>> people seem to think that there is bad faith on both sides of the debate. and the aclu is accused of a certain kind of naivete, particularly about war on terror issues. anthony talks about the false case pitted it is important, but, in a way, it is an easy case. these are not people who pose actual threat to the united states. these are homegrown puny anonymities. but what about the people we actually have reason to be afraid of? in the last decade, the aclu has fought like hell and achieved very little. there is a product of -- there is a provocative article saying

that some of these efforts have been counterproductive. if you go to court and ask for an answer, you may get locked into an answer you do not want. it is polarizing because there are really two different world views that are drifting further and further apart over whether the issues that engage the aclu and these important national- security measures where detention policy, rendition policy, all that stuff -- and even now when some of the domestic surveillance in ordinary law enforcement like the gps case and the strip search case -- we really start to live if we are living in a different era. it is not clearif the courts and american society are receptive when we move away from puny anonymity. a peace keeping group that

offered to provide the nine assistants to a group that had been labeled as -- provide assistance to a group that had been labeled as a security threat. all that was involved was pure speech to help these guys solve their in differences peacefully. and bin probably the most free speech cases in decades, the supreme court said thatthat kind of benign speech can be made criminal by homeland security. i would be interested to hear some responses from stephen anthony about the strategic choices they have to make day after day over whether they have to even go to court to give an answer. >> anthony, go ahead.

>> he is exactly right. in some cases, the faults cases -- the phelps case is easy. unless you are the parents that is burying him that day. but you get the phone calls and the outcry is often from people who feel grief. >> i completely agree with you. the national security cases are among the most controversial adopted. i think they are the gold standard of our case. i get this all the time. why do you care so much about 150 some odd guys? you have 2.5 million prisoners in america. why would we spend millions of dollars on kalik shiek muhammed? why would we bring a case on the drone?

in those cases, you are talking about the most critical exertion of government power. the number of individuals directly affected is maybe 100. but when you have the highest rank of government decide to hold individuals without charges or trial, to ship them off to black sites, to authorize torture, which was hitherto illegal, and then endeavor to obfuscate that from the entire practice, lawyers, the public, you're talking about a high-stakes game that can literally change the course of american history. and when we allow a government like ours to hunt and kill one of its own u.s. citizens, not

in a theatre of war, with no assertion of legal framework, no assertion of the fact, and then killed him without any judicial review, where the executive branch is to be judge, drury command executioner, the stakes -- judge, jury, and executioner, the stakes are enormously high. those powers, once taken, are very hard to take back. in the case of mr. lucky, we have had enormous discussion. i think it is -- mr. lockheed, we have had enormous discretion. i think it is one of our product cases. -- one of our proudest cases. i have gone to washington, d.c. with members of the democrats and the republicans and everyone in the room thought that we got anwar lockheed.

and they all said, well, we got him. and i was the only one of the table who said how do you know? what proof have you got? how do we know that he did not have a massive conversion last year when he was being hunted by his own government. we now believe that people can change their mind, the people can lay down their weapons. what proved to we have that is man's rea, the minute before he was executed by his own government -- i am glad to take on the hard ones. that makes this more fun. where are the checks and balances? you have the president of united states, the attorney general who was appallingly pedestrian in his speech when he talked about due process does not mean judicial process, right? i am quoting verbatim.

what is due process mean? -- what does due process mean without judicial process? it has to be the big adjudicative method for due process. they cannot confirm or deny the it existence of this program that i just laid at you in excruciating detail kit you have to say, my god, what type of republic are we talking about? at times, it often feels that we are at the cusp of losing the very basic rules -- and i am not exaggerating -- the most basic protections of what defines a republic. and those checks and balances, even if it is only one person in yemen, we ought to be very skeptical. it is extraordinary usurpation

of executive power. >> you were there at this very debate of executive power post- 9/11. >> it is not ours that easy. i do not like the idea of defending a program where we kill american citizens without some sort of process or things like that. but i think you have to look at it from both sides when we're having this kind of a conversation. if you have individuals and if but you are in the executive branch and you are sworn to defend the people of the united states and they are engaged in activities -- and they are plotting and you know that -- they are plotting to blow up a flight on which our citizens will fly or they are going to blow up a synagogue, one of the

similarities we have in this country is the right to -- one of the civil liberties we have in this country is the right to fly, the right to travel on an airplane, the right to go to a wedding or a public building, to have their children protected when they are trying to go to school, protected from things that happen in israel all the time -- synagogues being bombed and school children being killed with missiles -- if your responsibility is to protect the american people from that and you have someone who is in another country that you cannot possibly bring to justice before that crime or that mass act of terrorism is committed and you're unable to go to those places and bring them to justice in a courtroom, not going to be able to bring the witnesses and put them on trial,

and you have the capability of preventing the disaster from happening, you are now thinking about the civil rights of this individual who is preparing -- and anthony says, maybe the moment before the missile strikes, he is having a conversion, but maybe he has killed lots of americans already. and he has equipped other individuals to kill other americans said that is already going on. now you have the rights of that individual to something that anthony calls judicial process, which you cannot possibly bring about. >> the question should be decided by the general? >> i'm getting to the dilemma. this is not an easy thing to answer. and you put those rules civil- rights -- those civil rights against the people your sworn to protect against acts of

despicable terrorism. you do not have a choice to do it the way everybody would like, which is to bring someone into court, have all the witnesses, miranda rights, brady writes, all of those kinds of things -- you do not have that choice. so you allow that to happen until you do the thing that you cannot do, which is to bring about this judicial process or use a drone or some other method of killing that individual. i think it is extremely difficult. hink it is extremely difficult. you could kill the wrong people. you could kill children there in the vicinity of that suspected terrorists. it does happen. it does happen in war. and it happens when you send soldiers into the field and they are defending themselves. they do not have the luxury of

stopping someone and then giving their rights and giving them a lawyer and then trying them. they have to shoot and kill or they will die. so these things are -- i am with the aclu on these things. i am glad you're there. i am glad you are fighting for those things. but at the end of the day, sometimes, people in positions of responsibility have to make decisions because this is not a perfect world. >> i work with anthony and stephen when i went to guantanamo on the first trip that they let the ngo's -- >> after a very long and hard day looking at the military condition. [laughter] >> it was a very special trip. [laughter] on many levels. i wanted to get back to the broader point that saddam was raising and that goldsmith has been talking but in his book, the notion that the still huge

positions in these cases has been either not at all productive -- they have not especially achieved anything in terms of promoting liberty -- but they may also be counterproductive. i guess i really think that is wrong and i at least think that the answer is a lot more complicated than that. for example, torture is an issue that i spent an enormous amount of time working on when i was at an ngo working on these issues. there was a time before, in 2002, where we have reports out of afghanistan where prisoners had blunt force trauma and we couldn't get anybody to listen. in the meantime, you had people on the right and left say, of course, you can torture,

depending on how scary the issue is. then we have a grave -- we had of a grave -- we had abu gf raib,. tens of thousands of pages of documents showed more than 100 detainee's died in u.s. custody. then they have different interrogation tactics. it was a radically different debate. a bill inpassage of congress saying that you cannot treat people in custody with cruel and degrading treatment and there was a series of executive orders by obama that effectively ended the use of those tactics in american

custody across the board. that is one example of what i think -- we don't even talk about it anymore. it seems like the sort of helped fix that. is it eradicated? no. to the extent the claim is that this is counterproductive, what is the argument? is the argument that, if the aclu had done nothing, we would have been better off because the hundred people that were at guantanamo would have been released anyway -- because the 800 people that were at guantanamo would have been released to you? it does point to a question that is about the budget of strategy. the aclu has the best negation shops in the country. how did you decide when to lee did -- when to litigate and

when to negotiate. the odds are you will lose. so what are you gaining potentially in terms of calling attention to the issue and everything else versus what your potentially losing if you get a losing decision at of the court that changes the law is going forward? that is a tough call. >> let me just make a few quick points. nobody pretends otherwise. it is also true on this specific tissue around terrorism that the united states is not the only country facing terrorism. is the only country that uses the drones against its own .itizens i

in answer to the question of how the lawsuits been counterproductive, especially a lawsuit that you meant as a going in that you may lose, that is a question that we ask ourselves every day in the office. this is a mantra that people have heard me say over and over again give if we think the chances of winning are slim, we are not in the business of losing lawsuits, unless we can identify other benefits that we can obtain simply by fighting. the mere fact that the lawsuit brought promise to the issue, which forced public discussion, which led to the attorney general's speech, which is then

leading to a whole series of responses, none of the debate would have taken place or it's not for the spotlight that the loss to created. adam was saying that the earlier cases in the movie were simple. they were simple in hindsight, but not at the time. there is a famous concurring opinion where he votes to uphold the detention. and then he said he wished that the military would pick up these people and put them in camps and no one would come to ask your approval. then, after the war, everybody would have gone back and we would have not done anything through law that would have lasted more permanently. but now you ask us to ratify this and that principle hang s and you can call upon it in

the future. >> you sounded sympathetic to the goldsmith argument. >> i was trying to be provocative. [laughter] half a lot of the work that the aclu has done -- >> a lot of the work that the aclu has done has gone a long way.

the foil litigation used to be done more because we were richer. the aclu has taken on their role that we should still be doing -- clinics popping up in places like yale law school which is a measure of how much less of an economic engine the presse is. on this question about drones and killing people, it is right in the war paradigm. before the soldier shoot, he does not have to get a warrant. but if the attorney general is going to invoke the concept of due process and then redefine , i do think you want to stop

and active -- and ask if that is due process to you. it does seem to be the presentation of evidence, the ability to counter that evidence, a neutral party, perhaps a lawyer representing to you. some kind of testing of the evidence. i would think that in a setting where it can be judged by the public, to see if our government is doing the things they want them to be doing through some kind of paradigm that sounds like with the attorney general is talking about. but we have no idea. we don't have a clue what kind of procedures are going on here. >> heather, you got us going here on the domestic front. to the same arguments apply in the broader context? >> said think they do.

i think these are agonizing questions and i applaud the takc administration. many of the traditional allies of the administration have gone silent. i think they have shown themselves to be very principled and they are raising very important questions. but there is a discourse out there that criticizes the growth of lawfare, that we are imposing too much of a due process paradigm in a war

context. in a domestic context, mr. shapiro mentions the issue that we all want to support the economically people on the street. and that is true. i think they're using the court as a surrogate for making social and economic policy and courts are not good at treating off competing interests. so if they get on the order, for instance, on prison litigation where we spent x amount on prisoners' rights, that may be dispensable in the abstract, but it ignores the fact that public bodies have to make trade-offs of what they spend here versus what they spend there. and judges rightly are not often

politically accountable so they are short circuit in in many instances a political process. as far as the issue of public safety and policing in new york, i would place that as a rights issue as well. or there has been no greater public's disgust over the past quarter-century -- no greater public policy of the past quarter-century with such success. in new york city, where you have 10,000 minority males who are alive today, who would have been dead, had new york homicide rates remained at their early- 1990's level. no war on poverty program has brought that degree of improvement to inner-city said that assertive data-driven

policing has done. stopping frisks and hotspot policing is an essential part of how new york fights crime, but it has nothing to do with race. nothing. every week, the commanders in the new york police department meet to discuss the worst crime areas of the city. and they are concerned about one thing and one thing only -- where are the victims? and race never comes up. and when they find crime- fighter's occurring, they will deploy officers there because, unlike the rap against police for years ago which was that they ignored crime in minority neighborhoods because, all well, we know that is how those people be a, the process that has come to be known as comstat, that

holds precinct officers responsible. they use stop-and-frisk when they see suspicious behavior. it has nothing to do with race. by intervening early in suspicious behavior, they prevent crime from escalating. new york city and new york state has had a prison decline unlike many other states, in large part because we are arresting crime before it happens. we are not waiting for felonies to occur. we are intervening in suspicious behavior. averting crime, pouring out someone's open whiskey bottle was drinking in public at 11:00 a.m. rather than waiting until 11:00 p.m. when a person is job and could get into a nice fight and a homicide. i think the aclu has done a

disservice to police departments across the country by charging them with racial profiling, charging them with going after suspects on the basis of race, when in fact they are looking of behavior and they are addressing the demands of law-abiding people. if you go to a community meeting in harlem or brooklyn, they want police on the streets and they want them to arrest drug dealers when they come back and they want more quality of life public order. that has nothing to do with race and the new york police revolution has given a voice to the law-abiding residents in neighborhoods that never had it. >> of.i will ask one question. i think others confusing a lot

were converging a lot of different things. there are things in their policing that are objectionable. if they are only stopping people when there is reason to believe they might be up to something nefarious, which is the constitutional standard, one has to question why 99% of the people who are stocker never arrested -- who are stopped are never arrested. >> they may be doing something nefarious but there is no evidence for appeared the police cannot always be right. you cannot always assume that everybody you stop and question is going to have evidence of crime on them. it does not mean that the stop was not following a reasonable suspicion standard. but i would also like to ask you a question. the police are often criticized

for their stop ratios that do not match the population of the city, that that analysis that the sill you frequently uses to charge racial profiling. in new york city, blacks are 25% of the population and get 55% of all stops. what should the proper stop ratio be given that blacks commit 80% of all shootings and 66% of all violent crime? racialw in the aclu's profiling analysis is that it uses census data as the benchmark for policing, not crime. crime drives everything at the -- everything that the police do. given the crime disparities, what should a stop ratio look like that would satisfy the seal you?

do you think that because whites are 35% of the population, they should be 35% of all stops, even though they commit only 1.4% of all shootings? >> were to begin, really? i grew up in public housing. i lived on the 12th floor. the elevators never worked. the family next to mine was murdered when i was 7 years old. i had traumatic nightmares as a .hild appeare i had cousins who ended up in gangs. i do not to relive the facts that i remember. however, let's just leave aside the arguments for a moment. if i want the police to -- the

families who are essential to fighting crime in these neighborhoods, when you so anger and make good hard working class people like my family fear the police, which we did, and you get harassed like our clients and did in a recent lawsuit in new york where police were stopping people in the hallways because they're black or latino, when you make communities an essential part of good policing skeptical of calling the police, you are not doing anything for public safety. let's get down to brass tacks. if you're making enemies -- and i would love to go with you to some of these community town hall meetings. you pick some and i will pick some and we can compare notes.

it is not all a kumbaya moment for people of color in the bronx when they see police walking down the street nor have they been held relentlessly accountable. we cannot even get convictions for cops who rape women when they are on duty. i think there are some very fine men and women in uniform and there are very many problems with the ways in which they are asked to do what are very difficult jobs. that being said, we also cannot look to the fact that some crimes get more attention in the police department. i want to get back to national security, but the local issues are very important. we are the only organization in

the country with on the ground staff presence in every step across the country because you have to work locally for civil liberties. that said, the issue is how you think about crime. it is amazing to me the lack of prosecutions in the neighborhoods by for the most, wall street. we want to talk about crimes and we talk about the great tragedies of stripping people's pensions and homes and we look at the fbi, the police department, the justice department and the policy record of going after career criminals and pushing communities into further deprivation and poverty. policing is not all even-handed.

figuring out the balance on these issues always trade-offs. the question is where you come at it philosophically. the question is whether or not, in the name of the common good, you will be willing to abide and infringement of civil liberties. become so reductionist to from it that way. you're right. there are many calls to make in

government. but sometimes the intelligence is wrong. we have gone to war over intelligence that was wrong. sometimes the facts are not as clear and that is why you need some kind of judicial body to make sure that what they assert is not just what they assert, but the truth. at the end of the day, when the stakes are so high on life or death, literally, you do not have the luxury of resurrecting some when you have killed wrongfully. that is where scrutiny is most necessary. you convict someone for the the dna is therend and you can let them out.

but you cannot resurrect a person that you target for assassination. the power that is being exerted is such a at a level and nature that it is enormously troubling and provoking. there is torture going on in american prisons every day. so why do we care about the torture in guantanamo and the torture of the l.a. county jail. because the torture in guantanamo is done by the highest levels of government. we short circuit -- the notion that a short circuit the political process by bringing a lawsuit, i think that we kickstart the political process by bringing a lawsuit.

there is no way that there is a political constituency for the guantanamo detainee or the people were targeted by the government. you have to turn to the courts. that is the role of the courts. on criminal-justice issues, the reason why we're having so much success on criminal justice reform -- and we have -- geriatric prisoner bills enacted in louisiana, mississippi enacting a law reform efforts, new york, california -- that is because we filed the lawsuit and because legislatures were forced to take a look at the set of questions and now we can resolve it with to do legislative process. when you carry a big stick, sometimes you use it and create political will on issues that are difficult to convince people

on because they're not very nice people -- criminals or terrorist suspects -- and you force political leaders to take on water sometimes very difficult issues by forcing them down the road. >> i would say that, on skid row in los angeles, there is no shortage of advocates who takeover the entire pedestrian routes for their encampments of people shooting up drugs and killing each other. a woman was stabbed by a

parolee. that night, there were 82 shelter beds available on skid row. the business improvement district could persuade only to people who are living on the streets to use them. those people have lots of advocates who were living on the streets or advocates who are immigrant entrepreneurs who are coming in the morning, having to clean hypodermic needles or feces from their doorsteps, or other business owners down there who needed to get to work and they are mostly immigrant workers. i think there is also -- it is not just individual rights against the government and the common good. that is simplified. it is one group of individuals against another group of individuals who are not these days very well served by our

advocacy groups or by the courts. the judges in downtown l.a. who have been ruling on the ruling set of lawsuits that have been brought do not seem to have spent much time on skid row to actually see the efforts of the police there to try to convince get treatment, to take advantage of the services that are available to them and improve life for everybody. >> all of these issues deserve panels of their own, don't they? but there are >> you want to ask a question about citizens united. >> i read that there has been some controversy over the

citizens united decision. i read the organization filed before the supreme court. that raised a lot of -- critics of the decision. i was wondering what the aclu opposes current position has changed or whether it remains the same. what can you tell us -- what can you tell us what if any impact that debate had on their position? >> before i answer, could i ask you? you raise this at the beginning. you said this was a great moment. .> i did you >> i do not remember if i mention citizens united. but i did not. i will be glad to say a word or two because i know a little bit

about it. the briefs that were filed supporting what i would say as the right of organizations to participate in the political process by expressing their views about the qualifications of candidates for office, the briefs were filed by the aclu, the nra, the chamber of commerce, the democratic party. there was a immense broad spectrum of a meek as briefs supporting was ultimately the supreme court's decision. the case involved a nonprofit entity that was created to be an advocacy organization. it was formed as a corporation,

it is like the aclu and the naacp. and so, and i think the question relates to what the aclu has done subsequently with respect to contributions. i do not think you have change positions with respect to expenditures that happen to be formed into a corporation. nonprofit corporation, small business corporation, a hardware store corp. -- the new york times corporation, bless its heart, has written maybe 22,000 editorials against the citizens united case. maybe it is fewer than that. one of the things the new york times says a bout that is that it is wrong that corporations have these constitutional rights overlooking the fact that new york times versus sullivan

is one of the leading cases with everything who believes in freedom of the press and so forth. it is a complicated issue. i could go on and on about citizens united because i thought the principal that was being indicated there was the maximum amount of speech about the qualifications and confidence of -- the desirability of people running for their highest office in the united states was something that was fundamentally at the core of the first amendment freedom of speech and freedom of the press. the american people would benefit the more speech they heard no matter where it came from. that is my position on it. i was representing citizens united.

but that is the principal. your question goes to the aftermath. it has stirred up a lot of opposition. it happened as a result. >> it has generated a lot of controversy. it has generated a lot of controversy within the aclu. there is no policy within the aclu that has been debated more times internally that the aclu's campaign finance policy including a subsequent to the citizens united decision. at the end of the day the organization always comes back to the same fundamental point. we are not going to solve the problems that plague the american political system by eliminating speech. once you say you can limit speech you have to give somebody the power to decide how much speech is enough and who gets to speak. when the have said enough. there is nothing in our history

that leads you to believe the government can perform that job confidently or that you want to entrust the government with the power. our position has been over the years that if you want to decrease the influence of money in politics, the way to do that is not by decreasing the supply of money. the other lesson we have learned over the last 40 years is the money always finds other loopholes to seep through. you decrease the demand. you decrease the demand by creating a fair and equitable -- adequate system of public financing. if we were willing to invest money in our elections that we were willing to invest in one day of the war in afghanistan our politicians would not have to spend all day on the phone trying to raise money with private contributors. it at the end of the day, that is where we stand.

that is where we stood before citizens united and that is where we stand after you -- after citizens united. >> what is the new york times problem? i do not get it. >> the editorial pages unrelated to anything. i have no opinions of any kind if i were to think back to a different life, because i practiced first met law 15 years before i turn to reporting, i would find it hard to argue with ted and steve that the first amendment is about something it is about protecting speech about politics from whoever. it is about giving people the maximum amount of information. therefore, we talk about difficult cases for the aclu. for them to give their constituency in the way most right thinking liberals think about this issue, it must be very very tough to keep the line steve just through. it will be interesting for me to

see because there is another case coming up out in montana, whether we will see an aclu brief and there. good for them. let me be clear and full disclosure. in the aftermath of citizens united, the aclu national board did change its policy on campaign finance to accept what they would see as reasonable limits on campaign contributions. i think that was a mistake. i spoke against it. you can see i have to carry the fight even if i do not like carrying all the flags. this is the one i do not agree with i think this goes right to the heart of what is most important the political system is fundamentally corrupt. let's be clear. you cannot cover the sky with one hand it.

my grandmother used to sit at to me. is correct. the question is what the fix it. for as it has always been public financing. to have a running shot at it. money does not by you in office necessarily. look at the california governorship. money can make you lose in office. to have a viable candidates that can run campaigns, public financing is the way to go. the solution of how you limit the corrupting influence of money in politics is what gives all liberals knickers in a twist. what my constituents want to do is limit the power of somebody else's money go into a party or candidate they do not like. i find hypocrisy of liberals who will denounce and fund some of the most largest billionaire philanthropist's -- i will not name, because i have to keep

asking them for money -- they will fund the campaign finance reform efforts and they will spend $50 million to unseat george bush in the last election. campaign finance for you, not for me. it is often the problem of saying, being concerned about the money coming from, going to individuals you do not like. what is the solution? if you do not like where we are with citizens united and you do not like the corporations have free-speech rights. the aclu has free-speech rights. we have freedom of speech and association. if you are willing to bend our right to free speech and and the rights of corporate free speech, that is a fine way to do it. that is not what i would suggest. that you have citizens united, what is the solution? maybe the montana case, maybe another bite at the apple. maybe you have individuals who advocate, it is time to have a constitutional amendment process to see if we can carve out that

free-speech is for people and not for corporations. many have been thinking this is a good time to revisit the first amendment, i would ask you to put down the birr that you are drinking at home. -- the year they have been drinking at home. the idea that you could reopen it with this climate and this congress and he will try to carve out the big, bad contributions from corporations that corrupt the political process and you will not do damage to the type of free speech rights that you probably want to support like labor unions or the aclu or packs of the planned parenthood pact, i think you are all delusional if you think we will do something good for democracy by visiting the first amendment. it is the question i would like to enter the most. is probably the issue we do the least. i do not know what the solution is to cancer.

i cannot find a cure to cancer. the jurisprudence is not moving in my direction to find a cure to cancer. the same thing with campaign finance issues. if somebody has a perfect silver bullet that will do all good and no harm, then bring it on. right now a heated political context, a polarized country, money coming from -- individuals do not like. i actually think that is america. that is the robust political process. there is no such thing as too much speech and too much concern when politics is at play. >> all right. rachel jacob has a question about the death penalty. but i was wondering if you can

discuss -- [unintelligible] >> do you have it. done this on the dna database? >> where does it draw the line familiarizing with the kids? >> [unintelligible] >> including marijuana arrests? >> holding it for future law investigations? what's all of these are balancing cases. i think the benefit to being able to solve crimes the director actively or in the future outweighed -- retroactively or in the future out weigh the risks to personal

privacy. if somebody has already been convicted of a crime, their interests in the privacy that dna has to be outweighed by the fact, there is a possibility involvement in other crimes as well. law enforcement is right there that this is an extraordinarily powerful tool. it can help save lives. dna is getting to be a more and more accurate science. if he's a dna can exonerate people -- if you say dna can exonerate people. i do not think the downside risk is as much as the upside risk. >> i was going to sit one sentence. one of the issues i think is we are simply arresting the and

convicting far too many people. this would be a less serious question if in fact we were arresting and convicting fewer people. but when we are criminalizing as much as we have criminalize in this country, we are creating an entire and their class that now not only has their dna on file for the rest of their lives, they are denied the right to vote in many states for the rest of their lives. they have difficulty getting jobs when they get out because they have a felony conviction. i think you can separate the database issue from the question of, who is going into the database and who is going into the database is far too many people. >> i quite agree with everything steve just said. i want to use this in part -- it is fascinating with the aclu and their role in life and we are talking about the issues -- the

substance matter of american life. it is great but an interesting way of proving my earlier point. these are the issues that draws. that is why it is sometimes controversial. in response to your particular question, i am less concerned about the laws that say after conviction, laws that have been proposed and out that as a everybody is stopped and picked up. i am still concerned about it for the reasons the outline. what concerns me most in the death penalty context in the these issues of dna being used to exonerate questions of privacy and other kinds of life issues, in the death penalty we have seen the contraction and a contraction of the number of issues and the number of moments which is possible for a court to hear this evidence. this evidence some states are pushing back against that. that has been very productive.

it does to the broader question of the role of the courts and the role of the courts are asking -- the roll the aclu asks the courts to play. it is less concerning if you have this kind of policy. if you know there is going to be a repeated moment where the vindication of the rights of other side in court -- whether it is to exonerate or to convict -- or whether it is the adjudication of an individual right of privacy that is being advanced. what we have seen, and one of the roles the aclu has played that is most important in security context, is a contraction of the role the courts are willing to play. even as the technologies grow, even as the number of issues we call security related grows, the courts maintain this view that anything in that category we cannot do. if the legislature continues to narrow the jurisdiction of the

courts, there are still many issues, nobody has a chance to litigate. that is what worries me. that is a process failure. it is a moment when there is secrecy in the political process or the political process is not working and you do not have the courts as a process to fall back on. across the board whether it is criminals, issues an exoneration, security issues, it is the insistence that the courts are a coequal branch of government and have an essential role to play is one of the things -- >> 3 points on this. i know we have to be quick. one is a scale of the database. it will be so large. it we have to be quite sure -- it will be as foolproof as possible in terms of the level of dna samples.

the idea of dna is quite different than once fingerprint. with a dna you can unlock an entire health history. your genetic history. with those con swabs stored properly by a police lab, you can have all sorts of access to the person's body and their history and background. there are a history of cases where police officers have used police databanks to go after their girlfriends or they're divorced wives as a way of retaliation. we have to be quite sure that is not going to have privacy court should. the third one i cannot help but tweak the police department when you are here. can you explain to me why and whether you support the idea you would carve out marijuana arrests as not being in the dna data banks? you can be in the dna databank each update turnstile because you left your metro card at

home. if you are smoking a joint on the street, you are not in the dna databank. how does that compute? i think the reason why it does not, the reason they allow that carve out is because there of marijuana arrests are so racially skewed it would be impossible for them to say that it does have a ratio impact. if you look at the data, white kids smoke pot on the same and equal levels as african-american and latino kids. drug use is across the race lines. yet the marijuana arrests are predominantly black and latino. they have carved up the kind of marijuana arrests. they knew that ratio was so concentrated among people of color they did not want to fight that battle. >> i would said it probably carved out because it is a battle right now. they were not willing to fight

that because of the advocacies -- the notion that marijuana arrests are being driven by race as opposed to public use of marijuana. they are unfortunately -- there is not a single criminal law that does not have a racially impact. the victims of that are the law- abiding members of minority neighborhoods who are disproportionately victimized by crime. i do not think the impact is a legitimate argument to pull back on neutral laws that are being applied in a neutral way. the shooting per-capita rate in brownsville brooklyn is 81 times higher than in bay ridge, brooklyn. that is not an artifact of

racist policing. that is because people living in brownsville are victimizing their fellow neighbors at the higher rate. people are dying there at a higher rate. that is what police are conducting stop and frisk said at a much higher rate in brownsville. >> you cannot allow the assertion to go unchallenged. it makes it sound as if the african-american and latino residents are therefore in a lee an inherently more violent than the good old white folks. but it has nothing to do with in a nest. it is simply a fact. >> it has everything to do with opportunity, heather. we take away affirmative action programs, and when we take away the social safety net that the manhattan institute has been very aggressive in championing the efforts, and people out the rug from poor people where they have very few opportunities to make a lot of themselves, is

when you see the violence. i am no different than my cousins who are serving time in jail. what is different is i was given a chance. my cousin, as smart as i am. i went to princeton, he did time. he has great parents. same neighborhood. opportunity defines one's life progress. >> there is nothing that has created -- there is nothing that has traded more opportunity than the drop in crime. had given people the civil liberty from fear which is what people and park avenue -- >> i have a question regarding the lgbt movement for marriage

equality. you think that the ninth circuit court reservation who addressed the issue of process and the heavy reliance -- does that undermine the argument that there is a fundamental right to same-sex marriage? >> i guess that is addressed to me. what the ninth circuit did, the panel decision of the ninth circuit we are talking about, i hope everybody heard the question. it had to do with the decision hurt by the panel. with respect to the basis upon it is a stain or a firm, the district court decision striking down proposition 8. -- it is sustained or affirmed, the district court decision downping -- striking dumpe proposition 8.

they decided there was a constitutional right for citizens to marry somebody of the same sex. when the case gets to the night circuit, the ninth circuit is focusing on the fact that the supreme court of the united states in the rumor case had determined that similar constitutional amendment in colorado taking away the rights of gay and lesbian citizens violated the constitution of equal protection clause and the process clause. those two clauses are fallen in every time we talk about this issue whether it is the large -- folded in every time we talked about this issue. it is a fundamental right to marriage and an equal protection claim. but the ninth circuit did is make a relatively narrow decision but also talking about all of the justifications that call-up -- california had offered for its active

discrimination against people on the basis of marriage. it essentially systematically found every single one of those justifications without any rational or reasonable basis. while the decision was focus somewhat narrowly on a couple of supreme court decisions that happen to be written by justice anthony kennedy, that in no way we believe undermined the extensive factual and legal record that was compiled in the district court and form the basis for the district court's 184 page opinions. what will happen from the ninth circuit we do not know. another is a petition for rehearing on bond, pending it has been sitting there for six weeks. it will take 13 out of the 25 active judges in the ninth circuit to grant rehearing on bond. some think it will happen. some think it will not happen. in either event i suspect it will go to the supreme court.

if i have not answer that, i would be happy to elaborate. i wanted to do it since it's a to the time constraints. >> anybody else want to weigh in? >> i have a ton of questions on this, but not right now. >> thank you. my question is about internal polarization as well. the aclu policy initiative promoting ferrites and process. is a contradiction in valleys before -- between your first amendment advocacy and pro- government to advanced consumer privacy. is there a tension between the liberal values and pro- government progressivism within the aclu? if you want to take this opportunity to talk about health care as well, feel free to do so. >> i have no credibility on health care because i thought it would be an easy win. whatever else is quick to happen

it would not be an easy one. this is back to a comment somebody made at the very beginning of the panel. i do not think it is the most prevalent conflict we face. generally our cases involved individual rights against the government. there are many circumstances that we have to confront whether they are individual rights on both sides of the question. but the most difficult for us. i am not sure there is a simple equation that enables us to resolve those problems. we approach each one on their merits. we try to balance the competing rights as best as we possibly can. in most situations we like to believe it is not a zero sum game. is not either or, there is a way to reconcile both rights. you have raised the issue of free speech and digital privacy.

the situation arises for us when somebody wants to pick an outside -- pickets outside of an abortion clinic. whee believe it the right to picket and we believe in the right for reproduction choice. when the press was to public -- the press wants to publish, over the years we have tried to work out the -- we have tweaked the solutions. we have given more thought to the problem. it is a general problem that cannot be avoided. you do the best that you can. i will say just one last thing on the whole issue of digital privacy. the aclu over its history has been primarily concerned with invasions of individual rights

by the government. we support laws like had 07 as a private corporations cannot discriminate on the basis of race. it is perfectly clear there is at least as much threat to digital privacy coming from the goals and facebook said the world, the united states government. we will have to think about how to balance those rights as we go forward. >> i wanted to pick up on the health care piece of this. although i would not have expected, i am teaching constitutional law to the students this semester. i see a couple of them there. my poor students, i made them read the entire 80 page transcript of the supreme court last week. i know they enjoyed thoroughly. >> 80 pages? what's the first 80 pages of tuesday. >> you need the first half of tuesday. >> i let them off so easy.

the point is, it is fascinating to see this case friend as it has been publicly. it is an individual right against individual rights case at some level. the right on the other side is, you cannot force me to buy health insurance as it has been framed by the plaintive's side. you saw some of the most dramatic moments in the supreme court debate and public debate as well. this motion that, why should the government be able to tell me to take my money and to give it to somebody else. i do not want to buy health insurance. i should not have to buy health insurance. you are using my money to subsidize somebody else's care. the answer that the government council gets to this is, yes, this is what the government does every time the taxes people.

this is exactly the power to tax which the plaintiffs say, yes, but you did not call this a tax. you call this a penalty. if only you had called this a tax, then it would be ok. what is the argument there? the health care bill would be ok if you put the letters t-a-x on the title of the provision. the plaintiffs would say, we have no issue with the acceptance of government power? they are pressing on the real argument there. it was not clear enough to the public what congress was doing. they were trying to sneak it in because they thought it was politically easier to pass as a penalty that as a tax. the political process will not work of the voters do not know and cannot evaluate what they are really getting. that argument works sometimes. if the government is doing things in secret, if it is addressing lost to a discreet and insular minority, if it is inserting some random committee

bill that some giant authorization bill, the health care law is the most heavily democratic the processed law we have had in the last 20 years. you would have had to be living under a rock to not know exactly what the bill was doing. the argument that individuals could not effectively vote out their members, if they did not like this member -- of the cannot out by the did not like the law, they did not know this was really about taxes and not penalties, this is not an example of a case where there is a political process failure that you need the courts. either the court decides that in june or the voters decided in november, but there is every reason to think that the voters know exactly what was going on but it was passed and no plenty enough to vote against it if they do not like it without the court's interaction. >> i have to let adam in on this. >> it is much too difficult to get into. but i think deborah has

generated the general -- demonstrated the general academic you. that is not what we saw the court at all. making people engage in a commercial transaction with a private company is fundamentally different than paying taxes to the government and getting something in return. i want to make a point to follow up and come full circle about polarization. there is one way in which the aclu is not polarizing. at the supreme court, this is a testament to the [applause] leadership, -- they are really read with care. i say that in a setting where greece are not read with care. -- briefs are not read with care. i know in chambers on the liberal and conservative side, the handful of outside groups

whose of me as a brief skit really read, among the those are the aclu because they come from a certain perspective but they are credible and trusted. i think that is a testament to a really smart run lead -- legal shop. >> i would just say this. for those of you who absolutely disagree with the aclu and would have never given their time, had there was generous to give her time this evening to comment and engages in discussion. for those whose rigid for those who would not even give us the time of day and want to switch the channel off of c-span. the conflicts of today's panel was the aclu in american life. the question you have to ask yourself is, would american life like without an aclu?

if one did not exist, would america be the worse for it? i know the answer in mind is -- the answer in my mind is, i guess, america would be worse if one did not exist. if and if you do not believe in our work, these issues are too much for us to be silent bystanders. if we do anything right, it is just to get the far republican right to bring the part of america saying, why is the aclu advocating on behalf of citizens united? if we can get their light bulbs to sparkle and said, how can i possibly agree with the aclu on this issue, maybe that is a teachable moment for all of us. in american life is all the better when we have these debates. democracy can be a great many things but it should never be quiet. our job is to be as loud and noisy as possible. thank you to jeffrey at all. >> said at the beginning, this was a huge subject. became clear that everyone of

these issues you have spent a lot of time on in the debates. -- it became clear that on these issues have spent a lot of time on the new dates. >> thank you to all the panelists. thank you for having me. i hope you enjoyed it. thank you very much. [applause] . >> this year's student cam competition at students what part of the constitution was

important for them. today's winner selected the first amendment. >> i am a mormon. >> i am jewish. >> no matter who we are, where we come from, or what faith we have -- [together] we are american. >> the first amendment tells us we it should no longer respect and establishment of religion or the exercise their of. >> what does it really mean? >> the establishment clause is about no establishment. we are not want to set up an official state religion.

it keeps the government from taking sides in religion. the government is required to be neutral. >> these clauses keep the government neutral towards religion. they are meant to respect the rights of religious and nonreligious people. quite the first amendment protect the right of religious group to participate in political activities. we have a right to burn dissipate in the debate of all issues that are important. >> people are given the right to practice their faith, to follow their conscience. the protect the right of citizens to engage in public life and bring their faith into public life if they so choose brigid the united states is fortunate to have this arrangement of and no establishment and free exercise under the first amendment.

i think that it's the most credit for keeping us from being in a place where we kill one another in the name of religion. >> the framers of the constitution wrote these clauses to keep peace between religious and nonreligious individuals. they are intended to keep the people of the nation content in a religious life. >> if you did not have a state religion and allow for everyone to have freedom, everyone will get along better. >> religious liberty, or freedom of conscience, is a fundamental inalienable right for all people, religious and nonreligious. >> the freedom of conscience is a peak -- a freedom that cannot be taken away. it is a freedom for all people, religious or not. >> this is the best arrangement par allowing religion to thrive

, and nonreligious people benefit because they can live in a society where they do not have to be coerced into being religious or being involved in religion. >> these amendments protect religious practices. how debate specifically affect us. >> i am a christian. without these clauses, i would not be able to go to church every sunday, read the bible in my home, i would not be able to go out on the street and be able to say that i am a christian. >> these clauses are reported to me because citizens of have a right not to be forced into a religion i do not believe in. >> i think different religions make you want to have more religion. >> i am mormon. a member of the church of jesus

christ of latter-day saints. they had to flee from ellen likely -- illinois. it affects my religion because it is better to remember our religion. >> under the religious liberty clause is, the government cannot have control over your religion. how would you feel at all of this were to change? >> this country is supposed to be about freedom. we came here to be free. >> i would feel like they were imposing on might religious freedoms. >> i would feel like they were violating our freedoms and our rights and if they were to establish, [unintelligible]

>> if it would be really sad at the government made us one religion. >> i would like the government -- i would not like the government to make one official religion. if they made one official religion, i would not feel like i would ever turn to the government. i would feel like all my rights were taken away. >> if you americans are unsure about all of the different religions and whether may think they should have the freedom that their religion enjoys. the establishment clause, the united states would not be what it is today. >> the first amendment principles that explain -- sustain the experiment of religious liberty are not articles of faith. we have those in different ways.

what they are our articles of peace. now, more than any time in our history, it is imperative we live and all these articles of peace and our lives together as citizens, one nation with many faith and many cultures and many peoples. >> go to studentcam.org to watch the winning videos. continue the discussion on our facebook and twitter pages. >> >> , remarks on women's helped by the president of planned parenthood. after that, the weekly addresses by president obama and oklahoma governor mary fallin. then, income-tax filing tips. >> this sunday on c-span's q and a, the u.s. senate youth program. >> one of the great experiences

this week is when i got an opportunity to be -- to meet both my senators. just to be able to meet them and talk to them >> it is important to be financially sound. if we are not financially sound, devoting money to national defense will not have any money to devote to it. >> high school students per dissipated in a week-long government and leadership program. they share their observations and experiences as they interact with members of congress, the supreme court, and the president. let there is a lot of partisanship going on in congress. everybody we have met here has said that. it makes me wonder if everybody is saying that, but it is not actually happening that they are discussing what they are saying and they are actually doing. >> of the u.s. senate youth program sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's "q&a".

>> the head of planned parenthood spoke at a recent student foreign at princeton university. the daughter of former texas governor ann richards at focus to report -- but the remarks of birth control and health care. her speech, plus questions and answers from the audience, is one hour 20 minutes. >> i have to say i am honored to have the opportunity to introduce cecile riches. she has served as the head of planned parenthood since 2006. every year nearly 200 centers nationwide, this -year-d organization provides family planning, reproductive, and sexual health care to nearly 3 million people. during her tene, she has expanded the organization's advocacy for access for health

care. she has led nationwide campaign to preserve access to planned parenthood's preventive care through federal programs. she started the youth initiatives program that trains young people each year in leadership skills and health care advocacy. she is invested in private -- planned parenthood online, a web site that provides mobile access to health information and is visited by 33 million visitors every year. under her leadership, the number of planned parenthood supporters has doubled reaching a total of 6 million people. before jning planned parenthood, richards served as the deputy chief of staff for nancy pelosi. in 2004 she founded and served as president of america votes, a coalition of 42 national grassroots organizations working to maximize registration, education, and

ter participation. in 2011, richards was named to time's mazines annual list of 100 most influential people in the world. we are very privileged to have her here. she has been recognized as a national leader by the national council of jewish women, u.s. action, and the prize for creative citizenship. she is a 1980 graduate of brown university. she also serves in her spare time on the board of the ford foundation. today's talk, keeping politics out of women's help is being presented as a criminal -- at a critical moment in a nationwide conversation about women's health. the public outcry after the susan b. cullman withdrawal and the reinstatement for breast cancer screening, the debate

about contraception and religious organizations, whether they can be obligated to provide health insurance coverage, and even this week as the supreme court hearing on the affordable care act has brought start attention to the question about what the appropriate role is for government and for non-profit organizations and for insurance companies in promoting women's health. for many of us who study or advocate on behalf of the issues or for those of us who care about the issues, questions about ensuring woman's access to health care are not new ones. researchers at the center for health and well-being and the office of public -- i am sorry. the public of opposition research has focused on the importance of women's access to run the world. women die from pregnancy related causes each year.

princeton scholars like dan cates had examined how access to health care and sub saharan africa impact'the rate. most of these deaths occur in developing countries, the united states has one of the highest maternal mortality rates among developed countries -- 1000 maternal deaths per year. among developed countries, the united states also has the highest incidence of low birth rate and the infant deat something that is not unrelated to maternal health. the steady policy approaches to improving the maternity care system. my own research shows that extending public health insurance to poowomen and children has improved infant health and reduced mortality. clearly, there is a long way to

go given that half of pregnancies are unintended. clearly planned parenthood continues to fill a vital need. one of our newest affiliates has done research showing that political participation of facts access to health care and infant health in brazil. when i was preparing these remarks, i could not help thinking about the different careerof miss richards' looking at political participation and also access to health. it maye that the link between politics and women's health is inevitable, miss richards will speak to that. please join me in giving her a warm welcome. [applause] >> thank you so much. thank you.

thank you for the reay nice introduction. it is wonderful to be with you this that the day. it was great to be here all day and with a lot of interesting students at the woodrow wilson school. thank you to all the students and faculty who hosted events and got me around campus. thank you fohaving me here. i also want to acknowledge the interim ceo of planned parenthood -- anyway, welcome to all of you. it is nice tv princeton. before i give my formal remarks, you do not know that much about me and i do not know that much about you, i will mention a couple of things. i was born in taxes. i was born in waco, texas even.

somebody had to be. [laughter] my folks both went to blor university, which no is the baptist school. there were high school sweethearts and they both went on to baylor. my mother said everything they did was that much more fun because it was either against the royals or it was a sen. -- against the rules or a sin. the baptist convention disallowed six standing up at baylor because people might think you were trying to bet -- you were trying to dance which is forbidden. that is my family upbringing. but it was being at baylor which made them tough. our family was o where every issue and movement back into town the got involved in.

i grew up in dallas in the heights of the civil-rights movement. they were involved in that and the woman's movement. our dinner table was not aware you 8 but where you focused on whatever issue they were involved in on the campaign. that is how me and my siblings were raised. we eventuall moved to austin. my mother was a traditional housewife. it was the 1950's and 1960's after all. we moved to austin at the hght of the anti-war movement. everything was going crazy. she was invited for the first time to run a campaign, which was unheard of for women in that time. it was for a woman who wanted to run for the state legislature. the whole tng seemed a little bit craft. i thought, and what the heck. i would think -- i will get my hand at it. all of us kids got to be

involved. we learned of the political skills you need for a lifetime like handing out bumper stipples -- stickers and yard signs. anyway, the end of the story is, it was a very competitive race but thisentleman one. many of you will remember, but sarah at the age of 26 argued the roe versusade case before the supreme court. she has spent her entire life fighting for a woman's writes. i feel like my whole life as come full circle. the real moral of the storys my mom kind of got hooked on politics and she would run for office herself. she did a series of times. she was elected to a variety of offices. it was one moment where the stars and mooned aligned and we

elected the first and only completely pro-choice woman governor of texas, my mom, and richards. [applause] i just think about, we all stand on the soldier's -- shoulders of those who came before us. i want to give a special acknowledgment to mom and all the women years ago fought the battles so we would not ha to fight them. yet here we are doing it all over again. please all of you who are actual scholars, do not like this said because it will not sound right. life is not one thing after anher, it is the same damn thing over and over again. now i will get into my serious remarks. since this is princeton university i prepared remarks about a topic i think is interesting. i want to acknowledge your

fabulous -- what fabulous work she has done here at the woodrow wilson school and how lucky brown university is to steal her away. i mention that because my first experience with planned parenthood was with brown a as a student. i use birth control and college. it was rather unthinkable to go to theampus health center. planned parenthood was the only place i knew that really do everything about birth control. it is kind of funny because a lot of change since i walked to the help center in providence, rhode island years ago. a lot of things have not changed. that is how millions of women first get birth control is that planned parenthood. i am sorry. i have a bit of a cold. every day hundreds of people, primarily young people come to the health centers and ask the same thing. i need to give bir control and i needed affordable.

i do not have money to pay. where am afraid i am pregnant, is there somebody i can talk to? i think i need testing for rick and aristide. planned parenthood was started 96 years ago. it was out of a concern that with men were unable to get information about birth control, and were unable to get any kind of birth control devices and were unable to plan their families. margaret was drawn to this work by seeing her own mother who had died at the age of 50 after having 11 children and seven miscarriages. her body literally wore out from so many pregnancies. that is how margaret got into the work. you read about the early days in which women brought diaphragms

over from europe in their suitcases and smuggled them through trains. it was not since 1936 that the laws were rolled back and there were not finally repealed to 1970. it was not until 1965 that the griswald supreme court decision actually finally legalized birth control for married couples in america. i am glad we are not fing the griswald decision with the supreme court, i have to be honest. from where margaret began 96 years ago fast forward to today where planned parenthood is, one in five women come to planned parenthood at some point in their lifime for health care. 3 million patience come every single year. for so many women now, a family planting -- planning center like planned parenthood, that is the only doctor visit they will get

all year. so many women put off their hlth care. they are also getting their breast cancer screening or cervical cancer screening or an s t e test. some come for prenatal care as well. over the last year we have seen an unrelenting attack on women and young people being able to go to planned parenthood for basic preventive care. we can talk about all the political battles thahave been fought over the last year, but what i would like to focus on for a few minutes here in my remarks is that at this moment in which politics seems to be a increasingly used to limit access to fix education, for basic for mission for young people and reproductive health care, i actually believed there was a huge opportunity on the horizon. that is through technology.

and i think the technology is a way you go a lot -- beyond a lot of the political barriers put up to women for access to care. that is always our goal at planned parenthood. to reduce the barriers to get access to reproductive health care information and services. using technology in a new way is like the latest iteration. health care barriers in this country are difficult depending on who you are and where you are. people face barriers because of their economics, their background, where they live,

their race, their language, their geography. and the united states seeking our reproductive health care services as a whole other layer of barriers whether it is access to safe abortion services or birth control or as t testing, the additional barriers are the social stigma and -- getting basic answers to health care needs and it limits too many people from getting the care they need. this is my dream to give you a glance of the future where i believe we can deliver information and education and health care and a digital and social age. it is critical that we do so. to level set this, i think it was alluded to already, five years agohen i came to planned parenthood, we started plannedparenthood.org. this is a classic case of if you

build it they will come. the minute we were able to get ourselves tether and get organized and every new addition to the site generated more and more traffic. we were finally able to get it or you could type your zip code and find a health center anywhere in america. we became the fandango of reproductive health care in this -- what kind of bth control could work for them women fill that out everywhere. i heard about this other kind of birth control. maybe i should check it out. anher may need an ltd test or an emergency contraception. the 3 million patients came through o health center doors last year for the most hands-on care. last february, more than -- last

year, we moved to mobile phones. in 2012, this year, we estimate we will see 40 million people online and half of them will be through their sulfone. or those of you who have kids, if it is not on your cell phone, it does not exist. [laughter] over the last couple of years, we have been a living in the digital laboratory where we have been able to track what are on people's minds and what they need and ask people what they look for and start piloting really innovative programs to reduce the barriers for young people in this country, this whole new generation coming in to get access to care and services and try to eliminate some of the barriers we have. it is important.

we have to do this. i know a lot of people worked in public health. despite all the things we have been able to do in this country at the forefront more than anything, we have moved on to the i pad, which has revotionized the world. the numbers speak for themselves. we have the highest unintended pregnancy te then any developed country. on average, 730,000 teenagers will get pregnant every year. the vast majority are unintended and undesired pregnancies. we know that being a teenage mom is a huge contributor to poverty later in life, not only for the mom, but for their children. childrennder 18 have a 64% chance of growing up in poverty.

so these are really important issues. the other thing that has a lot of conversation about this is the cdc. it has been focused on the rate of this td's among young people. i do not want to -- rate of s t .'s among young people i do not want to scare u or make you have call your children away. [laughter] they are not having half of the sextet is happening in the country, but they are getting half of the infections for std's. for bad health outcomes, it is disproportionately happening among young people of color and people who have fewer economic options. and teen pregnancies, the taking huge toll co. what does it cost in taxes in this country?

it is $11 billion to $12 billion every year. it is not just about health outcomesit is a terrible drain on our nation's economy. the thing that is heartening is that we know how to keep young people from being that statistic. there things you can do together to make a difference. many young people deny get birth control information by the time the first time they have sex. generally, parents talk to children about sex. will we talk to teens, they say that their parents never talk about sex. so go back and talk to your child about it tonight. this is politically very challenging. in utah last week, the governor vetoed any kind of information

that would give information to kids. we only have abstinence only education. see how that is working for us. legislatures in other states are making it a lot harder for young people to have sex education. this is one of the most universally -- regardless of .eligion or anything else we have to figure of ways to get sex education to young people without having to get it through the gislature, through the school board control of the barriers that exist. that is where technology comes in here 13-29-year-olds spend

7.5 hours a day in front of the screen grid i do not know what else they're doing. [laughter] if that is my son, if that is what he is doing, everything else he is doing is sleeping. looking at the tv or texting could there is a lot of competition and that is where young people are paired for out of five teenagers have a cell phone could by the end of this year, half of them willave a smartphone. they have access toeverything. 87% of teenagers sleep with their cell phones right next to their heads. we will soon discover what the medical issues are related to that. [laughter] and then the average teen

3400 cents text per month. this is something they're living with every single moment of their lives. before, it was getting a car appeared now, it is getting a smartphone. it is bridging the digital divide either through a laptop or stationary computer. because african-american and latino teenagers are more likely to use their phones to access the internet than other teenagers. they live on line. they're not only going to defend websites. they are talking all the time and they're having social information and they're looking for sexual information. news flash. [laughter] about half of young people use the internet to search for health-related information and it is information that is sensitive, that they may be

embarrassed about talking to people about. some of it is drug use, sexual abuse, and depression. this is why it is so important. they are looking for iormation that they may not want to talk to their parents about or their teachers about. so they go on places like yahoo! and get information. and just read this the other day. this was on answered.com. someone asked "can i use a plastic glove instead of a condom." i did not want to even think about that. [laughter] but the website has this as the best dancer "one ti, my brother used one -- the best answer, "one time, my brother used one and the girl did not get pregnant." [laughter] it used to be that you got that information at a slumber party are on a school bus. now you get it online.

the need and the demand to get in this place is critical. we need to be aggressively in the social online sphere. we're getting into these conversations. we know questions that have and frequently asked questions for young adults and we are developing stuff on tumblr and other teen sites where they are having this conversation already. the other biggest demand is parents who say i he no idea how to deal with t explosion of information my kids are faced with and not able to have a real honest your heart to heart about

sex education. this is one of the single biggest things that parents are talking about on blogs. the concrete areas -- i think these are encouraging and i think they can make a difference. the first is texting. the days of the 1-800 number is going away. it is replaced by text and jack. we have - text and chat. we have a texting and chatting program to get a hold of a planned parenthood person 365 days. and we advertise through programs that children may watch. mtv said to was, you know, we run these shows, but we do not know a lot about what to say to young people who are concerned about getting pregnant before they are ready to have a child.

so we advertise and partner with media entities like that. our first year evaluation showed success. it was the immediacy of what people can get paid the conversations are incredible. we got a text from a young woman last week. again, it is not even like hi, my name is jimmy. "i am afraid i might be pregnant." so we had this conversation. she had unprotected sex the night before. if you do not want to be pregnant, you can take emergency contraception, the morning after pill. and there is a slight delay. then she checked back a "i can ?" and there are exclamation points. you could feel the rief through the text.

suddenly -- she was in crisis, terried she is pregnant, probably did not mean to have sex, not on birth control, and now a person on the other end of the text is telling her, you know what, your life may not be over. again, we could help her get unemployment with planned parenthood so she could get immediate contraceptive appeare. now they can go through text and chat to get information immediately. and we're finding that a lot of things -- kids do not even want to say things out loud. how long did she wait before she could it meant that she might be pregnant? they ask on text and chat the

same things you have heard. like, i heard you cannot get pregnant on the first time. can you get pregnant if you're still on birth control? can you get birth control without your parents knowing? that is a huge issue for young people. some are quick answers. some are more complicated. but the most exciting thing i we can get in at the moment of need where young people live in regardless of your situation. i think it is the single most promising real-time technology that takes away barriers. these are kids in texas and they have absolutely no one -- not to keep picking on taxes, but it is the biggest program of its kind in the united states. another way to rich people is telemedicine.

there is the video conference and local care providers and get state-of-the-art testing and treatment. the va has been pioneering this forever. veterans in ral areas do not have local clinics where they can video conference with a doctor. so we have bn experimenting and have begun a pilot with this as well across the country. patients come into our health center and meet with a health assistant or a nurse and then with a doctor that they can join by videoconference in real time and interact about birth control and std testing. th can walkthrough do in the blood sample or taking a swab and talking with the patient about what the results can be.

and getting into networks where we can provide care. and making sure that we ptner with others to do videoconferencing and telldmdci emedicine. i grew up and texas -- a group in texas, as i said. mind such a decatur was a coach. he -- my sex educator was a coach. he did the best job. traditionally, sex education took place in school because that is where we can reach a lot of young people. but what you know it is that come increasingly, there are too many places where they are banding sex education.

even now, only 21 states really require sex education. of course, it is the states that do not require it that have the highest teen pregnancy rates and std rates. another study in a long one of study shows that sex education actually help young people change their behavior. it helps them to delay the first time they have sex and it also helps ensure a greater likelihood that they will actual use protection when they actually become sexually active. if i were to ask the number people that we see on line, basically, each month, it is equivalent to about 160,000 classrooms in america. just do the math. this year, there is 1.9

classrooms in the year. we are creating digital sex education based on kinds of behavior change. one of the key things, for those who sty behavioral science, one of the ways to have teenagers delay being sexually active -- first, they have sex because everyone else is having sex. they want to be like everybody else. we're getting messages out that change that behavior. when you teach a young person that, on average, people start having sex at age 17, that is the single most important piece of information that will help them delay the onset of sexual activity. the second important thing is that 80% of young men use a condom when they have sex. that complete increases condom

use and that is how we can get to the other 20%. you may wonder how these help once worked. they absolutely work. mental health, smoking cessation, but only a few in reflective health care. we are creating the largest intervention related to sexual reproductive health based on science and what we know that people like to do online, particularly young people. if your love my son, it is play videos and share things. -- if you are like my son, it is playing videos and sharing things. it is really important to use a condom or having a question posed on yahoo! answered by someone who actually knows what they're talking about. that is really exciting. there is an opportunity here to

use videos. we have already seen it, beyond the ones of cats playing the piano, which are great. but young people are looking for this information. the thing about planned parenthood is not having to crea a demand. it is already there. we do not have to convince people of things like global warming could we do not have to convince people of poverty. ung people are already interested in what we do. it looks different from when it started 90 years ago, but it is actually kind of the same thing. we are reaching more young people and providing information in real time. the sile biggest struggle is dealing with the politics of it all. it ishe barrier of politics.

every time we made two steps forward, there's another step backwards. partisan politics, rather than public health care policy, is what is driving health care policy in america. there are challenges by congress and other trying to create barriers to education. we see a tax on access to planning, to cancer screening, to pap smears. i think it is important to remember that the u.s. house of her pretended as a year ago

funding for planned parenthood had nothing to do with abortion. the attacks that were made in this congress was about eliminated all the preventive care that we have d.eated that was literally what was at stake and that is what the house voted to do. we are in the early fighting to get preventive care in this country. it is an obvious point, but if you really wanted to rede the need for abortion in this country, would you not come volunteer at a planned parenthood health center? we do more every single day to

prevent unintended pregnancy and the need for abortion than all of these people with picket signs will do in a lifetime. last year, a lot of states passed laws that really target regulation of health care reoductive clinics. it makes it more difficult for clinics to stay open. we see a slew of new bills that strike at nothing more than humiliating women. texas has actually passed and implemented the required vaginal ultrasound bill so that women in the state of texas, regardless of what point they are in their pregnancy, they have to have a vaginal ultrasound before they haveny procedure. these are procedures that are

not medically necessary mandated by lawmakers who are not physicians. this is politicized. i want to of the size -- i want to emphasize that they just voted down the birth control ban in arizona. in arizona, planned parenthood was started by peggy goldwater, barry goldwater's wife. planned parenthood is the ultimate. it does not come with a political label.

last year, we have seen what young people around the globe can do in the facef censorship and what our supporters can do when planned parenthood is under attack. this is the other power of technology could it is the power to connect people, to tell our stories, to get our message out and to drive social change. in the last year, more than 1 million new people have joined planned parenthood as activists and more than half of them are young people. when the house ved, young people mobilized more than ever before. more than 1.3 million tweet --

which is what you do on twitter -- [laughter] they occurred in less than three days and drove mainstream media and coverage. that change the story immediately. and the legislature was trying to pass the same bill as texas on the vaginal ultrasound, but women and young people mobilized and made a human chain around t capital. texas gov. rick perry, when he ended the state family planning program in texasthousands of people rallied in towns and big cities and did it through social media. there are some in this country who wanted to inspect the

1950's. i take comrt in this fact. 96 years ago, margaret hanger was arrested for distributing information about birth control, literally just pamphlets about birth control. but this coming year, more than 40 million people will have access to that information through our web site. so you have to say there is a little bit of progress. [laughter] sorr i hope that works. [laughter] it is not everything, but you have to take hope and opportunity for the future, right? otherwise, you just get too darned discourage. i think there is potential for everyone who believes that reproductive health care, information, and services should be available to everyone. it can change people's lives. the technology itself will not change the world. but through all this, it can together could think to some

much for being here today. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> thank you so much. time for some questions. i guess i can take the prerogative as the chair to ask my own questions while we're waiting for some people to come down. i think it is fascinating that you have all of these fferent ways of reaching people now. if you could expand one thing,

what would it be you would pick out of your initiative? >> it would absolutely be taxed and chat. i read all of the directions we ext and it would be taxe chat. i get to meet people all over the country. almost every week, someone will come to me and say that planned parenthood chand my life. no one ever forgets having gone to planned parenthood. you may be anxious. you may be embarrassed. you may be afraid of the questions you have to ask. and planned parenthood was there. this is what we see on line

could some are so relieved that somebody is on the other end of the wire or whatever it is -- i don't know how it works. [laughter] that can be there in their moment of crisis and you can live truly here this relief over the phone, even if it is a tough situation. i think that is the single most important thing that we can be doing. >> ok. >> thank you for your top and the very important work you do. i have a question -- you touched briefly on this, the legislative backlash we are currently seeing with reproductive rights and so on. i wonder if planned parenthood has a long term vision plan of action in terms of rolling things back. technology is extremely important for getting information out tre. but my next thought is that ther's all of this censorship that is happening.

in some schools, you cannot access information or in public libraries. >> right. it did used to be you could go to public libraries, but now you can do to cell phones. that is where people are moving to give you can literally get this information into the hands of people that has been his starkly difficult to get. i will put it back on y. my host is your generation. there are a lot of things that give me hope. i am a perennial optimist despite all of the incoming information. i have seen this last year young people get organized and take on these issues in a way that i have never seen -- that i have not seen in decades. it is not just young women. it is young men.

a greater population of the people coming to planned parenthood are young men. they're taking on these issues as well. these issues -- these are issues of human rights, not just one gender or another. i think it is exciting. i just want to know how many people can you bring. who will stand up at the end of the day and make a difference? in the affordable care act yesterday, the supporters of the affordable care acout number the opponents in front of the supreme court 5-1. [applause] and a lot of them were young people who got access to planned parenthood or women's health care issues over the last year. i just think there has never been a better opportunity and there has been -- and there has

never been a greater need to stand up for your generation and demand the right to ask for health care information and the services that will help you live your life. so that is my charge to you, ok? >> i have had the privilege of working in the texas affiliate. >> nice to see you. you have been amazing work there. >> i was privileged to work there. i wanted to ask your opinion on the new legislative trend, like bills introduced four months old, like by agra with -- like the prostate exams to get viagra. >> most of the bill's letter

being passed limit women's access to health care. underlying them is a fundamental tenet that women are incapable of making responsible decisions without the legislature intervening in their personal lives. that is absolutely unacceptable. i love the thought that they will equal the playing fld. if women are incapable of making their medical decisions, then men must be as well to try it on and see how it fits. i do think social media made a great role in this. there is an example that probably all of you saw. issahearings were held by 8w on capitol hill appeared and here are five men who are about to explain that women do not

need sexual health care. someone took a picture on their on linephone and put it and it would viral. through social media, people tell their stories and expose what has been a lot of hypocrisy it around the treatment of women and women's health care issues. now we have the need to do it and we need to be using it. i think it is absolutely transformative. thank you for what you do and for the work. texas is one of the most challenging places now. centers at the rio grande border. it is a sad day. >> i just wanted to say thank you so much for what you do. it is a real honor to have you here.

i am just learning about the leadership responsibilities you have held over the course of your career and you continue to hold. it is incredible. i was wondering if you have any tips for young people on how to manage your time if you want to -- [laughter] >> am sorry. >> how to maintain the energy to feed on these issues and fight for them even though there's such a struggle sometimes. >> i have no idea on time management. once you have kids, it becomes even more complicated. the only thing i would say -- and some of us talked earlier in some of the of the class's -- i have been unbievably blessed in my life to do work that is meaningful to me and make a career of . all of you young people who are starting out and thinking about

public health were working in non-profits or whatever else, if you can find something that you are passionate about and you can do that for your job, i just cannot tell you how blessed your life will be. i can do this into the night. there's nothing more energizing to me then getting to do the work that i do that planned parenthood, to organize more people and young people and interact with them and learn from them. that is my only advice. you will never manage your time. you like something that use spending time doing and you can do it. so good luck to you. [laughter] >> thank you so much for coming in spending a couple of days with us. one of the wonderful things about the woodrow wilson school is that all the international students are here, in talking

bill today and to students last year with their international classmates, most of them have been shocked at the political turn of events in the united states. i was wondering if planned parenthood is looking to international models at all or is there anything that other countries are doing or not doing in terms of politicizing these issues that planned penthood is looking at to get ideas of other ways to move forward? >> first, let me join international students in saying that i am shocked at the political turn on these issues, particularly on issues of women's health. and i would also invite anyone from any foreign country who has any suggestions on how to get out of the fix we are in. i am more than open to suggestion. there will be a point at which folks say enough is enough.

and i hope we're getting to that point. in an interesting way, i think it hpened in the komkan situation. we want pple to get early screenings and self detect breast cancer. it was first that we were out there trying to demonize planned parenthood. that was a real problem. and the american people said that was too far. that is too much. you cannot play politics with breast cancer screenings in america. and that got turned around. frankly, we have to speak up now and we have to talk about the fact that the issues we're

dealing with our health care issues. the one who sees this as a social issues someone who has never used it, right? 98% of women who have used for control are catholic women. so this is a strange social phenomenon. my favorite statistic is that the average woman in america plans to have to 0.3 children, somewhere --2.3 children, somewhere around there. the average woman spent 30 years trying to avoid pregnant because she does not want to be. that is a lot of birth control. that is not a social issue. that is a major public health issue in this country and we should do everything we can to help them.

ok, off the soap box pierre >> thank you for coming and getting this talk and think for your work. one of the things that has shocked me the most about the recent presidential campaign coming even though it should be so much about the election, contraception kept blowing up. 99% of women use birth control, 98% of catholic women use birth control -- it doesn't even seem to be good politics. why is this issue continually floating up despite its political in viability -- inviability. >> ok you are really smart and i agree with you. [laughter] in the 2010 election when everything that realigned in this country, birth control, abortion, they were not mentioned at all. that was an election the people

were concerned about the economic decline, about unemployment, about home floor -- home foreclosures. the new congress, did they start dealing with those issues? no the jobs bill? no. the first thing they did was and the national family planning program. it is not what the voters wanted. in fact, i do not like to be that competitive, but after this entire back and forth we did with congress over the funding planned parenthood, planned parenthood's approval rating went up 69% of people in this country approved a plan parenthood and a 10% of people in this country approval of congress. [laughter] [applause] so to your point, i do not think it makes political sense.

the concern is watching this republican presidential debate which is a debate to the bottom. it is like i will be worse for women's health, no, i will be, note i will be. i say this becau we have a lot of republican supporters who are discouraged by the turn of events. this presidential primary has been a fight for the hearts and minds of a very small segment of this republic. -- of republicans. it is rewarding folks who are trying to hold the party hostage to a very extreme agenda around women's health. end resultw what the will be. i do think women are upset and i

do think that one thing to remember is that women will be the majority of voters in november. 53% in the 2008 election was women. i am grateful that a lot of men are in this room. but women and young people will probably determine who the next president is of the united states. so it is you in your hands whether this country on these issues moves f work or if we go back to the days of "madmen" and no one can get access to birth control. but i do think it does not make political sense. i am glad you're here. [laughter] >> one of the common arguments i hear against planned parenthood is that they encourage irresponsible behavior. frankly, i hear the argument from my peers at princeton all

the time. i sometimes travel to respond because it is a very plausible argument. i do not know -- it is aery principled argument. >> pardon me. i think there are a couple of points. i mentioned earlier that there have been studies for years that providing an people information about birt control, the more young people know about sex education, that they know about birth control, that they know about contraception and std's and conscious -- and prevention, the less likely there will be risky. and you may teach kids in high

school. the man not have sex in high school, but at some point, they will. and they need birth control. and the more likely they are you -- they are to use protection. i think part of your question is that i don't have to talk about sex for young people to think about it. [laughter] i am not trying to be funny about it. sex isverywhere except when it comes to providing real information and honest conversation. i think about my own kids who grew up watching "gossip girl," "one tree hill," let's just go down a list. and somehow, we do not want to provide access to good information.

the cat is out of the b. [laughter] i think the most important thing we can do and we take this very seriously at planned parenthood -- when and people come to planned parenthood and the text us, they want to know and my normal? is it weird that i am a virgin? this is the way i am feeling. our goal is to help young people delay having sex before they are ready and to make sure that, when they do make that decision to become sexually active, that the use protection and the use contraception. that is our whole goal. so good luck. [laughter] and thank you for the question could that is a really good question. >> i want to thank you again for coming and i also wanted to -- >> your the politest

students. [laughter] >> endure hilarius. i really appreciate that. i wanted to -- and you are hilarious. i really appreciate that. i wanted to bring that back to the young people who will be a high percentage of the voters. there are politicians and other people making these decisions for women and wanted to ask you come on behalf of your organization, if you have a message or you would like to create a message for these women. even though it does not have a lot to do with their personal concerns, you see them backing and supporting different politicians or pieces of legislation that would otherwise harm them, regardless of whether or not they are from this party or that party. is there something that can be done? is there a lack of information? what really needs to be out there to say, hey, this is important not just for yourself, but -- i don't know.

>> i will put on another hat. i am also the president of the political action fund. we endorse candidates and word at elections. one of the things we did this year was launched a website called women are watching. we host things the candidates are saying that relate to women's health care access pipit is really hard to follow the ll -- health care access. it is really hard to follow the ball. there is so much going on. certainly, they are running for president, but they are also running for office all across the country. that is something that we hope to be able to provide. one of the things we found in the past election is that they are pretty skeptical of politicians, young women in particular. shocking. [laughter]

so they discount lot of the information they hear at election time. but the really trust planned parenthood because they feel we are an honest broker when it comes to women's health care issues. it is important for us, again, in a non-partisan way, to show what these candidates are saying and what they're committing to on wen's health care issues. i keep saying i have seen it all. i have never seen an election like this where literally issues of access to birth control may be determined in the presidential election. it is kind of crazy. yeah, it is kind of crazy. so -- >> not to be redundant, but thank you again for coming. [laughter] >> youust be taught when you are freshmen. you always think people. that is really nice.

it is my honor to be here. >> you talk a lot about the services th planned parenood provides, but often times when you fit mentioned planned parenthood to people, the first thing they think is abortion. how do we change -- i think that the image of women's health is still abortion. how did you change it to talk about -- how do you change it to talk about more things? >> i want to be really clear that it is really important in this country that abortion is legal and it is safe and that won can get access to it. there are too many places in the world where men die -- and they did in this country as well before abortion was legal.

so that is a part of women's health care. but it is not all of women's health care. more than 90% of our services is preventative. the idea is to have fewer unintended pgnancies in the first place. but we have to continue to tell the story. but part of it is your oprtunity is provided through the congressional debate and letting your patience be the face of planned parenthood. two examples -- one was an interesting moment -- it is sometimes our opponentsho give us a little bit of an opening. so when he said that 90% of our services was abortion, he was called on it and he was pressed about it and said he did not intended to be a factual statement. [laughter]

it was not the only moment. and then we can say this is what we do pick and then i was on tv that night -- this is what we do. and then i was on tv that night to say this is what we do. some of the fox newasters -- [laughter] one of them said, during the b debate over whether planned parenthood should exist, one of them said that women can go to smears andfor pap stuff like that. but then walgreen said, no, don't come to walgreen's for pap smears. [laughter] and then someone said to, yes, go to walgreen's. ok for the stirrups that are

between the kiddie litter and the toilet paper. [laughter] in this last year, we had thousands of patients tell their stories on tumblr, on facebook, and more. one woman from florida went to congress three times. it is really putting a face on who planned parenthood is. we got one story from all 50 states, put it in a book, and to the to the members that the united states senate. we just have to continue to do

that and help educate people about the entirety of what women's health care is in this country. >> thank you for coming. [laughter] >> it is like a game now we're playing. >> we are only talking about one half of the parents, constructive parents. i wonder if you can talk about how you have an initiative to bring the men into the picture and talk to them about their risk for std's and how they can inform their girlfriends are they can inform their boyfriends. can you talk about how you can bring in young men sthey can grow to be better lawmakers? [laughter] >> i knew you had an ulterior motive there. [laughter] i am so glad you asked that .oul

men are coming to planned parenthood as partners or as patients themselves, we are doing more in education for young men. some of them are already pents before they wanted to be parents and training them to work with other young men. it is to teach them what they need to know, everything from negotiating skills to information about contraception to help them finish school if that is terrible, to finish college if that is their goal, and not become a parent unt they are ready to take care of their families. young men a huge part of this and a growing part of our organization. i was at our national conference and we trained a huge leong leadership -- accused young leadership, and a third of

th educators are young men. they will come to these issues from a lot of different walks of life. some come because they're concerned about birth control, some from a social justice pointed you, but i feel that this action -- to me, i look at the future, i see h technology can change the future. but the other is, if you look at this coming new generation in the united states of america, it is the most diverse ever in our history. it is so exciting. it is the earth's ethnically, racially, sexual orientation, you name it -- it is the versdie hnically, racially, sexl orientation, you name it.

for the moms who fought for reproductive rights, we cannot let them down. but we need to bring this into the future. i am glad to see so many men here tonight. [applause] and here is one right now. [laughter] >> hi, thank you again for coming. [laughter] in light of recent comments by rush limbaugh -- everyone about contraception and the context of ovarian cysts and requiring explaining the reasons that we need birth control to prevent cancer -- i guess my question is what role do you think sex positivity should have

in women's health? it a acceptable to say we need birth control to prent cervical cancer or ovarian cancer or do you think it is just as legitimate to say that we need birth control because women have the right to have sex as men do? >> here here! [laughter] look, everyone is having sex. even members of congress have sex. it is unbelievable that we cannot be honest about these conversations. so this bill -- i was in arizona two weeks ago. they were going to pass a bill that says basically -- if you are a 35-year-old woman, married with two kids and you want to use birth control, and you want

it covered by your employer through your insurance plan, you have to bring a doctor's permission slip to say that you are using it for something other than an unintended pregnancy, as if somehow there are better reasons to use birth control. [laughter] there are other good reasons, but it is absolutely ridiculous. this whole thought that women -- it is just insane to me. the good thing is that the senate voted that down today. but it will be back. yes, i think that it is right. we are sexual beings could that is part of who we are. it is time -- again it is just incredible to me that this country cannot come to grips with that. as we also know, it is often mes the folks who are the worst attackers who seem to have their own issues with sex.

i think it is really important that we stand up forhe right of all pple to have a sexually fulfilling life and to not have children when they're not ready to have children. to have that control, it is just crazy. i think the american people think it is insane, too. itean, you are sayinseeing every day. >> thank you very much. i am one of those international students at the woodrow wilson school has a hard time trying to understand the politics of women's health in the u.s. i'm from canada could ally of the state bills coming toward --

i am from canada. a lot of the stables coming forward, it is pushing women's health into the private sphere and that government should not be intervening is de legitimizing women's health. >> part of what is at stake is that we believe there should be public health system in america. women's health is being used as the lead dog in this conversation. the question is, does the legislature -- do politicians have the right or have better

information than the woman's medical doctor on how to deal with their medal care? that is what this is about. but the issue whether we believe public health is a good in and of itself, i think it is a fundamental thing that we will have to grapple with. i will pick on mitt romney for one minute. he brought it on himself. he said the of the day -- he said we would get rid of planned parenthood. but the other thing he said is we cannot afford planned parenthood. we cannot afford that in this country. i know that we cannot afford unplanned parenthood. we already know the billions of dollars that costs. you know what, we simply cannot

afford to provide health care to people in this country anymore. the medicare program that president nixon signed with bipartisan support, the entire family planning program that provides health care for 5 million people every year, that is a fundamental question. not only of women's health, but whether you believe that public health has any value in the united states of america. that is what ncerns me. i do think that is what will be issue. for those of you who are looking at public health as a potential career, frankly, there has never been a more important time. public health ca is good in this country and we have to nurse it and evaluate. it is fascinating that we hear

the supreme court decision on the affordable care act. i do not know what will happen. but we have to get serious in this country to make sure that people have access to health care. i am so grateful for what you do and grateful for this opportunity. thank you. [applause]

.

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012]

>> they can't file jointly, if they are not married, can they? >> when it comes down who should get the deduction, it depends on your ownership interest. if you buy it jointly but one person pays all the interest and property taxes, i think that person should take it. you should take the deductions in the way that you pay the deductible expenses. you cannot file jointly if you are not married. you have to file separate returns. it can get complicated, because you will get a single 1098 from the bank on that mortgage interest. it will show that full amount. you have to divide it. >> now, there is no special forum. the other person that worked to claim the interest expense

deduction, for the part they paid, it is likely the i.r.s. will contact them and say we don't have any record of receiving your 1098, that you should attach a statement to your return. >> for what it is worth, somebody like cindy, would she be in her -- and her partner be less liable for varesous taxes if they were married, or are they going to have a lower tax bhill if they stay single but living in the same house. >> generally speaking, if two people are married and file jointly, that's going to be less tax than if the two of them are single. that's not always the case. that really depends on the income, if one person has a higher income and the other person has a lower income, it could be better jointly. so many variables.

>> back to the phones. arlene from marina del ray. >> i love s&p. -- i love c-span. it is an intelligent show. i watch it every day. gentlemen, i go to the bank, i take out the minimum amount. the bank charges me $40 to take out the minimal amount from i.r.a. is that legal for a bank to do that? >> gee, a bank does something people don't like? >> arlene, are you still with me? >> i'm with you. >> when you say you take out the minimum amount, what's the minimum? >> this time i took out, i think, it was $1,300, something

like that. they are holding my money. >> and every time you take the money out, they charge you $40. >> and this is before you get hit with the tax bill. >> that's correct. >> what is your situation? >> i would switch banks right now. that's crazy. >> it is not illegal. this is american free enterprise. they can charge you anything they want just by doing this. i am stunned, but no it is not illegal. i would switch to another bank, a credit union. i have never heard of anybody charging to do the required minimum distribution. that's what she's talking about, the amount she has to take out because she's over 7.5. most firms are happy to figure out how much they have to incur, or send you a check or move it to a taxable account.

i'd get a different bank. >> if she rolls that i.r.a. into another bank or credit union, is she going to have to pay any sort of a bill or credit union? >> no harm, no foul. that's what she should do, not ever touch the money herself. nothing gets reported to the i.r.s. everything is fine. >> next up, fairfax, virginia. john, you're on the "washington journal." caller: my wife inherited some property. after we sold the property last year, would she have to pay tax on the money? guest: where did she own the property? caller: her father owned the property in south africa.

guest: you say someone died? guest: she said the father died and left the property to the wife. so it is the inherited basis, i would assume. guest: i don't think in general in this property, the tax basis in that property is stepped up to the value on the debt that the previous owner, the father died. only if they sell the property for more than that amount is there a taxable gain. they sell it for less, there will be a tax deductible loss. i don't know if there are special rules for foreign property or not. i think foreign property is the same. that's what the viewer has to look into, whether there are special rules for south african property. in the united states of america if that happened, they would

only owe a gain if it was worth more than the day the father died, and if it was less than that, they would have a tax deductible loss. a friend of mine had that happen. they got a tax deduction even though they got a substantial amount of money when they sold the house. host: stephanie, bowie, maryland. you are on "washington journal." caller: i was going to increase my w-4 to take additional out of each check. i want to know if that is enough. guest: if you think that the

2012 taxable income and yours will be the same, you would look at how many pay checks are left that says april already. you look at how many has been deducted for the first three or four months of the year, how many pay checks you have left, and you increase it so you have a total of some $3,700 more withheld. >> what are the red flags that the i.r.s. looks for, or what is it that triggers an audit and people should be careful not to hit those triggers? >> well, now it has a pretty sophisticated of grading the tax returns. they look at a lot of things. they look at your income and compare it to the deductions. you have a low income, but you have a big mortgage.

it's a big mortgage. they also look at what they call the opposite home rolls. if you are self-employed and you wanted to take a deduction to your home or a portion of your home, that's a red flag. if you have a large donation that's out of the norm or sort of a standard for your income level, they look at that. especially if it is a noncash contribution that they would look at the valuation. >> bob is right that these are red flags. you should never not take a tax benefit, because the worst thing that will happen is send you a letter and say prove it. if you have records to show it -- we hear all the time about

home office deductions being a red flag for an audit. if you look at audit statistics, more people claim home audit statistics every year. if you deserve a home office de durks you should claim it. the only reason you have to worry about red flags is if you are cheating. if you are cheating i hope the i.r.s. catches you, if you are not cheating, i hope your tax bill goes down. host: my question is i'm on the retired care act. my income is $37,000. my c.p.a. has told me when the affordable care act kicks in in 2013 i will be charged an extra 3.8% as an extra tax to pay for

the affordable care act. is this true? the seck second question is i'm already charged $1,2 hundred hookup -- $1,200 per year. will i have to pay that as well? >> no, that is not true. the affordable health care plan kicks in at a much higher level. your premiums will not goup at that level. there is a surcharge for medicare premiums, but it is much higher than 37,000 that it kicks in. i don't think you have anything to worry about. ask your c.p.a. to double-check the rules. host: we have a tweet. "president obama talks a lot about green energy.

has he increased or added any deduction for home energy solutions?" >> i can't believe if it is obama or bush. 30% of the cost of solar energy, 30% of that is a credit. you get a credit for that amount with no dollar limit. whether it comes to windows or installation last year, the most you could get a credit for was $5,000. when it comes to solar, wind, or geothermal. it has been in for a while. that's a pretty good tax break to encourage alternative energy. >> this comes from ahmed in

snapssnaps -- indianapolis. go ahead. caller: some tax preparers did something wrong from immigrants, and from that day on we hear -- i decided to audit everybody, immigrants from east africa.

in somalia, kenya, i'd like to to know if they can claim -- send money to them. host: thank you for your call. regarding the tax preparation and the audit, if you have a tax preparer, then you get auditted, what's your best move? >> i think your best move is talk to a preparer and see if he or she should know the audit. i know most people would prefer to see the i.r.s. themselves. the biggest problem they have is with a client that talks too much. so often they want to go by thelve themselves. you won't find bad tax preparers by the time you get auditted.

they are gone early on. the i.r.s. will send out 70 million or 0 million refunds before they see anybody's w-2 form. that's why there is a huge problem with the fraudulent returns is people file fraudulent returns, they have a phony w-2. the i.r.s. doesn't know better. they send the check out. usually the preparer gets ahold of the check. by the time the taxpayer hears of this, it is a real problem. host: regarding the second half of his question, does it matter where your dependent lives in order for you to claim that dependent? if you are living here in the united states -- guest: i don't think there is a problem with the overseas or not.

guest: i think there is a citizen qualification. check the i.r.s. instructions. that's one of the first things when it comes to who can qualify as a dependent. host: we've got about 12 minutes -- we have about five minutes left. good thing i don't do my own taxes. tom, you are on "the washington journal." the guy who can't act. caller: i was sued and awarded out of court some compensatory damages settlement.

this was 20 years ago. i did not receive any 1099's for 50 years, and then they started sending me 1099 cards which is for retirement income. i am not 66 yet, and i wonder how i could handle this. guest: sounds like this guy is in trouble. guest: you said you received a settlement, and that's usually a lump sum, a construction settlement. he says 20 years ago. i'm not sure. guest: i'm lost on this one. i'm sorry. host: if he did receive a lump sum settlement, would it have been his responsibility to seek out that 1099 form before 15 years passed? guest: no, it is not up to him to actually have the 1099.

even if you do not receive a 1099 you have to pay tax on the money you have to pay tax on. if he receives an income and it is a taxable income, you have to pay taxes on it. guest: we do this all the time on independent contractors. i can't tell you how many people i know that try to keep their payments to people uvend $600 and it is tax free. it is not free. it just means the i.r.s. doesn't know about it. host: caller? caller: i am 65 years of age houfment do i file? do i file as a single person? qualifying widower? which one do i file?

host: do you mind if i ask how long you have been a widower? j caller: two years. guest: what it is, if you are a widower after two years and you have a dependent child you can still use the money filed jointly tax rates. but if it is an older child, over 19, then you have to file as a single person. host: i have an e-mail who says if a woman is separated from her husband under court order file as head of household? she has a 19-year-old daughter, not in school with income less than $3,000.

guest: i'm not sure. the head of household rules are complicated when you have a child and you are married, but if you are separated for the entire year, sometimes that's considered unmarried. host: our next question. >> i have a daughter i put through college. she graduated sume cum laude. host: less, that's great. i'm running out of time. i need for you to get straight to the question. caller: this is pertinent to the question. i put $8 a,000 into her ed calte

indication out of my pocket. will i have recourse to go back and be able to collect on any of that tax-wise? another question i would like to ask you if i may? i'm retired now and i have about a 50,000 dollar income from retirement. what would be the best way to get her c.p.a.? host: we'll leave it there. guest: there are all sorts of tax breaks for paying for a child's education. this sounds like this was in the past. so, no, the only thing you can rely on is the kindness of strangers or your daughter to help you out, but the taxpayers are not going to help out.

host: robert baldasarri, advice for a future c.p.a.? guest: if your daughter has a degree, she can take the test. to become a c.p.a. you have to have the equivalent of five years of college. so if there is four years plus a masters or 150-hour requirement. so if she were to get another 30 hours of college, all she has to do is take the test. host: robert badassari, certified public accountant, and -- thank you for being with us.

>> four decades after watergate "the washington post" reporters ungovernor the facts that led to the resignation of president richard nixon. carled woodward and bob bernstein were at the american society of news conference tuesday in washington, d.c. this is about 1.5 hours.

>> "the washington post" coverage of watergate altered the map of political journalism and added to the muck raking. beginning june of 19 2, two young reporters, one a clean-cut

christian college educated mid westerner, just two years out of the navy. the other a long-haired chain-smoking college dropout from silver spring, maryland began with a routine night cop story and turned it into what still stands today as the high water mark of american journalism. i'm confident in saying that this single piece of reporting is responsible for many of us in this room choosing the profession we love so much. on this day we're here to honor the anniversary of those two reporters and use it to explore how journalism has changed in the decades since. what would happen tomorrow morning if a young "the washington post" reporter saw a police report on a break-in at the national democratic convention? what might transpire after her initial tweet?

can sources be sustained and protected or is the dinltal age too relealingvealing? we have a distinguished panel here to honor those. moderating the discussion will be alicia shepard. she a consultant that writes on media issues and is the former ombudsman for national radio. she's uniquely qualified having offered the aacclaimed book, woodward and bernstein, life in the shadow of "water gate." she is a pulitzer prize winner as a writer and editor. she's the author of six books. on the far left is jeff lein.

he's the editor in charge at "the washington post." he joined the post as an investigative reporter in 1997 after 15 years at the miami herald and he's worked on investigations that have been honored with seven pulitzer prizes. second from the right here is josh from "talking points ." in 2008 josh won a george polk award for the politically motivated dismissals of u.s. attorneys by the bush administration. and finally, perhaps the two most -- our charles darwin, our john, paul george and ring owe,

[applause] >> i want to recognize one other special guest here in the front row. we have ben bradley. former editor and current vice president of "the washington post". [applause] >> now the fun. >> thank you. it is a real privilege being here. i wrote my book because i wanted to answer one question -- how do you live the rest of your life when by age 30 you have achieved the kind of fame, success, wealth and professional respect that most of us hope to have by the time you die. writing a back about two living people is a very odd experience. i kind of feel like a stalker. you know so much about them t you probably know things they

have long forgotten. you are combing through their archives, their divorce papers, talking to their friends, their enemies, and all the while, they are there, not at all dead, but still not talking to you. but we're friends now. so watergate was a 100-year storm. it was two reporters that stumbled into the biggest corruption story of the 20th century that led to the president's resignation. unthinkable at the time was that the president of the united states could be a crook. today that's our default. at the time of the break-in, there was a completely different journalistic ecosystem. there were tv channels, no cable, no talk radio. "the washington post" was not even the biggest newspaper in

town. stories in d.c. did not necessarily filter out to the rest of the country, and there certainly was no internet. first i want to show you a clip to take you back to that moment, and then we'll spend some time paying tribute to this landmark piece of journalism, and then talk about today. >> these men are about to commit a crime which will trigger a series of events which will change the course of american history. now known collectively as watergate, this and related crimes might never had have become known had it not been for the american press. leading the efforts to get at the truth about watergate were two young reporters from "the washington post," bob woodward and carl bernstein. intrigued by the dramatic possibilities of two young

newspaper reporters, robert redford decided to approach woodward and bernstein about a movie on their story. >> i was impressed with redford. he wanted to make a serious movie about the newspaper business. >> he seemed excited about it in the sense that our rearends were out on the line for so long. >> they were unknown. and they lived an unstructured life in a very, very structured town. they were not on anyone's list. that's impressed me. they were real outsiders, and at the bottom of the running -- wrung so to speak. woodward was at the time investigating rat droppings in

restaurants. bernstein was having trouble staying awake. >> finally, redford decided to go ahead with the movie, "all the ment's men." it would star dustin hoffman. >> what comes to mind after watching that? >> my mayor -- hair is a different color. what comes to mind is what the book and the movie is all about is the process of reporting, getting at the best obtainable measure of the truth. and what we see in that movie and i think what we tried to depict in the book is it is a methodology to get you there. we were young. we worked at night, which was a great advantage in darkness. woodward has often said that the

light comes out in darkness. i think that's what we found. and that the methodology worked, and that 40 years later, what was dismissed as a third-rate burglary we know now was a massive unprecedented, unconstitutional campaign of political espionage and sabotage that defined the president of the united states and his presidency, and we can go on from there, i think. >> bob, how about you? what do you think or feel when you see that? >> somebody used the word "stumble" into the story and that's about 90% right. we worked in an environment in which the ed fores were always saying, where is the next

watergate? where were you going to go? they were encouraging, supportive. and the white house was denouncing this regularly. but in a sense, carl and i were in a bubble and protected. it is nice to work when you are protected and encouraged to get to the bottom of the story. don graham is here. his mother who was the publisher really was the backbone of the institution, and as we have often said, when she asked when are we going to get to know the whole story in 1973 when the stories we had written were not believed. when we answered this is a big cover-up, a massive conspiracy, people are being paid for their silence. our answer was "never" and she

said the memorable "never don't tell me nothing." >> just to bring us back, do you remember that day? june 17, 1972? can you tell us about that day for each of you? >> sure. he was one of the two chief virginia reporters. i came into the office working on a profile over the weekend of lieutenant governor henry howe from virginia who was running for governor. i heard a commotion around the city desk that there had been a break-in at the democratic head quarters at watergate. it seemed like a more interesting story than the one i was working on at the moment. so i said, can i make some phone calls. i got on the phone and started making phone calls. you could tell right away, it was an unusual story, and the city editor and the metropolitan

editor were both in an unusual state of excitement. >> in contrast to carl's self-assignment, i was asleep. the city editor woke me up and said, would you come in, there is this story. it was probably one of the most beautiful days in washington in 1972, and the editors said who would be dumb enough to come in and work on a day like this, and my name came to the list. i was sent to the court house. it was mysterious. we kind of felt like was this the local head quarters? the national head quarters? it wasn't clear. who were these fiveburg letters.

carl always said, who worked in journalism since age 4, he said, you just never see burglars in business suits. there they were in court. the judge asked the head burglar, and mccord, where did you -- gordon liddy is back. he walked in the room. mccord being forthright answered . and the jump said speak up, and mccord said c.i.a. and the judge said speak up, and mccord said i work at the c.i.a. so you know something is up. and i believe your words were

"holy [beep]] that's exactly right. >> we were coming back to the office and this is where they flooded the zone a "new york times" reporter said, i think we have eight people working on this story. carl and i being unmarried were the only one tozz come in and work on this right away. >> bob, what was watergate? i was told to treat you like i'm taking two big dogs on a leash and let you drag me around. >> i think the understanding of it now because there were so many tapes, so many investigations, when you glue it all together, you realize so many of the important activities in watergate occurred before the

watergate burglaries. there is a tape that shows in 1971 alderman's staff -- nixon's appointment secretary was running and had set up sabotage operations to derail the democrats. there are tapes that show nick -- nixon in august of 19 2 oked the payment of the watergate burglars for their assignment. carl laid this out very well. watergate was not just a third-rate burglary, not just a cover-up, but a whole mindset in illegal activities. for example they hired a former f.b.i. man to climb the telephone pone behind joe kraft's house and tap his

telephone. think, if something like that was going on, do you think barack obama has someone climbing telephone poles to tap people's telephones? let's hope not. and joe kraft was a prom tent columnist at the time. so watergate is an interlacing series of activities that were illegal. there were 50 people hired to do this and people dismissed that. the senate watergate committee found more than 50 people doing all kinds of things specifically to derail. >> let me add one thing. there are two essential elements. we can see it so clearly with the tapes. and that is an attempt to undermine the most basic of american democratic notions, which is free elections.

that what watergate was really about was to derail the electoral process of the opposition party to have the white house determine who the nominee of the democratic would be. then we found out, and i don't mean just the press bob and i, but i mean the judicial system, legislative system, that coincidentally, thament anti-war movement had been regarded in almost exactly the same way by the nixon white house. these two things came together. and there was this huge retributive mechanism of the white house that defined the president. >> i would like to know -- i am one of the people that is sitting here because of you.

i think many of us here are here because of you. what did you see -- >> can everyone hear that? >> what did watergate do to the process of journalism? what they think is good about it and what was not. >> we talk about the implemental coverage. we were told to stay on the stories. sometimes we had stories on page b-36. one of them i just thought of. there was a $3,000 receiver that the watergate burglars had, which was a very expensive

receiver at that point. we wrote a story about it. we didn't know zpactly what it meant. we thought they had virtually unlimited amounts of money to conduct these operations. the unlimited amount of money demonstrated that it wasn't just somebody at the middle level who authorized it, who said we can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on these things. so i think that though it is not in the book or in our notes, the idea was follow the money, find something. find something that will give you a hook into the story. >> but in terms of the profession rvings i think it is about a newspaper that we were fortunate, lucky enough to work for a newspaper where the bottom line was the truth. that was the bottom line. that's what the management was

interested in. that was the value of the publisher of the paper. you know, bradley and woodward and i were sitting around a week ago. we were sitting in woodward's bay room going over some things, and bradley september saying the truth, it's the truth, what about the truth. that's what he kept going at. >> and he also told us he didn't get into journalism because of that. >> that's right. >> we got into journalism because of him. >> i remember reading "the washington post" my last year in the navy and you would get it in the morning and it vibrated because it clearly was an independent voice. it clearly was the willingness to challenge the conventional wisdom to challenge the establishment. you could tell it.

that was so effective for young reporters. >> there a came a day when a subpoena for the president of the united states arrived at the office. i called bradley. i said they are coming after our notes. he called us. and catherine graham said, they are not my notes -- they are not their notes, they are mine my notes, and they are going to have to come and get me. >> this is great. can't you just see they are going to send her to jail and her limousine pulls up to the d.c. jail and she gets out and says i'll go to jail for this. >> if i could add one thing because i think these guys are too modest to say it. watergate for investigative reporting in american journalism was like the big bang. everything changed after it. everything from the way our government officials act to the way reporters act to the way the public per seeves investigative

reporting. my generation of reporters, you could call it the sons and daughters of watergate. i got into this business because of what these two guys did. at "the washington post" i run the investigative unit that was set up for bobwoodward to run -- bob woodward to run not long after watergate. i'm the fifth editor 30 years later. >> it shodse how much they sharufrpbl -- runk your staff. >> i still have seven full-time investigators. which is really a testimony. seven full-time investigators and we can spend ape year developing one story. but it goes back to what carl said about methodology. watergate taught a culture of investigative reporting, it provided a controlling myth, but it also told us how to think

about it. follow the money is something we do in every single investigation today. that's how we broke the abramof story in 2002. follow the money and take records are still in this internet and tweeting age the foundation of what we do. >> did he ever say to you "follow the money"? >> no, he never did, but if you look at the notes, that's what it added up to. one of the things you have to look at here, and jeff makes the point about it being method, and the method really was carl saying let's talk to the people that worked on the nixon campaign committee, and we could not get a list of who was there. there was a former girlfriend who had a contact who provided us with a list of the people that worked in.

we went into the night, and carl under the theory of the money, because we had done a story tracing the $25,000 check found the book people for the nixon campaign and that, in a sense, unlocked the whole issue of who was in charge, who authorized these large payments to people like gordon liddy who ran watergate and so forth. and that was systematically going through. >> let me say that the toll from the beginning, when the nixon white house said this was a third-rate burglar, when we went out to see the people who worked for the campaign, we encountered incredible fear, bordering on terror. it told us about the methodology. that information in itself was

essential. >> wouldn't you have been afraid -- you said if someone with a hair cut showed up at your door? >> right, power. >> i heard there is going to be a documentary about watergate that will appear in 01213. can either of you tell us about it and why it is necessary? don't we know everything? >> redford -- very serious about watergate. it is worth pausing and looking at what was said. what was it? i think one of the key questions in all of this was who was richard nixon? who was our president? the watergate tapes are stunning. nobody is ever going to listen to them all or -- >> you do in the car. >> i do in the car instead of

music. i have nixon tape cassettes to spur me on down the road. not only are there crimes, not only is there abuste abuse of power, but the smallness just jumped at you when you listened to enough of it. there's richard nixon. has the responsibility and the high purpose as the president of the united states and he wants to use the power of the presidency as an instrument and screw everyone. the i.r.s., the c.i.a., the f.b.i. or the order of firebombing of the brookings institution saying i don't give a damn, just get in there, get the safe, firebomb the god damn place if you have to. that's the president of the united states. >> it is really important that

the notion that this was some kind of caper or that the cover-up is worse than the crime, which is not the case. i certainly believe that this was an assault on democracy by the president of the united states. and that the system then worked. the judiciary. the supreme court of the united states ordered the president of the united states to turn his tapes over in a unanimous decision. the chief justice appointed by richard nixon who expected to get a pass from the chief justice. a 77-0 vote by the senate in the united states to undertaked watergate investigation headed by sam urban. imagine today, when i ask about a difference, imagine today getting a 77-0 vote to investigate the purported crimes or mall feesans of the sitting president? unanimous, both parties. the republican party, being

reeling with people who cast the most important votes for impeachment of the president of the united states from the house judiciary committee, republicans led by barry goldwater who led down, you don't have the votes in the senate. you are going to be convicted and convinced have you to leave. hugely important that i think on this anniversary and this movie might be an opportunity to finally put this in the perspective after 40 years. and bob talks about the wars of watergate. >> again, it was the senate watergate committee that got into the details of this. and we all, including carl and myself, ran by it. the issue quickly became what did nixon know and when did he know it in the pursuit of the tapes.

but when they did their investigation, they discovered, we kind of call it the five wars of watergate. the first was the anti-war movement. surveillance, wire-tapping, break-ins, nixon, f.b.i., c.i.a., and then the second war was against the press. oh, the press was covering this anti-war movement aggressively, so they tapped reporters telephones. they were going to set up what was called the houston plan which nixon signed off on which was a series of illegal activities to read people's mail, break into apartments. so all of a sudden the democrats are the next threat to richard nixon because they might unseed him in 1972, so they took the mindset and the apparatus and the people and again it is in the tapes that they tell nixon

they are moving all of this over to one campaign or another. >> sabotage. >> yeah, the sag sabotage. and the fourth war was really the war against the system of justice which was a cover-up. and the fifth war which is the war against history to say it is a third-rate burglary, when you look that nixon actually wanted to pick who they would run against. they did not want to run against musgrave. they thought he was a stronger candidate. they got george mcgovern, which is what they wanted. >> and it is important to point out the context. nexton was not in danger. >> that's not the case. because first they were worried about ted kennedy.

so they then got a former secret service agent so tail kennedy, report back to the white house. they infiltrated every aspect from way back of the democratic campaign. the other thing about this is that the tapes -- never on those tapes have we found a single instance where the president of the united states or those warned him say what would be the right thing for the country on any matter. >> is there any one thing that if it hadn't happened we would not be up here talking today? i would argue that alex butterfield played a huge role. >> i think that's right. i think if we did not have the tapes there would have been an ab ambiguity about all of this. it is the claret of the tapes and the people who listen to them, particularly republicans

on the house judiciary committee would not only deal with the substance, but the rage that nixon would get in about small things, and be indifferent to the law. the indifference to the responsibility nixon had as president. there is good will that everyone feels toward the president. even if they disagree if they are in the opposition party. and for nixon, he could never leverage that could will. he always was suspicious. ated end he kind of unlocked the key to the way he thinks on the day resign, he said "always remember others may hate you, but if you hate them --" let's

try again. "always remember others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win, unless you hate them. then you have destroyed yourself." the piston was hate and he kind of realized it destroyed him. >> there are some myths. one is that the two of you single handedly took down the president of the united states. is there one that bothers you? >> that's certainly one. this is about the system working, the judiciary, the legislature. it worked. i think that's the principal myth. it is an over simplification. >> and the idea that what we were writing was just following what the f.b.i. or the

prosecutors were chasing. in january of 1973, the prosecutors put on the first watergate trial and said gordon liddy was the mastermind. we had written a couple dozen stories saying the people behind watergate were alderman, chief of staff, john mitchell, herbert ho. lenbach, nixon's personal lawyer, nixon's appointment secretary right there in the oval office was running part of the sabotage campaign. it was a completely different picture from the sources we had. that's one of the mig -- myths we had. >> so there is a book out there called "bleak" and you talked in one of these videos as describing deach throat as a conscience-stricken man.

this new book says he was cynical, opportunistic, rather than noble. what do you think? >> there was a book called "secret man" in 2005 when marcel came forward and identified himself as that source. there is nothing in that book -- i said, there was an ambition, there was a manipulation. he disliked the press. one of the things he discovered as a reporter is people's motives are not just unitary. they generally have, sometimes particularly with someone like marcel and the complex mind three or four or five layers. one of them was his disappointment at not being made f.b.i. director. i knew him and dealt with him. he was troubled by what was going on