume that you

have to cooperate with the police officers if you are asked a question by a police officer. that is not true. i think the fifth amendment protection from self- incrimination. the burden of proof relies upon law enforcement and the court system. the burden of proof lies in them. the professor did not have to prove anything. there had to be no evidence of a break in. he did not have to prove it was his house because he did not have to prove anything. this relies upon the official. the fourth amendment protection from illegal search and seizure. you have to have probable cause and the search warrant to enter someone's home. when the sergeant arahead enterd his home, she was -- he was

going against the constitution. guest: the bottom line is that the only way the officer could have been assured that it was not a burglary was to actually communicate with mr. gates and that was only possible by going into his house. guest: as i listen to all of this, i am convinced now beyond a shadow of a doubt we need to get into cambridge, and begin to address this issue and a very honest way. i am convinced that all we have to do in this country now is get rid of these little from its, these little pockets that keep bubbling up -- we have to get rid of these little pockets that

keep bubbling up. our children are there. they are there. i think we have too many issues. i would say one thing about president obama. what he did was a brilliant political move. host: you are talking about the beer summit? guest: i am going to put it in very simple terms. he stepped in dog poop, and he had to figure at a way to clean this up when he made the comment stupid. he needed police union support. he has eric holder dealing with issues of racial profiling. he had to find a way to get out of it petted it was not president obama who invited crawley to the white house.

he had to get himself out of this so that he could focus on the health-care issue. he had had his summit. he had this photo opportunity. he has wiped his hands of it, and now we're sitting here discussing it and he is not going to address it anymore. guest: this will damage the president and the long run. -- in the long run i like the way joe explains this. i know many people who would love to say to the white house said they would love to come to the white house. the president wanted him at the white house. it was his idea. guest: the president seized on this.

he said immediately, i am going to have it -- what came out of it? we do not know what joe biden did but gates did not apologize. the biggest thing out of it was that the president did not have an american beer. guest: i cannot believe we had a beer discussion when we are dealing with health care in this economy. do you think this kind of -- do you think this had this kind of importance? guest: i just said the opposite. we will not care of of this. come labor day, this will not be on the radar. i am glad to talk about health care and afghanistan. i am going to be talking about

the economy. do you know what has remove this issue right now? the clunker legislation. people are wondering, should we put to more billion dollars in the? has this stimulated the auto industry? i guarantee you that on labor day we will not be invited back to discuss the beer summit. guest: the american people did not care about it, but the white house did. host: anthony on our republican line. caller: the morning. i was born in 1942 and married in 1961 to a beautiful black woman. what bothers me is these republican friends and people like clint backed -- and people

like glen beck. i am still a republican, and if it keeps going like this, armstrong -- let me say this to you. you talk about the sergeant and the professor. the sergeant had to a known the professor. he has been around a long time. he had to a known that face. he was in his house. how can you say that he could just arrest him like that when he is in his own house? guest: i think joe and i might agree on this. there are people in this country who might not recognize barack obama.

it is true. you might find this hard to believe. [laughter] it is very possible in the cambridge police -- of the cambridge -- it is very possible that on the cambridge campus they might not know the professor. guest: i laughed because there is a guess that said if barack obama's came to a particular place, the difficulty of getting a cab the sewe sometimes have, s that if he did not come with his bodyguard, he might be -- he might not be able to get a cab. we have to appreciate and learn each other's cultures. ani pride myself in knowing

different culture and wanting to know and learning about different cultures. i too often think we are culturally conditioned in this country, not to really appreciate each other's cultures as much as we should, but i agree with you. i do not think sergeant crawley new kreuz he was. it may not have made a difference. sometimes african americans who have status are often more profile than those who do not. there is such things. there is resentment on the part of people. you look at me like you were surprised. resentment against the fact that you are and it's cheaper.

there could be a combination of both. there can be, and these are pockets we're talking about. i also heard people and officers have called me up and i heard a talk-show hosts say this, that he said had been arrested for something called, content of cop. i said, what is that? it is not a law, but if a police officer feels that a person is being contentious, we will arrest you and then we will deal with that later on when we get you down at the station. that often happens. unfortunately, not only to black people but sometimes to white. guest: i think a huge disservice has been done to officers of the law. in terms of making people

believe they cannot trust police officers they may get a wrong sometimes, but there is never a police officers and tension in most cases, it is to shoot unarmed citizens that they wear the badge to protect. i think we have done a disservice by saying this. there are people that do not trust police officers because they do not know them, they do not want to get to know them and when they are interacting with and they are already precondition. they are insecure. that is not good. guest: i agree 100% with everything you are saying. what you do noto is when you have officers who do break the law, food to file false police reports -- puente to file false police reports, -- who do file

false police reports, it needs to be dealt with. i have a list here in new york city -- i would be reading for the rest of the at work. -- reading for the rest of the hour. a lot of people's trust is based on these experiences with a small number of police. a rotten apple and a barrel can ruin the entire barrel. what you have to do is we've the rotten apples out of any department. host: date on our independent line. go ahead. -- dave on all our independent line.

caller: i hate to use cops as an example to show cops, but they had said that in the black culture a lot of times the kids are raised that the cops are going to get you one day and stuff like that day. so it is in a self-fulfilling prophecy -- so is it a self of billing prophecy? guest: this is why we need to know each other. there may be some families that might do this type of thing. i think those families do a disservice to their children. but i remind, when he brought up o.j., the person that came to my mind was mark ferman.

he filed a disability because he did not like black people. he wanted to be paid disability. here was a police officer who had years in the police force and supported by his fellow police officers that did not like interracial couples. he would plant weapons on them. these are the experiences we have to do well when with. we are a lot better than we used to be, but again, i think armstrong would agree -- i would never -- i was put never taught to disrespect police officers. they would come to my elementary school and teach us. maybe that is what needs to be done more. there needs to be more community policing and all of our communities where people get to know the jobs of police officers. guest: he certainly does not

need any more beer summits. it has to be worked out where people are. it is being worked out every day. most people get along and understand this. if you will always have the pockets of racist and ignorance in this society. that will never change. host: does the president have a role to play in a race going forward? guest: the president@@@@ -- the president has played this right. and he is the president of all people. when you speak about injustice and unfairness, you speak about for all people. i did not believe there is such a thing as a white problem, latino problem. there are problems that affect

people in different ways. the president is there to address the concerns of the american people. whether it is crime, drugs, out of wedlock birth. care, all americans are directly affected by it. he has to speak to issues. he cannot put them in categories of race and gender. these are american issues, and we must address them as americans. guest: i want to stand up and salute, but the reality is we have disparity in health care. we have individuals in these pockets that sometimes find themselves in position of power and responsibility. when those kids, for example, and the suburb of philadelphia got thrown at the cool, they got thrown out because they were the little black kids. -- got thrown out of tehe

pool, they got thrown out because they were little black kids. thank god those people were held accountable. yes, we have a race problem in america. the question is, how do we eliminate it? that is the real issue. we also have a very general problems. wb deploys was right -- w.b. duboise was right. we are americans and we strive to be american. that is why my grandfather served in world war one and my father in world war two. what was that is that when my father came back, he could not vote in mississippi. he could not vote until he was an older man.

so we had to correct those situations. we have now progressed tremendously. there is an ongoing correction that we must always be conscious of in order to get to the perfect union that we want. host: one more call. caller: thank you for taking my call. i appreciate it. good morning to everyone. the only individual i am familiar with is joe. my concern is the opportunity for adults discussion over race was lost with the whole beer summit due to the immaturity of adults to talk about race.

i will give you an example. talk radio and rhode island, one of the commentators joked that we spent 3.5 hours talking about the kind of beer. it is like are you serious? if you should be embarrassed at 3.5 hours went by with the opportunity to talk about race relations or nationally and you talk about beer. many made fun of the president. question who was paying for this? all of the typical chatter that you get from the fringe right -- host: could you summarize please? caller: i think there was an opportunity for us to have an adult conversation, but unfortunately we are not mature enough yet as a nation to do that. i do not know the answer, but i

am just trying to point out that i think it was evident that glen beck was name-calling. where was the honest discourse? guest: i would agree totally with him. i thought the statements were at regis to refer to their president as a racist. remember when keyane west made that statement, she was forced to apologize. i am working towards a town hall meeting type of truth and reconciliation and a very mature, not finger-pointing session to get to the truth, concile it and move on. . .

the media did a very poor job of discussing what kind of beer they were going to drink. guest: talk radio does not have a monopoly on attacks. we saw when bush administration was in effect that the left would malkin. these guys are entertainers. if you have to use your own judgment when you are listening to the shows. we would not have had these conversations for as long as we are having them had the president not injected himself. he is really a decent guy. many americans voted for him because of the dire straits we are in with the economy and the leadership we were looking for, republicans losing their moral

compass, and no voice for leadership. president barack obama offered something, freshness, newness, and americans want to give him a chance. in the meantime, they saw that we could probably close one of the darkest chapters in our history, and that was on the issue of race. for anyone to try to say of president barack obama being a racist, hating anybody, they really do not know this country or no our president. i think most people really want this president to do well, even his personal popularity continuing to soar despite all the problems abroad. the thing people want to believe that when it comes down to issues like this, mainstream america wants to believe that he is their president, too. there is still so much that we did not know about the president. i think for the most part, people want to trust him, but they do not want him to appear to take sides on an issue of

race, and it appeared that he took the side of the black professor at against the white cop. in a situation like that, he cannot take sides. for the sake of this president doing what he was elected to do, the best thing to do in the end was learned from the situation and not allow himself to get mired in these kinds of discussions. and the harm, he does more harm than good. host: we have talked about this for a double over an hour. thank you for the conversation. guest: thank you. >> tomorrow, a political roundtable. and mark plotkin, political analyst for wtop radio in washington. we also look at the governors' races in new jersey and virginia, and allan sloan discusses how legislators can preserve social security.

"washington journal," live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> up next, minnesota governor tim pawlenty on president obama's health care proposal and his own vision for the republican party. later, arizona representative jeff like on his opposition to the earmarked process and his point of view of how money is appropriated in congress. after that, the future exploration of mars. >> join the conversation on civil rights and race relations with npr and fox news analyst juan williams on c-span2. >> remarks now from minnesota governor tim of pawlenty -- tim pawlenty. he spoke about president obama's

health care proposal and his own vision for the republican party. this event begins with an introduction from rnc chair michael steele. it is about half an hour. >> again, welcome, and we're very excited about our guest speaker joining us for lunch today. and helping us carry forth the message of the party and sharing with all of you the excitement that i see and hear every day in the grass roots of this country. also, the concern that they have about the direction our nation is headed when it comes to our financial markets. the cars that we purchase and bone, the health care that we need so much. i think it will be very interesting to hear the insights from the governor who was having to deal with the challenges and the stress of this economy, but also understands and

appreciates the hard work and the fortitude and effort it will take to put us on the road to recovery. tim pawlenty is such a governor. he is regarded as one of the nation's most innovative, energetic, reform-minded, accomplished government -- rick accomplished governor's we have, and he is a republican. [applause] that part should not be lost on you, america. now serving his second term as the 39th governor of minnesota, gov. pawlenty has brought increased accountability to the state government, held the line on taxes, improved k-12 education standards and made minnesota a leader in energy reform. as governor, he balanced minnesota's budget three times without raising taxes, despite facing record budget deficits. governor pawlenty's most notable accomplishments include

proposing and signing into all significant new benefits for veterans and members of the military, enacting a property tax cap, eliminating the marriage penalty, and cutting taxes, toughening the state education standards, reforming the way peach it -- teachers are paid through a pay plan, instituting free-market health care reforms -- ahem, hint, hint -- increased accountability, and providing tax credits to encourage health savings accounts -- imagine that -- and implementing a plan to generate 25% of the state's electricity from renewable sources by 25 -- 2025. he is been a leader and innovator in his state. since assuming this job as chairman, right now in our midst are republican governors who are the laboratory, the back yard if you will where good things are happening.

all we need now is to focus more attention on their way of solving problems as opposed to the ways that are being proposed in washington. they gave me -- it gives me great pleasure and pride to introduce the governor from the great state of minnesota, mr. tim pawlenty. [applause] >> thanks a lot. thank you very much. i appreciate that. thank you. thanks a lot. i appreciate that. thank you. thanks for the honor of being with you today. thank you, that is very nice. thank you. if it is a delight to be here with you today. as speaker, one voice from the heartland about the challenges and opportunities facing our great nation and party, i am looking for to doing that in just a moment.

your passion and vision and attitude and optimistic outlook for our party and nation is exactly what we need right now. thank you for your tremendous leadership and service. i also want to thank the members of the minnesota rnc who are here today. many of you may know about minnesota politics. it is challenging. if your republican in minnesota, it is kind of like being a polar bear in miami. it is a tough place to be a republican, but their steadfast leadership and commitment to our principles is making a difference. we're moving forward in minnesota. [applause] we have 460 days to go until the 2010 election. there's a lot of staked -- there's a lot at stake, and

we'll have work to do. we all can play our part. for me, i am pleased and proud to have just become the vice chair of the republican governors association. i will be joining the tremendous share of that organization, haley barbour. [applause] and between haley barbour and me, we have both ends of the mississippi river covered as we try to return this country to the majority party. if i want to start today with some breaking news. i know you have been in meetings all day and may not have heard this, but there is developing is coming across the wire, coming across the tv sets. apparently, they are announcing that president obama is making great progress on climate change. he is turning the political climate of our country back toward republicans. [applause]

as you know, it in eyes of many, president obama is cool, cool, cool, but the american people are figuring out that he is wrong, wrong, wrong. [applause] this current presidency reflects a collision between the image and personality of president obama and the important lessons of history. .

>> i disagree with that. from a global perspective, he knows exactly what he is doing. he is in the process of unleashing a flood of federal spending and the greatest expansion of federal government in the modern history of this country. it is time that we stand up to president obama and it is time that we stand up for our principles and return it to the american people. [applause] that is one to require us, as republicans, to be more than just the critics in chief. we cannot just hope the other side goofs up and hits it in the

dugout. we have real challenges in this country and real concerns of our fellow citizens and we need to state that boldly. i want to tell you a true story about a construction worker that is working in suburban chicago on a tall water tower. he was in a safety harness but he needed a tool that was out of his reach and so he unwisely and of his safety harness and reached for the tool and he fell the hole in the water tower. surprisingly and miraculously, he landed in a larger and salt pile of dirt and he not only survived but he escaped even serious injury. the ambulance and emergency medical workers were scrambling to respond to this crisis and as they were picking him up gingerly and tenderly out of the dirt, they put him on to a gurney that was no more than three or 4 feet off the ground

and as they were lowering him on the gurney, past that they not drop him. as republicans, we have already had our fault. we need to get over the political posttraumatic stress syndrome of being so apologizing and discouraged about our future. we need to move forward with strength and confidence. let's move forward. as you know, political movement can aspire great change. one example that we can learn from is the polish independence movement. this is a great story and it is true.

the polish independence movement sparked the fall. they adopted a slogan a true proposition and it was two plus two equals four. they did that to borrow a sentiment from the book 1984 it said that if the state to plus two equals five -- if the state says that two plus two equals five, it equals five. we need to speak the truth. they're not -- this is not --

they have served us well the starkly. it will continue to serve as well. we need to ask what we believe and why we believe it and then we have to have the ability to communicate and educate and motivate and mobilize them change those sentiments into political action and govern and leave. that is why we do what we do. for all those, part of what we believe is who we are and where we come from. before me, i grew up on a -- in a little place in minnesota just outside of st. paul. when i grew up, it was the home of one of the largest meatpacking plants. it was a blue-collar town.

it shut down precipitously. there were a lot of moms and dads being laid off and there were a lot of family disruptions because of that. but it was a great community. it was a great place to grow up. i want to tell you about the challenge that we have in front of us. my oldest sister has worked as a secretary or administrative assistant for a company for 40 plus years. my older brother worked as a member as a member of the united food workers and union organizer and and a union steward working in the produce department of a grocery store. my other brother works for a number of years in a oral refineries as a member of the chemical and atomic workers union and now he works for a

municipality. my other sister is a special ed aid for children who are disabled in the public schools and she belongs to that union. you can imagine that the political discussion around my house growing up was a little challenging it was -- when we talk about the issues and the merits and the values and beliefs of what we stood for, we would have a discussion that would touch on things and we would ask if we believe we should have our taxes increased. we were paying enough in a state like minnesota. should we plow more money into the educational system or should we demand accountability for results and performance? >> that sounds good. >> what about health care? do you want the government taking the thing over worst should -- should those decisions be made by you and your doctor? >> i am with you on that.

>> what about hot-button issues? >> what about protecting and respecting life? why are you democrats? >> well, because republicans are not for the working person. you are not for us. have you ever heard that? do you still hear that? of course she did. the challenge and opportunity, i call them sam's club republicans. why do i refer to them as that? because people who shop at wal- mart or target like i do, you do

not have as much money as you would like for you have a limited amount of money. at the very least, you do not have more money to spend but you want good value for the money that you do spend. that is a good sentiment for us as republicans. people want good value for the money that they do spend. we have to communicate how our conservative ideas, principles and values translate into way helpful and meaningful opportunity for them. what do we believe? >> we believe that the success of our nation rides on the growth of private enterprise, not the growth of government. we believe in a limited and effective government. there are important things that government needs to do, so we are not always to anti- government. we believe that tyranny can take

the form of a well-meaning but bundling -- and bundligling the government. diplomacy only works if it is backed up by strength. whee believe that will community is most often found in our family is and our churches and our places of worship and in our neighborhoods and in individual acts of kindness and concern and love and caring. and most importantly, we believe in the paramount significance of freedom and liberty. we're not a great nation because guy just happened to make us smarter than everybody else on the face of the air. we are a great nation because we

are the freest people who have ever had the privilege to live in this great nation. [applause] that is important because freedom allows ordinary people to do extraordinary things. it allows us to invent. it allows a student -- to innovate. it allows us to dream. it allows us to have aspirations and the pursuit of happiness that is different from much of the rest of the world and it gives us tremendous advantage. it amplifies and celebrates the human spirit. we have an opportunity to showcase that as republicans. we want to be free so we can be on to open doors without be in beaten down -- without being beaten down. we want to be free to choose our own doctor and make our own health care decisions. we want to be free from the

weight of the crushing debt and that the federal government is dumping on us with no concern as to how it will be paid back. we want to be free to send our children to a school of our choice that suits the needs of our families and i do not believe and i know you do not believe that nobody should not be forced to have a child go to a bad school. [applause] so, how do we apply that to the modern issues? in the time that i have, i will touch on a few examples. one of them as clearly spending. we have a situation where our federal government does not even try anymore to pursue the goal of balancing the federal budget. we need to tell the truth. you cannot do five the financial laws of gravity and not have it

come back and haunt us in ways that are terrific. we are going to have the federal government the equivalent of a mortgage meltdown if we do not get a hold of this and begin to change it. it has not mattered whether we send some republicans were to congress or democrats to congress. if we are going to be the party of being fiscally disciplined, then we have to walk the walk and we send our team to washington under the banner and the jersey of the republican party, we need to expect and demand that they do that. we lost our way. [applause] the american people get this. they are tightening their belts and being asked to live within their means and their place of employment is not seeing wage increases.

they're living on less for an hour and they expect to understand that government should do the same thing and we should. we should deliver that for the american people. the only thing growing faster than the federal government's deficit is chris matthews man crushed on barack obama. -- a man crush on barack obama. barack obama said that we do not have any more money. with all due respect, mr. president, if we are out of money, stop spending it. [applause] in the war on spending, president obama is a pacifist. this is unlike the minnesota experience. i am not proud of the fact that my state has had a very robust spending pattern throughout its

history. we have begun to change that trend line. minnesota has been a state for 150 years. we celebrate our sesquicentennial a year ago. spending and government never went down until i became governor. we have control the spending and we have cut it for the first time in 150 years. [applause] we have also had a longstanding goal of getting minnesota out of the top-10 in taxes. the governors have said that we need to get out of the top 10 and finally the department of labour said that minnesota got out of the top-10. we got all the way to 11, but we are making progress.

also, i just want to touch briefly on health care. let us not just be the party that says we're not going to do anything. clearly, the health care system is broken. we have families and small businesses and school districts and counties and states and the federal government having their financial backs broken by the crushing weight of the cost of the current system, but as we do that, we have to be truth tellers and the commonsensical. we're going to control costs by spending more. that is like saying we're going to balance the checkbook by writing more checks. it is not want to work. we know it will not work. this is a scheme that will make burning made of blush -- make bernie madoff blush.

they want a government option to compete with the private sector. the justification and rationale for that is that we want to keep the private sector honest. ponder that for a moment what is next? if the price of pork a paper is too high and the price of deodorant or toothpaste is too high and the price of the towels are too high, is the government going to start a government wal- mart to keep the private sector honest and keep prices down if we do not like the price of potatoes? are we going to have the government start a new federal potato form of to keep the potato farmers honest? is absurd. we need to fight that. what can we do as republicans? we should be able to join

together with democrats on health care reform on a bipartisan basis. we need to get rid of junk lawsuits and have tougher standards for medical malpractice claims. we need to the knowledge that if you get sick, that should not preclude you from getting insurance in the future. we need to prohibit and limit the ability of insurance companies to keep people frozen out of the insurance system because of a pre-existing condition. we need portability. people do not need to risk losing their insurance every time they changed jobs. we need to switch the system from paying for volumes of procedures to paying for better health care and better health care outcomes. we have done that in minnesota. it helps. if we are paying for volumes of procedures, what do you think we

are going to kid? >> volumes of procedures. we can do better in chronic disease management. we know that if we can get people to the best care, we can get more efficiency. in the internet world, why should i in minnesota or you in maryland be limited in your health care purchasing choices to adjust your state? -- to adjust your state? >> what can i go wherever i feel like it? why does the government tell me that my market are the three insurance companies in minnesota? let's open that up. there are loads of things that we can do to improve the system. finally, i want to touch on foreign affairs. we have, as a first priority for

our federal government to protect and defend this nation and its people. like you, i am worried about the threats that this nation faces. we need to remember that pretty speeches do not intimidate tyrants and thugs. we need to remember what i said earlier. it is weakness that temps our enemies. we have a situation where president obama recently said that he believes that iran has a right to develop nuclear energy in as long as it's for civilian energy purposes. let me see if i got that straight. president obama will not allow america to expand and develop nuclear energy, but it's ok for iran to do it? [applause] we need to stand with our friends that share our values and our principles.

we need to keep our guard up. there are troubling signs on the horizon. there are some hints that the administration may reconsider the anti-missile defense research. you can't pull the rug out from underneath them. a couple of countries wrote obama and ask him not to do that. we look at the defense budget and we look at missile defense capabilities being reduced in funding in alaska at a time when north korea and iran are more and more of a threat. then, you see proposals that cut discretionary spending in the department of defense. let me just close by saying that to renew america, we must apply

the values that founded our party and made our nation great and guided it through all these years. as you know, i am a republican in a traditionally democratic state. we were able to contain our tax burden. we were able to reform our system, even with a divided government. we need that in washington. we need that strong republican voice in washington d.c. so that conservative solutions can address these problems. i respect those who do not agree with us. we need an opportunity to reach out to those that are not republicans. we need to get more democrats and independents to see the wisdom in supporting us. as ronald reagan said, someone who disagrees with the save percent of the time -- agrees

with us 80 percent of the time are not our enemy. we need a coalition that says that we will be the republican party but we will also have room for conservative democrats and independents so that we can govern with that coalition in mind. let's be proud of who we are. a let's make sure that we welcome others who are not yet republicans to to the opportunity of experiencing our values and principles. we lead our nation through the slump -- the civil war and we ended slavery. we led the nation in free-market solutions that have created the greatest economy in the world and we are americans and we know that ever challenged opens the door to another opportunity and a brighter future tomorrow. applying those principles to the issues of our time is a great opportunity. it is what we owe ourselves and our nation. nothing else, nothing more, and nothing less. thank you for the chance to

speak with you today. thank you for what you do for our party and the conservative movement. [applause]

>> later that day, the democratic national committee released a response, saying that he and other republican politicians would appeal only to the far wall like -- far right wing of their party. to read the entire statement, visit the democratic national committee's website. >> coming up in a moment, rep just like on his opposition to the earmarked process and his point of view on how money is appropriated in congress. following that, a look at the future exploration of mars. a little bit later, a hearing on guantanamo bay detainee's and the ability to try them in u.s. courts.

>> and now, arizona rep jeff late on his opposition to the earmarked process and his point of view on how money is appropriated in congress. from washington journal, this is half an hour. host: jeff flake joins us to talk about your marks -- earma rks and spending bills. what is behind all of this? guest: they have gotten out of control completely for the past two decades. in the 1990's, we ran to be the practice. initially, earmarks were used to protect vulnerable members. it's kind of income protection thing. host: incumbency protection. guest: yes, but since then it

has become a lot more pernicious. both parties discovered that earmarks could be used for fund- raising. many are not just wasteful, pork-barrel projects, but they are no bid contracts. on the other end, th recipient are executives and lobbyists and political action committees will contribute. host: you have made a concerted effort over the last weeks and months to bring awareness on earmarks in legislation. is the problem with earmarks worse under the democrats that was in the previous congress under republicans? guest: the ramping up of earmarks happened mostly under republican rule. republicans bear a lot of the blame. in 2006, in a deathbed

repentance, republicans passed some earmark reforms. they came in and enacted so little of. i felt a little bit better. having said that, some of the transparency is there. when i challenged an earmark, i used to not know whose earmark i was defendinchallenging. i do not have as many opportunities to challenge now. the democrats have really closed down the appropriation process. that is unprecedented. we have a lot more information about earmarks, but we do not have the accountability that we should have because of the inability of members to challenge these earmarks. host: jeff flake is with us until 8:30.

democrats, 202-737-0002. republicans, 202-737-0001. independents, 202-628-0205. we will take your e-mails and tweets. host: do you ask for earmarks? guest: no, i do not ask for any. ihost: how do you go about making it happen? guest: there's a lot of federal spending that goes on all over the country. earmarks represent a tiny portion. i think somebody has got to stand up and say i will not do it at all. once you get earmarks, if you go to the floor to challenge other earmarks, the appropriators will say you have this earmark in this bill, so how can you criticize others?

hostit is not just me. there are a number of members who do not take earmarks now. host: another thing you have been talking about on the house floor -- you have been making a point about lobbying and the impact of lobbying on congressional spending. guest: earmarks used to be -- the chairman of the appropriations committee will point back to 1992 when he chaired the rooappropriations committee. he said there was not one earmark in the labor bill. today there were 2500. there were more than 1000 in the bill that just passed the house last week. as i mentioned, it was kind of

wasteful stuff. now it has become circular fund- raising. the member will get the earmark, likened the defense bill this week. there are 548 no bid contracts to private companies. there are more than 1000 earmarks in the bill and 548 represent no bid contracts. in many cases, you see a pattern of circular fund-raising. the member who gets the earmark will see campaign contributions come back, usually when the earmark is requested, and later when it is granted, and also from a lobbyist that represent it. there are a number of investigations at the justice department focusing on the practice. host: you have called for an

ethics investigation on the pma group. guest: that is correct. they're looking at the relationship between campaign contributions and earmarks. there are allegations that his firm used -- basically reimbursed employees. there are a number of other investigations going on regarding mostly defense contracts. host: was the largest beneficiary of the pma group? >> i do not want to name anyone. there are a few that received a lot of money. our own ethics committee, when you request earmarks, you have to say you have no financial interest in the earmark. our own ethics committee says

campaign contributions do not necessarily constitute financial interest. they have greenlighted circular funding. i think that exposes members to investigation. in the house, we should set a higher standard than whether or not you can be indicted or convicted. we ought to say that if there's an appearance of impropriety, we should stay away. i have proposed resolution is to try to get the ethics committee to investigate pma. i offered eight in a row. i got an increasing number of members each time. finally the democrats offered their own resolution to basically force the ethics committee to indicate that it was investigating. host: when will we hear about

that? guest: the ethics committee has indicated that it is under review. there's no ticking clock. i would like to see the ethics committee established a committee to look into it. only then do you really know it is investigated. host: jacksonville, fla. on the democrats' line. caller: good morning, jeff flake. i saw york exchange last week on the floor. i called my representative and told her in a last time voters for the democrats. i do not like the way the minority is being left out of the process. i think you need more time to debate the bills and have some kind of change in the process

where an equal number of amendments can be presented, especially in the appropriations. it was very difficult to see what was going on when the minority side was left out of the process. guest: it is a great point about the appropriations process. for the first time in anybody's memory, the appropriations committee or the rules committee on the democratic side has decided to bring appropriations to the floor under a closed rule. the rules committee and not the members at large decide which amendments can be offered. under the typical appropriation bill, as long as the amendment is germane, can breed to the floor to move money around in a bill. this year, the majority has decided to close those rules and

only allow the amendments that they want to see offered. we were told this was done because of time constraints. appropriating is what we do in congress. i do not think we should try to do as we are doing this week, to the defense bill in one day. even if that were the case, the democratic majority has given me a number of amendments, mostly because they know they can beat my amendments. logrolling takes affect. host: what does that mean? guest: i have an amendment for a bridge, you have an amendment for the rock and roll hall of fame. i will vote for yours and you will vote for mine. it's a process where everybody has each other's back and nothing gets done. the democrats know that, so they have allowed a lot of my amendments to come to the floor. and then they said, we got 10

amendments. of course, eight of them are flakes. what i have been doing is asking for unanimous consent to substitute one of my colleagues amendments for one of mine. we are under the time constraints already. it is basically calling their bluff. if it is a time issue, simply allow us to offer the amendments we would like. i have asked for unanimous consent 16 times and it was objected to every time. the majority has decided they do not want their members to take some of the tough votes. host: a question on twitter. guest: i think you can say there is in economic benefits whenever money is spent, fleeting though it may be.

whenever you take money from one area, when you have a budget, you typically take it from another. but the of these earmarks -- many of these earmarks are very wasteful. yes, you can say that they promote economic development. what spending does not? that is part of the problem. we have accounts that are simply for economic development. a member can get earmarks to renovate a theater or whatever and they can say that is economic development. they're right, fleeting as though it may be. host: a republican call from rhode island. caller: thank you. i don't really have a question for you. i have a comment.

i have been watching you on the floor of the congress. i sure wish you were from rhode island. guest: [laughter] i wish you were from arizona. caller: i would love to vote for you. i do not see an end to the corruption and high taxes. even when we get a republican -- i am a republican from the old days. when we get a republican, they're not even a moderate. host: are there enough of you to form a flake earmark caucus? guest: i used to get 30 votes or 40 votes for some of my earmark amendments. i have offered a few hundred. now, routinely, it is over 100.

that is still not enough. i have. -- i have won once out of a few hundred times. host: hollywood, north carolina on the independents line. caller: thank you. i watched you and rep king the other day. you guys make a ehcheck of a team. i called your office because i wanted to express my appreciation for the way you stand up for us. it has not been seen for a while. you make a great team. i do not know. it is like no one in our government cares about what the american people are thinking anymore. it was just so wonderful to see that. it was refreshing.

please keep up. i do not want to read about anything that in the newspaper about you. i want to stand behind you. i hope you go far. i know it sounds crazy. you are not my representative, but i like you guys. guest: please move to arizona. host: does this interfere with such a focus on earmarks -- do you find it hard to get other work done? guest: no, it is an important part of what i feel i do here, but it does not consume everything. there are a lot of other issues i am concerned about. the earmarks problem the is not just the money wasted with earmarks. they consume a lot of other things as well. when you get a earmark in a bill, you are somewhat obligated to support that bill, no matter how bloated it becomes with other spending, and no matter

what items there are. there are times when real debates occur in congress on a number of issues. that debate is muted because people have their earmarks, so you have overwhelming bipartisan support for a bill that should not be there. when great example is the last reauthorization of the highway bill in 2005. we overspend what was in the highway trust fund by billions of dollars. we knew we were to read the chairman of the appropriations committee said we are overspending. this week, we may do another chargtranche. host: because it is time that much debt? guest: it is in that much debt. we have 6300 earmarks in that

bill, including the infamous bridge to nowhere. very few members there to vote against the bill because they have their own projects. 8 votes against the bill in the house and three in the senate for a bill that everyone knew should not be passed. because it was larded up with the earmarks, everybody felt obligated to do so. that has become the norm on appropriation bills and it does not do well for the covers and other areas. host: representative jeff flake , a master's of political science at brigham young. a democratic caller is next. caller: i really admire you. i wish we had 100 more like you.

there are just not many people in our congress now that will stand up and fight for the people. thea >> we cannot sustain that. on the current issue, the legislation working its way through, what are your thoughts? >> i am not a fan of this kind of reform. i'm not a fan of this kind of reform. they're a lot of good proposals out there.

what is on the table has a lot of terrible aspects. i think it will lead to more government control, not less. the decisions that individuals make now will be made by others. host: what do you hear from constituents? guest: they obviously want to make health care more affordable and a sensiblaccessible. overwhelmingly, my constituents favor the more free market reforms. host: here's a call from florida on the republican line. caller: i call as the loyal opposition republican reform. we are known as the moose herd ers. we are going into our opposition for the coming elections with a 1000 word essay.

would you be our debts in it to write a 1000 word essay on earmarks. -- would you write our 100 word essay on earmarks? get olympia snowe. host: a tall order. guesta comment from twitter.com. is there not something to be said for getting spending bills done in a timely order in the house? guest: you bet. thus timely me we should do the defense bill with such huge amounts of spending and also earmarks with a number also -- and also with a number of

earmarks that should be vetted? we should take at least a couple of days. the defense subcommittee passed this out and very little time. the full committee march up the defense bill in 18 minutes. it took 18 minutes. last year, they did not mark it up at all and it came to the floor under completely closed rule. now we have seen the investigations that happen when the members are allowed to get no bid contracts for private companies and received campaign contributions from those who received a earmarks. host: same bidders fost. peterss the.

caller: you ran all over the democrats and pushed everything you could push through, including the war in the bracken the afghanistan. -- the war in iraq and afghanistan. why don't you people to get your heads together and start working for the people rather than filling your pockets with campaign money? you are not helping nobody but yourself. guest: i appreciate the call. we were in the majority and we did not change this practice. that is part of the reason we are in the minority today. sometimes republicans use roles in a heavy-handed way. we held open the prescription drug vote for three hours. whichever majority is in sometimes abuses the process. i have never seen anything like this today, where appropriation bills come to the floor under closed rule and members are not

allowed to offer amendments. there were times when republicans were in charge that myself and other members brought some very uncomfortable amendments up during the appropriation process. i challenge my own speakers earmark at one. -- at one time. for example, the interior bill. we have interior bill for three days. the majority watched member after member bring earmarks and other amendments to the floor. three days on the interior bill, and now we do a defense bill in one day. host: the speakers tortured will appear today on capitol hill -- the speakers portrait will

appear today. guest: as you can imagine, i do not get much from pax. it is individuals in arizona who believe that government is too big. host: one of our regular tweet ers -- guest: there is a reporting going on, be it will call, the hill, "the washington post" and "the wall street journal" -- and "the new york times." there are wonderful grooves on the outside. they have already analyze the defense bill.

was it is to give up with a few days ago -- members the represent less than 4% of the entire body in the house of representatives, get their taking home 32% of the earmark dollars. you see that over and over. the appropriations committee members take home the lion's share. they have also analyzed campaign contributions that have come back to these members on the defense appropriations subcommittee. there are some resources out there. citizens against government waste and a lot of other organizations. host: miami, fla.

caller: i do not like you too much. every amendment that made the other day was designed to kill the bill. do not bs me. next, republicans do not get it. this is the law united states -- this is the united states of america. you do not operate that way. getting back to earmarks. without earmarks, there would be no southwest of this country. earmarks were good until 2001 when you guys got a hold of it.

host: just a minute or two. we will let jeff flake response. guest: he brings up a good point of funding projects. you like the spending, but you do not like these earmarks today. i would point out that those were not earmarks. it was debated for years. it was as far from an earmark as you can get. i'm talking about a contemporary practice of earmarking where members try to obfuscate and

then try to hide priorities. host: kentucky caller. caller: thank you. i have two questions. if the president's new health- care proposal is so good, why is it that congress and the president have a different health care plan than what is recommended to the overall people? two, is the primary objective of this healthcare plan to curtail the increased medical and expenses they it is they will cover the baby boomers. what we were bored, they had to increase hospitals, the elementary schools, schools,

universities. then we have the housing boom of the 1970's. host: i will let jeff flake answer. guest: on the government-run plan, an immense were offered in two committees of the house to force members of the congress. those of the bids were rejected by the majority is time. it's a great point. i think both republicans and democrats understand that we have an unsustainable amount of growth in medicare spending and medicaid spending. we have e got to reform. >> and you for being with us. >> tomorrow, on washington journal, a political roundtable.

in the political analyst for a station in washington. we look at the governors' races in virginia and discuss how legislators can preserve were so security. washington journal, live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> a look at the future exploration of mars with the senior project scientist of the james web space telescope. he spoke at the international convention held by the mars society early this week. this is about 45 minutes. perhaps we could have a teaching moment. one of the most -- this is

whether or not they can accept awards and prizes from outside organizations. we look to see if there are particular standards in place and whether the awards are given -- with written standards. what changes are the facts from time to time. we look at the regulations and government books. one of the examples listed in the ethics regulations which i happen to point out to john at the time, was that u.s. department of agriculture's scientist to accept the nobel prize if offered. i felt that it was not out of

the realm of possibilities that we might be able to do this for you. being the humble man that he is, he explained to me that those sorts of things take a long time. after period of time, it gives one pause to think that perhaps this might actually happen. one day, in 2006, i came into the office and my colleagues are jumping up and down and running down holway and john and his colleague said we had won the nobel prize. it was one of a series of nobel prizes on that subject. we would like to think there are more to come. it is a very nice experience being in stockholm sweden. it is not really tourist season. my friend and colleague were

walking down the street and we would run into local people from stockholm and we would -- they would find that we were americans and they would ask is what brings them -- brings us to stockholm. it is a very interesting experience. so, without further ado, let me bring up my colleague, john mather. [applause] >> david, thank you for that lovely introduction. i remember seeing my ethics instructions that said it was all right to win a nobel prize. anyway, it did happen. i need to take a few seconds to set up this computer connection, but that usually works. anyway, i am going to

concentrate -- maybe you heard i was going to talk about this. . . something appearing on the screen, i hope. something is happening. ta-da. we have to make sure that we get the system set up correctly,

first. is that good? that is not so good. tweaking get better pictures, right? let's try that. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] okay, i think we're ready to go now. there we go. ok. what i want to do is talk about how we learn our own history and how we may learn more about it with telescopes. i am going to start off with

some basic stories i've have been hearing about the earth. i work on the cosmic background radiation a long time. i think mario explained a great deal of history of the universe to you. let me concentrate on something much more closer to home and a much more surprising. the big bang theory was already part of the lore when i was a college kid, background radiation was discovered when i was a college kid. when we confirmed that the big bang story was correct, that was not a big surprise to me, but nevertheless it turned out to be important to the world. what is more surprising is the possibility of money as much as we think we know about the earth and its own history and how much more we may be able to learn about how the earth came to exist. if i move on to my next chart, i will tell you a little bit about

what people think they know about the earth. we have an astonishing precise measure day for the beginning of the solar system. these are the earliest bits of sand and such that we confined orbiting, either picked up from rocks on the moon orbits of comets that we bring home or we try to find them on the earth. we have this astonishingly precise date, four. 567 -- 4.567 billion years ago this all got started and the solar system was quick to establish the sun and the planets that we have. a couple of rather remarkable things are supposed to have happened, worked out by the people studying the solar system. the big question for many decades was, how come the moon we have is so different from other moons in the solar system? how did we get it? the current theory that seems most popular is a thing about

the size of mars hit the earth. that tells you if you want to know about mars, you should try studying the moon also. the collision was rather spectacular, the story goes everything was melted from the surface to the bottom, and huge amounts of material came flying out the space, orbiting the ground. from that debris, rock was formed again and turned into the moon. i do not know whether the theory tells us it was formed from vapor were chunks of rock that came out of the earth. there's a lot to be found out by studying the moon, and i definitely concur it is a fascinating place to go if you want to learn more about the early history of the solar system. at any rate, it seems to be all the light weight elements like carbon and hydrogen that we are rather fond of here because they support life might just have dispersed back into space

because everything was so hot. if that is true, then the early earth was rocky and hot and there were no chemicals of life handy. that means we may have had to have had additional bombardments of rock to have those elements. there was a three for a long time that the oil underground was a direct deposit from space project goals. that was a competing theory at one time. after that, the early earth was probably a little bit cool because the sun was not as bright as it is now. it that might have been interesting times as well. quite recently, the people that study orbital mechanics, the motion of the planets around the sun, have been doing simulations and a rather common result is that jupiter and saturn have switched orbits twice. a long time ago, i was speaking

with a rather and weighing a character who claimed that the world's had been colliding all the time. his specifics were disastrously wrong, but now that we're getting into the details, the general idea that the solar system has not always been stable and like it is seems to becoming quite clear. you might remember that generations ago that people were very upset because isaac newton give us a clockwork universe and everything was set up and going to go in regular progression forever. well, nowadays, even without the benefit of quantum mechanics, we can calculate where particles will go and it is rather chaotic. a remarkable history of the earth. life on the earth formed shortly after all the bombardment happened, because we have signs of that. here i have a few things to say about the earth itself. my colleagues tell us the things

that made volcanoes on mars released huge amounts of chemicals into the atmosphere. they did so here on earth as well,, dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, poisonous elements, and the conditions for life here on the surface or variable. the continents moved around quite a lot. the names of some of the earlier ones on the chart, we have some evidence of these from the way that the earth is magnetize and where the rock strata can be pieced together to see that this was next to that a while ago. this amazing series of things has been happening. when i was in grade school, my history teacher said, not see how the continents of the americas at fit together with africa and europe? we can see this, but we do not know how come the scientists cannot see this. this was in the 1950's, before the idea of continental drift

was recognized as scientifically valid. nevertheless, my grade school history teacher could see it, and it was obvious to us kids. we kept wondering where the scientists were. we kept getting some lovely surprises, things right in front of our eyes not noticed for a long time. a little but else about our history, already mentioned the continent's have been moving, huge numbers of ice ages, modulated by volcanic activity. if there is even a possibility that just before the great outburst of life, the cambrian explosion, there was a time when the earth may have been frozen solid, the idea here that all the oceans were solid ice. well, it is dramatic to think about the possibilities that our earth has gone through this series of events. i do not know how to interpret this, whether this is a known fact or just something worth thinking about and working on.

but when you get closer to the current time and you think, how the human beings get here? it seems our particular ancestral population was down to about 600 individuals living somewhere in africa, possibly on the south coast, right about the time of what is called the glacial period 150,000 years ago. as a result, we are all very closely related, 600 ancestors altogether, which is a remarkable possibility. jumping ahead, 40 years ago, calais' appointed his telescope at the sky and we are now celebrating the international year of astronomy. will happen in the future, there is another surprise, it is possible all this wonderful life we have is going to put all the carbon dioxide that is in the earth into rock and will go into rock over the next few hundred million years, and then there will not be enough greenhouse gas here to keep the earth warm

at all and it will get too cold. we better get going with our space travel. not to say that it is easy or that we know how, but we do have a certain time pressure. [laughter] after that, the son is getting warmer. but it will get too hot for us. before the end of the solar system, the sun is supposed to expand to just about the size of the earth orbit. around that time, we're going to be orbiting inside the service of a very bright, rather red star, and will definitely be too hot. if we're going to go traveling, we better figure out. some people think that the future of space travel is we will build silicon life with transistors or future equivalent and it will travel through the universe. we do not know. anyway, why are people so excited about this? when i was a kid, i said, dad, how did we get here? he was a geneticist so little

about evolution and chromosomes and genes, now i just want to give you an example, if you want to know how you get your personally, you can learn something more than you might have. i have just sent my $100 to national geographic and they tell me this is where my car in the sun went. i think it is a school project and i want to plug that. not that this is an astronomy, this is part of why we are also interested in astronomy, that we have to learn our own history. when you ask why does the public want to do what they want to do, we just have a very deep compulsion to learn how we got here and where we're going. we can learn more than you thought. i want to illustrate a couple key events of the universe. if this works, i'm supposed to be able to show you a movie of a gamma ray bursts. this is the object blowing up. this is a star in the process of

some kind of disastrous collapse. it is showing a jet of material coming toward us, close to the speed of light. what we think is happening is this extraordinary collision is releasing material pointed at us. the reason we see these things at the edge of the universe is once in awhile they are aimed at us. that is why they're so bright. as it happens now, the record holder for the most distant object ever discovered is one camry burst just seen this year, and it is at a red shift of 8.2. it is 9.2 times object made, and this subject was about 600, 700 million years old. we have been able to see that far back in time. this matters because of this like this probably created the chemical elements that were then released into space to produce the first possibilities of life in the early universe.

mario has shown you a little bit of the history of the galaxies. we have our own simulated movie here, two galaxies colliding, and a freeze frame. the picture in the upper middle. galaxies collide. what mario may not have mentioned, we're kind of expecting our nearest neighbor galaxy, the andromeda nebula, to come get us. the andromeda nebula will intersect the milky way in about 5 billion years, just about the time that it is getting too hot to live here on earth. we better get going, again, on space travel. it was a few years ago that the andromeda strain was a popular story and we thought, well, bacteria from over there coming at us. it is not just bacteria. [laughter] now we would like to know how we got here. we have lots of pictures from theorists, saying how we think

stars and planets may have formed. we have animations of this process that takes just a few tens of thousands of years for a start to form. it takes a few millions of years for distant material formed planets, and it takes maybe tens, hundreds of millions of years for the basic course of the planets to get set up an fourth of rocks to get cleared up so that a life form could exist on a planet like earth. we also should use this picture, the eagle nebula, where stars have been born, and are burning away their homes. now want to show you a different view of the same place. this is the same place as seen with infrared light. the point to show here is that in for red deer is quite a different view. there are stars on this picture taken from the ground with a very large telescope in chile that you could have not have seen in the previous picture. he could not see them because the dust grains in the clouds

are too opaque. in for red light goes around the dust grains without as much impediment -- and for red light -- infrared light goes around the dust grains. we use them to see inside the clouds were stars are born. very important message about looking into are stellar birthplaces. i want to talk a little bit about extra planets. a vast numbers have already been found. there are about 100 projects already going or planned to study planets around other stars. webber has a telescope that could possibly make progress has figured out how to try. we already have many. there are 327 points that have been found by the radio velocity astronomy techniques, a planet going around the star will pull back and forth on the

start and you see the change of velocity of that star. with great care, the people working this method have been able to measure the velocity of a star down to 1 meter per second. this is totally astonishing to an instrument builder, and this is getting pretty close to fundamental limits. but it is enough that some plants that are not a lot bigger than earth are possible to see if you get to see them close and to their parents' cars. -- there parent stars. we are ready now have 59 plants that go in front of their parent stars. i will show you some sketches of that. i have another method here called a micro lensing. once in awhile, if you look in the right direction, toward the middle of the galaxy, there are some and stars in your line of

sight that one will cross in front of another almost. when this happens, the one in the middle will bend the light of the distant star enough to magnified image of the distant star, and what we see is the distance start over the course of a year or so will get brighter and fainter. now it turns out if you are very lucky and there is a planet around the middle start, it will make its own little blip on the curve. this has been done for seven different star systems, and one of them happened have at two plants that could be seen. is a very complementary techniques, and this has all been done from the ground, even better in space, and maybe we will do that one of these days. we are beginning to learn. most recently, we have been beginning to make direct images. mario showed you one picture of those. finally, timing. we have a few plants that have been discovered orbiting pulsars, which is not exactly where you would hope to go

living because a pulsar is a very nasty source of intense radiation. it seems when a star system completes its life and turns into a neutron stars and pulsars, once and awhile either planets are formed from the debris or they were still there from leftover beforehand. we're able to do this most amazing thing. this year, we have recently watched the kepler mission, an observatory built specifically to discover planets like earth orbiting stars like the sun. it was just launched a few months ago. it is to be pointed at the cygnus' region of our galaxy or has the possibility of seeing the most popular stars at one time. there will be monitoring about 100,000 stars continuously several years. the purpose of this is to see some of them blank. the calculation says they should discover a handful of planets like earth around stars like the

sun if there are out there. of course, thousands are easier targets are likely to be found as well. we will see what we see, but the expectation is this will be the first measurement of how abundant planets like earth are around stars like the sun. it will take a while. if you see one blank, you do not know what happened. we have to wait another year if it is an earth around the sun for the alignment to reoccur. you have to watch as many times before your confident, but i think over the next few years we will hear from them that there are many places like home over there. how much like home, that remains to be figured out. we have an illustration coming here about how the planet can obscure light from a star. uc degraff suggesting that the star will get -- you see the

graph suggesting that the light will get faster. and the picture we have a similar story. when a planet goes behind the start, you'll also notice if the planet is bright enough that the total light is diminished when the star blocks the light of the planet. this has been done already with the spitzer space telescope, which has been in operation quite a few years. this only works when the star is faint and the planet is bright, but nevertheless it has been done and worked. more of these detections are likely to happen. what can we learn from these sorts of things? some of the light from the star will go through the atmosphere of the planet on its way to your telescope. that enables you to study the characteristics of the constituents of that planetary atmosphere. also, once and awhile there is a possibility with enough sensitivity that he could even detect the effect of a mood around the planet if he could do

this. -- of a moon around the planet, and if you are very lucky may be able to tell of the planet has water in its atmosphere, depending on temperature and many other things. in the very long term, we have many hopes for this technique. it is the first technique that has been effective to learn details about the at this year's of planets. -- atmospheres of planets. just to illustrate another way of going at things, quite often a system like the sun, with its planetary system and interplanetary dust, will be visible from a distance because of the dust. here is a close by start in the southern sky. we saw this with the hubble telescope. there is a ring of dust orbiting around that star. even a long time ago, it was recognized this ring of dust is not where it is supposed to be.

why would the dust be in a ring, and second, why is it not orbiting, why is it not centered on the star? the upshot is we figured a plan it had to be there. sure enough, if years later, it was figured out there really is a planet over there, inside the ring of dust, and it is presumably the want responsible for making the dust have that particular orbit. since then, we have more pictures from the ground. if you make a very good telescope on the ground and you correct for the fluctuations of the atmosphere with adaptive optics, you could take pictures of stars from the ground and hope to see planets. the one on the upper right is done with a very large jim and i telescope and adaptive optics. -- jim and i telescope and adaptive optics. we've been able to wait long enough to see the planets move. the purple on red thing in the middle is actually not the

star, but the leftovers from the optics. that is what the star looks like through our imperfect optics and the atmosphere of the earth. what will we do next? clearly, europe but is an interesting place in our own soul of system. mars is not the only wet place. besides the earth and mars, this is another place that was discovered by galileo. both of these have oceans covered with ice. europa has this amazing structure that looks like ice floes with muddy water between the cracks. i think we have recognized a long time since this picture was taken by the galileo mission that this is a wonderful place to go studying and thinking about how water works and the solar system and to see if that material has any signs of organic chemistry in it.

it is pretty hard to drill through this ice to get to some real water underneath. people have drawn pictures of nuclear reactors melting through, so it will be kind of hard to do that and find out if there is pond scum under the surface, but it could be. it also in the system run sadr, we have two places that are alive. you have probably heard about one of these which has these little spritzers of volcanic water coming out. we flew the probe through the spritzer plume to measure them. it is also recognize that tighten where we landed a probe and the pictures as a surface that is basically made out of place -- titan, with the likes of methane and ethane on the surface. the surface has been shifting. we figure, okay, how can a shift? it is floating on something. the calculation says the surface of titan is ice and it is

floating on water underneath. we have four places in the solar system besides mars that are wet. what can be learned and our own solar system? we now have eight planets in the solar system, but there are hundreds of things out there in the distant part of the solar system to study. plutio got demoted because he was about to be outclassed. this is what the known planets look like outside of into the outer solar system. there is one that is already bigger than pluto. the one that is marked eris has a curved around it and so does makemake. their march that way because they have a temporary atmosphere when it close to the sun. some of them also have their own

little satellites. it is a very remarkable study that can be done. these are presumed to be remnants of an earlier solar system. if we want to know how come the earth is like it is, this is a good place to look. find the rocks, see what they're made of, and learn what you can about their orbits and figure out when they could have or if they did come towards earth to bring us water and carbon. where are these objects? this is a diagram that shows their orbits, the horizontal axis is distance from the sun, vertical axis is inclination of the orbit. most of the orbits are not exactly zero inclined orbits. these things have been kicked out of the plant -- a lipstick plane, but they are out there. -- these things have been kicked out of the political plane. >> now i want to take a few minutes to talk about the new telescope we're working on, the

james webb telescope. it will help work on this question of how the planets get here, how did we get here. i mentioned earlier that we want to study infrared. one reason is the infrared light will pass through and around the dust grains that obscure the view of the stars that have just been formed. another is that it is the place to look for the early universe. i thought we will concentrate on planets today. also, infrared comes from room temperature. things like us. so here we are, friends of ours. at any rate, infrared tells us different things. what is the new telescope look like? this is the james webb telescope. it does not look like any telescope we have ever flown.

what you see here looks like a solar energy concentrator behind a shield. it is a galaxy energy concentrator. the light comes from the lower right in this picture, the lens is of the hex agonal mirror, focused on the the secondary mirror at the end of the blue triangular tower and bounces back into the instrument package. this will be operated far from earth, but not nearly as far as mars. it is 1 million miles away. the long, gray ash thing is actually an umbrella. it has five layers. this telescope looks like this partly because it is bigger than the rocket. this is the first time we're trying to put up a giant deployable telescope in space and make it function in the way that it should as a proper telescope. it is a partnership, doing this project, nasa leading, but we have big contributions from

europe and canada, including europe is providing commercial launch vehicle to carry a payload out there. ii am not going to be able to tell you the whole story about what we want to do with this, but i will show you where it goes. here is the diagram. many of you have heard about l4 and l5 because they are stable places in orbit. on the other hand, they're far away, each one of them as one astronomical unit away from here. we like this l2 because it is overhead at midnight for us, a million miles away, four times as far away as the moon. it is an unstable or but point. we keep having to move the spacecraft to stay there, but it does not take much to do that. how big is the telescope? this model is made of steel. this is not the real one. but here is on the lawn over a battered spaceflight center. this is about 1/10 of the

engineering team that is working on this mission. it is a very large collaboration to do this. people might say that it takes a village to build the telescope. [laughter] i will show you how it is supposed to unfold. this is much larger than the rocket can be, and on the other hand maybe it essentially we but bigger rockets. here is how it unfolds, about 10,000 times faster than it really goes. first, we unfold the solar panels and the telemetry disch. now we have erected the telescope on to its power and we are about to unfold the sun shield. in real life, the sun and earth will be below the observatory, so the telescope you see will be protected completely from the heat of the sun and will be the cool itself down by radiation and outer space down to about 40 calvin. this is what it takes to do an ifrared telescope in space.

-- it will be cooled down to 40 kelvin. we could never do this on the earth because the earth is too warm. there are five layers of the sun shield. that is what it takes to protect it, a sun protection factor of about 1 million sunblock. there is the telescope, more or less set up. it will be adjusted after launch to be the right shape. we learn from the hubble telescope how to just a mirror. it was figured out the math. the mathematics that we had to invent for the hubble are exactly the same for the fine adjustment for this telescope. the collection of 18 beryllium hexagons will function as one single parabolic mirror. he might say that is hard to do, how can you manage doing that? this is a tremendous challenge for mechanical teams. how we make sure this works?

clearly, we will rehearse a lot, do a lot of testing. we have people, the company that is building this, northrop grumman, working for other government agencies that cannot tell you what they do, but they tell us this is definitely not the most complicated thing that ever put up. [laughter] people are watching it. that is good. [laughter] i will just illustrate one thing that we will do, i can tell you more about this, this is the optical test. the apollo astronauts rehearse their trip to the moon using this giant vacuum tank in houston. we find a just the right size and shape for artest. we will we'll in the telescope on the track, and we will put the instrumentation of the top. turns out the center of curvature of the mirror is right near the instrumentation at the top, so it is just the right size and shape. this will soon become the world's largest helium-cooled tank. we have to make the whole inside

of the apparatus come down to near 20 kelvin so we contested at its operating temperature of about 40. -- so that we can test it at its operating temperature. this will be launched according to plan in 2014. now i would like to wrap up about what speculations may come next summer and about the planets around other stars. this is a sketch of an idea called new world's observer. this is a way of saying planets around other stars that is quite different from the ways we have tried before. you would say, well, can't we just point a telescope at a store and look for the telescope next to it -- but for the planet next to it? the answer is yes but there's a lot of belair on the telescope. -- there is a lot of belair on the telescope. if you are going to see any

great distance, you have to get rid of almost all of that some light and will be put it? here is an idea. this is called an up coulter, and the idea is to put this thing that looks like a point the sunflower about 50,000 kilometers away from the telescope. 50,000 kilometers, that is a small amount in the business of space. if you could do this, even cast a shadow of the star on the telescope. the shad will be big enough to put the telescope in, but nevertheless the planet that you will be hunting for will be off to the side a little bit. you should be able to look around the edge of the starke shield and see the planet earth or earth-like planet earth out there. we have studied this idea in my colleagues say they can build it. will we build it? that is another subject. this is not easy because this

shield that is up there has to be something like 50 meters across. we have not built something that large with the kind of precision that is required. we would have to learn how to do that. on the other hand, is easier at least in principle -- i should not say that, it might be easier than building it. telescope and viewing the starlight with optical measures. another way that we have to go at finding planets, this is called a terrestrial planet finder with the infrared wavelength. this is a difficult project to do. this has for telescopes in a row, all collecting light from the start at the infrared wavelength and send them to the combining device, a fifth observatory, flying the information with the others. this one is also difficult, but i guess of what i would like to point out is if you could build this one, there is a possibility

that you could see the signs of life in the atmosphere of another planet this way. the little graph shows with the infrared spectrum of such an earth-like plant would be from such a distance. there are three compounds noted, ozone and carbon dioxide. that is because that is what the earth looks like. the ozone is there because we needed on planets. our job here is to make carbon dioxide for them. from a distance, we can make an observation that would tell us if the planet is like earth because it is alive like earth. it would not tell you that there are people over there, but it would tell you that there are planets over there. iwould another life system make oxygen? it might. if it did not, we would not know. the early earth could be alive without producing this much oxygen, but maybe not. anyway, i would like to wrap up with this video.

this is the series 5 -- aries 5 moon rocket. we will show you how it may carry something out to the point with the telescope to look for whatever you might want to look for. a telescope carried in the moon rocket would not have to be folded up such a way. it is getting it nice circular piece of glass. the moon rocket is capable of caring about 60 metric ton out to the lebron point. the james webb telescope will be 6,000 kilograms. that is about 6 tons. roughly 10 times the mass could be carried out to that point and it enables you to design quite different telescopes' for looking for distant life or anything else you want to know

about the early universe. here we are making our trip past the moon, and then i will close with some places to get more information. i this telescope looks a lot more like the telescope you might be expecting. this looks a lot like the hubble telescope, only bigger. so it could happen. we're certainly counting on the nation to continue with the heavy lift vehicles it would take to this. astronomers would definitely know what to do. you can get more information if you want to pursue details about the telescope. we sent lots of white papers.

if you look on google 2010 survey, you'll find a website and find best information about astronomy. it's also look for books, including the very first flight, which is a book that i did that tells the story of the coby satellite, and there's a new chapter about the nobel prize. thank you very much. i am happy to have a few questions if we have a few minutes. [applause] >> we have time for two questions. >> he talked about jupiter and saturn changing positions. what was the mechanism that caused that? >> the orbits of the system are not necessarily stable. in fact, the more that we know about gravitating systems, the more unusual it seems to be that a set of orbits like our solar system has would be stable. if you start them off a few

millimeters different from where you think they started, the result will be completely different. this is just the middle gratification, and gratification interaction of the planets with each other and the bodies that happen to be left over as well. as i said, give us this clockwork universe, and it is not clockwork. -- isaac newton gave us this clockwork universe and is not a clockwork. >> i want to know what you thought about using the far side of the mood as an observatory, like every observatory? >> the far side of the moon as eight radio observatory is one of a leading possibility for what the moon -- sizes would like to do for astronomy on the moon. the retroreflectors that tell us about gravitation that we have had since apollo could be upgraded and helpless study dark energy and dark matter and things like that. the radio telescope on the far side of the moon is a gleam in our eye. we have precursors to that being

built on the ground and deployed in places like australia to see what is out there. when we get to the end of what you can do on the ground, i think people will say we need to go to the far side of the moon for the next debt. it is hard because we can get pretty far on the ground, but eventually we need to go there to do the next debt. -- to the next step. >> it is quite a leap from life to intelligence, there are optical telescopes now searching for signals. >> sure, it is definitely worth looking. a dog's of success are small, but it is definitely worth looking. ok, -- odds of success are small, but it is definitely worth looking. ok, thank you all. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> up next, a hearing on

guantanamo bay detainees and the plan to try some of them in u.s. courts. that will be followed by remarks from vice-president joe biden on the administration strategy to stabilize the economy and how those plans could benefit minorities and small businesses. later, a hearing on the upcoming hurricane season and ways to improve research efforts and preparedness. tuesday, the full senate debates the nomination of sonia sotomayor for supreme court justice. watch live on c-span2 and c- span.org. coming this fall, take a look at the supreme court. now hearing on guantanamo bay detainees. we will hear about the obama administration's plans to try some of those detainees in u.s. courts, while some would be tried in military commissions. this subcommittee is two hours, 40 minutes.

>> the subcommittee will come to order. i apologize for being a little bit late. once ran a little bit late, and then we had a vote on the senate foreign relations committee -- lunch ran a little bit late in the we had a vote on the senate foreign relations committee. shortly after taking office, president obama ordered the closure of guantanamo bay detention facility within a year. i commend it president obama at the time for ordering the closure. president obama is sending a clear message to the world that we're re-establishing world law in the united states and we as a nation will abide by our own international obligations. as the chairman of the united states helsinki commission, know the concern has been raised with the united states delegation by our colleagues in europe as often and as an artist as the situation as guantanamo bay. as a member of the house of

representatives in 2006, voted against the military commissions act. at the time i said i believed it was not sound legislation and i thought was susceptible to challenge in the courts. the legislation set up the fault system with tribunals in guantanamo bay that was ultimately rejected by the supreme court. it but me make this very clear -- i want the united states government to bring terror suspect to just as quickly and effectively. we must remain vigilant against terrorist attacks on our nation from september 11, 2001. the system we use must be fundamental and basic rule of law standards. americans have a right to expect this under the constitution, and our federal courts would demand it when reviewing the conviction. we would of course expect other nations to use a system that utilizes no less protection for americans that are accused of committing crimes abroad and called upon and forecourts.

-- in foreign courts. today's hearing focuses on the first two categories. at first, detainees who have piloted american criminal law being tried in federal court, article 3 courts. at second, detainees who violate all lost who could be tried to military commissions. violate the laws of war and can be tried through military commissions. i understand that the detention policy task force under the guidance of department of justice and defense have extended its work for an additional six months in order to issue a comprehensive final report and recommendations. last week, the task force issued a preliminary report along with a protocol for the termination of guantanamo cases referred to for prosecution. this protocol lays out factors that the department of justice and defense will consider in deciding whether to try a case in an article three court or in a reformed military commission. the protocol states that there is a presumption that where feasible, preferred cases will be prosecuted in article three

courts in keeping with the traditions, principles of federal prosecution. nevertheless, where other compelling factors make it more appropriate to prosecute a case in a reformed military commission, it may be prosecuted there. i might point out that the senate did enact an amendment to the department of defense authorization bill which may not be totally consistent with the position which the administration has taken. we do have two distinguished panels of witnesses today to help us in our deliberations and i look forward to their testimony. at this point, i would recognize the republican leader on this committee, senator kyl. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i, too, thank the witnesses for being here and presenting testimony today. we're going to hear testimony of several witnesses to the extent to which military commissions should be used in the prosecution of terrorists presently detained at guantanamo. before they testify, however, i think it's important to recall that military commissions have a

long history in this country. precisely because it has widely recognized that procedures governing civilian criminal trials lack the flexibility that is frequently needed to deal appropriately with the unique circumstances presented in war. these include issues regarding the admissibility of hearsay evidence obtained on the battlefield and the protection of classified information. military commissions can provide a workable solution to these issues while still providing the accused with a fair trial. opponents of military commissions like to point out that we have successfully convicted terrorists in civilian courts, such as the so-called blind sheikh, but rather than improve the adequacy of civilian courts for terrorist prosecutions, these cases actually highlight the national security risks inherent in prosecuting terrorists as if they were common criminals. in a case of mr. raman, for example, intelligence information was compromised when the government was forced to turn over to the defense a list of unindicted co-conspirators as

required in civilian prosecutions. according to the 9/11 commission's final report, the release of that list had the unintended consequence of alerting some al qaeda members to the u.s. government's interest in them. similarly, judge mukasey, who provided over several terrorist prosecutions, has described how our national security interests were compromised in the prosecution of ramsey yousef when an apparently innocuous bit of testimony in a public courtroom about delivery of a cell phone battery was enough to tip off terrorists still at large that one of their communication links had been compromised, end of his quotation. but he goes on to say this communication link had provided enormously valuable intelligence but as a result of the public testimony, the link was immediately shut down and further intelligence information lost. end of quote. cognizant of these serious national security concerns, congress has in a bipartisan fashion repeatedly ratified its support for military commissions. indeed, just last week, as the

chairman noted, the senate passed an amendment to the national defense authorization act that once again stated that military commissions were the preferred forum for the trial of terrorists. in light of the significant national security risks associated with civilian prosecution of terrorists, and the oft repeated support of military commissions by congress, i'm deeply troubled that the obama justice department's july 20 protocol for guantanamo cases adopts a presumption that terrorism cases will be prosecuted in civilian courts. in my view, the justice department's july 20 policy puts americans at risk unnecessarily. military commissions have been used for over two centuries to bring justice to war criminals and they have done so in a way that is fair to the accused. more troubling than what we heard from the justice department on july 20, however, is what we didn't hear. president obama has issued an arbitrary deadline for closing guantanamo by january 22nd, 2010. less than six months from now. thus far, we know precious

little about how he intends to do it. i hope perhaps at this hearing which the chairman initially entitled closing guantanamo, the path forward under the rule of law, might provide an opportunity for the administration to lay out its plan. apparently, however, administration officials are not ready to talk about the plan, if one exists. i would add that the justice department has been unwilling to fulfill even the simplest requests for information. for example, i sent a letter to attorney general holder on may 29th, 2009, asking for details regarding the terrorists who are currently imprisoned in the united states. i reiterated my request during the attorney general's oversight hearing before this committee on june 17th but still have not received a response from the justice department. it is clear to even the most casual observer that the administration will either need to push back its arbitrary deadline for closing guantanamo or bring those presently detained at guantanamo to the united states. bringing the detainees to the united states could, of course, substantially curtail the range

of options available to detain and prosecute suspected terrorists. it could also mean that detainees who are not convicted will be ordered released into our country. this is understandably of concern to all americans, especially since the pentagon believes that more than 70 previously released guantanamo detainees have resurfaced on the battlefield. we therefore need to know whether the administration intends to bring guantanamo detainees into the united states before we can have an informed debate on prosecution alternatives. finally, i would note that any plan to bring detainees into the united states would likely require congressional action. it is therefore critical that the administration devise a plan and share it with the congress as soon as possible while there are still sufficient legislative days to fully consider and debate the available options by the president's self-imposed deadline. >> thank you, senator kyl. senator durbin has requested an opportunity to give an opening statement as chairman of the human rights subcommittee.

without objection, senator durbin is recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i think what you just heard articulated by my colleague, senator kyl, is a point of view that's been expressed many times on the floor of the senate, and you can be summarized very simply. when it comes to terrorists, american courts can't try them and american jails can't hold them. i couldn't disagree more. any discussion of prosecuting suspected terrorists held at guantanamo should begin with an examination of the facts. for seven long years, the bush administration failed to convict any of the terrorists who planned the 9/11 terrorist attack, and for seven long years, only three individuals, three, were convicted by military commissions at guantanamo bay. in contrast, look at the record of our criminal justice system. in holding terrorists accountable. richard sable and james benjamin, two former federal prosecutors with extensive experience, published a detailed study on prosecuting terrorists in america's courts, our federal courts. here's what they concluded. from 9/11 until the end of 2007,

145 terrorists have been convicted and sentenced for their crimes. according to justice department, in just the last five months, since january 1st, 2009, more than 30 terrorists have been successfully prosecuted or sentenced in federal courts. to argue that american courts cannot prosecute terrorists, look at the facts. we're not only done it in the past, we're doing it now. this argument that we're somehow at risk when we try these terrorists of disclosing sensitive classified information, this goes back to a case that was prosecuted involving the 1993 world trade center, where the prosecutors failed to use the classified information procedures act. according to the same individuals i mentioned earlier, the government didn't invoke cipa to prevent the disclosure of a less than unindicted co-conspirators but the government has learned from this case and in letter terrorism prosecutions like the trial of the 1998 embassy bombers, the

government did use cipa to protect sensitive information. the law is there, it can be used, terrorists can still be prosecuted. last month, the obama administration transferred ghalani for prosecution for bombing of embassies. here's what the president said. preventing this detainee from coming to our shores would prevent his trial and conviction for killing 12 americans. after over a decade, the president says, it's time to finally see justice is served. that's what we intend to do. some members of congress have a different perspective. recently a member of the house republican leadership, mr. cantor criticize the decision to grinning ghalani to trial. he said, and i quote, we have no judicial precedence for the conviction of someone like this.

the truth is there are many precedents. let me name a few. one is ramsi youssef, richard reid, the shoe bomber, and mo can't say moussai. this is the very same attack for which ghalani is being prosecuted. four men were prosecute to life without parole in the var same court where ghalan zi being tried. the argue thamt we cannot prosecute him in that court, the argument that it's somehow unsafe to the people of new york city for him to be incarcerated while he's being tried really defies history. susan hirsch an american citizen lost her husband in kenya at the embassy bombing. she testified in the hearing for the four suspects coin victimed. she supports the decision to prosecute ghalani. she said, and i quote, i'm 'leaved we're finally moving

forward. it's really, really important to me anyone we have in custody accused of acts that led to the death of my husband and others be held accountable for what they've done. ms. hirsch supports the shutting down ofguantanamo. she believes it's safe to try ghalani in the united states. she says, quote, i trust the new york police department. listen to what she said about the critics of the administration. they're raising fear and alarm. there's a lot more to be afraid of while we have guantanamo open. i have faith in them. i have faith in the new york police department, in our court system. they have proven time and again they can rise to this challenge. some of my colleagues argue we shld continue to not prosecute guantanamo detainees because no prison in america can safely hold them. remember that flap? that dust-up as to whether or not terrorists could be successfully incarcerated,

securely held in the united states? senator lindsay graham, also a military lawyer said, and i quote, the idea that we can't find a place to securely house 250-plus detainees within the united states is not rational. the record is clear. today our federal prisons hold 355 convicted terrorists. no prison has ever escaped from a super maximum security facility. clear lir ou corrections officers know how to hold terrorists. i recently visited the federal prison which used to be our super max in southern illinois. i can tell you what the guards told me. you can bring any terrorist that you want. we're holding terrorists today, we can hold them safely and securely. and the mayor of illinois said i hole hoep you'll allow us to expand this prison. we can do our job for america as we've done for so many years. so let's get to the bottom line. if we don't bring suspected

terrorists here to be prosecuted and detained we can't close guantanamo. who wants to close guantanamo? not just the president of the united states, but general colin powell, the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and secretary of state under president bush has called for the closing of guantanamo. as has john mccain and lindsey graham, james baker, henry kissinger and condoleezza rice. admiral mike molen and general petraeus have called for us to close guantanamo. as long as it's open, it's a recruiting tool for terrorists around the world. it's time to turn the page and acknowledge history. we have successfully prosecuted and incarcerated terrorists in the united states much more succe successfully than any military commission in guantanamo. thank you.