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tv   Washington Journal  CSPAN  April 8, 2012 7:00am-10:00am EDT

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then, hans von spakovsky offers his reaction to the recent remarks by president obama about the supreme court and the healthcare law. "washington journal" is next. [captions performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> good morning, and welcome to journal" on this sunday, april 8, 2012. it's easter sunday and the second day of passover. tomorrow, the white house holds its traditional easter egg roll on the south lawn. a question to start off is about religious liberty and how important it is to you. a recent survey shows that a majority of americans do not believe religious liberties are under attack but take it very seriously. is this a personal issue for
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you? how important is religious liberty? here's the number to call -- you can email in your comments to journal@c-span.org. here's the survey i mentioned a moment ago from the public religion research institute. most, that's 56% of americans, do not believe religious liberty is threatened in america today but four in 10 do believe religious liberty is under threat and it breaks it down into which groups find it more perilous and which are less worried. majorities of tea party americans, republicans and seniors believe religious being threatened.
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white evangelical protestants do believe that religious freedom is being affected today. majorities of catholics and the unaffiliated do not believe religious liberty is threatened. among those who have concerns about religious liberty, there are breakdowns about what they perceive as a threat. 23%, when asked about how religious liberty is threatened, said, "religion from the public square" is of concern. 19% said hostility towards christians or religion is of concern and 9% says changing culture threatens religious liberty. 6% said the contraception
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mandate concerns them and 4%, other issues involving sexuality or homosexuality didn't know or had other reasons for concerns. let's go to the phones and hear what bill those say on the independent line. believe myon't religious rights are being threatened but i do believe in the separation of church and state. i don't believe that some of these candidates that run on the so-called "i'm a christian" and get caught up in scandals and immorality, they're not a good example. and i don't believe in churches talking politics from the pulpit is good, either. and if they're going to do that, they can pay taxes. we've got corruption on both sides and the bottom line is the lack of leadership, morality and honesty. nothing is reported in the
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press, very truthful, and people are just becoming jaded and that's why this country is disintegrating. host: what would you do about it, bill? caller:what can you do? it starts in the home, it starts with not going along with the crowd. it starts with telling the truth. the truth isn't very popular these days so the media seems to think people just want to be fat and entertained and fed a bunch of garbage and it's going to go the same way as rome. history always repeats itself but as an individual, i don't have to be caught up in that. host: let's hear from anthony, democratic caller in washington, d.c. how important is religious liberty to you. caller: it's important to me but bill stole my thunder.
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i don't think my religious freedom is threatened right now. to me, religion and faith is a personal thing and for the politicians to put it out there, they're using it and abusing it for their own personal gain. i think what the president did, didn't attack religious freedom. when a church goes outside of its normal environment, they have to gave in the same manner any other business does. you provide healthcare, that's what you do. host: let's hear from alicia, a republican in san antonio, texas. caller: good morning. i wanted to say, as far as religious liberty, for me, i believe everyone is entitled to their faith, their religion,
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their beliefs. i'm a follower of jesus christ. i don't care what name you put on him, i follow him. i understand the lord gave us free will to decide if we would follow him and if we would not and told us to love everybody. i feel people forget the scriptures that words are powerful and to love and god is the only judge. for me, as a follower of him, this life i'm living right now, it's a journey i have to go on and this world doesn't belong to me. he let us know sat satan is running the world and belongs to him. you see it every day but as far as me, i feel i have to be a light in the world. host: do you feel you have that freedom in america? caller: i do feel i have that freedom in america. when i get paid, i don't make a
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lot of money but if i want to give, volunteer my time, i want to spread the gospel, i do feel i have that freedom in america. it's gotten tougher because of the fact that with every different faith, now it's kind of like, if you go to schools or work or whatever you're doing, they tighten the reins on what you can say, but still being able to go into the streets and talk about it, i feel like i am able and god always wins. you have a blessed day. host: comment on twitter from keenan who agreed with our last caller who said religious freedoms are in tact but of church and state is a problem. tim is joining us now. caller: good morning. i believe religious liberty is very important. it's important to me because i'm a black man and i practice judaism and i think we should be willing to give religious
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on an individual level. i wish that would happen a lot more. i would like to speak on behalf of my muslim friends who don't feel they have religious liberty, people i talk to at work or in the street or in their shops, and so forth. we need to do that on an individual level. the reason i'm a democrat is because i never hear my republican friends like mitt romney or newt gingrich or rick santorum talk about the fact that black people were not always given religious liberty. they talk about the fact that our country was founded on religious liberty but not that that liberty was not always extended and catholics should be more sensitive to that. host: what are you doing to honor passover this week? caller: i just had a wonderful seder and i'm glad that i have a congregation that's warm and accepting. host: randy is a republican in
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pasadena, california. good morning, randy. how are you today? caller: yes, good morning. host: what do you think about religious liberty? i think we lost him. going on to mark in new era, michigan, on the independent line. hi, mark. caller: my feelings are, the concept is, god is a spirit in love. if you want to love, become a new creature. if that's your religion, you transform other people's lives and work for their best and not for the, quote, government's interests, that's only looking out for itself. hopefully the seven-year tax cycle will solve our spending spree or taxing spree, but, yeah, i'm concerned about what's with the supreme court. i thought the taxation act of 1920 was supposed to offer the public a nonburdensome tax and
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they haven't qualified for it yet. host: doug, democratic caller in boston. good morning. caller: i've lived in saudi arabia for several years and obviously i've lived in the united states and sometimes religiously it's difficult to tell them apart. i think people are free to worship any kind of biblical mumbo jumbo they wish to but i don't think they should intrude on politics. host: glent chris on twitter, liberty is important to me, religious or otherwise. carl is on our republican line. caller: the thing that bothers me is people who want to profit off religion like the aclu, someone sees a coach kneel down and pray before a ball game, a
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coffee of -- coffey of lawyers from the aclu will converge on that school system and walk away with a couple of million dollars and very happy. if you took a poll, the families that practice religion are better off by 100% because even believe in god, it's morality. you don't have to inject government into religion but it's not necessarily good to keep the government out of religion altogether. thank you. host: comment on twitter from j.w.b. who says, no nonchristian will ever be elected president in this country. this is religious tyranny. kevin, an independent caller in marshall, texas.
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caller: good morning. i think a lot of it depends on, you know, the people that want to keep government separate from religion. the founders, what they were looking for was the idea that you can believe whatever you want but you can't impose your morality or ethics on other people. thomas jefferson would say as long as you don't pick my pocket or break my leg, you're free to do whatever you want, and i think we get hung up on this idea of religion that it has to be a godhead. there are many religions that don't have a godhead, it comes down to imposing what you believe people should do, whether it's social programs or prayer in school. it's all imposing your ethics and that's what the government needs a barrier from and that's
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my comment. thanks, c-span. host: let's look at the first amendment to the constitution. it says "congress should make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the right of people to peaceably assemble." we're talking about religious liberty. how important is it to you. do you feel you have the freedoms you desire to practice your religion, to congregate, to share that in commune gron with others? do you think religious liberty is about being able not have a religion? do we feel we have enough laws in place or too many? let's hear what sheila has to say, a democrat. caller: it's funny you have this show on this morning because i've had a lot of conflict with this. we do not have freedom of religion. people say if you are not a
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christian, look at all the wars that have happened over christianity, look at the way people feel about islam. i am not an islamic, i am a christian. but the bible teaches us to love and tells you to forgive seven times 70,000. that's continuously. we do not do that. we stand in judgment on everything. i've sat with christians in churches who have said, they're not saved. it's up to god whether you are saved or not. if you accept christ as your savior and ask god to forgive your sins, that's salvation, period. it's as simple as that. and yet, the things we go through and think, sometimes being with christians is like being in an exclusive, you know, there are some christians, not all, but i still do not want
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to -- i still believe in god. i believe in the goodness of god and i believe what it can bring to men and i believe that i also believe that people have a right to enjoy whatever religious freedoms they have. for sharing your thoughts, sheila. a comment on twitter. monte says, "when politicians inject religion into speeches, they're impinging on religious freedom." and in "the washington post," this op-ed piece -- "in the last years of his life, thomas jefferson completed a project he'd been working on for some time, a new version of the story of jesus. jefferson rearranged fragments of the gospel into what was
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known as the jefferson gospel. it was an account of jesus' life that omitted, among other things, the virgin birth, the divinity of jesus, raising of the dead, driving out devils and the event that believing christians celebrate today, the resurrection. this is from garry wills -- a belief in the literal sense of the bible. he talks about interpretation of the bible and how it changes over time and some readers might be surprised to learn about jefferson's take on the bible. mike is a republican from arizona. good morning. caller: i'm taking the threat to religion as far as the government goes and the first
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amendment goes. if we go one line in article 6 says, after all the senators and members of congress, presidents, governors and so on, are bound by earth to support the constitution, but the last sentence says, "but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the united states." and that ought to be something that everybody understands, even those religious people that want to get a little religion into government. but when you talk about a threat to religion, very definitely. as you read the first amendment, congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise
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thereof, religion. congress does that all the time because they have rewritten that first amendment by saying congress can regulate religious conduct but forbidden from regulating religious belief, so that's why they can and they have on many, many occasions, for instance -- well, many, many occasions, you can find for yourself, but by congress, or, excuse me, by the courts, appellate courts, making a paradigm of appellate review subject to, yes, congress with regulate conduct and religious conduct but not religious belief and i don't see how anybody can regulate religious conduct and not have that affect their you have aelief and very good day, libby. host: jody writes on twitter --
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"in the u.s., one can practice religion in the same country one cannot believe in religion, the government needs to rule for both." the "new york times" sunday religion section, the piece called "divided by god." november 8, 1960, is regarded as the date the presidency ceased to be the exclusive property of republicans but the election of j.f.k. was more like a temporary aberration. post-j.f.k., many established churches went into decline, struggling to make their message resonate in a diverse, affluent and sexually permissive america. a nation that was increasingly nondenominational and post denominational kept selecting
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protestants to the white house. he lists people who have sat in the white house but he says in 2012 we have a presidential field whose diversity mirrors of the diversity of american christianity as a whole and he looks at the main candidates -- barack obama, mitt romney, rick santorum -- all identified as christians but different theological traditions and personal experiences that diverge more starkly than any group of presidential contenders in america, reflecting the america as it actually is. we have a caller from tennessee. good morning. caller: good morning. host: how important is religious liberty to you? caller: it's very important but it's something that on a personal level it cannot be regulated by the government.
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they can't tell you how to think and feel. in that article you just read, you talked about personal experience. i would like to share a personal insurance with you. my experience is online in the form of a book i wrote and the book is free, there's no charge for it, at the website, lovegodislove.org. it goes like this, "feeling led, almost compelled, to write my book by bolding and underlining and placing tildes and quotes around many of the words and phrases all throughout my book, by doing this, i discovered a 77
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alignment of 7 that was hidden in the book of revelation. do you think that physical -- excuse me, i stutter -- do you think this physical evidence of spiritual intelligence, you know, that that would be god, might cause more of us to sit up and take notice of what it truly means to love thy neighbor as thyself. it's some stuff i have experienced and one last thing, if you go to youtube.com and watch "the curtain is moving again" whoever or whatever is moving my curtain, it's not me. host: let's hear from a republican calling us from los angeles. good morning, michael.
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caller: good morning. i think what it boils down to is tolerance and the understanding that religion in of itself is not necessarily just a religion, it's more a way of life and to think that individuals can separate the two as far as politicians or even our justices, is just false thinking and false hope if people feel that can happen and i think a lot of people need to -- me, myself, i'm jewish. obviously we just celebrated passover and are continuing to do so, but many of our laws deratify from the bible -- derive from the bible that are on our books, the majority of bankruptcy laws, et cetera, all derive from the bible so i think religion is through and through our society, as americans, through our constitutions as well as our founding fathers and to try to separate the two, i don't think that is possible and i really think it boils down to
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our politicians sticking with the issues we're dealing with as opposed to taking low blows as to what people believe and are practicing and in my opinion government needs to stay out of our lives and treat us as adults and let us live our lives. host: there's a comment on facebook and a conversation, you can join by going to c-span on facebook. "today, you will have a moral code of some kind. like it or not, it will come from government or come people who seek liberty from government." michael calling us from the independent line in chicago this time. hi, michael. caller: how you doing?
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my forefathers came here because of religious persecution. i'm irish catholic and my people were persecuted in ireland and that's why they came here. one of the main reasons, you know. and that's the most beautiful thing about this country. we have a right to believe in what we want, we have a right to practice any religion we want. we are probably the only unique country in the world that's had that right and it's taken for granted quite a bit and politicians tend to use religion as a ploy to get people to vote for them and that shouldn't be allowed. that's all i got to say. host: you think it's happening right now, michael? caller: yeah, it is, i think it is. they should not wear their christianity on their sleeve. religion is a personal thing. you shouldn't be allowed to get on the ballot box and preach your religion and use religion as a ploy to get people to vote for you. i don't think they should be
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allowed to mention religious beliefs in election time. host: let's hear now from brooklyn, new york. democratic caller, good morning. caller: good morning. i have a complaint about the word "god." host: ok. caller: why do religious men, pastors, or whoever, use the word "god," and i always use the word lord, because god spelled backwards spells dog. host: do you feel you have religious freedom in this country? caller: yes. host: harold is our next caller, westwood, new jersey, republican line. caller: good morning. yes, religious liberty is important to me. i have -- i do not think that
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taxpayer money should be used in this regard. i have two degrees from berkley university and recently a grandson graduated from rutgers university. we went there and the talker said, we should all be tolerant because there is no such thing as good or evil. we had a big laugh about that. we didn't want to pay the bill because there's no such thing as good or evil. rutgers would say that religions were started by selfish men to take control of the people. they said the virgin mary could not have had a son. they deliberately attacked the original tenets of religion and this they should not do.
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atheists like hitler and stalin, created the wars. religion has many defects, obviously, but we actually we must love our neighbor as ourselves. if we do that, obviously, the rest of the problems with solve themselves and today being easter sunday, the miracle is that jesus did die and he did rise from the dead. i look forward to everybody in the world, billions and billions of people, we should all be together some day but where? in heaven! that's the goal of everybody to reach eternity and that is the big thing, whether obama gets re-elected or not, it would be a sad thing, but nevertheless, in
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eternity, this is our real goal. host: harold, president obama mentioned easter in his weekly address. let's take a listen to that right now. >> the story of christ's triumph over death holds special meaning for christians but all of us, no matter how or whether we believe, can identify with elements of his story. the triumph of hope over despair, of faith over death. the notion that there's something out there that is bigger than ourselves. these beliefs help unite americans of ail faiths and backgrounds. they shape our values and guide our work. they put our lives in perspective. all christians celebrating the resurrection with us, michelle and i want to wish you a blessed and happy easter and to all americans, i hope you have a weekend filled with joy and reflection focused on the things that matter most. god bless you and may god bless
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the united states of america. host: president obama addressing the easter holiday. the republican response is delivered by oklahoma governor mary fallon and pbs focused on what she talked about. she focused on energy, blaming the president's failed policies for causing the energy crisis. "the energy crisis isn't a lack of resources, it's a lack of leadership." that's the republican response to the president's weekly address. a few other stories in politics, "a lagging gingrich insists he won't quit. newt gingrich these days sounds more like a man leading a cause than a campaign." and there's stories in the news
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about the contest for the presidency. dan millbank says "romney needs a reality check. the" it says that he is getting some of his facts wrong when he talks about the president and what romney wants to do to get into office. he blamed obama for the weakest economic recovery since the great depression, said he would save $100 billion a year eliminating obama care but fact checkers in the press have been pointing out that these are whoppers. other stories looking at the presidential election, why are newt and santorum still running? "the washington post" looks at the question of those two candidates and what role they're playing in the presidential election right now. "mitt romney has twice as many delegates as rick santorum and more than four times newt gingrich's tally and ron paul's count barely registers so why is
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it a four-man race?" part of the answer lies with the fact that the decisions have to do with what's going on in a candidate's head. a story in the "new york times" looking at the relationship between mitt romney and netanyahu and we'll find that here in a moment. it talks about their shared experiences and friendship that dates back to 1976. it resonates in 2012, reports the "new york times." "the two young men had little in common, one, a wealthy morman from michigan, the other, a middle class duke from israel but in in their lives intersected when they were both recruited as consultant,
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advisers. mr. netanyahu is making the case for military action against iran as mr. romney is attacking the obama administration for not supporting mr. netanyahu more robustly. it says their relationship was nurtured over meals in boston, new york, strengthened by a network of friends, has resulted in an unusually frank exchange of advice and insight. we're talking about religious liberty this morning. what kind of a role does it play in your life? do you feel to practice your religion or choose not to practice a religion? norman, amhurst, massachusetts, good morning. >> thank you for taking my call. i certainly do not feel free to practice my religion in the united states. i belong to the church of tree of life and we use many herbs
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for sacraments. we of them is called the cactus called saint pedro cactus which is completely legal in the united states but the year before last under president obama the d.e.a. arrested a merchant for selling san pedro cactus, a religious sacrament. but on the basis that it has a chemical in it which, if taken by itself, can be illegal. the supreme court has ruled against such practices but the d.e.a. continues to do it. our religion is suppressed in the united states. and the quote from president obama contradicts the quote you read from the constitution, because he does, it seems, seek to establish religion by saying god bless the united states of america at the end and also going into the theological
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discussion at the end. host: here's a comment on twitter. jeff writes in and says "religious liberty is very important to me but i do not want church in schools. christian views are different and should be dealt with at home." sandy is commenting on facebook and that's @c-span. "the first amendment is clear regarding separation of church and state. in considering my family or original settlers that funded the revolutionary war, we should remember the country was founded by those escaping religious persecution and not restrict anyone from practicing their religion." new castle, delaware, patrick, republican, go ahead.
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caller: i feel we're still being attacked many times. we have this football player named tim tebow and he has a habit of kneeling down on the sidelines during the game. he's attacked constantly and vilified and demonized and humiliated and ridiculed, especially by the black sportscaster. this is a disgrace. white christian should contact the networks that employ the black bigots and tell them to get rid of that. one of them, stephen smith, horrible man. host: do you think tim tebow has gotten a lot of popularity for that? caller: he's got a lot of popularity? he's got a lot of popularity because he's a damn good football player. host: michael is a democratic caller in charlotte, north carolina. good morning, michael. caller: good morning and good morning to america. one of the major questions that
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should be asked here is, why is it that we don't really understand the real value of the constitution. the united states itself with the constitution can stand separate of religions. that requires us to do right by our fellow citizens and each other. whenever we grow up and really start to look at it, that's how we will elect people who will do the better things for the people and not allow people to use the religious conversation, the religious charter, -- chatter, o control people. this is the greatest country in the world. that's the challenge for the country. it's also to grow and get better. with that, i don't think religious liberties are challenged. it's just that people are going to have to grow up, rise up and
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be better. thank you. host: victor, independent line, fort wayne, indiana. good morning, victor. >> good morning. yeah. religion is an important part of my life every day. i like to read the bible a little bit each day to keep me going, keep me closer to god and without that, i'd be lost. it's just very important to me. host: do you feel you have the freedom to practice your religion in america? caller: oh, yeah. i believe america is real good there. they give you that freedom. i know you can't push it down people's throat. that would be the wrong thing to do. but it's whatever makes you happy and god makes me happy. a story in look at "u.s.a. today" called "religious revert come back to the faith." "churches and sin dogs -- synagogues push to reclaim those
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who have walked away" and it talks about a family that will celebrate easter this weekend among southern baptists and he is returning to practice his faith. the "u.s.a. today" looks at religion in flux. "most u.s. adults have switched their religion at least once. 47% remain with the religion of their childhood and never change. 44% do not belong to their childhood religion, and over 90% changed their religion and reverted back to what they grew up with as a child again. scott is calling. good morning. caller: i do not believe there is religious freedom especially in terms of those of us who are atheists.
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it's silly to say atheists don't have religious freedom but it goes both ways. we have a caller from new jersey saying atheists have led us into wars. i remember george w. bush, a christian born again, leading us into war. were his morals? the other problem i want to say really quick, people spouting religion always seem to vote on religious wedge issues so they're not free from their own thoughts. they always vote on religious ideas, like abortion, they make that a religious idea and that's a huge problem. they know so much about their religion but nothing about the government and how laws are passed. so thank governor jesse ventura had it right many years ago when he said religion is for the weak minded. host: are you still with us? do you feel you can voice these
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opinions and express these beliefs? caller: you can but you do take a shellacking as an atheist. everybody wants to gang up on you and tell you you're wrong and you have no morals and yada, yada. as far as having freedom, no, not really. in washington, d.c. a few weeks ago, there was an atheist movement, people gathered in washington, d.c., nobody talked about it. about it.ked but when religious groups get together and have a revival, it's on every channel in the country. so it's a two-way street and christians definitely don't ever to see that. host: the comment on twitter, "every person has a right to practice their religion. they do not have the right to force religion on others." the "u.s.a. today" piece looks
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at denominations of christianity and other organized religions such as judaism and the percentage of the population that believes and practices those religions. it says "most major religions or traditions lost members or barely kept pace from 1990 to 2008 while the u.s. population grew by 30%. that's 1990 and the light blue line is 2008 and you can see the slippage in every group -- catholicism, baptist, methodist, judaism, episcopalians and anglicans also in the percentages. ray from syracuse, new york. good morning. caller: my comment is that the discussion we're trying to have here is both difficult and problematic due to a pervasive and profound ignorance beginning with our founding documents.
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host: how so? caller: as an example. there's been many this morning. but the gentleman a moment ago talked about bush going to war as though war was a -- an idea that is not allowed as christians which is not true and biblical illiteracy is shown by that comment. voting on wedge issues, shellacking for being an atheist, none of these is what the constitution is speaking about when it talks about liberty. you're not guaranteed that you're not going to be set upon by people who disagree with you and try to argue against you. that's not what the constitution provides. what it provides is protection from the government, the government to come and speak to
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you and tell you to shut up or they don't like you're ideas. so that just shows an ignorance of our founding documents. last call here, sherry, independent caller in saltville, virginia. caller: i feel like religious liberty is threatened if you are a born again christian because if you disagree with someone on a moral issue, then other religions are not tolerant, either. and i find that to be a problem then we're not able to express ourselves and practice our religion and i feel like it is fully under attack. if you're a christian in today's society, you are basically told to shut up and keep it at home. and i have conversations with atheists.
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i have conversations with islams, buddhists, and i find it to otherg to listen people and other religions and in a small minority of those beliefs i find that other people are tolerant to listen to me, also, and i just wish everybody would be a little more tolerant. i think the government needs to stay out of all of our religions and let us be who we are. host: here's a comment on twitter. "liberty trumps everything," and that was from facebook. steve has a comment from twitter. "interesting that far right christians who believe the u.s. should be a christian nation think theirs is the faith under attack." has aashington post" piece, "the u.s. seeing gains in iran intelligence, drowns fill-in gap on nuclear activity.
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more than three years ago the c.i.a. dispatched a surveillance drone into the skies over iran and the piece talks about what it is learning there. the "new york times" has a front-page story, welfare limits left the poor adrift as recession hits. perhaps no law in the forecast generation has -- past generation has drawn more praise than welfare as we know it. officials of both parties hailing the virtues of tough love but the distress of the last four years has added a cautionary post script. much overlooked critics of restrictions once warned, a program that built its reputation when times were good offered little help when jobs disagreed and times were tough. the cash wonderful -- welfare rolls have dropped and those
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dependent talk about desperate ways they have to make ends meet. fewer receiving welfare but food stamp use is soaring, from the "new york times." coming up next, we'll talk about the partisan gridlock with the author of a new book. first let's go to c-span radio. >> beginning at noon eastern on c-span radio, we re-air five network tv talk shows and topics on this sunday include religion, presidential politics and the economy. we begin at noon with nbc's "meet the press," host david gregory welcomes senator dick durbin, ohio governor john kasich and bishop william laurie of baltimore. at 1:00 p.m., hear abc's "this week" with guests including pastor rick warren, founder of the saddle back church and author of "the purpose driven life" and kay warren, author of
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"choose joy." "fox news sunday" begins at 2:00 p.m. eastern, chris wallace talks with newt gingrich and senate budget committee members, republican ron johnson and kent conrad. at 3:00 p.m., it's cnn's "state of the union" and candy crowley welcomes debby wasserman schultz and former solicitor general ken starr and hear "face the nation" from cbs. a panel discussion with richard land, president of the ethics and religious liberty commission, rabbi david wolpi. five network tv talk shows brought to you as a public service by the networks and c-span. re-airs begin on c-span radio at noon eastern with nbc's meet the press,," 1:00 p.m., abc's "this
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week," at 3:00, cnn's "state of the union" and at 4:00 p.m., "face the nation" from cbs. listen to them on c-span radio, nation wide on xm satellite radio, downloadable ason -- an iphone ap. >> tonight on c-span's "q&a." >> the greatest experience for me is when i got the opportunity to meet both move senators and being able to meet them and talk to them. >> leon panetta talked about how important it is to be financially sound because if we're not financially sound, devoting money to national defense is worthless because we won't have money to devote to it. >> high school students from all 50 states participated in a week-long government and leadership program shared observations and experiences as
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they interacted with members of congress, the supreme court and the president. >> there's a lot of partisanship going on in congress and i'm reaching across the aisle and everyone we've met here who said that and it makes me wonder if everybody's saying that but it's not actually happening, is there a discrepancy between what they're saying and what they're actually doing. >> the u.s. senate youth program tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span's "q&a." "washington journal" continues. >> doug schoen joins us from new york, with a new book out called "hopelessly divided: the new crisis in american politics and what it means for 2012 and beyond." mr. schoen, good morning, thanks for being here. guest: my pleasure. host: is it really hopeless? guest: all the signs aren't good.
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you have more money in politics, more lobbyists in politics, the public is pulling the candidates to the left and to the right respectively so i'm discouraged and i think it is hopelessly divided. host: you've been in politics for decades. have you felt like this before? guest: i haven't. i've been in politics since the late 1960's, early 1970's. sure, we've had a lot of partisan conflict but there's such difficulty getting together on even core values, core ideas, that it leaves me profound me disturbed, disquieted. host: if you'd like to talk with doug schoen about partisan politics, here are the numbers to call -- talk about the factors that you see as driving these divisions. guest: i think there are three
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or four factors that drive the divisions. first, and i think we're seeing it now in the presidential primaries, the role of money, particularly super pacs. you have narrow ideological groups with vast amounts of money supporting candidates and politics is like anything else. it's almost impossible that a candidate would ignore those providing the bulk of their funding for their campaign, whether it's independently or not. so that's one thing. the other thing is the party themselves reward those on the left and the democratic case, the right in the republican case. you have re-districting on the congressional level which certainly isolates people on the left and the right and the fund-raising exclusive of super pac typically comes from idea driven groups or groups with an agenda but there are almost no forces that i see pulling members of congress or
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senators or the president for that matter to the center and indeed with the media dividing and there being a republican, a democratic and an independent caller number and i have no problem with it, but it certainly doesn't emphasize the fact that we are all americans with one goal which is to succeed as a nation. host: we're already getting questions for you on twitter. joseph writes in and asks about citizens united, the supreme court case, has it made democracy in america better or worse? guest: it's undeniably the case that it's made democracy worse. what you have in mitt romney's case maybe 40 or 50 people who are providing $45 or $50 million for his super pac, when you have two people or three people in the case of newt gingrich and rick santorum, who are funding their campaigns, it's hard to make the case that this is representative democracy so i think citizens united as opened
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a floodgates which has made things much worse for american democracy. host: let's go through some of the issues you mentioned a few moments ago. reasons that our guest, doug schoen, believes the american process is hopelessly divided -- the concentration of political power in washington, d.c., also the way that fund-raising and campaign money dominates the political process, the strong party system that puts ideology before individual action and bipartisanship, the growing power of lobbyists and a political system that is undemocratic and unrepresentative. how do you see it as undemocratic and unrepresentative? guest:ordinary people are more isolated from the decision making and election of candidates. if you have a choice of talking to either rich fundraisers or ordinary voters, it's easy to determine what the politician
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will do. he'll talk to the lobbyist or the fundraiser and the parties pick the candidates, they decide who will get funding. funding flows from lobbyists and issues and ideological groups in sync with the parties and that particular world view and the candidates have no choice but to hue to the dictates of those who will support and fund their campaign, ordinary people are left out. host: bob is calling us from hermantown, minnesota, democratic caller. go ahead, bob. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. i think you're exactly right about super pacs and money controlling politics and i think it's going to be the ruination of our political system. but i think that there is one
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other force that not a lot of people are looking at, is grover norquist has been pushing many years for trying to take the money out of the social security system and use it in the general fund and he's pushed the republican party so far right that i don't think you're going to get a credible candidate. i think the only credible candidate they've had so far was -- i can't think of his name right now. guest: bob, it's early and i appreciate your call. let me just say, you're citing a very good example. i don't believe i cited it in my book but when you have someone as strong as grover norquist and americans for tax reform saying that any republican who wants to raise taxes or even lower rates and get rid of deductions is "a
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tax raiser" and should be opposed, it makes it very difficult to produce consensus to achieve a balanced budget so i think your comments are exactly right about money. i think sadly you're right about what the impact of what grover norquist has done and it makes the system that much more difficult and puts us more at risk. so i agree. host: you right about the group, americans elect, one of their points they'd like to see is not let politicians take pledges, not have them swear oaths to uphold the constitution and serve the people. what do you think about americans elect? process is healthy and i've worked with them and i want to be clear about that. i think any group that offers an alternative, as americans elect does, is a healthy thing, because if we get a candidate in the middle, i think that will encourage bipartisan consensus in the way that ross perot in
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1992 focused on the debt and the deficit and got the republican congress after 1994 and the white house under bill clinton to produce a balanced budget so i think americans elect has the capacity to do that. it's just been tough for candidates to step forward and i remain optimistic that americans elect will field a centrist candidate who encourages bipartisan cooperation. host: doug schoen's book is called, "hopelessly divided: the new crisis in american politics and what it means for 2012 and beyond." a founding partner and principal strategist for penn schoen and is a contributor on fox news and his political clients include in the past, new york city mayor michael bloomberg, indiana democratic senator evan bayh and corporate clients including aol time warner, proctor and gamble and
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at&t. what were the moments in history where the decline that you see has happened began? was there a point that things could have been different? guest: i don't think there's one particular point but as i cite in "hopelessly divided," there were a variety of factors that came into play. as the last caller suggested correctly, the profusion of money in politics, the independent expenditures, now the super pacs certainly are a large part of it, the role of the party committees in funding house and senate candidates is also part of it. the fact that we haven't really achieved re-districting reform so that you have candidates on the left and the right dominating the democratic and republican house delegations. the roles of lobbyists in pushing particular agendas and raising money for the candidates who support those agendas and the fact that campaigns
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themselves have gotten so it's very, very difficult for a candidate from the grass roots to come up without party support and to run on their own agenda so those are some of the factors that have emerged and each year it seems to me things have gotten worse and worse. host: pate rick joins us from light house. good morning. ..
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guest: i think c-span is fair and balanced and does the best it possibly can to promote a diversity of views so i think that's all to the good and i think c-span is all to the good but fuller is raising, i think, a very real issue which is you can be against government and feel that you should have more personal responsibility but as programs have expanded, like medicare, emergency assistance and the like, it's very hard to be for across-the-board tax cuts and want more and more government to provide medicare, social security, emergency assistance and the like. so the question is how do you rationally achieve a balanced
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budget to provide an increased level of social programs without raising taxes through the ceiling and getting both sides on board? that's an intractable problem that we've been unable to solve and the best example that i can see is the bowles-simpson plan that got 38 votes a week or so ago. points to a real challenge how much government do we want and where does personal responsibility end and government begin. host: to our caller patrick, we actually recently had a segment on "washington journal" looking at fema. it's our monday "your money" segment and we looked at the funding of its emergency aid program and you can find that in our archives at the c-span.org web site. ruth is up next in oregon. caller: thank you for c-span. i disagree with the previous caller that the programming is not balanced. i think that you guys cover a lot of different points of view.
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but one of the things that i think your guest has neglected to mention is that the influence of unions, and politics because, you know, the afl-cio, all those groups, not only contribute large sums of money to their favorite political candidates who almost are consistently democrats, they're also pulling money from -- from their members and my particular experience is coming to oregon and i have no choice but being part of a union to do my job. and then i got a statement from the union saying that over $500 came from me against my will went to democratic candidates and that's not the democratic process either so i think the unions are part of the problem. guest: i must agree with the caller. i was speaking with pacs and
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special interests. i don't exempt unions at all! and indeed, this is not a republican problem and democrats are innocent. i think the power of the unions and if you look at the expenditures in 2010, the last full year that we have data for, there was almost -- not quite as much but almost as much union money in congressional and senatorial campaigns as there was special interest money on the right. so i think that that's absolutely right. and i think that we have a democratic party that is beholden to unions, a republican party that is beholden to interests on the right and people in the middle who might well be moderate and not want to be beholden to either side frequently find themselves without any real interests representing their world view. host: doug schoen, question on twitter. bill writes in and says the tea party republicans have taken partisan politics to highs never
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seen in our country's history. what do you think about the tea party's influence? guest: i think the tea party started out as an authentic grassroots movement designed to try to return government to its roots and it became increasingly partisan over 2010, had a clear and demonstrable impact on the 2010 elections. sadly, the tea party is a reflection of ordinary people's anger with the system but the members of congress who have been elected are sufficiently inflexible and the electorate in the tea party now sufficiently intolerant that at least on the right, you're seeing a race to adopt extreme policies. you know, we've seen in the republican primaries how the tea party movement has, if nothing else, driven the ideological debate among the four candidates. so i sadly have to agree all the while underscoring that the sentiment that produced the tea
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party, frustration with government was something that's across the board and not necessarily just in the -- at the outset a republican ideologically driven movement. >> what do you think about the occupy wall street movement and its role? what does that reflect on the tone, the feelings of americans and where do you see that going? guest: sure. well, to me, occupy wall street reaches a very, very much smaller segment of the population than the tea party but it is again, a reflection of anger with what they call the 1% vs. the 99%. the fact that government and politics frequently reflect the interests of a narrow political, financial, governmental elite at the expense of ordinary people. and so while occupy wall street itself is a more narrow movement and many in it are given to acts of civil disobedience as their
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primary form of political action, their rhetoric about the need for redistribution. their rhetoric about the unfairness of the society has largely penetrated the obama campaign and i think it's fair to say that they've had clear impact as well on our dialogue. host: monte writes on twitter, voting in the political system is no longer one vote but a political weight by corporations. it sounds like he's like minded like you. guest: i think he's right. i'd like to believe that the power of the contribution or the power of the buck determines the outcomes but sadly, what i suggest in "hopelessly divided" is that's precisely what's happened. i wish that weren't the case and i hope we can adopt some sort of campaign finance legislation that takes big money out but as
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i suggested in the outset, i can't say i'm optimistic. host: let's look at some of the things you'd like to see happen as solutions. you mentioned campaign financing reform, lobby reform and keeping lobbyists from making contributions during legislative sessions, what would that do? guest: i think we need to know what lobbyists are doing, who they're saying and what they're seeing them about and limit what they can contribute. the idea that you can have members of congress over for a fundraiser, raise money for them and then go back and lobby them the next day doesn't inspire a great deal of confidence in me. so i think more disclosure, more restrictions and more sunshine will make the process that much more transparent and certainly, anything that promotes and provokes a broader public involvement in the process
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through public financing is good and i would be for having the networks as a condition of having their license have to give free time and provide time on the air for debates between the candidates to get big money out of the purchase of television commercials. host: let's hear from tom who is a republican in plantation, florida. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for the time. i believe this nation is divided because the press is basically advocated its role as being a critic of the politicians and administrations. they give new life to all the spin that's out there and, for example, the -- the administration saying that the economy is going in the right direction. well, there isn't a single economist in the united states who says that we need at least 300,000 jobs created each month
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that allows the administration to say that we're going in the right direction. you know, it at least says it's disappointing to be truthful. i'm 65 and the press used to be the enemy of any administration, republican or democrat and i think it was healthy because, you know, when people get the idea that a politician is perfect and everything they say is absolutely factual and truthful, then they -- that gives them license to take a very strong position. the truth is none of them are factual and truthful in every single way and i'd like to see a little bit more courage on the part of the press to criticize when criticism is needed on a national basis, maybe then, you know, we can agree that this -- government is not perfect. and we need this criticism to reach a united conclusion, a united --
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guest: let me offer a judgment about that. the media in my judgment has become more polarized. we have media on the left. we have media on the right, principally cable. the internet as well. and the neutral role of being sort of an adversarial truth teller, i think, has in large measure though not entirely, disappeared. so i think the caller is right, but i would further say that the ideological divisions i talk about in "hopelessly divided" are further reflected in cable tv, in the internet, in talk radio so sadly, we're hopelessly divided in all ways. host: comment on twitter. going what you were talking about doug schoen. he says c-span is there, fox news and msnbc hurt democracy with its biassed coverage. one viewer's opinion. but doug schoen, which comes first? is this a chicken or the egg moment? if the audience is there, if the
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audience is interested in hearing one side of the story or hearing -- going to web sites that have just one perspective and not a balance, which feeds which? the public demand? the appetite for it? or the production of it? guest: look, i'm not one for limiting broadcast. i mean, i think each network clearly is doing what it is seeking out to do well. i'm not here to say it's fox's fault. it's not here to say it's msnbc's fault, it isn't. if you look at it, fox has been the leader for 10 years straight and msnbc only started really improving its market share when it moved to the left. cnn in the center has struggled being in the center really only doing well with breaking news. we're in a culture where those who take ideologically distinct positions, have thrived and those in the center haven't and my point in writing the book was
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not to demonize any individual network, player or participant in the political process but to describe a process that is leaving us hopelessly divided and putting us at risk. and i don't think you can say -- cite any one element but it would be a mistake not to recognize that there are a whole confluence of forces that divide us. host: we're looking at this book "hopelessly divided, the new crisis in american politics, what it means for 2012 and beyond." it's by our guest doug schoen and democratic pollster. let's look at some of the solutions you propose. you call for redistricting reform and open primaries. guest: absolutely. i mean, redistricting reform will bring into the process an outside group to draw the lines not based on what's going to preserve incumbent power but on contiguous population patterns.
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hopefully that would encourage more electoral competition, more people in the center to run and less dominance by the ideological extremes and similarly, an open primary allows independents to participate which also further dissipates the powers of the organized members of the party and forces candidates hopefully to be more inclusive in their messages and orientation. host: bethlehem, pennsylvania, jim, democrats line. good morning. caller: good morning. years ago, i remember the george wallaces and those people saying there isn't $0.10 worth of difference between the two parties. they go out golfing together and go to the same cocktail parties. guess what? that was a good thing because the right-wing extremists were exposed to liberals who really have the compassion for people and republicans feared that this compassion got into their mix. so they came up with things like k street where they segregate their congressmen and senators and subsidize their apartments
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$3,000 apartments and only have to pay $300 for them, that sort of thing. have a republican restaurant downtown where democrats weren't allowed to go. all those types of things. those are the ones that separated from the mainstream with their extreme positions and i'm surprised, you're a democratic pollster but somehow you're associated with fox news' most unfair and unbalanced unions, by the way, have decreased about 80% of their clout in the last 20 years. let's be honest about it. and corporations are going to flood this election with so much money that -- like to the point where people are going to begin to resent it and vote against the money. that's what i see coming down the road. they're going to flood this election with money and people are going to say i'm not going to go that way. guest: i hope people vote against the money which is one of the reasons why i think there's some salutary benefits in both the tea party and occupy wall street and i also agree with your premise that it's good
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when democrats and republicans get together. it's the reason that i have been on fox news and i'm proud to be on fox news because i think if you leave a network only to one ideological position and don't offer a counterveiling view, you are doing a disservice to the greater dialogue and fox accords me that chance and i would similarly encourage people who are conservatives to go on msnbc or current or the equivalents. i think we do better with healthy dialogue. i think we do better with bipartisan cooperation and if we are segregated on the basis of party, i absolutely agree with the caller that no good will come of it. host: doug schoen, one of our followers on twitter writes in and says "look at the delegates selection process." do you see that as a problem? guest: boy, i do. i mean, when you have iowa and new hampshire going first. when you have the fundraising
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challenges that have befallen all parties and all candidates, the role of the super pacs and the fact that if texas had come earlier on the republican side, we might be singing a different song about rick santorum. the calendar is serendipitous, it seems. so i think the primary calendar with mitt romney getting, what is it, about 41% or 42% of the vote and 54% of the delegates is clearly not benefitting the process of achieving consensus. we've stopped debates now and, you know, i don't see the primary process as being at all healthy and, in fact, i think it's demonstrably unhealthy. host: republican caller joining us now from florida. good morning. caller: good morning. i'm sorry, i didn't get your name but i did get doug schoen,
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i believe that's how it's pronounced. guest: schoen. caller: schoen, i'm sorry. what i'd like to discuss is the fact that i'm kind of old so i've been around for a while. and i'm seeing what's happening, and i'm very, very interested because we were always taught we should never talk about politics and religion. and i have to disagree with that because there's where all the money is. there are things wrong with our system and there are things wrong with some of the things that you said but there's also a lot of truth of what you said. i see our young children living very strange lives because we don't have real good leadership. i think they're very disappointed in america because there's no one that can make a decision. everybody seems to be afraid. but what i'd like to stress is during the second world war which i was part of that, i was
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only a little girl. but we did without a lot of things. and we did it gladly. we were not the whining generation that we have now. that are looking for, i don't know what, they don't want to grow up for one thing. but when the second world war came about, america was an isolationist country and did not want war and i believe roosevelt, there's always been discussion about whether roosevelt did this purposely or not because nobody wanted war and war is ugly and it is horrible but i think they woke up that sleeping giant and look what happened. now, the silent majority has been woken up. so i'm telling all politicians especially the incumbents and the pollsters, i'm not sure your poll was sufficient enough. it could have been. but maybe you didn't talk to the right people. because i find there's a lot of double talk.
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there is some truth in what you say. but i like to have -- i think this program is great because we can speak our minds. now, i hope that they don't cut mine out because i think there's a lot of people that feel like i do. but i think if you want a really good, i don't know the woman's name there, i'm sorry, i don't because i like to know names. but i just caught yours because i was listening to other people's opinion and i agree with a lot of what is being said. guest: thank you, ma'am. let me just emphasize one aspect of what you're saying which is that leadership is the key. you mentioned f.d.r. we are lacking leaders now, people who are able to unite the country around common principles and i think that it's not so much that necessarily life was better 50 or 60 years ago but there was a sense of common
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national purpose. a sense that once we got to the nation's edge, to the water's edge, that we were all americans and sadly, it's much more difficult to achieve that kind of consensus today and i think if anything comes of this election, if we are able to in some way revisit and redouble our commitment to being americans and trying to have some goals that are common to democrats, republicans and independents, we will be advantaged. >> doug schoen looking at your decades of experience in politics, what insights can you give us about the 2012 race right now? do you see romney as the nominee? do you see pennsylvania as a must win for rick santorum? let's just talk about the g.o.p. process briefly. guest: sure, in the g.o.p. process, i think mitt romney is going to be the nominee given the polls coming out showing that mitt romney has moved ahead in pennsylvania. i think it's likely on april 24th, he will defeat rick
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santorum and effectively end the process. if that happens, the general election campaign which we have seen starting to begin in earnest this week, i think, will accelerate and what we will be greeted with is the specter of full-time negative ads and full-time attacks by the candidates being levelled for the next seven or eight months. host: and this note, rick santorum's campaign put out this press release, this statement yesterday. he said he will not be campaigning on monday. they're canceling events so he can be with his family, his daughter bela santorum is ill. she's in the hospital. so the entire santorum family says they're grateful for the outpouring of prayers and support but no campaign event for him on monday. guest: i think, look, this is one of the other issues i'd say about politics. whether you agree or disagree with rick santorum. when a 3-year-old child has a serious, serious illness like his daughter does, i think your heart has to go out to him and
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to his family. and ultimately, politics is politics. but, you know, this is a serious situation. so i would hope everybody, republicans, democrats, independents, liberals and conservatives would understand that at this moment, all of us need to have bela santorum in our prayers. host: let's hear from bill, democratic caller in pennsylvania. good morning, bill. caller: good morning, c-span. i'm calling because i have a -- i have some information about -- i continuously hear about how unions are funding the democratic party and they're taking union dues and spending it. these moneys are voluntary moneys. they're -- the afl-cio has cope, c-o-p-e and they have the volunteer action community program. this money is credibilitiieied
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contributed by the members. because it's a contribution, it's not dues money. we support candidates that support our issues and we also support the middle class and we're probably the only organized body that can support the middle class at this time and thank you for your time. guest: sir and, again, the issue here, we had two callers on different sides of the question. one caller saying look, money is deducted from my compensation to pay for and provide for both union and political activities. another caller saying no, that doesn't happen. it's all voluntary contributions. clearly, both are true. there are some circumstances where money goes into politics without explicit approval of union members and there are other circumstances where union members support those activities. but regardless, unions have become the most powerful force
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on the democratic left and make for arguably the most powerful, certainly the most organized interest group supporting democrats. host: we have two comments on twitter i'd like you to address, doug schoen. jimmy writes in and says voters can use their brains and reject big money and do their own research on candidates. helpless victims aren't so sad. another follow of our followers, eddie writes in says whether it's with the pacs or the news, there will always be prop beganed -- propaganda, the solution for citizens is individual knowledge and media literacy. guest: i agree. we have the capacity to do internet research, there are more and more sources, radio, tv, so yes, in theory, i agree with the caller but when you have saturation levels of expenditure as we've seen from mitt romney, he was behind and i guess michigan, illinois and
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ohio, and once his super pac geared up and outspent santorum 10 to 1 or more, opinions changed. so yes, you can do individual research but if there's that much money in politics running tough negative ads, it's hard to minimize its impact. host: should media literacy be taught in schools? guest: absolutely. i think media literacy -- i was taught media literacy in school. i think the key is to teach people how to use the media, how to understand what's there. but to avoid at all costs anything that approaches indoctrination or even skewing people to think one side or the other side is right. host: monica in miami, florida. independent caller. go ahead. caller: yes, hello, doug. guest: how are you? caller: mentioning about the independents, i'm an independent voter. i'm african-american from
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mississippi and now living in miami, florida. and i'm a firm believer of having those, the independents included in the process of open primaries and i think this will kill some of the divide between republicans and democrats. right now, that doesn't seem to be very -- they don't seem to be very responsive when it comes to that process and i think it's because, you know, the power on each side and they don't want to have to share any of that power but i think it's not so much of being a party. we're voters that can vote either way. we can vote democrat one year, and republican another or bring in our own candidates and i think it's very important for them to know that. that we are driving forces for elections. and so they need to pay more attention to us and open these primaries up especially in florida. guest: i completely agree with the caller. i think that open primaries, the
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ability of third party or independent candidates running is healthy. and the fact that if you have an open primary, independents can make their own judgment is all to the good. so i completely associate myself with the views the caller just expressed. host: good morning to peter, a republican in rockland county, new york. go right ahead. caller: hi, doug. pleasure to talk to you. i see you all the time on fox and, you know, you and pat goodell are the two guys that are fair and give your honest opinion and don't do the talking points. i really appreciate that, doug. two things. one -- what would it cost for the federal government to finance all elections on the federal level, congressional and senate? i mean, how many billions of dollars would that be? i mean, that would be one way to get the lobbyists' money out of washington. i understand that, you know,
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under the constitution, all people have the right to lobby their senators and congress. that would be one way to take the money. another problem that i see if we have a third or fourth party candidate, there's no runoff so if nobody gets a majority, somebody loses in the, you know, in the election because it will take votes away from somebody else so why can't we have a system where if nobody gets a clear majority, there's a runoff between the two candidates who get the most votes? host: let's leave it there and get a response. guest: two things. first, it would be very expensive to do public financing. i think you need a system where candidates have to raise the threshold level of contribution in their state or in their district and then the federal government in some way would match it. i think it's a good idea, it's expensive but worth considering. and, you know, in some elections in some states, there are runoffs. in the presidential election, i don't think we're going to change how we elect our
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presidents any time soon but i would remind you that ross perot got close to 20% and drew evenly from george h.w. bush and bill clinton so he didn't really draw disproportionately from either side. host: comment on twitter. ryan asks about the no labels group. he wants to know what you think about it? he says no labels is an organization, a half million strong dedicated to bipartisanship in government. guest: and i'm all supportive of no labels. it was founded by the wife of my ex-partner mark penn. i think they have done important work in trying to get budgets passed and so hold legislators accountable. if they don't get budgets passed. i think it's an important idea and i think that every group that's out there trying to promote bipartisan conciliation is important and is doing important work. host: doug schoen, author of the book "hopelessly divided, the
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new crisis in american politics and what it means for 2012 and beyond." he's a democratic pollster. you can see him on fox news as a contributor. he's also a founding partner and principal strategist for penn, schoen and berlin and widely recognized as one of the co-inventors of overnight polling. thank you for joining us this morning. guest: thank you for having me. host: coming up next, we'll look at the president's comments on the supreme court. what the reaction to that has been. but first, we'll take this break. we'll be right back.
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host: hans von spakovsky, senior fellow at the heritage foundation. we want to speak to you about president obama's comments last week about the supreme court. take us through the first set of comments the president made and this is, of course, in reference to the health care oral arguments earlier this month. guest: he said something that certainly surprised the entire legal community. he said it would be an extraordinary, an unprecedented step for the supreme court to overturn a democratically majority elected and passed law in congress. and, of course, we know that's completely untrue because it has been the role of the supreme court for over 200 years to determine whether laws passed by congress and state legislatures are constitutional or not. host: let's take a look at president obama's remarks last wednesday. this is at the white house, he's holding a press conference and
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the issue came up. >> ultimately, i'm confident that the supreme court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected congress. and i just remind conservative commentators that for years, what we've heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint. that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. well, it's a good example and i'm pretty confident that this quote will recognize that. and not take that step.
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host: president obama speaking in front of the white house on wednesday. hans von spakovsky, your reaction? guest: i said, he's a lawyer besides being a president and he taught constitutional law and he knows what he said was untrue. also, it was a bit hypocritical for him to be criticizing the court and saying they shouldn't overturn a law passed by congress at the very same time that lawyers from his justice department were actually in the first circuit court of appeals telling judges there that they should overturn the defense of marriage act which also was a law passed by a much larger majority. and yet his lawyers were there saying you should overturn that law because it was unconstitutional. host: the president altered his statement a little bit the next day. he was speaking at a luncheon at the american society of news editors. let's hear how his tone changed a little bit the next day. >> the point i was making is that the supreme court is the
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final say on our constitution and our laws and all of us have to respect it. but it's precisely because of that extraordinary power that the court has traditionally exercised significant restraint in deference to our duly elected legislature, our congress, and so the burden is on those who would overturn a law like this. host: does that make a difference? is the president's follow-up remarks change your impression of what he said? guest: well, he clearly was trying to repair the political damage that was done by his attack on the court. but he really didn't do a good job of it, i don't believe, because his statement the first day was so clear. there was no confusion or ambiguity in what he was saying.
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and the fact that he would have said that to begin with given his knowledge of that particular issue made it look like a political attack on the court and a possible attempt to intimidate the justices. host: president obama's comments on the supreme court is our topic right now. here's the numbers you can call to join the conversation. democrats 202-737-001 and independent callers, 202-628-020 e 5. "usa today" had a piece that looked at how other presidents have dealt with the court and they said other presidents took on the high court before obama but some experts call the recent remark a new level of defiance. it does go through and look at presidents who have criticized the court or even tried to steer the court in a certain direction. jefferson campaigned against the court in the 1800 election after the justices had made it a criminal offense to criticize high government officials under the alien act. a lot of it was much stronger
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than what we hear today says barry friedman, new york university law professor who has written about the impact of public opinion and the court. also president lincoln, president roosevelt who tried unsuccessfully to attack the court in 1937. compare this to history. guest: yeah, but see, mr. friedman is missing the point. the point is not that the court is immune to criticism. of course the president can criticize the court but those actions that they're talking about were general criticisms of the court. they were criticisms after a case had been decided. here, we're in a situation where the president's lawyers are before the court arguing a case where a decision has not yet been made and the president basically interferes with that and injects himself into it by criticizing the court before the case is finished and before a decision has been rendered. host: let's go to james calling in on the republican line from
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springfield, missouri. good morning. caller: good morning, good morning. i think -- i just watched your last show, i think a lot of it is just showing the core issues at hand in america today in politics. i think simply the core issues are the politicians, government, call them whoever you want, congressmen, senators, people, they forgot who they serve. they were elected to serve the people of the united states of america and what they're doing is making it a process to serve money, to serve interests, lobbyists and they've got to get back to the core issues, and you know, obama said, you know, we need to respect the supreme court's decision. guess what? the supreme court needs to respect the people's decision of this country. this is what service to the people is. this is a core issue that's out of control in our government
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today. guest: well, i would say that this case represents a very fundamental, historical point in american history because with this particular law, congress is taking on to itself power in a way that it really has never done before and the decision that the court makes is going to be a determining factor in whether really there are any limits on the power of congress going forward in american history. host: hans von spakovsky is senior legal fellow at the heritage foundation. you sat in and listened to the oral arguments regarding health care on days two and three. guest: i did have to stand in line but i managed to get in. host: tell us your takeaway of the impressions of that. guest: it was an extraordinary event. the courtroom was packed by all the people in washington from the legislative branch and the executive branch who make decisions. i saw everyone from eric holder
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in there to members of the senate and congress and also from the states. i was actually surrounded by a number of state attorneys generals from there. and we had some of the best litigators who argue before the court there basically arguing for six hours. and the justices were obviously very involved. they were asking very tough questions actually of both sides. and it was clear that they understood that this is a very historical decision and one that's going to be looked at by the american people for a long time to come. host: and our guest wrote about his observations about the oral arguments on the blog pjmedia.com and you can read more about his observations there. wesley is a democrat in sacramento, california, joining us now. good morning. caller: good morning, and i would just like to make a comment that president george bush and his time in office had
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some remarks about the supreme court and no one called him into question. i wonder why the supreme court is in question about president obama. thank you so much. host: if you listen to comments that george w. bush made. this is from november of 2007 at the federalist society's 25th anniversary convention. >> each of these branches plays a vital role in our free society. each serves as a check on the others. and to preserve our liberty, each must meet its responsibilities and resist the temptation to encroach on the powers the constitution accords to others. for the judiciary, resisting this temptation is particularly important. because it's the only branch that's unelected and whose officers serve for life.
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unfortunately, some judges give into the temptation and make laws instead of interpreting. such judiciary lawlessness is a threat to our democracy and it needs to stop. host: former president george w. bush speaking back in november of 2007, federalist society's 25th anniversary convention. hans von spakovsky, reflect on president bush's attitude towards activist judges? guest: sure. by the way, i was at that convention so i actually heard that speech. that actually brings up another issue that the president talked about, you know, he talked about judicial activism and -- host: which president? guest: president obama did in his speech earlier. he mentioned that in his original presentation but he defined it the wrong way. judicial activism is not when justices of the supreme court overturn a piece of congressional legislation if it is unconstitutional. it is when judges use not the
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constitution or federal laws for making their decision. it's when they use their own policy preferences to overturn a law or to create law where there is no constitutional right to something and that is what the issue is in this particular case is whether or not the law passed by congress, signed by the president which, you know, everyone refers to as obamacare, whether or not it was within the enumerated powers of congress to pass such extensive legislation. host: does the president criticizing the high court or the judiciary branch in general, though, rub you the wrong way? does it raise concerns about separations of the branches? guest: no, no. i mean, the branch -- the three branches, of course, they have the ability to criticize each other. the problem here is that the president was not engaging in general criticism. he was going after the court in a specific case that is still before the court. let me tell you, the parallel
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situation to this is as if a senior partner in a law firm went out and held a press conference and started criticizing a court in which an associate who worked for him had just argued a case and in fact, the senior partner was taking positions publicly that is the opposite of what the associate had taken in the case. that would be unprofessional behavior by a lawyer and that's the kind of behavior we had here by the president. host: brad joins us from wichita, kansas. republican caller. good morning. guest: good morning. i agree with everything that you're saying and thank goodness you're saying it. the american people just like this segment before, the american people need to take a good look at the ideology of the people who are trying to run our country. thank you. host: barry, next up, independent line in vienna, virginia, not too far away from washington, d.c. go ahead, barry. caller: good morning.
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rather than concerning ourselves with soundbites i think the full explanation that president obama gave plus his press secretary the next day gave really focused on the fact that for the supreme court to strike down the affordable care act would be a deviation from basically a supreme court's upholding almost all the cases on congress' power to regulate interstate commerce since the 1930's. and if the supreme court were to deviate from those well established precedents now, it really does seem to smack of a political decision which by the guest's own definition would be judicial activism because it is such a department you're from the overwhelming number of supreme court precedence giving commerce substantial authority to regulate interstate commerce. guest: i disagree with that.
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the cases you're talking about, the one most prominently referred to by legal commentators and argued about in the case was a case from 1952. in that case, the supreme court held that the commerce clause did allow government to regulate a commodity being grown by a farmer, wheat. but this case is extraordinarily different from that. in that case, the government wasn't given the power to compel the farmer to grow wheat. what it said was that if a farmer decided on his own to grow wheat, then the government could regulate the production and sale of that commodity. the situation we have here is that the government is saying it can compel americans into commerce. it can compel them to buy an insurance policy from a private company. there is no supreme court case that says that or goes that far. there's not a single case, any precedent whatsoever that says
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that congress can compel americans into commerce. host: linda, democratic caller in waco, texas. good morning. caller: hi, i have two points here. one that i request c-span identify the organizations whose representatives are speaking on the program. for example, the heritage foundation is a well known southern baptist organization and the only way you can find that on their web page is to go into their archives. which clearly to me shows bias in a speaker. no matter if it's a democrat or a republican, religious or nonreligious. i would appreciate if c-span could identify that. the argument, i'm a lawyer as well, your argument is a republican stand on interpreting the law and taxpayers have been
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having to bear the brunt of noninsured individuals. hospitals have been going down the tubes because of noninsured individuals who will use any excuse on the book on why they shouldn't have to buy insurance and be responsible for their own health care. they get into a car accident, they get into a gang shooting and getting into any number of illnesses, have babies, that have -- that extensive intensive care and we foot the bill. there's no difference, in my mind, in that and congress instituting a requirement that we carry health care because the hospitals cannot refuse emergencies. host: linda, let me ask you about focusing on this morning
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regarding the president's comments. what did you think about president obama's comments on the supreme court? caller: i -- i stand with president obama. i think he has the greater good in mind. i think that the other side's representations are those of insurance companies and other organizations who stand to benefit from people's illnesses. host: we'll leave it there and get a response from our guest. guest: i have to laugh because i don't know where this southern -- i have the greatest respect for southern baptists but the heritage foundation is the largest -- one of the largest think tanks in the country. we have over 700,000 members across the country. everything that the caller just said is a public policy argument. that is not the issue before the united states supreme court. it's not up to the justices to decide whether the national health care law that was passed by congress was good public policy or not. that's up to the legislature to
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decide. what's before the court is whether or not it was constitutional. whether congress had the power, whether one of the enumerated powers, in this case, the commerce clause gave congress the power to do that. whether it's good public policy or not, that is not the issue. and that is something that congress is going to decide and for those who think this is a republican argument or not, i'm sorry. but there are plenty of legal commentators on both sides who have said this is an extraordinarily difficult legal issue. it is one that is not clear and the idea that it's all the insurance companies want to do this, i suggest you do a little google search and you'll research it and find that many of the insurance companies across the country actually supported the passage of obamacare. host: hans von spakovsky, senior legal fellow at the heritage foundation center for legal and judicial studies and the manager of heritage's civil justice reform initiative and a member of the fairfax county electoral
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board and a virginia advisory board to the u.s. commission on civil rights. he's critical of president obama's comments last week taking to task the supreme court regarding the oral arguments on the health care law. we have a question from don that relates to the earlier caller talking about the heritage foundation. how much money has heritage paid clarence thomas' wife to oppose health care reform? does heritage think this may influence clarence thomas? guest: jenny thomas does not work for the heritage foundation. we have our own in-house health care analyst and lawyers who do the analysis and we don't have her as an employee. host: she was with heritage. guest: she was at one point but left quite a while ago. host: what do you think about the relationship between the outside world and the justices? i mean, you know, the justices are in there for life. they're not beholden to the
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social pressures trying to garner votes and garner support. but how much of a bubble do they live? how much do they listen to the public discourse and how much does that influence them? guest: look, i'll tell you, there are justices whose views i disagree with legally on the court but the idea that the justices are going to be influenced by the kind of things that i read about in the paper, that's just not going to happen. the justices, all of them, i think, are going to make a real effort to decide this on the legal issues. some of them are going to make a decision that i probably will disagree with. but i do not think that there's any kind of lobbying going on or anything like that that's going to affect them. they're really going to look at the constitution. they're going to look at the past cases and they're going to try to decide whether or not they believe this is within the power of congress to do. host: charles is a republican in connecticut. good morning. caller: first, a quick aside.
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had i been a student of obama when he was a law professor, i think i'd be asking for a refund. but my question is this -- the argument for the individual mandate seems to be that a lot of people don't carry insurance so therefore, the people that are taxpayers are subsidizing them. they're paying for them. and i don't understand that argument because let's look at it this way. if that's upheld by the court, then is the next step that everybody must have life insurance because many, many people in this country don't carry life insurance than don't carry health insurance. when these people die, is it the responsibility of the taxpayers to either bury them or cremate them or dump them out to sea or whatever they're going to do
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with what's left. i'll take my answer off the air. thank you. guest: actually, that's a very good point and in fact, that came up in the oral arguments. the solicitor general of the united states was trying to argue to the court that the reason congress has the power under the commerce clause to regulate the insurance mark and the health care market was because it's a unique market. you know, what the government said was that everyone is going to have to get health care at some point in their life and therefore, the government has the power to regulate this. justice alito said excuse me, everyone at some point in their life is going to die and there are costs associated with dying including getting buried and if you don't pay for that yourself ahead of time than the family or the state and the taxpayer is going to be stuck with the cost of doing that. does this mean that congress has
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the power to make every american buy burial insurance and quite frankly, the government didn't have a good answer then. he tried to say no, that's different but he couldn't really explain how it was different and that was the biggest problem the solicitor general had tlult the case. the justices kept asking him what is the limiting factor on the government? in other words, if we hold that congress does have the power in the commerce clause to do this, what can they not do? and the government was never really able to come up with a good limiting factor that would give comfort to the justices. host: attorney general eric holder sent a letter to a judge who was concerned about the president's comments and the back and forth that ensued. here's from "the wall street journal" from a few days ago. attorney general eric holder said thursday the justice department recognized the authority of judges to overturn laws but he defended comments on judicial review by president
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barack obama earlier this week attempting to quell a political storm over the remarks. mr. holder wrote a letter to the three-judge panel of the fifth circuit court of appeals that ordered it up after mr. obama said monday it would be unprecedented for unelected judges to overturn the health care law. here's the letter that the attorney general sent. it says at no point has the government suggested that the court would lack authority to review plaintiffs' constitutional claims. if the court were to conclude that jurisdiction exists. guest: the problem with that letter. i should say i spent four years at the justice department. the problem with the letter is it really did not answer the question that was asked by the judges and we should say that the reason this came up was there's a separate case before the fourth circuit court of appeals that involves the obamacare law. the issue in that case is that some physicians who own a
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hospital have sued because they say that the law is discriminatory and punishes hospitals that are owned by physicians. the justices had just heard arguments in that case from the justice department at the very time that the president is saying that the courts don't have the authority to overturn this federal law and quite logically, they asked the justice department to explain the president's remarks. they have the ability to do that because the president is the ultimate supervisor and boss of the lawyers from the justice department who are arguing before them. the problem with the letter is that it's about three pages. it's like a law professor lecture on judicial review. well, that's not what the court asked him to do. what it asked attorney general holder to do is to say how the concept of judicial review goes with what the president said and instead, the attorney general simply says -- well, this is
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consistent with the president's remarks. well, that is simply untrue. host: we have a comment on twitter that pushes back against your comments a little bit. and she says she finds this a bit hypocritical. president obama was asked about the affordable health care act at a press conference. george w. bush went out on its own and raked the courts. guest: i'm sorry, did what? host: he rigged the courts on the polls, he criticized the courts unsolicited where president obama was asked about the affordable care act. guest: yes, well, if he had the kind of discretion that a lawyer is supposed to have, he would have said i can't comment on a case that's currently pending before the court. that is very different from engaging in general criticism of the judiciary in the courts when they act in the way that they shouldn't. that is they don't comply with the constitution and federal law. it's a very different situation. host: burke, virginia, miles, democratic caller. good morning.
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caller: good morning. i just wanted to make a couple of comments. first, it really is kind of laughable to think that someone who is a senior legal fellow at the heritage foundation has an objective, unbiassed view of this matter. i don't think very many people are really fooled by that. host: miles, can i just let you know? we recognize that hans von spakovsky comes from the conservative heritage foundation and just like our last guest who was a democratic pollster, we try to create balance throughout the show. we know he has an opinion but we welcome what you have to say and want to hear what your response to him is. caller: i appreciate you saying that. there's a difference here. the difference has to do with the fact that we're discussing a legal issue. whether the affordable care act is constitutional should not be a question of someone's public policy predilictions and your guest said that. it's difficult to separate his
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comments from the public policy. my question i have for him is for him to identify the last time the united states supreme court overturned a broad economic regulation passed by the congress of the united states. that's really what the president somewhat inartfully was trying to say. that to allow the -- for the supreme court to overturn this type of regulation, this type of broad regulation which everyone talks about how broad it is, how big an impact it has on the economy, for it to do that smacks of what was called substantive due process. that has been kind of undermined as far as its legal neutrality for many years. so i would like to know from the guest when the last time the supreme court overturned something that has the kind of breadth and economic basis that this particular legislation has. and the other comment is to say that justice scalia himself has talked about how broad the
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commerce clause is. and if the supreme court along what seemed to be ideological lines overturns this particular law, how is that going to allow people to have faith in the neutrality of the supreme court? because how can it be that those justices who are regarded as being liberal can uphold legislation and those who are regarded as being conservative can strike it down? host: miles, thanks for all your questions. let's get a response from hans von spakovsky. guest: the last two times that the court threw out federal legislation because it said, no, this is not within the commerce clause power of congress was, of course, the lopez and morrison cases in 1995 and 2000. and the caller keeps saying laws with this kind of extraordinary economic breadth. that's not the issue in this case. the issue as i said before is
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whether congress can compel you to enter into commerce. there's no prior case that brings up this issue and i would point out that, for example, during the extraordinary time and circumstances of world war ii, when there was actually rationing in the united states, even then, congress did not believe it had the power to force individuals to work in certain jobs in the war industry. it did not have the ability to force farmers to grow certain crops. we've never had legislation that went to this extraordinary length telling people that they have to enter into commerce and they have to buy a product from a private company. that is very different from prior economic regulations and that is what the issue is in this court. host: our caller also asked about the objectivity of the court and the public perception of whether or not they're making a decision on the constitutionality of a law vs. the politics.
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can you reflect on how the public perceives the role of the court? guest: i suggest that anybody who believes that the justices are making a political decision as this caller would suggest, read the transcripts of the questioning which is easily available on the supreme court site. you won't see politics in that questioning. what you'll see is extraordinarily detailed and difficult questions being asked by all of the justices, whether they're conservative or liberal about the constitution, the commerce clause, the extent of authority of the government particularly congress under that clause. i think they're going to make a decision based on their views of the constitution and its legislation -- legislative history and i don't think, frankly, politics is going to have a lot to do with it. host: carl is a republican in norris town, pennsylvania.
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good morning. caller: good morning, how are you? host: good. go ahead. caller: i was just wondering here while the conversation was going on, what i see is a political speech more or less a push towards us while religious speech is against, pushed away from us. and i'm wondering in your point of view, what becomes a rule of law if they are successful in eliminating religious views and speech all together? just what does happen to rule of law in this country? guest: in fact, that's what this whole case is about. it's about whether we will remain a country based on the rule of law. the religious issue has come up because under the obamacare law, the head of h.h.s. by the way at one point was in the supreme court listening to the arguments, you know, they have issued a ruling that will force religious institutions to
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provide certain kinds of coverage that go against their religious beliefs and that is a fundamental first amendment problem that brings up a whole near issue in this case. and it's an extraordinary intrusion into the first amendment rights of religious institutions and actually no matter what happens with this particular case for the supreme court, that issue is also already in court and is also -- may end up before the supreme court. host: let's go to dayton, ohio and hear from the independent line. good morning. caller: good morning. let me just begin by saying i totally agree with the points of view of your guests. and then i have a response to the topic for this morning. i firmly believe that obama is a great orator, is a law officer trained and an equipped politician. so in that regard, he says
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exactly what he means to say and people trying to make excuses and trying to explain it by saying that obama was trying to say -- he wasn't trying to say anything. he said exactly what he meant to say. now, let's go back to another one, he joined the campaign before he came into office. he was going to call health care stake holders to around civil discussion and that was going to be televised live on c-span. i recall those conversations from yesterday. he was going to do away with lobbyists where i have yet to see that debate on c-span, no round table discussion to the best of my knowledge and then again, the mandate now before
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the supreme court besides it being a mandate before the american people, i see it as a mandate against the supreme court itself. guest: well, i'm not quite sure what the question was there. host: one thing that -- did you want to reflect on his final comments there about the actual legality of the law and the supreme court? guest: well, look, i'll be very clear. i mean, i think it's an unconstitutional law. i don't believe congress has the power to compel people to enter into the stream of commerce. and if i, for example, am a young person, i'm 25, 26 years old, i'm in good health and i don't want to spend the money on a health insurance policy because i'd rather spend it buying a new car or doing something else, i have the ability to do that. probably would be a good idea if i bought catastrophic coverage which is much cheaper than regular health insurance coverage but guess what sni --?
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i won't be able to do that because the obamacare law outlaws catastrophic plans that are probably the best coverage for young people in good health to get but the idea that the government can tell any individual, especially younger individuals that they have to buy health insurance policy and, in fact, are going to be subsidizing the insurance premiums of other people of particularly older americans, i mean, i just think if congress -- if the supreme court says congress has that authority, really, there is no limit and everybody keeps bringing up the issue, it came up in the arguments that, well, does that mean the government can tell you you have to buy and eat broccoli so you'll stay healthy and that may sound like a funny question but it would not be beyond the power of the supreme court to say that congress could do that. host: festus says he agrees with the president but thinks he's a
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great orator. what do you think the political commentary behind his remarks and what's the politics behind it all? guest: i think the politics was an attempt to intimidate the court and to make it clear to them that they are going to be under extraordinary political attacks if they make a decision that overturns any part of the law. he's a lawyer. he knew what he was saying was wrong. i really can't see any other purpose to it. host: ben joins us from durham, north carolina. democrats line. good morning. caller: good morning. i'm really concerned about this decision of the supreme court. the issue is not whether or not president obama decided to make a comment prior to the ruling. the issue is whether or not, in my opinion, that the supreme court had any right to take the case at this time. it's going to be extremely political and i'm afraid that
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it's going to help put the republicans in office. host: what did you think about the president's comment last week about the supreme court? caller: that's my point. he -- he had the right to make that comment simply because the timing. i think he's concerned about the timing of when the supreme court took this case. they couldn't take the case and decide whether it's constitutional or unconstitutional but why did they take it now to rule before an upcoming election? that's extremely concerning especially in light of, you know, the gore case back in 2000. host: bush v. gore, let's get a response from hans von spakovsky. guest: you can't blame the supreme court for this. the case was appealed by the obama administration. they did not like the decisions being made in the 11th circuit, the obama administration and, in fact, the plaintiffs in that case appealed the decision so it
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came to the supreme court from the government, from the plaintiffs in the case and they made a decision to take it because it is an extraordinarily important case. in fact, this is probably the most important case the court has looked at since brown vs. board of education in the 1950's. host: question on twitter. this super tone, twitter handle, wants to know this from you. he says please ask him why heritage foundation pushed for a mandate back in the early 1990's but now they're saying it's unconstitutional. guest: well, actually, there was a senior analyst in the health care area back in 1989 who talked about a mandate for not the kind of mandate that's in this law but for catastrophic coverage, something i mentioned before although he coupled it with tax credits and other things to offset the cost. because of other analysis that heritage did, we soon figured
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out that actually it would not achieve the public policy goals set out and frankly, at the time, there was no legal center at heritage and the legal center immediately said that this is unconstitutional because it's an invasion of the liberty of america. so at one point more than 20 years ago, the caller is correct. but that position was quickly changed and was changed well before president obama came into office. host: final quick tweet, the term judicial activism is only used after the judiciary rules to the other side. guest: i would disagree with that. there are plenty of cases where i think one particular result would be a good result but it's not up to the court to make that decision. you know, i may think that the public policy solution that the legislature came up with was a stupid one or not a very intelligent one. but that doesn't mean the court
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has the ability to overturn it. they can only overturn it if the legislature is acting beyond its authority urged the constitution. host: hans von spakovsky, senior legal fellow at the heritage foundation, thanks for talking with us this morning. guest: sure, great to be here. host: we'll be right back. >> this year's video competition asks students to create a video talking about which part of the constitution is most important to them and why? we'll take you to texas where third prize winner is a junior at the high school. hi, dalia. >> hi. >> why did you choose the seventh amendment as your topic? >> well, i realized that trials by jury don't have to be just in court cases. and they can be anywhere else whenever you need someone that knows what happened in any event, it can be like a discussion, it could be a car crash. it's just any type of thing like
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that. >> what was the seventh amendment? >> the seventh amendment was trial by jury in civil cases. >> what does it mean to you to have a trial by jury? >> well, whenever there's a trial by jury, you have a certain amount of people that are sitting there listening to the case and they each have to have their own opinion about the issue. and i think that's really important because you should always have someone that can help you out and give their opinion because sometimes people don't just want to listen to one opinion. >> where did the idea of trial by jury originate? >> it well, it originated from great britain. it changed a bit by the numbers like now 12 people have to be in a jury and before it used to be more. >> what are some of the benefits of having a trial by jury? >> some of the benefits are that you have people that can
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help you. they give their own opinion and they listen to the case and they can put their feelings into it. >> you talked to several different lawyers in your interview, what did they say they looked for when they're selecting jury members? >> they said that the main thing was it has to be someone that can be honest. they have to be really good listeners. they have to have an unbiassed idea of what was going on in the cases and just someone that can have a really good opinion. >> what did you learn in the process of making your video? >> well, i learned that jury members are really good for different things, not just court. even in school if there's a discussion going on and something happens, someone could easily just stand up what they saw and what they believe is right. >> what do you want people who
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watch your video to take away? >> i want them to realize that if anything is going on around them, that it's always important to pay a lot of attention to what's going on because you never know what your -- what you saw could be used for. >> congratulations again on your win. >> thank you. >> and here's a brief portion from her documentary titled "seventh amendment." >> jurors sht just helpful in cases. how many times have we not been stopped in a crime or in a student's case a fight or a broken rule in which we try to explain what happened from a fair and truthful statement from someone else. >> watch and see the harm in the disability and the loss of income certainly suffers because another person. >> in civil cases, people are
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generally asking for remedy of money. that's how you fix the problem. in civil cases. >> the constitution states that in common law where the controversy shall exceed $20, the right of trial by jury should be preserved for trial by jury in any court of the united states according to rules of the common law. >> trial by jury safeguards in the seventh amendment of the constitution. where adoptations of these common law concepts harmonized with the sixth amendment's clause that local juries be used in criminal trials. >> you can watch this entire documentary as well as all of the winning documentaries at studentcam.org and continue the conversation on c-span's facebook and twitter pages. >> robert jones is c.e.o. and founder of public religion institute.
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thank you for coming in. guest: thank you. host: there was a story this morning that we referenced earlier that talks about how in "the new york times" talking about how the candidates this year reflect america. we have a mormon candidate. we have a conservative catholic candidate. we have president obama who shared his journey of faith and has switched churches. reflect on that idea. guest: i think that's absolutely right. it should be a very interesting conversation about faith in american life. we, as you say, we got -- we had two mormon candidates actually on the campaign. now jon huntsman is out but it looks like if mitt romney continues and it looks like he'll be the presumptive nominee, then certainly it will be a very interesting time where we have, you know, a mormon candidate which we haven't had and then we'll have, you know, president obama who, as you said, has, you know, comes out of the main line protestant tradition but with kind of african-american protestant roots as well and that should
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make for a very interesting conversation about faith. both candidates have talked about their faith in public and in private life. and it, i think, it will be a very interesting topic and one that will have different contours than it has in the past. host: people referring to an op ed divided by god, it's called and it looks at the role of religion in politics and it mentions that when john f. kennedy was elected as the first candidate but there weren't a lot of variety in the scope of christianity. guest: one of the things that we actually saw. kennedy is the first and only catholic president and that was a really watershed moment, i think, for the u.s. earlier in the 20th century, there was a lot of anti-catholic sentiment in the country and i think kennedy's election as president really marked the mainstreaming of catholicism into, you know, american public life. rick santorum really hasn't faced many of those kinds of questions. all of those questions that kennedy got at the houston
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ministerial association in september of 1960, whether the vatican would control the white house if a catholic was elected president. santorum hasn't faced those questions. that's largely been settled in americans' minds. one thing that we have seen since kennedy is the election of the evangelical presidents that we don't see a lot of. go back earlier in american history and we didn't see a lot of that. we've seen carter, interesting enough, they've been democrats. jimmy carter, bill clinton, al gore, vice president. george w. bush certainly had evangelical, i think, tendencies to his religion but he was actually never a main line protestant church, united methodist church. host: the group that our guest, c.e.o. and founder of the public religious institute group, we talked about a study they did. you can find more on their web site publicreligion.org. tell us how religion is playing a role in this campaign compared
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to past election cycles? guest: i think we've seen an evolution of what americans are expecting from their presidential candidates especially if you go back to 1960, the main question before john f. kennedy was how independent will you be from the hierarchy of your tradition? you know, will the pope be -- there were actually political cartoons and other things about the pope packing up his suitcase and moving to the white house. i mean, that's how front and center this was in the debate and kennedy really -- his challenge was to say here's what religion will not do in my campaign where i believe in the absolute separation of church and state. when he gave the speech to the houston ministers association, my own faith is very sincere but it's largely private and that, i think, was enough in the 1960 campaign. it's really evolved so that i think in the present campaign it's not enough for -- americans really do expect presidential candidate to be able to articulate a little bit more than that. a recent survey we found that 2/3 of the country say that it's
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somewhat or very important for the president to have strong religious beliefs and they do sort of expect now not only to say i have strong religious beliefs and they're private but to also say here's how it will affect my candidacy and decision making as president. host: how important is it to the average voter that a candidate is religious and that the candidate does have a belief in god, a faith, even a church that he or she goes to? guest: it's very important. host: actually, i used the word church but that's presumptive. it could be a synagogue. mosque. guest: it is very important. we -- one just example is that we don't have one on record atheist in all of congress so not just in the executive branch but in the legislative branch and, you know, the american -- americans are sort of known especially compared to western europe to be exceptionally religious. i mean, 8 in 10 americans identify with some religion or other. there's a growing segment of the population that does not affiliate but still, less than 20% that doesn't affiliate with
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any particular religion and so, you know, again, and we ask people directly about it and they tell us 2/3 say it's very important to me that a president has strong religious beliefs. host: looking at this "usa today," this is a piece that came out of a couple of days ago. the nominations are a losing ground, most religious traditions lost members or barely kept pace from 1990 to 2008 while the u.s. population actually grew. and it shows a decrease in the practice of different denominations. how is that reflected or not reflected in what americans want from candidates? guest: yeah. well, this is really driven by younger americans. what we see is that younger americans are far more likely not only than older americans but even than americans in previous generations at that age, to be unaffiliated. they're much more likely to be unaffiliated. in other words, it's not just a life cycle effect. we're really seeing a different generation here that's much less likely to be religiously affiliated so this will play out
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much more, i think, in younger generations and in future years than it is right now. right now, i still think, you know, it's very important, again, 8 in 10 americans, you know, religiously affiliated one way or the other and the majority of them expect the president to be able to say something about their own religious beliefs and how it impacts their policies. host: robert jones is the c.e.o. and founder of the public religious institute and he's a member of the national steering committee for the religion and politics section at the american academy of religion and also an editorial board member of religion in politics at the journal of american political science association. let's go to the phones and hear from lisa. she's a republican in kansas city, missouri. good morning. caller: good morning. yes. my question is i'm a catholic. and i don't understand how president obama thinks he can
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tell us what we can or can't do. i thought there was such a separation of church and state and to me, this is not separation of church and state when a president starts telling our religious leaders when they can and can't do. and their institutions. to me, that is just overstepping the bounds of politics and of government. and i don't understand that. to me, he's just overstepped his bounds and he's made it, to me, that he doesn't even -- he isn't very friendly to the religion at all or the catholic people. guest: well, this idea of democrats and president obama being unfriendly to religion, i think, is one that's -- that's important to take up and when president obama was elected, there was clear data showing that democrats were much less likely to be perceived as friendly to religion than republicans. however, in the 2008 campaign, candidate obama at that time actually scored higher than
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mccain on friendliness to religion despite the fact that the party was trailing. so there was a sense that in the 2008 campaign that president obama sort of had some concerns from religion, was breaking that mold, i think, that had been on the table for a while. talking really about the h.h.s. mandate that we've been talking about earlier on the show. one thing to say about that is in our data, we actually have been polling on this, and interestingly enough, the first thing to say is that churches and other places of worship have always been exempt. even from the very get go in this thing so we're really talking about religiously affiliated institutions like catholic hospitals, social service agencies, and colleges and universities is what we're really talking about here. and what we found in the polling data actually is that most catholics agreed with the obama administration's stance, catholics overall did. white catholics were more divided. there's a difference between white catholics that tend to be a little more republican, a
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little older and more conservative and representing the caller's view but catholics overall supported it while white catholics were divided on the question. host: here's the gallup poll. americans in the contraception debate. do you sympathize with the views of religious leaders or those of the obama administration? this is from february and we can see that 48% side with religious leaders and 45% with the obama administration so not too -- not top heavy one way or the other. guest: pretty divided. host: yeah. 8% with either sympathetic to both and no opinions and you look at the division between women and men. women, 47% are sympathetic of religious leaders with 46% sympathetic to the president's administration, men, 49% vs. 44% slightly more sympathetic to the religious leaders. guest: our numbers are higher than that on the obama side. not overwhelming numbers. clearly, this is certainly a division here that leaning into the obama administration and i think since then, the obama
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administration has made a couple of adjustments. one, i think the biggest one is actually allowing religious groups to define for themselves which groups count as religious organizations? i think that's a fairly big concession on the part of the obama administration that provides for much more leeway for religious groups to make some of those decisions. that was some of the earlier objections is that -- that the current guidelines were deciding for religious groups which ones were religious and which ones weren't. i think the obama administration has backed up and said wait a minute, we'll allow religious groups to make calls for themselves. host: we'll show this poll from the public religion institute that our guest was speaking about a few moments ago. you can see the breakdowns here among all americans, white evangelicals, white main line, all catholics and going down from there. minority, protestants and unaffiliated. you can see some of the members that our guest was talking about a few moments ago. rick is an independent caller in port huron, michigan. we'll go to him now.
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hi, rick. caller: happy easter. host: thank you, go ahead. caller: i was wondering if anybody really read the first amendment. host: the first amendment? rick is breaking up on us. but the first amendment. guest: sure. first amendment has two pieces to it, right, and there's the religious liberty side of the -- of the first amendment and there's also the separation of church and state side to the first amendment and i think some of what we're seeing particularly in these recent debates is where do you draw the line between on the one hand separation of church and state and on on the other hand, the religious liberty rights of groups to operate fully without government interference and, you know, what gets particularly dicey, i think, is many of the institutions you're talking about accept federal money. that's where these lines get very, very, very difficult to draw in a fair way that, you know, if you have a group that's taking federal money, taxpayer money on the one hand, that gives the government some
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obligation to be sure those orpgss are operating in a way that seems fair to all taxpayers. on the other hand, if they have a religiously affiliated kind of character and culture and identity, you know, that has weight as well. and i think that's one of the reasons why this debate is fairly dicey. host: the first amendment, congress should make no law prohibiting the free exercise thereoff. let's hear from roy, republican in richmond, virginia. good morning. caller: good morning. i've been listening to your show all morning and i've heard lots of people to talk about the extreme views of republicans but i haven't heard one person mention the extreme and radical views of our president or take justice ginsburg, for instance, who said she prefers the african constitution over our constitution because it is more in line with social justice. now, this country is not based on social justice which allows people to make all the rules and
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change the rules at their will. we are endowed by our creator which is a part of our religious freedom but people came to this country to escape religious persecution that had nothing to do with an individual being offended by mere words or by someone else's symbols. you have the right to get over your hurt feelings in this country and thank god we do and we have the right to disagree without being called a racist and i think most people know that this health care law is unconstitutional. it's just some people care and some people don't. >> ok. a lot of ground to cover there. thanks for that. sort of move back. so there's a clear link in the caller's conversation between sort of larger views, mentioned being able to speak freely in public without being sort of silenced and linked -- went straight to the health care law and i think our polling actually
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shows us that if you're talking about religious liberty or one of the things that our polling shows in conversations with religious liberty or perceived threats to religious liberty, most americans tie those things to much older themes like the removal of teacher led prayer in school. those kinds of older issues, the displaying of 10 commandments on public places, those are the kind of issues that do that. most americans aren't quite tying it to the current health care law. we had only about 6% of americans really citing that specifically when they talked about threats to religious liberty. host: you can see this pie chart created by the public religious institute. those who said they do believe religious liberty is threatened, here's how they see it as endangered. general government interference and religion, 20%. hostility towards christians and religion, 10% and it goes from
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there. including changing culture. guest: that's right. one of the things that's really important is to realize we're on the verge of becoming a minority protestant society and that's a real c change for american public life. you look back at the composition of the supreme court, for example, it has been long dominated by protestants, particularly main line protestants like episcopalians and presbyterians on the bench. now, we have zero protestants on the u.s. supreme court. that's a real c change for american public life and it reflects kind of greater changes that if you look back in the early 1970's, we were in upwards of 60 something percent, protestants in the country and we're now at 51%, you know, and it's going to be sort of dropping from there just because of increasing diversity in the country and i think that's also part of what's in the mix now is that religious liberty is not only just between protestants and catholics but it's now sort of between protestants, catholics, jews, muslims, hindus, buddhists, much more diverse society and the types of
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christianity that are represented are much more diverse than they have been in the past. that makes the conversation much more complicated. host: rod is in denver, colorado. democrats line. good morning. caller: good morning. i'm struck by listening to all these things in terms of how vague individual religious belief can be. what a religion can be. and i'm thinking of the mormons in the 1800's had polygamy as a basic tenet of their religion. and over time and i'm not sure to the supreme court rulings or whatever but they were ruled against and monogamy in this country is part of the law. so in that case, the law did rule against their beliefs and against that particular faith. and it was one of the major tenets. so to say that the law cannot
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regulate belief systems, it has very strong roots in our history that the law supersedes the religious beliefs. that is to say, you can change somebody's -- if somebody declares a religion that says i can do something that is illegal, the law takes precedence. so i'm -- i'm -- i find it very difficult when they're talking about going against their beliefs because the -- what a religion is, you can just define things and it will -- it will go against a grain of many people. so i think you have to decide whether, you know, the law is going to be supreme or whether your religious beliefs are going to be supreme. host: let's get a response from robert jones. guest: thank you for that. i mean, i think it's important to point out that it's certainly
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the case that the religious liberty, even as guaranteed in the first amendment of the constitution, is not absolute. i mean, the caller is absolutely right about this. there's plenty of cases, workplace regulations, other places where the law has sort of curtailed or limited religious liberty in certain context in certain situations. i mean, if you didn't have that, yeah, we would have very -- many varied marriage practices. we would have very different employment practices. you know, we -- i mean, and religion has supported things like slavery in the past, so if we didn't have laws superseding those sorts of things, that's right, i think it would be very sort of chaotic situation. so religious liberty is not absolute and i think it's very, very important. it's a bedrock principle but certainly not absolute and finding those limitations where the state has an interest in curbing religious liberty, it's very difficult. host: our caller brought up mormonism and this is a piece
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from politico recently. d.n.c. chief says mormonism is off-limits. representative debbie wasserman-schultz fired back on the orrin hatch's claim that democrats have attacked his religion in the fall election saying the claim was nonsense and the issue of religion was off-limits. guest: that's very interesting. one of the things that we'll see in the campaign is that it may be the case that the two candidates sort of stay away from religion, you know, obama had his own religion challenges in 2008 campaign with reverend wright in the very public falling out with his own pastor at his own church over some extreme comments that were made by reverend wright. and was also simultaneously fighting off new accusations that he was muslim at the same time. so he's had his own sort of religious difficulties, i think, and then romney certainly has. you know, we have, again, among evangelicals, half of evangelicals say they'd have a difficulty voting for a monday for president. that's kind of the bedrock in the republican party.
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what remains to be seen, however, is that after the citizens united ruling this year, we have the advent of the super pacs that have virtually unlimited money. very little accountability and what -- even if the two candidates sort of, you know, play by the rules and, you know, agree to kind of have it be off-limits, it's unclear to me whether the super pacs are going to abide by the same thing. host: one of our followers on twitter write in and asks if you think a christian scientist could be president. guest: romney's faith is a good one in which how much can the candidate connect it to themselves. how similar or different do you see the candidate's religion to your own? what we see in those categories that among americans who say, for example, that mitt romney's religion is very different from their own or for that matter that president barack obama's religion is very different from their own, their favorability of those figure are very, very low.
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there's a high correlation between how similar they see their religion and how -- and their favorability toward the candidate. so i think the trick would be for any minority religion that is not sort of well known to the american public is how well can the candidate sort of make the case that their religion is in a way at least analogous or can connect with the general in the american public. host: does the average american believe that mormonism is christianity? guest: the average american does believe that. nearly half of the evangelical voters do not believe that. again, 7 in 10 americans say that the mormon faith and the christian religion, virtually all mormons, by the way, say that the mormon faith is a christian religion. about 7 in 10 americans say that but only about half of the evangelicals say that so again, there's kind of this real, i think, challenge among particularly in the primary season for mitt romney among evangelicals.
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host: let's hear from sandy, republican in ohio. welcome. caller: no, i'm a democrat. host: i'm sorry, sandy. caller: that's quite all right. i have a really quick question for the gentleman. i'm a little confused about religion and the 2012 campaign. especially when it comes to mitt romney and paul ryan. paul ryan's budget which he just put out and is very proud of it is cutting all programs for the poor. now, how can you -- and paul ryan claims to be a christian. how can you be a christian and a politician and yet take from the poor and give to the rich. i'm totally confused about religion and politics in the 2012 campaign. can you explain that, please? guest: thanks for the call. the caller is pointing out something that's indicative, i think, of going back to "the new york times" piece here of the divisions between the parties on
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religion that, you know, what we have often is republicans, you know, quoting one part of the bible and democrats quoting another part of the bible to sort of justify and we do see that there has been some criticism by sort of middle and left leaning religious groups over the ryan budget for precisely these reasons but it -- it has the effect, i think, of undercutting some programs or underfunding or defunding programs for the poor that i think many people sort of sit on the left take to be an important bedrock religious principle. but again, i think the challenge will be for romney and ryan and for romney to sort of connect that up with how does that fit with his general sense of religiousity and his own values? he'll be pressed on that and how convincing is his answer on that question. host: robert jones, founder of the public religious institute. mary asks on twitter whether your group is a right-wing
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group. why don't you tell us about that as we show the web site. that web site is publicreligion.org. guest: fair question. we're not affiliated with any particular religious groups despite the name, religion. so the word religion in the title really refers to the fact that we study the rule of religion in the american public life. mostly through public opinion polling. we do about 20 polls a year on religion in american public life. host: from the web site, it says our mission to help journalists, opinion leaders, scholars, clergy and the general public to understand the role of religion in american public life by conducting high quality, public opinion surveys and qualitative research. mobile, alabama, michael, republican. good morning. caller: good morning. host: hi. caller: i'd like to say to y'all that jesus said that it's the full duty of man to keep the commandments of god. and one of the most important commandments is the fourth
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commandment. and it's to keep the true sabbath day which is the seventh day of the week and that's where people have been deceived and that's why jesus said many would be received and in vain do they worship me. you have to keep the true sabbath day and you have to mimic jesus and we've been taughted by the roman catholics to keep the false sabbath. host: let me ask you this. how important is religion when you go to vote? do you vote and do you vote for candidates whose religiousness you connect with? caller: no, ma'am. i believe in jesus christ and jesus said be ye not of this world so for if you are of this world, you do not love me. host: you do not vote? caller: no, ma'am, i put my faith in the lord and that's what everybody that practices religion should do and they should quit voting and let the world have it. host: ok. guest: i appreciate the comment. what's interesting about, i think, that comment is it
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actually reflects a view that was much more prominent among evangelical christians in the country in the 1960's than it is today. so, for example, if you look back at reverend jerry falwell, a real leader of the mobilization of the christian right in the 1980's, you go back to the 1960's, he declined to be activist in the vietnam movement for exactly the reasons the caller cites, you know, we shouldn't be of this world and shouldn't be in the world. we have our own mission over here. this is specifically religious. and he very publicly said i'm going to confine my role to preaching the gospel, period, that's it. by the 1980's, falwell had shifted very much and he had shifted from preaching the gospel to famously saying we're going to get them saved, get them baptized and registered to vote. that mobilization so the caller is representing an older view in the evangelical world that all is tainted. we should let it go. we'll do our own thing here and kind of be, you know, faithfully religious but not get involved
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in politics. today, i think that's not the dominant view particularly among evangelical christians that the politicalization and political action movement in the 1980 as and the christian right movement is still with us but not nearly as strong as it was in the 1980's and 1990's. host: which candidate so far has the potential to mobilize and activate a religious group behind him? guest: talk about the primary first. one of the challenges, the protestants make the biggest block in the republican primaries certainly and with many states making up as much as 6 in 10 or more primary voters and what's interesting in the debate is that romney has consistently run about seven to 10 points behind where he's run in the kind of state overall primaries among ivan jaevangeli. there's been a 10 point drag. rick santorum has been the favorite candidate.
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there's an irony here, rick santorum the catholic candidate. i wrote a piece calling him the evangelicals catholics for the campaign. they had a closed door meeting when it looked like romney was moving ahead saying what are we going to do about this? they came out and unanimously endorsed rick santorum. what's interesting in this debate, i think, is it barely moved the needle and it didn't really make a lot of difference and we still see romney sort of running out ahead. i think that's a kind of interesting commentary on the real power of kind of mobilized evangelicals of the christian right in the 2012 election not nearly as we've seen in the 1980's or 1990. host: wayne joins us from district heights, maryland, democratic line. good morning. caller: good morning. give me one minute please. the last gentleman talked about jesus christ was right on the money to a very extent. say that's old, jesus christ is
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never old. if the whole world would adhere to that, that would be a better place to live in. me being a 68-year-old african-american when i hear about christianity in united states, it scares me. from slavery, religion, race to all the way when george bush called -- somebody said he was called from god to go out there and bomb the iraqi people, barack obama droning the bejesus of people out there and in pakistan but everybody is being done by people who call themselves christians. so when i hear conversations like this and i'm looking at the history of so-called christians in america or american christians, i'm going to tell you, i can understand why most people in the world don't trust americans who say they're christians when you take a look at the atrocities and the evilness and the crazy that is done by our political leaders who stand and claim to the world to be christians, jesus christ is the founder of the christian
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religion and his whole conversation was all about loving everybody. even loving your enemies who love you. we got these people talking about killing and bombing and going to war! see? so to me, it's all a bunch of -- it's crazy and it scares me to hear any politician, says he's a christian and the preacher carry a gun. go preach on sunday and then go out and encourage the people not to love each other in this nation. i mean, so to hear this is good. it's good politics. it's good entertainment but really, it's no basis to it when you really talk about christianity because christianity means to be christlike. and to be christlike, you must study the life of jesus christ and when you do that, you will find a whole different philosophy, ideology and way of living than what we see under the barrel of christianity in america today. thank you. guest: thank you. i want to clarify one thing, when i said it was old, what i meant by that is that the style of public engagement of saying we're really not going to be involved in politics and i'm particularly talking about the
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white evangelical protestant community here, not the african-american protestant community that has a longer history of religious engagement, pretty steady. it was apolitical in the 1960's and before from the scopes trial up to the 1960's was fairly apolitical and fairly silent on the national political scene and so what i meant is there was new and old was really that style of political engagement, not really the religious content of the caller's speech. second thing, i think, that the caller points is exactly right and part of the challenge here is that there are very different interpretations of what, you know, christianity requires, what brand of christianity. we have 160 denominations that sociologists even track in the country and there's a very wide range here. even among people who, i think, believe or agree on theological tenets when you actually take them to politics, i actually wrote a piece on this, that
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white evangelical protestants and african-american protestants if you ask them about literal beliefs in the bible, how often they attend church and how often they pray, those kinds of things are very, very consistent between those two communities and they take them in very different political directions. that's one of the real challenges in the country, you can't just say well, this is a christian style of politics. there are many different interpretations of what a christian style of politics looks like. host: robert jones is c.e.o. and founder of the public religion institute, nonpartisan, nonprofit research and education organization that looks at the intersection of religion, values and public life. he has a piece in this book the book is "religion and the american presidency" and he contributed to this along with daniel cox who co-wroet a piece called "president barack obama and his faith." what's the gist of your story in here? guest: i've alluded to it before. obama arrived on the scene in the post bush era where democrats had been painted to be
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anti-religious. that stuck in a lot of ways, the kind of values voters campaigned in 2004 and there was some pushback to it, taking a black eye on religion in that campaign. and barack obama arrived on the scene and if you look through the campaign, he was very articulate about weaving together his own religious story, his own politics and how those two things went together, very elegant in doing that and broke the mold because he was able to comfortably use religious language and connecting it to his own set of policies in a a way, i think, that was surprising. it wasn't what people expected from a democratic presidential candidate in the campaign. so i think that's the sort of gist of the article, kind of moving the campaign. i think we've heard a little bit less from president obama than we heard from candidate obama on religion and that's, i think, one place where, i think, his struggles in the campaign with reverend wright over americans
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wrongly believing he's muslim, i think, have sort of had -- continued to have legs, i think, because we haven't heard as much as many thought we might from president obama once he's been in office. host: neil joins us from fort lauderdale, florida. independent caller. good morning. caller: good morning. i'm not an independent predicated of what's going on, i fancy myself a political atheist and religious agnostic. host: we don't have a line for that, so -- caller: you should have one. my comment is this, our foundation was in some degree predicated on a jihad, in the form of the holy crusades when in the name of christ, ok, we would go and they would go rather to the middle east and kill muslims in the name of our lord. sadly today, i think we have our own domestic jihadists. i will identify one religious group which i found to be very
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disconcerting in terms of their practice and that is the mormon who's are baptizing jews. they have gone down and picked out the names of jewish people who are passed on and they're baptizing them. now, what kind of fanaticism is that? between the evangelists, the southern baptists and mormons and other factions it's gotten really out of hand. and in conclusion, perhaps a note, when you think of the 10 commandments i have my own. and that is the 11th commandment and that is thou should make someone laugh and smile every day. if you practice that 11th commandment, you cannot in any way break the other 10 so for what it's worth, happy easter and happy passover. have a good day. guest: all right. this has certainly been a theme that has caused some controversy among mormons. for the record, the mormon church has sort of officially
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stopped this practice of sort of mass baptizing jews. it's a belief that if one sort of does this in the current context that it gives one in the after life another opportunity to convert to mormonism so there is a kind of theological background behind it but nonetheless, the mormon church has officially stopped the practice. that doesn't mean there aren't still individuals doing it but the mormon church officially does not endorse the practice. host: here's a story from cbs news. mormons apologize for baptizing of dead jews and talks about a holocaust survivor, jewish rights activist and he was very upset because his parents were baptized after they died. it's a controversial ritual that mormons believe allows deceased people a way to the after life but offends members of many other religions and this was the -- rather, the mormon church was apologizing to this family of jewish rights advocate simon
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wiesenthal after his parents were baptized after death. let's go to mark, democratic caller in erie, pennsylvania. caller: i wish the evangelicals would go to the old style and get out of politics. i think they're just heaping dung at the obama administration and causing a controversy that doesn't really exist. there is no war on religion as programmed in the religious dictatorship preventing the religious people from imposing their views on others. for instance, if you don't want to use contraception, don't use contraception. there's no such thing as a lutheran heart surgery. heart surgery is heart surgery. catholic heart surgery. catholic hospitals are mixed into other businesses. guest: yeah. well, one thing that this brings to mind, there has been some pushback in the evangelical community of the overpoliticalization of the faith, this comes from younger
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evangelicals who grew up with the height of the christian right of the politicalization of christianity and a whole movement among younger evangelicals to take a step back from the partisan table and say let's re-evaluate here about what we're doing, are we really endorsing a political party, for a set of values that we might want to push into the public square no matter which party is behind it or should we step back all together and take sabbaticals as the word has been used, take a sabbatical from politics for a little while to re-evaluate where we are. there have been some discussion precisely along those lines. host: dr. robert jones is founder of the political religious institute. you can see polls and a dialogue and discussions about how religion figures in the public life and intersects with american values on their web site. thank you so much for being here this morning. guest: thank you, enjoyed it. host: coming up tomorrow on "washington journal" our guests
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include dr. john santa, director of the health ratings center looking at doctors pushing back against medical tests and center for public integrity executive director looking at all 50 states and how they rank in terms of things like campaign finance and lobbying disclosure. and talk to damian paletta "wall street journal" financial reporter. that's all for today. thanks for being with us. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012]

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