discuss politics and the 2012 election. we discuss political policies and supertax that could affect the -- political action committees that could affect the election. >> people often say to me, and it is a perfectly good question, how much of your greet question. no one ever says how much of your time do you spend thinking? that's probably the most important part of it. >> his writing process "the greater journey: americans in paris." >> supreme court justice samuel

alito gave a speech in st. louis listing the 10 top things you don't know about the supreme court. he said that while oral argument often lasts one hour, preparation often takes reading over 500 hours of legal briefs. the speech was part of america's law day celebration. this is 40 minutes. any attorneys or nonattorneys who have managed to infiltrate the room. thank you for that wonderful introduction. dwayne was one of the stars of our law school class and it wouldn't have surprised any of his classmates to learn, had they been able to foresee this fact that today he would be one of the real stars of the

federal judiciary. so i want to thank dwayne for the great introduction. i want to thank all of you for the warm welcome and i want to thank the bar association for all of the courtesies that have been extended to me. it's a great pleasure for me to be here and have this opportunity to talk to you this afternoon for many reasons. among other things, i welcome this opportunity to congratulate your bar association for its century-long commitment to providing equal access to justice. i'm sure many of you know that the inscription on the front of the supreme court building reads "equal justice under law." that is surely the highest ideal of our profession and i come mend the bar association for its many efforts to translate that ideal into reality and i hope that during the next century you will

redouble those efforts. i mentioned one fact about the supreme court that i think many of you know, the inspiring inscription on the front of the building. what i want to talk about this afternoon are some other things about the supreme court that some people, even knowledgeable people, either don't know or more likely have tended to forget in reading coverage of our day-to-day work. now, i got the idea nor this talk a couple of years ago, actually, when i heard about a pop that asked people to name two justice of the supreme court and what the poll revealed was that more people could name two of snow white's seven dwarfs than could name two justice of the supreme court. i was actually not disturbed about that poll result. knowing the names or personalities of justice is not

really very important and i was just relieved that all these people didn't think that sleepy, grumpy, and dopey were the names of some of the current supreme court jumps. so that kind of trivia is not important for ordinary knowledgeable americans to know. but there are some things about the court that i think should be perhaps widely known. and as i mentioned, many of these will be things that the knowledgeable people in this room know, but i think we tend to forget them if we read coverage of the court in the general media or even in some general interests publications. so the title i have for my talk today is "the top 10 things that you may not know about the supreme court." everybody watches late-night tv so this is my spin on what you might see during that time. now, on to the first item and

to introduce this, i want to paint a fairly common scene. it's 10:00 a.m. on a monday morning in the nation's capital. our carom is filled with spectators. the first few rows of benches are occupied by lawyers who are members of the bar of our court. the rest of the courtroom is usually pretty full and many of the people who occupy those seats are simply tourists who are in town and would like to see a supreme court argument. and among those spectators in the general gallery in the supreme court there are often a lot of students who have heard about the court, studied the court in high school american history course or maybe in a college course and they've heard about the great supreme court cases to have past, mar bury vs. madison. brounl vs. board of education.

gid onverts wainwright. the spielli case, things of that nature. so they announce all rise, the chief justice and the associate justice of the supreme court of the yirntse. the first case is called. the audience looks on with eepings and then the lawyers and -- anticipation and then the lawyers and justice begin to talk about something that is incredibly arcain, technical and for many, i suspect, downright boring. the truth of the matter is, and this is the first item of our list. most of our cases are not about the great issues of constitutional law. in fact, the great motor of our -- majority of our cases are not about the constitution at all. last term, 3/4 of our cases were not about cougsal issues. they were mostly about saw

chutes indebate enacted by congress congress or rules. in term, we've had, among others, arissa, the employment retirement securement act of 1974. the for-our act. is there anybody in the room who knows what the for-our act is? >> right here. >> you get a door prize. what is it? [inaudible] you really deserve a door prize for that. the railroad revitalization and regulatory reform act of 1976. we've heard the veterans judicial review act. the truth in lending act, the copyright act, the uniform services employment and reemployment rights act. the fair labor standards act.

the false claims act, the arms career criminal act, the security and exchange act of 1934, the national traffic and motor vehicle safety act of 1966, the bankruptcy act, the internal revenue code and many others. now, these cases involve important questions but for the most part they are not what people have in mind when they think about the -- united states supreme court cases. ok, that's 3/4 of the case load. what about the remaining 25%? suppose a law student heard oral argument for two days and so heard argument in four cases. the odds are at least one of them would be about a cougsal issue. what -- constitutional issue. what sort of arguments is the student likely to hear in that case? most of you are probably aware that for the past few decades in legal academia, there has

been an intense debate, an intensifying debate about constitutional theory, about original little and nonoriginal little and all of that and i think a lot of law students are introduced to those theories in class and come to have, perhaps, an exaggerated impression about their importance in actual litigation. of course, there are cases in which theories loom very large. a couple of terms ago we had a very good example of this. district of columbia vs. heller. this was a case surgeoning the -- concerning the interpretation of the second amendment right to keep and bear arms and the question was whether that means a right to keep and bear arms that is individual and incorporates the right to keep an arm -- to keep a firearm for the purpose of self-defense. it was an unusual case because there was so little prior

supreme court precedent. really just one unusual little case decided in 1939 in a very short and cryptic opinion so. this was a case in which theory naturally had an important role, and the opinion for the court, written by justice scalia, was an example of one leading theory of constitutional interpretation. not surprisingly, it was vigorously original list. the principal descent by justice stevenson was also an original list opinion but justice breyer wrote a different descent and it was just as rigorously pragmatic so. this was an example of a case in which theory meant a lot. the choice of the theory that a

justice selected meant a lot in the outcome. but that was really the exception that proves the resume. and another case that came along a couple of years later in the wake of heller illustrates this point. and this is the second item on my list. most of our constitutional occasions are governed by precedent and not by theory. now, the case that came along in the wake of heller, which illustrates this point, is a case called mcdonald versus the city of chicago and this was also about the second-amendment right to keep and bear arms. heller involved the district of columbia so it did not concern the question of the application of the second amendment to the states. mcdonald presented that latter question. now, for the few non-lawyers who are in the room, let me

back up for a second and provide a little bit of constitutional background. the provision of the bill of right as originally adopted applied only to the federal government. they did not apply to the states. it was not until after the ratification of the post civil war amendments, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments that time question was presented anew about the application of the bill of rights provisions to the states. now, in the mcdonald case, two provisions of those post civil war amendments, which fundamentally altered the relationship between the federal government and the stats were at issue. one was the privileges or immune 'tis clause of the 14th amendment prohibiting a state from abridging the privileges or immuneties of a citizen of the united states. the other provision was the due

process clause of the 14th amendment, prohibiting any person from being deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. shortly after the civil war in a very famous cause called the slaughterhouse cases decided in 1873, the supreme court gave the privileges or inhumanities clause a very narrow interpretation. we might think of the metaphor, since there's been so much flooding in this area, of water heading down to the sea. water is going to flow downhill -- downhill no matter what you do. it is going to make its way to the sea so if it's blocked in one channel, it will find another channel to each -- reach its destination. and that may be viewed as what happened with respect to the interpretation of the 14th amendment. the slaughterhouse cases blocked the use of the pritch

ledges or immunities clause to provide substantive protection for rights that are not specifically mentioned in the constitution. now, today, many scholars believe that was exactly what the privileges or immunities law was -- clause was intended to do. but it went through the due process clause of the 149 amendment and bit by bit almost all of the provisions of the bill of rights were made an libble to the states -- applicable to the states by means of the theory of incorporation. just as there are a lot of scholars who think that the privileges or immune 'tis clause was badly misinterpreted in the slaughterhouse cases -- in fact, today it is said you can hardly find a sholer -- scholar who thinks the slaughterhouse cases was

interpreted yectly. there are scholars who think the due process clause was meant to protect -- and not substance. we have the question of whether the right to bear arms is applicable to the states and if so, through what provision to have constitution? a following plea -- as professors of constitutional law, we look forward to the day when we can teach our students how the supreme court corrected the grieve use error made in the slaughterhouse cases. the lead attorney representing the petitioners in mcdonald, argued that we should use the privileges or immunities clause and not the due process clause. now, you might think that this

academic plea, based on some solid scholarship, would have received a very sympathetic hearing in our court. the current supreme court is the most academic court in the history of the country. today fur of my colleagues were former law professors. very distinguished law professors before they took the bench and thee of those justice were sitting on the mcdonald case when it was argued. when one of the lawyers raised the privileges or immune 'tis point, former professor scalia took the wind out of his sails when he said the following. what you argue is the darling of the pro-professorat but also against our jurisprudence. why do you take that aim?

everybody else applied the established framework. ok, point number four. this is a question that i am frequently asked during a week like this week when we are not hearing orel argument. it -- oral argument. it tends to come new my house over thanksgiving dinner when one of my cousins say ruoff this week? i bristle and say well, we're not hearing oral arguments but i actually have a lot of work to do, which is true. although i often get the impression that the people who hear that don't believe me. they really seem to have the idea that sitting on the bench and hearing oral argument is our main job. it is not. this is my fourth point. hearing oral argument is a relatively small, and if the truth is small, relatively unimportant part of what we do. for every case that we hear on

the merits, we hear one hour of oral argument. that's all. sometimes when justices or judges from other countries attend one of our oral arguments, they are absolutely etannished that we will devote -- etannished that we will devote just one hour to oral argument. in cases like the united kingdom and canada the argument goes on much longer. by contrast to the one hour we spend listening to the argument or participating in the argument, we spend many, many, many hours reading and studying the case before we ever take the bench. before we take the bench to hear argument in a case, we will have spent many hours, often days, studying the case. the volume of the briefing that we now receive is really

enormous. last term we had nine cases in which the briefs, including the amicas briefs, totaled more than 500 pages, and we had one case involving an important patent issue in which the briefs exceeded 2,000 pages. so you can see, a lot of time is put into the case before the argument begins, and as a result, i think, when we do take the bench, we were really primed for the argument and the justices tend to have a lot to say. last term the court averaged 120 questions per case. 120 questions divided by 60 minutes, you can see we're averaging two questions per minute. 40% of the words that were spoken during the oral arguments last term were uttered by the justices and not by the attorneys and this term a lot of observers have

commented that we seem to be asking even more questions. so if the statistics are compiled apt the end of this term i wouldn't be surprised if we are pushing the 50% mark. and if we don't reach it this term, i'm pretty sure we will in the future. i personally find that oral argument is helpful as one of the final steps in the decision-making process. but as i've said, the truth of the matter is that it is less important than the briefing or the opinion preparation process that follows the oral argument. this brings me to my fifth point. we do our own work. here -- here i'm quoting justice brandeis. he said "the reason the public thinks so much of the justices of the supreme court is that they are almost the only people in washington who do their own work." now, i'm not going to address the first part of justice

brandeis's statement about what people think about the supreme court, but the latter is definitely true. we still do our own work. and when i say that, i don't mean to cast any aspersions on the president or congress. their responsibilities are now so vast that an enormous amount of delegation is unavoidable. can you imagine how a president could possibly do his job if, for example, he wrote his own speeches or many of the other things that are done in his name. so i'm not criticizing the other branches. but we've had the luxury of retaining an old-fashioned personal role. we have very small staffs. some people are quite etannished that we don't have a larger support staff. we each have three career nonlawyers who provide office support and we have four law clerks and the law clerks serve

for just one year. they are very brilliant young attorneys and their assistance to us is invaluable. but they serve for only one year. by the time they become fully familiar with all of their tasks, at least 1/3 or possibly one-half of their tenure is completed. despite, this there are those on the outside who think that the clerks are actually pulling our strings. a recent article, after quoting justice brandeis's assertion that the justices do their own work said "today no knowledgeable observer of the court would make a similar claim. but if that is true than the so-called knowledgeable observers of the court are wrong." keep that in mind because i will come back to that later. for now, on to point number six. we are very independent. we are not manipulated by our

clerks, and while we give serious consideration to our colleagues' arguments, in the end he -- we each reach an independent judgment. we don't even discuss cases among ourselves prior to the time we vote at conference in most cases. in respect to what count most, we're all quamme. we all have one vote and no one is ever required to sign on to an opinion with which he or she does not agree. and we always have to right to issue our own concurrence or dissent if we are not pleased with the opinion of the court. of course, there a -- is a big difference between productive independence and a refusal to listen to or take into account the views of colleagues. in this as so many things in

life, the trick is striking the right balance. i recall two cartoons about the supreme court that appeared in the new yorker some years ago. i think they bracket the approach that a justice should take in considering how to react to the views of colleagues when that justice doesn't agree with his or her colleagues' views. both of these cartoons featured a picture of the supreme court bench. all of the justice sitting on the bench in their black robes. in one -- in both cases, one of the justifications was speaking. in the first, one side oaf the brackett, one of the justices says well, if all you smart cookie agree, who am i do -- to dissent. that's one extreme of deference to your colleagues. the other cartoon which appeared later again shows the whole bench. one of the justices reading a

dissenting opinion and the justice says my dissenting opinion will be brief -- you're all full of crap. [laughter] i've had a couple of cases during the last two terms in which i was the only person in dissent but that was not what i was saying about my colleagues. [laughter] if you reeled some of our dissenting opinions, you might interpret them as essentially saying that because sometimes they are pretty strongly worded and this brings me to my seventh point. we are not at each other's throats, temporary to the impression that some people might get from reading our opinions. a couple of years ago i was assigned to write an opinion for the court. i wrote the opinion and it produced a concurrence. now, this is a concurrence, mind you, not a dissent. and the concurrence said that my opinion was "meaningless,

inconsistent with the rule of law, and insane." [laughter] now, these are strong words but i didn't take them personally and i know they weren't meant personally. this is just the sort of bare knuckle intellectual disagreement that we sometimes have, but it doesn't mean that there's personal animosity involved. now, this may not have always been true on the supreme court. during the last year a very interesting book was published called "scorpions: the battles and triumphs of f.d.r.'s great supreme court justice." the book claims that some of the justices who served during the 1940's and 1950's thoroughly disliked each other and sometimes showed it. it's an interesting book. obviously, i don't know for sure how accurate all of the inside stuff is but it has some

interesting anecdotes. here's an example. according to the book, during a conference one day, justice frankfurter, former law professor, made an acerbic remark about chief justice vincent had said. chief justice got to upset he walked towards justice frankfurter and threatened to punch him in the nose. i can a-- assure you nothing like that goes on today. after a morning conference in which heavy disagreed sharply about matters. we all have lunch together and we have one rule at lunch and that is you may not talk about any case. so we talk about items in the news. we talk about music, sports. our families. books.

anything but the cases, including the ones where we may have disagreed sharply just a short period before. shifting gears, i'm ready for my point number eight and that is some of our opinions mean less than a lot of people think. what do i mean by that? this is so for several reasons. for one thing, the opinion-writing justice has a lot of prerot -- prerogatives. we don't make a request for stylistic changes in each other's opinions. if you had eight people making all sorts of editorials, suggestions in an opinion, you can imagine how long it would take to get anything out and what the end product might look like, so we don't mess with the style of our colleagues' opinions, but style sometimes bleeds into substance and so if

someone takes something from the tone of a particular opinion, that person may be reading something into the opinion that's just not there. our opinions are also written under considerable time pressure. we don't have as much time to mull over and revise our opinions, as, for example, the author of a book might have in many stances. and the third is that our -- instances. and third, our opinions focus primarily on deciding the case at hand so the majority that endorses the opinion and the rule that's set out in the opinion necessarily believes that rule is the right one for that case and governs that case but the agreement among the members of the majority may not extend a lot further than the ground that is covered in the opinion, and you read more into it, as having a much broader application you may or may not be correct. point number nine.

some of what is written about it -- us is misleading or just plain wrong. i'll give you two examples. the first involves something that's misleading, i think, unintentionally but nevertheless misleading. i was struck and somewhat displeased earlier this term by a flurry of articles referring justice thomas's practice of not asking questions during oral argument. if he asked as many questions as the rest of us i don't think the lawyers could get a word in edge-wise but it is his practice not to ask questions except on unusual occasions. much was made of this in the press. there were even articles suggesting that justices have an obligation to ask questions during oral arguments so the lawyers will know what they're thinking.

none of the articles that i read pointed out something that i think is important and would put this matter in historical perspective, and that is that justice thomas's practice of not asking questions is, as far as i can tell, exactly the same as the practice of the person who is just about universally regarded as the greatest supreme court justice ever, and that's john marshall, the fourth chief justice of the united states, the person who more than anyone else built the supreme court into the institution that it has become. in john marshall's day, the justices asked no questions. they sat there and listened to the attorneys. the attorneys did not submit briefs and so is entire presentation was oral. there were no limits on the length of the argument and there was no prohicks on tag team arguments. a party could have two or three torrents -- attorneys arguing on his or her behalf.

that was john marshall's practice and the practice of the other great justices during the founding era. justice story and other names you would recognize. i think it would have presented some historical evidence if at least one of the articles had pointed out that fact. something that is unintentionally wrong, for several years now a widespread criticism of our court is that we are very pro-business. we always decide cases in favor of business as opposed to employees and consumers. this has been mentioned in a lot of articles, it's been mentioned by a lot of public officials. now, a few months ago, i was running on my treadmill and when i do that, i almost always watch television to overcome the boredom and the discomfort of what i'm doing so i'm flipping through the channels looking for something that will

make 45 minutes or so pasarell actively fast. i found rather slim pickings and somewhat reluctantly i settled on a c-span program that featured a debate between a well known and distinguished commentator on the supreme court and another personality. i wouldn't have watched it if the topic of the debate the was squarely about the court but it wasn't. for want of anything else i started watching. within a few minutes, the commentator on the court began to discuss the court and he said, you know, the current supreme court is very pro-business, but what can you expect, because both chief justice roberts and justice alito used to work for the chamber of commerce. when i heard this i almost fell off the treadmill because i had no recollection of this episode in my career. as you might have gathered from

judge benton's introduction, i have had only two employers my entire working life. the department of justice and the united states courts. never actually earned an honest living in the private sector. when i heard this i thought something has happened to you. you have partial amnesia. you've forgotten an entire period of your life, and i thought i better swrump -- jump off the treadmill, run to my computer and look up my entry on wikipedia and see what i've forgotten. but i knew if i did that who knows what i would have found? justice alito was once in the french foreign legionen. well, that was maybe in early 2011. a short time after that, a number of articles began to appear that expressed surprise that most of our cases involving business law and employment law during the

current term had actually gone against business interests and gone against employers. linda greenhouse, who covered the supreme court for "the new york times" for many years wrong an article about this and asked "what accounts for the topsy-turvy world of the supreme court's 2010-2011 term"? well, here's a possible explanation. maybe the law has something to do with it. maybe the text of the particular statutes involved and the precedents that we have to apply have something to do with the outcome in these case. now, i know it's a radical thought but it's worth considering. that brings me to my last item. number 10, we -- the federal courts, the supreme court, the courts of appeals and the district courts, the bankruptcy courts, all of the federal courts taken together, we are a co-equal branch of government.

we are not more equal than the other branches and we have to keep that in mind. we are also not less equal than the other branches. the constitution called on the -- calls on the three branches of government to check each other but this can be done with fairness and it can be done with respect. i think that is what the american people expect and it is surely what they deserve. this is the message i would leave you with on this occasion of this law day celebration. it is important for all of us who work in the law, for those of us who are fortunate to be judges or those of us who are fortunate enough to be attorneys. it is important for us to teach other people about our legal system and the learning center that was described earlier is a perfect example of the sort of thing that we need to do to reach out to ordinary citizens,

both children and adults, so that they appreciate our legal system, and it's important for us to defend that legal system against encroachments. it is important for us to recognize the strength and the weaknesses of our legal system, to preserve the strengths and to work to correct the weaknesses. one of the advantages i've had, one of the great experiences i've had in serving on the supreme court has been the opportunity to speak to justices and judges from many other countries and when you take an international perspective, when you look at our legal system, if you draw back from the details that we are concerned with on a daily basis and you look at the system somewhat from afar, you appreciate what a great legal system it is. yes, those of us who are working attorneys and judges know the defects of the system.

we know them better than most people, but in understanding the weaknesses and in making -- resolving to work to improve them, we also should not lose sight of the fact that we have the best legal system in the world. it is quite a rarity and it is something we have to work to preserve. it's been a pleasure for me to be able to participate in your law day celebration today. thank you very much. [applause] >> it's now my pleasure to actually cite united states supreme court precedent to a united states supreme court

justice. i am going to refer you to blood versus cohen, which, involved kurt blood, a st. louis cardinal and the majority opinion was written by justice blackman. however, it's fairly unique amongst the opinions in that he wrote a sort of valentine to baseball that the rest of the majority opinion did not endorse. the first section included a lengthy list of baseball players, hall of famers mostly. and i cite this for the proposition that it is not unusual for a supreme court justice to have an interest in baseball or for that matter bar president. so as a tone of our appreciation, we are selected a baseball themed gift for you. it's obviously this baseball bat engraved with your name,

may 16, 2007. and we'll be enjoying, of course, the baseball game later this evening. thank you very much for joining us. >> thank you. [applause] thank you. i will certainly treasure this. this will go into the baseball shrine i have in my office. i am just as enthusiastic about baseball as justice backman was. i would have joined the first part of his opinion, and just the -- to tell you -- so that you'll know that that's the truth. when the marshalls drove me here to the hotel last evening after they picked me up at the airport i had a request when which they may have thought was rather strange. i gave them a street address and said i want to drive past here. it was the former location of

sportsman's park and the first busch stadium. i know that's where rogers hornsby and dizzy dean and stan musial and all those great players played. for a fan like me, just seeing that was an experience that i wanted to have and this will -- as i said, be displayed in my baseball museum in my office. thank you very much. [applause] >> people often say to me and it's a perfectly good question. how much of your time do you spend writing and how much do you spend doing research? great question. no one ever says how much of your time do you spend thinking and that's probably the most important par part of it. >> sunday in part two of c-span's q&a interview with david mccullogh.

>> next, a media research center announces its awards for what it calls the most biased liberal reporting for 2011. some of the presenters include author and columnist ann could every. neal boortz and andrew kr lavan. brent bo zell speaks first. this is about an hour and 40 minutes. and this event contains language and comments that some viewers may find offensive. >> shut the hell up! [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

>> shut the hell up. >> ladies and gentlemen, once again, brent bozell iii. >> thank you, keith olbermann, for watching my back again. god, i'm going to miss that man. i swear i would look forward to his next career but ann and i were talking about it this afternoon, does anyone know where on a tv dial one can find current tv? no. >> shut the hell up! >> we're going to have more on

good ol' keith in a moment. but for now, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2011 dishonors awards. [applause] let's try to get a flavor for what audience i'm dealing with here. how many of you believe that you've been here every year since we've done this in 1999. how many? ok. how many of you are new to this? [applause] all right. how many of you were here last year? we didn't do it last year. a bunch of liars. all right. for those of you who are new, including those people who raised their hands, let me try to explain how we do this. we have three presenters who will be presenting a total of five awards. they'll be presenting and winners in five different award

cat doris. -- categories. when all that's done we will arrive at the quote of the year and you, ladies and gentlemen, will make the selection for the winner by noise acclimation. you will note there are assorted noisemakers that have been placed at each table. consider them your personal w.m.d.'s tonight. feel free to use them at any time to voice your displeasure with anything you see or here on the podium, and i expect my brother to start right now. tonight, ladies and gentlemen, we rise to new lows in personal decorum. but like a bad ginzu commercial -- wait, there's more. tonight we're also going to be announcing the winner, this one a serious one, for the 2011 william f. buckley award for excellence in journalism and when all the awards are

finished the evening is just beginning because on the other side of this beautiful and historic building, you'll have a special performance by the outlaws. so it's a good evening. and those of you who are eating here for free should start feeling guilty right about now. so let's begin. to present our first two awards is a man who needs no introduction except then you'd never know who he was. neal boortz is a radio talk veteran of over 40 years and can be heard on over 200 syndicated shows nationally for his show. he was a finalist for the 2002 marconi awards for network syndicated personality of the year and that won he won the award on the radio and records magazine. he's the author of several books about liberals and taxes,

neither of which he likes. he is our first presenter because -- and this is a true story -- i was doing a show about three months ago, four months ago and on his own program he started to whine. on 250 station he stade wah, wah, why don't you invite me to go on your awards ceremony, the way only neal boortz can whine. you have sean hannity. you have all those other people. you never have me. it was so embarrassing. i had to give in. i said ok, neal. you can be a presenter. that's why, ladies and gentlemen, he is a presenter and tonight's first presenter. the truth of the matter is i was delighted to hear neal say that. he's been a presenter on this program several times before. he's always been a smash hit. he's always been a favorite of

mine. if i could i would abuse his friendship every year by asking him to be a presenter. ladies and gentlemen, i give you the very dangerous neal boortz. >> i'm going to have so much fun with my granddaughter with that tomorrow. did brent just tell you about the palm beach speech i gave to him? is that what -- he talked about me being a whiner. is that it? when he invited me down there to speak and i'm sitting in the back and he's talking about the great hannity and limbaugh are going to save the world. notice there's no teleprompters. and --

[applause] i have trouble with bow ties. ann? where's ann. thanks. i had to go to ann's room to get the bow tie done. little did i know that andrew klavan has trouble with bow ties also. and apparently suspenders. and shoes. as soon as we're through here, i'm going to be selling my new bumper sticker in the back. it's very simple -- change you can step in. [applause] or change you can scrape off the bottom of your shoe. you know, on halloween, you can take some obama change, you put it in a back, set it on the front porn -- porbling, you set it on fire. you know it's been four years since they invited me because the last time i was

overmedicated and i'm told i embarrassed some people, but, you know, i'm old enough that i just really don't give a damn anymore. the first award tonight is the obama kashm award named by el brent and i'm glad he thought of me to give this award and i have a theory about this obama gasms. it's the this liberal fascination with the obama gentleman ha dean, the crowd that occupies the white house right now. obama is their absolutely perfect than. you look at the way the washington, d.c. press corps writes about barack obama.

that's the second thing you can do that will make you go blind the way they do that. i mean, look at them. olbermann. look at him. there's a reason. and here we have a president that up until this week has failed at every single thing he ever tried to do except running for president. [applause] and this was a tough week because i actually had to go on the air and say good job, mr. president. you told the military to do what they do and then you take credit for it and then there's a website that pops up. have you seen this? gutsy call.com. you log on to gutsycall.com and where does it take you? obama, 2012. is that not spiking the

football, folks? so when it comes to a barry:gasms, absolutely nobody is better at it than our guy charisma thuse. oh, look at obama. oh, he's so dreamy. look at those abs. he's on the beach in hawaii. my god, he has nipples. look at him in golf shorts and there's a sick bag under every chair in here, ladies and gentlemen. so charisma thuse is our first nominee tonight. he has to be. it's just a matter of principle. this is the guy that made the m.r.c.'s the media research center tingle up my leg award with his stunning man crush on barack obama. he doesn't have sense enough to

be embarrassed about it. on september 11 of 2010 -- the election was just weeks away. boy, did we have fun with that one. charisma thuse, the host of "hardball" confided to the nation, broadcasting from the men's room at msnbc. but on the air. that's what happens when you leave that wireless switch on your phone on. that not only does he have a tingle in his leg but ladies and gentlemen, it has spread. charisma thuse. >> my family gave me love. they gave me an education, and most of all, they gave me hope. hope that in america, no dream is beyond our grasp. if we reach for it and fight for and it work for it. >> you know, i get the same thrill up my leg all over me

every time i hear those words. i'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, that's me. he's talking about my country and nobody does it better. can president do it again and help his party keep power? >> the answer is no. and if you look around the table the other guys are moving their chairs back as he -- what a pervert. he's going to be announcing next week that he's leaving msnbc for a new show on logo. so -- now the second nominee ask "nightline" anchor terry moran. now, that comes on too late for me to watch, ladies and gentlemen. so i don't have much to say about this guy except that after you watch this clip you'll probably have to take a shower. it's one month into the obama administration. the liberal media is still drooling and slobbering like

burmese mountain dogs over this guy. and moran -- is it moran or moron? ok. morning media menu, whatever that is. anyway, moran makes sure that we understand the massive historic awesomeness of that -- this completely awesome community organizer/president. here we go. >> i'd like to say that in some ways barack obama is the first president since george washington to be taking a step down into the oval office. i mean, from visionary leader of a giant movement. now he's gotten a executive position that he has to perform in.

>> god! a step down into the oval office? i mean, this is a guy that announced -- yeah, i know. you're doing that because the other would be impolite and it would evacuate the room. this is a guy that announced his entry into politics in the living room of a convicted american domestic tryst and it's a step -- terrorist and it's a step down to the presidency? a convicted domestic terrorist who by god wrote that book "dreams from my father." so hold my responsible. this is a guy that steps out of the pews of jeremiah wright's church down to the presidency? this is a guy who was a community organizer in chicago with nothing but a record of failure in that regard who steps down to the presidency?

this is astounding. i mean, the office of president of the united states is beneath barack obama? he lowered himself to take this job? floated down off of mount obump -- olympus? wait a minute. mount alump us is in washington. he floated down off of kilimanjaro to take this job? and the third nominee -- when i was a judge, this is the guy i voted for. i don't know how it's going to turn out. but we're sorry that evan thomas couldn't be with us tonight. he's busy lighting candles and beating drums in kenya for the messiah. this guy. evan thomas. i'll never forget this one.

in this pretend "newsweek" magazine, which has been bought out by larry flint, by the way. yeah. eben thomas says he grabbed the party's power brockers by their elephant stitched -- whatever. he's a c thrvings nn contradictory appearing most nights -- wait a minute. i jumped ahead of the script. that's ok. i want you and they're going to get upset with me because i'm not reading the exact words that bring on the clip. but the people who are running the clips are going to be able to figure this out with these word -- play the ebens what's his face cliff. it's self-explanatory, i promise. >> reagan was all about america. and he talked about it. obama is we are above that now. we're not just parochial, shove

nisk or provensrble. in a way obama is standing above the country, above the world. a sort of god. audience: boo! sort of god, but i can't say that up here. ok, here's the envelope, ladies and gentlemen. you know, i can tell from your reaction who you'd like to win this award. am i right? ok. by the way, has anybody accepted? actually said yeah, send me -- does thomas or keith olbermann -- not keith olbermann or --