>> this morning the supreme court decisions for this term including the decisions dealing with the affordable care to act in the hours on emigration law. then we talk about the egyptian president's election and what it means for the egyptian people and u.s.-egypt relations and later, a conversation with a washington post columnist. "washington journal" is next. ♪ good morning a on this memorial day weekend with ceremonies in the nation's capital and those around the country. president obama will pay tribute tomorrow at arlington national cemetery. the senate is in recess for a

holiday weekend and a house is back midweek for votes. it is sunday, may 27. will take a look back and look ahead at the class of 2012 and what to expect in this economic climate. our phone lines are open and the numbers are on your screen. you can always join the conversation on line let's begin with the lead story this morning on the front page of " the new york times" and" washington post."

this is a photograph inside " the new york times." many children were among those who were killed. these are the bodies and the confirmation from the united nations. we want to continue with your calls on the issue of the future of the class of 2012. we will also share some commencement speeches we have been covering the last couple of weeks and we will feature them to more on the cspan networks and many have been posted at c-

span.org. begin with a story from inside the business section of "the washington post." the job market is still tight and millions of people remain unemployed and graduates whether they are embarking on a career from high school, college, or midlife are entering the work world where salaries have not rebounded since the recession

began in 2007-2008. general david petraeus is among those delivering a commencement address and this is from dickinson college in pennsylvania. [video clip] >> i was the newly appointed commander in iraq five years ago overseeing forces and implementing the most important surge, the surge of ideas on the conduct of counterinsurgency operations. it was an expert jury in a difficult period. well over 200 and attacks a day at the height of the violence. during that time, i occasionally true strength by recalling general grandpa's words after the first bloody day in the battle of shiloh. pierre was sitting in the rain under a tree late that night, his army having merely been driven into the tennessee river, is man having sustained terrible losses to a fierce confederate attack. his most trusted comrade,

general sherman, appeared out of the dark and sat down next to him in the rain. sherman could hear the cries of the wounded all round them and he could sense grandpa's mood. let a few minutes passed before saying a word and finally he spoke --"we have had the devil's own day, haven't we? " grant replied,"yep, let them tomorrow, though. " relentless and determined, our soldiers and body those qualities as well as initiative and courage during the tough, long days of the search. the qualities continue to be their home market as we carry out further difficult missions against resilience enemies and the most challenging of conditions. host: as of the comments of the cia director david petraeus. ""the detroit "posted this

story. our question is what is the future economic and otherwise for the class of 2012? we will begin with brentwood, california, republican line, good morning. caller: good morning, i think our young girl friends and neighbors are looking at tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt and wait to many of them are unsellable from doing

studies. while those to go to trade school like plumbers or electricians are not qualified for the student loan break that the president is pushing, they are looking up at paying upwards of 6% on their student loans even though they are looking at much better prospect of getting employed. our youth will have trouble finding housing as everybody knows and will have to live in their parents' basement until they are 40. there are no jobs out there. their retirements are shot longer-term social. security will not be there for them, medicare will not be there for them. the president will not even say the word. the student loan thing is hung up in the democratic senate over how it will be paid for with harry reid's democrats trying to raise taxes. host: thanks for the call perry

the deadline for the student loan interest rate hike is july 1. the senate will likely take up again when they return after the memorial day recess. the senate is out this week in the house returns on wednesday. cornelius is on the fund from akron, ohio -- what is the political outlook for the class of 2012? caller: good morning. i am very optimistic. i'm a student. i am 43 years old. i work full time and go to school full-time. i waited and looked for a job. i never went on unemployment. it depends how aggressive the bar. you have to be aggressive and the job market and stay positive. you cannot look down and say the economy is bad. the economy is doing fine. people are doing better than what they are saying.

you have to stay positive. there are many jobs that americans are not qualified or they are giving up. host: you can join the conversation on our twitter page -- we are asking you about the future of the graduating class of 2012. the president addressed the air force academy and we will hear from him in a moment. the vice president was at west point yesterday and earlier this month, mitt romney had this to say to the class of 2012. [video clip] >> you and to a world with civilizations and economies that are far from equal. harvard university historian david landis delivered his lifespan -- lifelong study to

why some civilizations rise and why others falter. his conclusion was best -- culture makes all the difference. not natural resources, not geography, but what people believe and what they value. central to american's rise to global leadership is our judeo- christian traditions with the goodness and possibilities of every human life. the american culture promotes personal responsibility, the dignity of work, the value of education, the merit of service, devotion to a purpose > self, and that the foundation, the pre-eminence of family. the power of these values, this culture, is evidenced by recent brookings institution study that senator rick santorum brought to my attention for those who graduate from high school, get a job, and mary before they have

their first child, the probability they will be port is 2%. if those things are absent, 76% will be poor. culture, what you believe, what you value, how you live matters. host: mitt romney at liberty university in lynchburg, virginia. he is sitting down with "time magazine" talking about cultural issues and the economy. in the interview he was asked about the economy and the set i cannot possibly predict what the unemployment will be at the end of one year. over a period of four years by virtue of the policies we put in place, we will get unemployment down to 6% and perhaps a little lower. back to your calls -- the future of the class of 2012. from dallas, texas, good morning. caller: good morning, i think

the future is bright for the graduates. this is an opportunity for them to think outside the box. i think it entrepreneurs will be there is a hallmark of our time. getting a job and being hired by a corporation instead of creating a job and making a better life for themselves, it is a double bill situation but the negativity is too high. my advice to the 2012 graduates is to be positive, the entrepreneurial, make a job in case you don't find one. think of something you can do and be creative. good things will happen to these graduates. host: where are you from originally? caller: i am from nigeria. host: how long have you been in

united states? caller: about 35 years. host: why did you come here? caller: for the opportunity. the american portrayed by voice of america was fascinating. host: what do you do today? caller: i would rather not say. life is good, thank you. host: that is one of our viewers saying the class of 2012 should realize that our economy is shaky because of the same policies that mitt romney will double down on as the president. next is linda from bloomfield, conn.. caller: good morning, i am elated that the opportunity that these young people have. it is not just young people but people who are changing careers and deciding to take the next step of whether being an entrepreneur or whether it be switching careers into things

they have gets and hobbies and trying to find new ways to put ideas and policies together and implement them to be applicable to more aspects of society. whether it be in the new affordable housing, whether it be in the more creative health care field, whether it be the new technologies that have emerged for the commercialization of military items that are now becoming available for products and to be more globally minded. many people have come here in the past to be educated. now people are staying where they are because we have great universities and grade schools and they have established campuses all over the world. working with large alumni associations, working with networking, within communities

for the local causes that have to be handled, both on a humanitarian side, a business side, and a spiritual side, the missions that have been out there with churches and synagogues or even mosques all over the world are now finding practical ways to let younger people solve some of the world problems. host: thank you for the call. we welcome your calls and you can send us an e-mail -- or you can join us on facebook. this is from our twitter page -- huffington post posted this story --

this is my honest message for the class of 2012. that piece of paper you just picked up does not matter and neither does your matter--- made a dozen major order gpa -- the only thing that matters from here on out is your work. can you find the job you're looking for? what is the future for the class of 2012? from charlotte, north calif. -- north carolina, democrats line, good morning. caller: good morning, no matter who is in office, the republicans or democrats, it will be up to the graduates to work as hard as they can to try

to find what they can. they cannot make the economy get better and the democrats are trying all i can. if mitt romney gets in, the economy will be stagnated. it will be uncomfortable to those graduates. igraduates in 2012. . it is up to them to go out and look for a job as hard as they can. host: thanks for the call. this is from harter pager -- -- our twitter page -- during the commencement season, the president delivered his remarks before the air force

graduating class of 2012 in colorado springs and yesterday, vice president joe biden was at west point with his message to the class of 2012. the story is inside "the washington post." next is atlantic, good morning, democrats line. caller: yes, i would like to say that i have a niece that has graduated from college in the medical field. she has a job offer. she just graduated in early may. she did volunteer work for

about one year or two and she now has a good job. i think things are looking up. any time you were in a bad economy, it will not skyrocket all of a seven. will take time and she has a loan but it is at the low interest level that the president and the democrats have fought for. she will be able to pay back. nothing comes free. host: thanks for the call. if you are listening on cspan radio or just tuning in, we're talking about the class of 2012 on this memorial day weekend and what is the future for those graduating this year. the president delivered his commencement address as he rotated between the military academies this past wednesday. he delivered remarks at the air force academy in colorado springs. [video clip] >> four years ago, you arrive here at this time of

extraordinary challenge for our nation. our forces were engaged in two wars. al-qaeda had attacked as a 9/11, was entrenched in their safe havens, many of our alliances were strained and our standing in the world had suffered. our economy was on the worst recession of the great depression. around the world and here at home, there were those that questioned whether the united states still had the capacity for goal leadership. -- global leadership. today's step forward into another world. you are the first class in nine years that will graduate in two world where there are no americans fighting in iraq. [applause] for the first time in your lives and thanks to air force

personnel who did their part, osama bin laden is no longer a threat to our country. [applause] we put al qaeda on the path to defeat and you are the first graduates since 9/11 who can clearly see how we will end the war in afghanistan. what does all this mean? when you came here four years ago, there were some 180,000 american troops in iraq and afghanistan. we have now cut that number by. more than by half. more of our troops will come home while achieving the objective that led us to war in the first lesson that is defeating al-qaeda and denying them hit safe haven. we're not just sending these wars, we're doing so in a way that makes us safer and stronger.

host: the president addressing the air force academy this past wednesday in colorado springs. this is a piece from " the new york times."

back to your calls and the future of the class of 2012. winston-salem, n.c., and a pan of line, good morning. caller: for the graduates of 2012, the prospects will be dim and they will be for quite awhile. i cannot speak from experience but if you graduate in something , your opportunity for employment pay will be not as good as you expected to be. host: how old are you? caller: i am 25. host: when did you graduate? caller: i graduated at 21 but

went back and i'm getting a master's degree. i was studying humanities but if you study something like engineering, you do quite well. i have a few friends who are doing quite well. even friends who are getting -- are struggling. your support -- if you are not studying, your prospects are shot. host: when you finish your masters? caller: hopefully this coming year. host: this is from our facebook page --

you can join the conversation on facebook. here is another point of view from our twitter page -- the story from "the detroit news"-- next is gary from new york city, good morning. caller: good morning and thank you cspan for taking my call. just like in the 1960's and 1970's when the youth was radicalized by the vietnam war and the draft, today's youth will be radicalized by the american economy and job market going belly up. we already saw hence of this in the occupy movement. it was treasonous to handle our sovereignty in industrial and

manufacturing to china. here we have the world's biggest communist country deciding the fate of america and the citizens of our country. this madness have to be reversed. thank you very much, cspan. host: next is south carolina, republican . caller: the brother of the new york had just right. a high 5 to that last got. my comment on the education is that if they can go for a master's and have the money to do that, do that. other than that, they will face tough times. i was big just a moment, i have a comment to anybody that is getting out -- into this economy out of college and anybody else - first of all, the

president came in promoting change and right away he hired eric holder as attorney-general. know, hethat don't held a bill clinton get those pardons in 2000. mark rich still money for the united states and lived in switzerland and skipped out and his most agrees is part and was a man who was in jail and never getting out, a cocaine distributor, big time, and was guilty of having peoplekilled.

host: we will move on and go back to the question which is the future of the class of 2012. from inside, "the washington post."

in " the new york times"magazine -- wisconsin politics came up and our sunday "newsmakers"program with the debbie wasserman schultz. we asked her about the wisconsin recall. [video clip] >> should be dnc have gotten more involved in wisconsin? >> there is no way that we were ever going to be able to counter the mass of efforts that was dropped into wisconsin by republican special interests. they have tens of millions of dollars that have been spending. the fact that scott walker is having to defend, and the middle of this term, shows that with over 1 million signatures of

wisconsin voters who really disturbed by the direction he was taking the stake and so disturbed that they said we have to have another election -- that tells you something about how extreme scott walker has been when it comes to the policies as it relates to workers in his state but also the takeover by the republican party by the tea party. that is why they bring all the extremists into the state and wide as millions of dollars are being funneled in. we have deployed the entire weight of our considerable grass-roots operation. we have put more than to one rickety thousand dollars into the race already. i'm going to the state on tuesday to do a fund-raiser for mayor barrett. we are telling them that this is the first important national election. is the june 5 election to recall governor scott walker.

it is our considerable grass- roots donor base and we know we will give them an infusion as a result of that effort. we expect over the next weekend at half that we will have surrogates' come in and our sophisticated get-out-the-vote operation will help turn out voters in support of mayor barrett in what will be an understandable a close election. what we are trying to do is elect someone to replace a sitting governor in the middle of their term. host: congresswoman debbie wasserman schultz, the chair of the democratic national committee and she is our guest following "washington journal." that is at 10:00 a.m. eastern time. "the weekly standard"on wisconsin --

back to your calls and comments about the future for the class of 2012. redeye chicago has put this into perspective -- that website as a breakdown of the average salary for the class of 2012. gaithersburg, maryland, and democrats line, good morning. caller: my feeling for the future of the graduates of 2012

is that it will be a struggle for them to get a job. i believe employment is there. four years ago, we were losing 750,000 jobs per month. that is what the president had inherited and today, we are not losing that much. we're gaining somewhere around aroundd and $75,000 -- 175,000 per month. it is getting better. i believe the economy has been far -- would be far better if there was more, -- compromise in congress. if they would compromise with the economy and come to terms, i think the potential for the future of 2012 would be even better. i believe very strongly that the unemployment would be far less than what it is.

this nation was built on compromise. compromise is very important. the president i believe is doing a good job to move the economy for which it is. unemployment has to decrease and there are jobs out there. we just need more innovative ways to accomplish that. host: thank you for the call. on our facebook page -- our next caller is from dallas, texas, independent line, good morning. caller: hiring someone is the last thing a businessman wants to do. it is a binding contract much like getting married. for instance, there's health care involved, a retirement

plan, workmen's compensation, unemployment compensation insurance, paid sick leave, paid vacation, time off for child raising. if your work force does not reflect racial makeup of the area, the civil-rights commission will come at you. with the diverse population that we have, you end up with a polyglot of racism and religion any of which will pursue you at any time not to mention sexual harassment. then they decide to join a union and now you have union thuggery to contend with. it is cheaper to spend $100,000 on a technology upgrade them to hire so much as one person and you avoid all of the above. thank you. host: this is from " the new york times" about the postal

service. there is this from our twitter page -- from philadelphia, good morning

to you. caller:hi. i graduated in 2008. host: was your degree index criminal-justice caller:. host: are you working in your field today? caller:no, that is the point i was calling about. i graduated in 2008 and it is hard to find a job. my friends who also have different degrees still cannot get a job. host: why has it been so hard in your profession? caller: why? host: for you, personally. caller: there are not that many jobs out there. like, i try to look for a job and there's nothing out there.

host: what is your outlook for you personally? how do you feel about the future? caller: um, i'm going into the coast guard. hopefully, you knowe, the military. host: thank you for the call. linda is joining us from norris, tennessee, good morning. caller: i have five grandchildren in college and two of them got a pell grant and the president doubled the amount of money in pell grants. it might be hopeful for them to apply to one that they did not qualify. to thank don't forget the president for all the pell grants and how the money is

given to the black colleges. i tell my grandchildren do not take the loan from this government. i will sell the kit made before i will let you be an indentured servant to this president. host: thanks for the call. let's go to doracon, north carolina, republican line. caller: yes, i feel sorry for the graduate of 2008. she kind of sounded a little vacant. i don't know how she does in interviews but i can understand why she has been out of work for four years. the graduates of 2012 need to look at the graduates of 2008 and learn from them. the future that to have is the future that you make.

if you want to live in the future were you don't have a job, where you pay more for gas than you should come where you have regulations and you cannot open a business or start a business you want because the government will come after you, if you want to have drones in the sky looking at you and what you do when you are at home, then vote for the democrats because that is exactly what they want to do. if you want to constantly be afraid to get on any public transportation because you don't want to be sexually assaulted by people who work for the government, both for obama. and the democrats. if you want freedom and you want to make your own way and you want to have something substantial for yourself, then do with the kids did in the 1970's when there was an election between jimmy carter

and ronald reagan. they made the right choice. host: thanks for the call. that election was in 1980. we're asking about the future for the class of 2012. live coverage is getting under way to mark a memorial day monday here in washington, d.c. and around the country would ceremonies including at arlington national cemetery where the president will deliver remarks, traditional remarks by the commander in chief and that gets under way at about 10:50 eastern time on monday. then the president will travel to the vietnam veterans memorial and he will be joined by a vice president joe biden. live coverage will be at 1:00 p.m. eastern. we want to bring this story to your attention -- the history of this holiday weekend, the birthplace of memorial day, go from the n.y. times."

the president talked about all this in his weekly address. here is more from president obama. [video clip] >> our men and women in uniform took an oath to protect our country all costs.

as members of the funds molitor the world has ever known, they have held up that old with dignity and courage. as president, i have no higher honor than serving as their commander in chief. with the honor comes as some responsibility, one that gets driven home every time i sign a condolence letter or meet a family member whose life has been turned upside down. no words can never bring back a loved one who has been lost. no ceremony can do justice to their memory. no honor will ever fill their absence. on memorial day, we come together as americans to let these families and veterans know they're not alone. we give thanks to those who sacrificed everything so that we could be free and we commit ourselves to upholding the ideals for which so many patriots have fought and died. thank you, god bless you, have a wonderful weekend. host: those of the comments from the president in his weekly address. mitt romney will be in san diego

and joined by senator john mccain to commemorate memorial day and live coverage of the president and vice president to marlon you can check on -- check out our website c-span.org. there is a tradition around washington, d.c.. you see a lot of motorcycles, all part of rolling thunder which began as a military operation in the vietnam war and now is being used to pay tribute to those who suffer the ultimate prize in vietnam and all veterans in our nation's capital. john is on the telephone to get perspective is ben wolfgang who has a story in "the new york times." give us the history of rolling thunder and why this has become a memorial day tradition. guest: anybody who has lived in d.c. for a couple of years are certainly for the 25 years this has been going on realizes what a large event this has become

very began in the 1980's, 1987 was the first year, and essentially the impetus for it was for vietnam veterans who were pushing some legislative causes. one that we keep the department of defense from declaring servicemen and women dead before there was concrete evidence. they're pushing this legislation there not having a lot of luck with it. there are not getting the attention they were looking for on capitol hill. one day, there were hanging around on the national mall and they decided what can we do to this -- draw more attention to our cause? we thought they'd -- they thought they would use this as activism. there were fewer than 1000 motorcycles that first year in 1987 and here we are 25 years later, and they will have more than 1 million. it has certainly grown far more than their wildest imagination. host: with a generation or two

since the vietnam war has ended, the issue of pows continues to come up every memorial day among this group. guest: absolutely, that is one of their key issues and that is the cornerstone of the concern over the pow-mia issue. their 83,000 servicemen and women still classified as missing by the department of defense perr there are thousands more from the korean war and vietnam. we still have one known pows being held in afghanistan. this is an issue that is very closely tied with the vietnam era and a lot of rolling thunder members and vietnam veterans who are concerned about their colleagues in vietnam possibly still being held or still missing. it is still something very

important today. host: explain the operation of rolling thunder during the vietnam war which gave the name to this memorial day tradition in washington, d.c.. guest: i talked to the president of rolling thunder, d.c., and i brought that up but i asked him to tell me about the operation of rolling thunder and why you guys decided to name the rally after that. he said that as the biggest misconception about this rally included he said the reason we picked the name rolling thunder is when we were hanging out on the national mall, back in the mid-1980s planning this rally, he said the godfather of rolling thunder quipped that when flags came across memorial bridge, it would sound like thunder. he said that was the impetus for

naming it rolling thunder and not the operation in north vietnam. i had kind of a sound that's where it came from until i got a chance to talk to these guys. calle host: many of the vietnam vets are into their mid 50's at mid 60's. who will take over this tradition? guest: the rolling thunder chapters across the country are very concerned about this. one thing that impressed me in speaking to members, there are a lot of iraq and afghanistan war veterans associated with a rolling thunder. there are a lot of family members and grandchildren of korean and vietnam war members associated with rolling thunder. some of our local rolling

thunder members in maryland and virginia admit junior members. there are certainly a lot of young people involved. they tried to drive on that you will have to be a motorcycle rider and you don't have to be a veteran. if you are concerned about the issues like the pow-mia issue or you want to do something nice for those who pay the price for this country, join rolling thunder because they do more than just a motorcycle rally every weekend. they are involved with -- every memorial day weekend they are involved with many causes. they're looking to pass this on to younger veterans and their families. host: in talking to these participants, what did you take away in your conversation with them? what is motivating them to do this every year? guest: i thank the biggest motivating factor for them is how much work remains to be done. they have made a lot of progress

in terms of legislative priorities when a service man or woman can be declared dead. they have made progress on that and got and other legislation enacted but they still have a lot of work to do. there's only one known pow right now but in their minds, one is too many. as long as he is being held there, there'll advocate for the u.s. to do all they can to bring him home. they have a number of other legislative priorities they are pushing now. they are very involved with seeking better health care for veterans, better housing for their families, they are pushing legislation right now for more recognition, in national recognition for blue star and goldstar moms. in their minds, they don't plan on going anywhere. host: there is an in-depth poll

-- peace in " the new york times." you can see what it looks like a long memorial bridge as they arrive here in our nation's capital every memorial day weekend and will have live coverage later in this program to show you how the preparations are today. thank you very much for being with us. guest: thanks a lot. host: you are watching "washington journal.' coming up next is a discussion of the supreme court and there is significant decisions as they wrap up their term and the elections in egypt. , what it means for the egyptian people and our relations in that part of the world. we will have an expert from the region. we're back in just a moment

>> i want people to get a better sense of understanding from the book about what she was like. there have been books written and most of that has been written by people who have talked to friends and friends and friends and i really don't have the information themselves. i happened to be there and i knew her. >> from late 1960 through 1964, the secret service agent served on the protective detail to first lady jacqueline kennedy. >> there is no salacious information, it is just what happened and what she was like in the things she likes to do and how humor she was at times and how athletic to was at times and how intelligent she was. she was also rambunctious and tried to put me to the past -- test, many many times and i gave my best >> to meet >> more tonight at 8:00 on c-span 's"q &a." >> yeehaw.

welcome to the old cowtown museum in wichita, kansas. >> we are waking up the city for 22 years and we think we have a heck of a start. we will talk today about the problem we're having in the city with taxicabs. hang on for that if you will. >> june 2 and 3, book-tv and american history to be exported heritage and literary culture of wichita, kan.. >> is a modest looking paper- wrapped binding but what it contends is is an alphabetical list of the members of the senate and house of representatives is done in 1831. i believe this was issued only for the members immediate use only. they're not supposed to loan this out because, as you can see, it would tell you exactly

where everybody lives. >> watch for book-tv and american history tv in wichita on june 2 and 3 on c-span 2 and 3. guest: "washington journal" continues. host: adam liptec is following the supreme court. let's talk about a decision this past week and some of the pending decisions. there's the issue of double jeopardy. guest: we had a decision on thursday where the court 6-3 ruled that an arkansas man accused of murder could re-tried even though at his first trial, the jury and have rejected the most serious charges against him. he was accused of killing a 1- year-old boy, knocking him into a mattress. the jury looked at four

different charges, the very serious charge of capital murder, first-degree murder, and lesser charges like manslaughter. the jury decides he is not guilty of the first two things that we cannot come to a decision on the lesser charges. the judge declares a mistrial. there is no formal adjudication of the more serious charges but it is clear the jury has decided he was not guilty of the two more serious charges. the question for the court was, can he be re-tried? success story, the corps says yes he can because there had not been a form --6-3, the court decides yes he can. the three dissenters said that as a perversion of what double jeopardy is meant to protect which is once you have been acquitted, you cannot be re- tried. host: you feature this in a story in " the new york times."

guest: they explain to the judge where they are and go back for half an hour and a chief justice as may be in the meantime, they will change their minds. all we know is that they were deadlocked and there was a mistrial. this is an illustration of an ideological split or the more conservative justices tend to be tougher in criminal cases on criminal defendants, the more liberal ones, more lenient. host: will get to your phone calls in just a moment and you could join the conversation on our twitter page. you can send us an e-mail. we're talking about this term of the u.s. supreme court and there is significant cases. will focus on all the cases plus -- not including the health care case. guesthere was the funding of

ballot measures -- they have done a lot this term. guest: the court has several first amendment cases this term. that is an interesting one involving when union members can be compelled to participate in the political activities of the unions. right? host: that's the one, paying the union dues. guest: there is an interesting tension there. the citizens united case makes it easy for corporations to engage in political activities. it does not give shareholders much right to opt out of those kind of political activities. the court tends to treat humans differently they say union members cannot be compelled to fund political activities of their unions. this case is a very incremental

cxase.of a k streethe do you have to send out a separate notice to union members? i don't think any earthshaking rule cannot invest the likely outcome in these human cases is that the core is protective of union members and does not believe union members should be forced to pay union dues to engage in any kind of political speech through their union that they don't approve of. host: there is the issue of decency and the u.s. constitution -- what will the supreme court decided this case? guest: that is one of the two major cases to be decided this is important about whether the government can regulate broadcast television. and a way that it does not regulate any other medium. on the few broadcast stations

that are left, you don't know which ones they are, the fcc has indecency rules so that even relatively mild cursing or relatively mild partial nudity, a celebrity swearing on awards show, or a partially nude rear view of a woman on the old cop show "nypd blue" has subjected stations to enormous fines. the question is when broadcast tv is not the only game in town, should the government be allowed to regulate them and imposed a harsh fines. the court is interested in that issue and within broadcast television, it is hard to know what the fcc will do. list" is in question host:: let's go back to

the issue of double jeopardy. guest: and the majority, but four conservative justices, john roberts, justice alito, justice thomas, and justice scalia for joining four swing justices and one of the more liberal justices, stephen briar. host: with two relatively new member is, have the dynamics of the court changed from your observations? guest: the two newest justices appointed by president obama, elena kagan and sonia sotomayor, have brought some liveliness and vigor and aggressive questioning to the court and two free members. -- female members.

you noticed the man or on one side and the women were on another. that is only the third time this has happened on gender lines rather than political lines. those two appointments are absolutely not surprising in political terms.

caller: good morning to you, michael. i'm wondering -- on wall street and i was very involved with concentrating on citizens united and i'm curious, is there any movement towards returning it because if you listen to the "washington journal" most of the callers' comments are very indicative of political ads.

it would be nice to get back to people thinking for themselves. guest: just to remind you, citizens united was the case that said corporations can spend unlimited money to support a political candidate and the viewers' question was there any movement afoot to overturn it? there is. there's a case out of montana where the supreme court has so far blocked montana's attempts to get out from under citizens united, will very likely agree to hear the case and, perhaps, issue a so-called summary reversal meaning no argument, just a decision or, perhaps, set it down for argument. this is a case where they say whatever you say about the federal government, we in the state of montana can prove we have a history of institutions corrupting our political process and we should be allowed to limit this kind of corporate spending so there is something on the horizon where the court will in some fashion revisit

this issue. most people think it's unlikely, though, to move away from the 5-4 decision in citizens united. host: good morning, jane from montana. good morning. caller: good morning. host: please go ahead. caller: yes, i think here in montana, we are very concerned about outsiders coming into our state and spending lots of money that in a way that's directly opposite the opinions in general that are held by montana. i wonder if your guest could discuss that as being really an invasion of our own rights here. host: any type primarily about immigration issues or there other factors? caller: well, the factor that i'm looking at right now is the situation where outside money is coming in and yes, they're being

used for immigration issues and being used to control who is elected in a specific state and that's really a major concern because here in montana, we tend to be fairly independent and this really just flies in the face of all reason. host: thanks for the call from montana. guest: so the montana case which could revisit citizens united is different in just the way she says. citizens united concerned the federal election and therefore, nationwide speech by corporations which may be said to be one kind of problem. outside the state money coming into montana to try to influence the outcome of a montana election might well be said to be a different question. of course, you can also ask the question of under the first amendment, the mere fact that somebody puts on tv ads, you would think would not necessarily pose a problem if the citizens of montana would

look at that information along with the other information they have, view it skeptically, make up their own minds as the caller said, montanans are independent and a premise of citizens united is just because someone says something, you don't necessarily have to believe it. host: john's point from our twitter page, how does the supreme court view free speech? does more money equal free speech? is my free speech less valuable than a large corporation? guest: that's a tiny bit hard to answer. it goes to what i was saying just a second ago, that the theory of the first amendment as the majority in citizens united would have it is that everybody should stay whatever they want to say and people should make their decision. and just because i see a tv ad once or 10 times or 100 times, if it's a stupid thought, i'm not going to adopt that thought. i'm going to make sense of the information given to me in a skeptical and independent manner. now, lots and lots of people believe that the average voter

doesn't pay a ton of attention to the issues of the day and may well be swayed by a negative ad that we see over and over again. host: children conceived with a dead father's frozen sperm not entitled to social security benefits. guest: here's a question that the people who passed the social security act probably never thought of. what happens if a father dies but leaves behind frozen sperm. some years later, his wife uses that sperm to conceive another child or in the case of this case, a set of twins. does that set of twins get social security benefits? and the court said no. and it's a tiny bit tangled. you first of all look to what would happen under inheritance laws of the state that goes twins were born in this case it was florida but the general idea was that social security is meant to replace the earnings of somebody who is actually

supporting children at the time of their death. not children who were conceived long afterwards. host: our next caller is mark joining us from port land, oregon. good morning, independent line. caller: good morning, i'm so glad you're here, i've been wanting to talk to someone from the supreme court or at least representing them. what happened to antitrust laws? for instance, i am a 35-year radio/music broadcast veteran and it used to be you could only have 1:00 a.m. -- am and fm and then they changed it to five and now there are five media companies that own them. for grocery stores, kroger's owns ralph's, they own king, they own bakers, they own smith. they own food 4 less and talking about the rockefeller with the

standard oil company. they broke up into amoco, exxon, chevron, mobiles and they're all coming -- they're all coming back together. at&t, the breakup of the bell. southwestern bell bought southern bell bought -- what happened? and it's like i was a democrat because i felt that i liked george bush sr. but i didn't like george bush jr. because president clinton took the deficit everybody was talking about and made it surplus and all of a sudden, george bush is spending $37 billion this month to iraq and $47 billion this month and all of a sudden, obama gets all the -- you know, and i vote for the person with charactered and vote. host: put it in the form of a

question. caller: what happened? guest: the supreme court hasn't had a lot of antitrust cases. whatever you said about consolidation is probably not blamable on the supreme court. i think you correctly say that the department of justice has been less active than it was decades ago in going after consolidation through antitrust actions. although i should say that just some weeks ago, the justice department did take issue with apple and some publishers getting together to -- the justice department would say control prices. host: let me go back to the other issue i had posted to the caller from montana about immigration because when you talk about outside forces in politics, that is also the concern of outsiders coming into this country and that is, i guess, the centerpiece of arizona v. u.s., high profile case that brought the governor of arizona to the u.s. supreme court. guest: so the immigration case probably the second most high profile case after the health

care case involves the question of whether states can, in effect, set their own immigration policy. arizona has a very tough anti-immigration law. its centerpiece is probably a requirement that police verify the immigration status of anyone they stop or arrest. and when that case is argued in the supreme court, it looked like a majority was prepared to uphold that centerpiece of the arizona law saying it did not conflict with federal immigration law or policy. a lot of people thought the case was about something it was not about. this particular immigration case is not about a kind of racial profiling. it's about whether federal and state law conflict and at least across that one dimension, the feeling on the court seemed to be that it did not conflict. there might be other provisions of the arizona law that get struck down. host: we're talking with adam liptak of "the new york times." if you're hearing us on xm radio and doral moore has this point.

i know we're going back and forth on all these issues. i appreciate you jumping around. this point of view -- citizens united has set politics back 10 years. supreme court has made a big mistake. voices are being drowned out by big corporations. they lie to us. guest: that's a very commonly held view. citizens united is not a popular decision. in this most recent election, there's been in the primaries a lot of spending but not a lot of corporate spending. not an outside amount of corporate spending by comparison to previous years. more spending by individuals, by rich people and citizens united actually did nothing to change that kind of spending. rich people were always allowed to spend before and after citizens you united. host: and the court is taking up the case on electronic surveillance. what's this about? guest: well, it's been almost -- almost -- about a decade since the bush administration started

a warrantless wiretapping program in the wake of the september 11th attacks and that program allowed the monitoring of international calls which is to say one end of the call was outside of the united states and the other end was inside the u.s. and when it was revealed by "the new york times" in 2005, it caused a big controversy in 2008, congress legalized it. and after that, 2008 amendment, some human rights lawyers, some journalists said wait a second, this law, this secret program violates my fourth amendment rights and it allows the government to listen in on my phone calls. the supreme court is now finally 10 years out agreed to hear an aspect of the case but apparently narrow aspect which is simply whether these human rights lawyers and journalists and others have standing to sue. whether they can show they were directly injured enough by the program to be allowed to sue over it. court won't get to the ultimate question of does the program violate the fourth amendment? only does anyone have the right to protest and the curious piece of it is that if these people don't have the right to sue,

probably nobody does because it's a secret program and nobody knows whether they're being monitored or not. host: charles is on the phone from fairfax, virginia. thanks for waiting. caller: i'm very interested to see when the court is going to take up gay marriage, gay divorce. we have a case coming up in maryland in state court where a couple of individuals, same gender people, were married in a different state. took up residence in maryland. and now they're trying to get a divorce in maryland. and since maryland doesn't yet recognize same gender marriage, this divorce is apparently working up to the maryland state supreme court and i'm interested to see the implication of an older case, williams v. north carolina, 1940, where the court held that different states must

recognize the divorces and the marriages of other states because two individuals got divorced in -- resident of north carolina, divorced in nevada, married in nevada, moved back to north carolina and north carolina refused to recognize the divorces and the marriages and the court held in williams v. north carolina that north carolina had to recognize the marriage and divorces from out of state and so what's your take on this? back to you, thank you. host: good question. guest: so two parts of it. first of all, when will the court hear a same sex marriage case? maybe as soon as the next term. as you probably know, there's a case out of the ninth circuit, the federal appeals court in california, which has said that same-sex marriage is required there. that decision has been blocked for now and the full ninth circuit is considering whether to hear that case but that case, the one that the prominent lawyers have brought might get to the supreme court fairly

soon. there are other cases most prominently out of the federal appeals court in boston, the first circuit about the federal law called the defense of marriage act which says that even if you're lawfully married in a state like massachusetts, federal benefits don't have to follow. that -- that's state decision. you can be lawfully married for massachusetts purposes but not for federal purposes and then on the second question of do states have to recognize other states' marriages and divorces? on the question of other states' marriages in the same sex context, the same law, different part of the same law, the defense of marriage act says that states do not. and i would think that, therefore, they also do not need to recognize divorces from other states. but that second point is a little bit speculative. host: this is admittedly self-serving, adam liptak, but they have something that we're focusing on for many reasons,

there's no reason why c-span 3 shouldn't be broadcasting live hearings from the scotus? guest: you won't hear an argument from me. we've never had camera coverage in the courts. i myself can't think of a principled reason not to have it but the justices don't seem inclined to have it and i'm a little bit thinking that even on health care that was cut and pasted to make an attack ad after the solicitor general's, some said weak performance made the justices wary of that kind of release. host: our guest is adam liptak, a graduate of yale and yale law school. does being a law school help or hinder in covering the supreme court in terms of trying to explain and analyze what the court does? guest: it mostly helps. it's very technical stuff. it helps that legal training, many reporters who cover the

court do have legal training. and at the same time, and i think this is, you know, the underlying premise of your question, you do need to make sure you stay away from the jargon that you translate it into something that's accessible and conversational but not give up accuracy in the process and that is a daily challenge. host: let's talk about what clearly is the biggest case still coming which is the health care case and this is from joseph ramirez. what will the supreme court do with the affordable health care act now pending? summarize the decisions and they are decisions, not a single decision that will come down. guest: so there are four parts to it. the centerpiece is whether it's constitutional for congress to enact the individual mandate. that's the provision that requires almost every american to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty. that's the centerpiece in the case. will the mandate rise or fall? the second piece in the case is assuming the mandate goes down, what other parts of this sprawling 2,000 page law go down along with it? just the mandate?

the entire law? or a couple of provisions that are very closely related to the mandate so that second question people call severability. the third question is whether it's premature whether the court should hear the case at all. there's a law that says some kinds of cases can't be heard until the tax actually becomes due which doesn't happen until 2015 so there have been some lower court judges who have said, too soon. got to wait until 2015. that's the third question. and then a fourth question, largely unrelated to what we've been talking about now, is whether the expansion of the medicaid program is constitutional. but the question everyone is focused on is is the mandate constitutional? host: come back in a moment to this issue but let's go to eric who has been waiting from middletown, new york. good morning to you with adam liptak of "the new york times." caller: good morning, good to have you here. i have a case that i've been tracking that seems to possibly be on its way to the supreme

court. it's currently pending before the new york state court of appeals which, if i understand correctly is the highest court in new york state and it involves this stuff that's been a common thread through the discussion on money controlling, influence and access. and backing elections like we see in a lot of courts, the statistics are pretty good on supreme courts and courts of appeals in the states having their benches packed with, you know, friendly justices at least to have that majority of, you know, five or four, whatever it is, depending on the states to see that corporations are favored in decisions, where lower court decisions can see an individual citizen actually have their, you know, right to bring a claim and redress a grievance, you know, their constitutional access to petition the government and to have a jury of

their peers, but i guess my question would be is are you familiar with the case currently pending there in new york? it's landon v.kroll? guest: i don't think i know the new york case but the general question you speak about, whether the corporate influence can influence the courts directly through the elections of course doesn't apply in the federal system where judges and justices are appointed by presidents and confirmed by the senate. but most state judges are elected and some groups say there's a real question about whether in those elections, the money spent in them sometimes from corporate interests and sometimes others might not result in courts that don't do justice impartially. it is true that business groups spend a lot of money on a few issues. most centrally what they call tort reform. so i think that's a real concern. host: with so many decisions you indicated this past week, 6-3 or 5-4, john has this

question, when was the last time there was a unanimous decision by the u.s. supreme court? guest: it's not unusual. just this last week, we had one or two. the court decides unanimously i'm guessing 20%, 30% of the time. there are lots and lots of cases, typically minor statutory cases but nonetheless cases in which they all come together and come out the same way. even a couple of major cases this term, what about the religious freedom rights of religious schools not to be faced by discrimination lawsuits was unanimous although on different rationals, the court also said that the -- unanimously that the government can't put gps tracking devices on people's cars. host: with the same day audio release you talked about earlier by the supreme court on health care issue, we at c-span lets you listen in and show you the entire proceedings. here are two moments, want to get your reaction to donald varelli who represented the white house and the democrats

and the solicitor general as he went back and forth with justice antonin scalia. >> you're going -- in the health care market, you're going into the market without the ability to pay for what you get getting the health care service anyway as a result of the social norms that allow that to which we've obligated ourselves so people don't -- >> don't obligate yourself to that. >> i can't imagine that the commerce clause would forbid congress taking into account this social norm. >> you can do it but does that expand your ability to issue mandates to the people? >> this is not a purchase mandate. this is a law that regulates people paying for a service that people will inevitably consume. host: one of the moments from the u.s. supreme court. the case was heard in march and adam liptak, you were inside the courtroom. with this case or any high

profile case, what do you learn from the questions asked by the justices? guest: the justices do not hold their cards close to the vest. you can generally tell which way the justices are leaning and you can definitely tell which way justice scalia who we just listened to is leaning and while the administration while going in thought they had a shot at getting justice scalia's vote, nobody thinks they have a shot at getting his vote now after the arc um. host: let's go to another exchange, this is by paul clement, former solicitor general from the bush administration as he brought the argument against the affordable health care act. [video clip] >> they ask you to do exactly the opposite, look past labels in order to up end our basic federalist system. >> tell me, do you think the states could pass this mandate? >> i represent 26 states. i do think the states could pass this mandate. but i -- >> is there any other area of commerce, business where we have

held there isn't concurrent power between the state and the federal government to protect the welfare of commerce? >> justice, i have to resist your premise because i didn't answer yes, the states could do it because it would be a valid regulation of intrastate commerce. i said yes, the states can do it because they have a police power and that's the fundamental difference between the states on the one hand and the limited enumerated government on the other. host: if you're interested, the entire audio is available on our web site. when will the supreme court announce its decision on this case? guest: in theory, it could happen any time. in practice, it will probably happen on the last day of the term. probably monday, june 25th but they don't tell us anything and we'll find out when we find out. host: on the phone from baton rouge, louisiana. good morning, democrats line. caller: thank you, dear. why is the supreme court now -- the people are able to know how the supreme court justices are

going to vote on laws that are sympathetic to the republicans or laws that are sympathetic to the democrats? i cannot believe that we know most probably ahead of time the vote is going to be 5-4, 5-4, 5-4. i thought each supreme court justice was to see laws clearly, not what's favorable to their parties. i think this is a sad shape of american government today. we're dealing in perceptions and not reality. host: thank you, appreciate the call from louisiana. guest: so a couple of things of thes it's true that a bunch of decisions are 5-4 and often in big high profile cases, 5-4 and also 5-4 along ideological lines but that's not uniform. the question of how do we know how they're going to vote? well, a couple of things. some of these justices have been

on the court for a long time and they've faced similar questions in similar cases. we have a pretty good idea of where they're going to come out because they've kind of looked at the issue before so you can look at that and then second of all as i was saying before, during arguments, the tone of the question will very often tell you where the justices are headed. host: george is on the phone from illinois. good morning, republican line. caller: good morning. i have enjoyed reading mr. liptak's column for a number of years. my question, mr. liptak, relates to his earlier comments concerning the pending montana case. in the event the supreme court does take that case rather than enter a summary of reversal which is a possibility. i'm curious to his opinion or speculation, if you will, of the -- with respect to the probable

position of justice kennedy who was in the majority in citizens united, as i understand it, and as i understand it, there was a vigorous dissent, maybe almost 100 pages long by former justice stevens in that case and the montana case, i presume involves -- if it is taken by the court, the high court questions with respect to federalism and possibly interstate commerce as well as first amendment. i'd be very interested in mr. liptak's comments in that regard, particularly in view of the pending or trend not only in wisconsin but in other states but particularly in the wisconsin with the pending recall election of the governor, out-of-state money going into a

particular state mr. liptak mentioned. host: thank you for the call. we're short on time. we'll give him a chance to respond. guest: the basic question is will the court change their mind about citizens united and what about justice kennedy? justice kennedy is often in the middle, often the swing vote. but wasn't the swing vote in citizens united. he wrote the majority and he really truly believes that the first amendment protects this kind of spending so i don't see justice kennedy changing his mind. in fact, it's very hard to see any of the five justices in the majority changing their minds. so i think that although the montana case will get a lot of attention, it's hard to see how it will change anything. host: our last caller from st. louis, missouri. good morning. caller: yes, i have one quick question here regarding the health care law. and i'm with the aia which was a law in may of 1800, if the court should rule that there is a tax and according to that statue,

they would have to list the -- dismiss the petition. please comment on that. guest: right, so one of the four issues in the case is whether it's too soon to hear the case. whether you have to wait until the tax becomes due and payable in 2015. and it may -- it's at least open to the court to kick the can down the road. not decide anything for now. that does not seem to be a very likely outcome. host: technically, the supreme court, we talked about the end of the term in june but it stays in session through the summer and can come back at any time. ask you to speculate for a moment. if the president is re-elected, can you see any retirements in the next year? guest: i wouldn't say the next year. but i would think in the next term, particularly if the president is re-elected justice ginsburg might be the next justice to go. host: and if mitt romney is elected president, can you see -- because obviously, republicans tend to retire when a republicans -- if mitt romney is elected president, could we see retirement?

guest: there's no obvious retirement on the horizon. people like these jobs. and tend to go for reasons of failing health usually. david souter, an exception to that rule or the failing health of a spouse. i don't -- you know, you never know. but i don't -- under a romney administration, i think justice ginsburg tries to tough it out for another four years and i don't have a reason to concern that a more conservative justice would go. host: thank you very much for being with us on a holiday weekend. you can read more of his work any time at nytimes.com. adam liptak who covers the u.s. supreme court. coming up in a couple of minutes, shibley telhami will be joining us from the university of maryland to talk about the elections in egypt. another round slated for next month. what it means for that country and also for the 50 million voters in egypt and also for our relations in that part of the world. later, our series on columnists

continues. a conversation with colbert king of "the washington post." that's coming up on the "the washington journal." one of the traditions for the last 25 years, rolling thunder. this is the scene live at the pentagon parking lot where rolling thunder is gathering before making its way throughout washington, d.c. this began 25 years ago with about 1,000 participants. now, in excess of 500,000 cyclists in our nation's capital. live coverage here on c-span. >> i drove the bike over here. and i started not liking this bike because it was too big. i'm liking it now. >> are you with a news channel?

>> we came to support your country.

host: the scene from the pentagon parking lot and the participants of rolling thunder. you can see them beginning to line up for the massive demonstration that will take place as they move across the memorial bridge into washington, d.c. and gather along the monuments including the vietnam veterans memorial and check in later on the program to see how the process continues for rolling thunder. now, a tradition for 25 years here in washington, d.c. shibley telhami is joining us from the university of maryland. welcome back. always a president bush -- pleasure to see you. guest: always a pleasure to be here. host: let's begin with the

headlines from "the new york times." two very different candidates and many concern that the candidates won't appeal to the uprisings that led these elections. disdain vote for the candidates. what's happening over there? guest: it's fascinating, you know, i've been watching this very closely. in fact, i conducted a public opinion poll before the election. and what is interesting is that because you have 13 candidates, and this is a new experiment. no one really knew how this was going to turn out. we don't have a model for turnout. a lot of the candidates were appealing, you know, to the general public as if they're going to -- this was the win all election. in fact, the ones that did well were the ones who actually appealed to passionate minorities. you don't have to get a majority. you have to get a determined plurality to place in the top two to win. and the remarkable thing is that both morsi and shafiq, the two leading candidates combined just below 50% and when you look at the turnout of the egyptian election which is really

probably the more depressing story is that you only had a little over 40% turnout in, you know, in initial polls including one by the newspaper, 90% of the public were saying we're going to vote. and less than half of that ended up voting so that's why a lot of people looking at this say this is not representative. this is 25%, morsi, the leading candidate is getting 25% of the 43% turnout, you know, the second is close at nearly 24%. so this is a difficult one particularly for the young liberal revolution is because, in fact, most all of them, particularly the liberals, believe that there was a conspiracy from the beginning between the military establishment and the muslim brotherhood against them. in fact, there was sort of tepid cooperation between the military establishment and brotherhood that martialized the liberals early on and in the end, they end up getting stuck with what appears the candidates ordered

by the military and they end up getting the muslim brotherhood candidate and neither one is having a majority. but between now and the run-off election, you know, in three weeks, we're going to have a lot of coalition building. this certainly, you know, for any of the candidates to get a majority, they're going to have to broaden the coalition. and you're already seeing that. the muslim brotherhood candidate is already offered the two vice presidencies to the next two leading candidates to the secular, leftist, exceptionally well in the election. almost was within reach of the top two and then the liberal islamists also got roughly 18% of the vote so he's offering the vice presidencies, one of the liberal members of parliament who is well known here in washington used to be at the carnegie endowment, he's very popular in the egyptian

parliament is put a proposal that essentially the muslim brotherhood candidates stepped down and make the leftist secular candidate, the actual candidate for president. it's improbable but not crazy as it sounds because frankly the muslim brotherhood initially did not want to field their own candidates. this was a situation where it's evolved and felt like they had to do it. their initial instinct was actually to put forth a liberal candidate that was more secular and could support somebody like the former head of the international atomic energy agency who he didn't want to run in these elections, the constitution is clear on the presidential powers. but then they backed them. so we're going to see a lot of topics going on between now and the 16th of june in the elections including some challenges, obviously, to the election because while these

were, you know, relatively transparent elections, there's still so many issues that they are raising about the role of security forces. unlikely to make a difference but clearly will complicate the picture. host: our guest here in the studios in washington, d.c. is shibley telhami from the university of maryland. and we want to get a perspective from inside cairo. joining us on the phone is leila fadel the the washington bureau chief, the cairo bureau chief for "the washington post." thank you for being with us. guest: thank you for having me. host: i want to begin on something that was quoted in your newspaper yesterday. the carnegie endowment of peace essentially said regardless of who wins the elections in egypt, neither is good news for the u.s. do you agree or disagree with that sentiment? can you elaborate on what's going on on the ground? guest: i think a lot of people here feel that this has become the worst case scenario for egypt and the most polarizing

options have come to the forefront. islamist candidate, much more conservative than others and what people see as really a parcel of the mubarak regime when they see ahmed shafiq who is a close aide to him. when she says that, she's talking about how polarizing the runoff can be as people try to choose between two options that more than 50% of voters actually did not choose on election day. host: when you talk to voters in egypt, in cairo, what questions are you asking or what are you hearing from these folks? guest: well, right -- are you talking about on election day or now that there's -- host: now that we're moving to the next phase. guest: the results started coming out, you really felt a sense of real gloom and fear especially among revolutionaries, liberals and centrists who voted for the

other candidates. and so what they fear right now is they're stuck between two really not good choices. do i pick the former military officer who has openly said that the rule of an iron fist is needed, that he'll put islamists in their place or do i vote for an islamist who may create a much more conservative based legal system here. and so for a lot of these people, they just feel that there is no good choice and what do i do? you hear a lot of people talking about boycotting instead of voting or choosing between two candidates, they feel are not for them. host: a question for you from shibley telhami. guest: it's more of a comment than a question. i know that's the role of the u.s. i know, leila, you're there and you get a sense of the issues on the ground. i mean, this is not about the u.s. the u.s. obviously is an important issue in the political picture overall for every single segment of politics and also public opinion.

but in the end, this is all about egypt and the kind of government they want, the nature of the government they want and frankly, i don't agree with the fact that, you know, the u.s. is stuck here between two horrible choices because frankly, it doesn't matter who is going to become the president of egypt, the two things that are pretty clear. one is we're not going back to the same close relationship that existed during the mubarak era. that i think is gone because public opinion is somewhere else and every president is going to have to respond to it. and second, it's not going to be crazy, radical rupturing relations with the u.s. because every candidate, major candidate including muslim brotherhood candidates, they understand they have to have relations with the rest of the world. they sent a delegation here to try to assure people they don't want to rock the boat too much. they understand they need foreign aid. they understand they need to focus on the home front so yes, there will be differences undoubtedly there will be differences among them. they wouldn't be all the same but i think it's all limited space where they're operating

vis-a-vis the u.s. we would best as americans and particularly our government, the best thing to do is to give the egyptians the space to operate and choose their own president and let them work with whoever emerges. the minute we try to be taking sides is the kiss of death and we shoot ourselves in the foot. host: leila fadel, your response? guest: i agree completely. this is not about the u.s. and whatever candidate comes to the forefront, like you said, i agree it won't be that much vis-a-vis what the americans care or israel, candidates talking to american diplomats here. first thing they reassured that about that treaty or is it to talk about issues such as their relationship with the united states which many egyptians see as in the last two decades subservant where mubarak is in the populous government and they don't want that anymore. so they -- these issues when it comes to the u.s. is unimportant at this moment. egyptians are choosing their

leader. they are very concerned about who that leader will be. as you can see from the voting, they were very divided on what division for egypt should be. no candidate got a majority of these voters, the muslim brotherhood that took 47% of votes during parliament only took a quarter of votes this time so really an important time and very important transition. you're going to see lots of people already have all the candidates crying fraud, talking about elections suspension so this is a really critical time. host: leila fadel, as always, we appreciate your time and perspective, the cairo bureau chief for "the washington post" joining us live this morning from cairo. appreciate it. guest: thank you so much. host: our phone lines are open. give us a call, number is on the bottom of the screen and send us an e-mail, journal at cspan.org or join the conversation on our twitter page at twitter.

79% expressing unfavorable attitudes towards the united nations. this based on a pew study in mid may. guest: towards the united states, you mean? host: to the u.s. guest: my polls show that, too. i had a poll on may 10th that showed similar results. if hasn't changed much for the past decade frankly. the only time when this has changed a little bit was in 2009 when president obama got elected, there was a feeling of anything but bush's sense of relief after 80 years, egyptian and public opinion broadly were very angry with the u.s. over the iraq issue, over the israel-palestine question. they were optimistic about obama. they weren't -- their views were still negative against the u.s. but they improved a little bit. they were giving obama more of a positive than negative outlook and all that changed within a year. by 2010 in the polling that we conducted in summer of 2010, people were frustrated over the

policy and palestine issue went the other way around and in 2012, just the poll that we conducted in may, the same thing happened. it's not a surprise. i want to say something, though, that when you ask people -- we've -- in the poll that we conducted on may 4th to may 10th, just a couple of weeks ago, we asked people what is the main issue they're voting on when they're selecting the candidate for president? foreign policy was not very high. i mean, mostly they said personal trust. the experience of the candidate. the economy, unemployment. the foreign policy wasn't very high and the only candidate who received high marks because of his foreign policy was morsi who placed fifth among the five leading candidates so it's not really a -- i think the central issue and when you look at egyptians actually and when you ask them, as i did in two polls, i conducted one in october of 2011 in egypt and then another one this may about sort of the

vision for the country, what country in the world do they want their country to look most like? both broadly in an open question and also, the terms of the role of religion in the country. and the majority of egyptians select turkey. turkey is much more contemporary democratic and yes it has an islamic character but it has good relations with the u.s. and yes, it's a member of nato. i mean, that is not exactly a country that is, you know, going out to -- the vision of egyptians is much more limited than people think in terms of the change that they want including, by the way, in the role of religion because i know a lot of people are terrified by this idea that it's going to turn into a theocracy. there's always a danger particularly when you get a political minority manipulating politics and that's related to the muslim brotherhood but when you ask egyptians about what role they want religion to play in their country, yes, you know,

2/3 say i want sharia law to be the basis of law in egypt but when you ask them, do you want sharia islamic law to be implemented literally including to the penal code or you want just the spirit of sharia adapted to modern times? 83% say the latter. they want just the spirit of sharia adapted to modern times so they're not thinking of egypt as -- even though most of egyptians tend to be religious. they're not thinking about the role of religion in that way, and that showed itself in the elections. i mean, this candidate who placed third who is very close to being one of the top two. he got roughly 22%, 23% of the vote, the biggest shocker was is that he won in the areas that seem to be the strength of the islamists, it was a total surprise. he's a secular. he's a leftist.

he is by no means, you know, one that would be counted as an ally of islamists, it tells you something about the dynamics of politics. far more complicated than we've been led to believe. host: this one simple point from our twitter page thanking us for this segment on egypt and calling the situation over there, saying this -- what a mess! our guest is shibley telhami, the university -- is at the university of maryland, professor of peace and development. he's also the author of a number of books including "a decade of reflections on peace." and "the stakes, america and the middle east." he served as the u.s. -- the advisor to the united nations and also worked for a while for congressman lee hamilton. let's go to susan from hartford, connecticut. good morning, thanks for waiting. caller: hi, professor. i'm calling and i wanted to ask you, i was following the revolution, the arab spring in egypt just like i've been following and rooting for the occupy wall street here in this

kunlt. -- country. so i kind of wondered. i heard that the muslim brotherhood has been revamped and it's much more moderate so i wondered is there really a choice at all? and why -- who -- is the third candidate you were talking about, is he the candidate that was, in your opinion, have mostly encapsulated the views of those valiant people who were in the square? guest: let's start with the muslim brotherhood briefly. i'm not sure how much they changed or whether they've become moderate or not moderate. they've always been actually a middle class conservative don't rock the boat too much nonviolent movement by and large. and you've seen that. even in all of the contentious issues that have emerged, they've never really employed force. but they tend to be conservative. clearly, their candidate morsi in appealing to the core sentiment of his supporters for this round of the elections, he

did focus on the application of sharia law. he did call himself the only "true islamist" because he had competition from a more liberal islamist who was doing quite well. in fact, in the polls, he was ahead up until just two weeks ago, he was ahead in the polls, ahead of the muslim brotherhood candidate. so it's not clear, you know, that they've profoundly changed their outlook. it's just they are what they are. but what is clear that while they have -- we don't know exactly how many card holding members, their estimates from people who come from them who say it's only about 700,000 card holding members, you know, not a small number but clearly, they're appealing to the broad public. and they -- they were the best organized group which is, i mean, if you look at this remarkable story of the, you know, 13 candidates running for president, and really the only genuine party backing any candidate, i mean, was the

muslim brotherhood. everybody else was roughly independent. yes, they were backed by particular movements but there was no measured, organized infrastructure and despite that, despite the perception they were the kingmakers and did well in the parliamentary elections, all the candidate could muster was 25% of the vote which probably was a larger segment of the turnout. i mean, i suspect that when we analyze the turnout in the egyptian election, as i said only a little over 40% of the -- of those eligible to vote turned out. you are going to find the most passionate supporters will turn out more. i think the members of the muslim brotherhood will probably turn out in larger numbers. my expectation in this particular election so they're not getting huge support which is why they understand right now for them to win, the election, you know, in three weeks between their candidate and ahmed

shafiq, they're going to have to broaden the coalition. they understand there's a lot of resentment about shafiq. he's a technocrat and part of the former regime, the military like him. don't underestimate the importance of the military, not just organizationally but the fact is there are security services members and their families, extended members of their family have a stake, hundreds of thousands of people, possibly millions so he does have some support. but there's a lot of resentment of him and the brotherhood is beginning to play on that and they're going to try to appeal to the liberals against him and unless they do that, they don't -- they can't win. host: quick follow-up on hosni mubarak. did he expect the arab uprising? is this something he thought was going to happen? guest: no, undoubtedly, though. not in his wildest dream.

even after the tunisian uprising started, he was just laughing at it, you know, this can't happen in egypt and the very fact that he was, you know, grooming his son, some people around him were grooming his son to be president was an indication of how certain and confident they were about the security and it's interesting, i have to tell you, i met with a -- an ambassador of a foreign country in egypt, i was in egypt a week after mubarak was overthrown. and i had a dinner with an ambassador of another country, i won't mention which country but that ambassador accompanied an envoy, high level envoy from his country to meet with mubarak and with then the vice president the day before mubarak resigned. and he told me that both mubarak and omar told them things remained under control.

that they felt the security services could stop this thing and the military would be the last resort if need be. whether of course, they're projecting that to give a picture to the outside world, i'm sure their confidence was shaken but not in their wildest dream, i don't think that mubarak believed it and i think, you know, it -- it -- there was an assassination attempt against him in the 1980's, 1980's, 1990's, actually forgot the exact date of the assassination attempt but after that assassination attempt, it's clear that he changed and egypt became much more of a security state. he became more reliant on that. in that reliance, he became far more confident. host: in addition to his teaching responsibilities at the university of maryland, our guest shibley telhami is a fellow at the brookings institution here in washington, d.c. and a member of the council on foreign relations.

jean is on the phone from wilmington, delaware. good morning. caller: good morning. i wanted to ask him, i heard the u.s. should not be getting really involved and should not be very concerned about who gets elected because they have such a small following. well, anybody who has had this morsi and his followers like what they're saying, jihad is our method. we'll take over and we want to, you know, i hear this from the egyptians who live around me in the philadelphia area. this man was a professor and he has kids who are u.s. citizens, he has a right to come back and forth. why should we not be concerned about people living in this country or allow kids to hear this crap and are in our country? guest: first of all in terms of what they're saying and what they're not saying, actually, since they got elected in, you know, they won the parliamentary

elections and they've been sending delegations around the world making more official statements, they've actually -- they have not been making wild statements either about the relationship with the u.s. or for that matter about the peace treaty with israel. they've been kind of sending more assuring messages. i happened to also meet with the delegation that they sent to washington while they were here. so some of his supporters, obviously, you know, have different views but in the end, you know, it's not just what they stand for, it is what the egyptian -- whether the egyptian people will allow them to carry out something that is too radical for the public. and i think there is a revolution that's going to stay with us in egypt and we have to understand that this is not an episodic event that took place in egypt, that you have a public empowerment that is enabled by an information revolution that is expanding. what we call tharir square mobilization is with us to stay. i think that you're going to

find the situation in egypt will evolve. i don't say the u.s. shouldn't care. the u.s. has to care. there are too many interests for the u.s. egypt is very important to the u.s. it's been an anchor of american policy in the middle east for decades really since the camp david accords in the late 1970's. and obviously it matters particularly because of the stability of the israeli-egyptian peace treaty which is also an anchor of american policy towards the region. so the u.s. has to care. but what i'm saying is the u.s. has no capability to influence the outcome. the more we try, the worse it gets. host: you were making your comment that will the outcome of the election in egypt impact us directly or are we worried about the impact on our friendly nations in the region? most notably israel. guest: yes, i think there's no question that the israel situation is essential. you know, if you go into members -- into congress as i did and i

briefed many members, you know, right after the uprising started in egypt before mubarak was overthrown, and after and clearly the first thing they asked is will egypt become an islamist state and will it cut its relations with israel? those are the two concerns and israel wanted a huge one, for the u.s., it's clearly one that's important in congress but there is more and let me explain what i mean by more. you know, when you look at it, egypt is most clearly the important state. it's a role model for what happens in the region. and so it's not a surprise that the expansion of american influence in the middle east happened after the egyptians abandoned the soviet union and joined the u.s. you know, in part of the camp david deal that happened in the late 1970's. and that not only created a major country that is an ally of the u.s. in the implementation

of policies in the region, but also coordination on the military and intelligence level that was core. if you, you know, look at american strategy particularly with the continued american presence in the gulf, even without the iraq war, there's still thousands of american troops in bases in the gulf region, there has to be some coordination and the ability of saudi arabia and the gulf states to essentially provide that cover and coordinate with the u.s. is enhanced by the egyptian role as an ally of the u.s. so there is a lot at stake for the u.s. it's not a -- it's something that has to be underestimated. every american leader has to know, in fact, the assumption in washington -- i would say in the obama administration in the strategy toward the uprisings in the arab world, toward the arab awakening is that egypt is core and egypt has to come -- how

egypt comes out will impact everything else. the focus, though, has to be on the economic stability of egypt and working with egypt internationally no matter who the egyptians elect and they have to elect their own president. host: it's the top of the hour. we welcome our listeners on c-span radio coast to coast, on channel 119, we're talking about the elections in egypt scheduled for mid june. our guest at the table is shibley telhami from the university of maryland and doug is on the phone from florida. independent line. good morning to you. caller: good morning. with 80% of the anti-american sentiment, this is a direct consequence of the unadulterated and blind hatred of muslims and arabs that are on top of the

already what bush, cheney rumsfeld did with iraq. that coupled with the rhetoric and in particular the republican presidential candidates and the republican congress there, blind hatred of muslims and arabs and 24/7 fox news propaganda. and even the hatred for president obama because he's an arab so affects the sentiment towards the united states and this is not brought up enough by any of the news organizations and it has a big effect. they don't realize how it sounds to -- from people in other parts of the world that are listening to this hatred so their people and for their religions. guest: you know, the polarization that happened in the relations between the united

states and muslim countries broadly after the tragedy of 9/11 is clear. i mean, you had people here focused a lot on the islamic threat and they are seeing american foreign policy as specifically targeting muslims. we've seen that over the whole decade in the polling. i've been doing polls in the -- over the decade, we also have pew, we have gallup, we have a lot of other -- we have a lot of other pollsters who have been measuring this over the past decade. but i have to tell you something about the egyptian attitude toward the u.s. there is no question in my mind given what i've been studying over the decade that the core angle of the u.s. -- i wouldn't say hatred. hatred is not the right word. the core anger with american foreign policy in general is over the israel-palestine question. we have seen exactly how that went up and down. even their attitudes towards obama. i mean, i know obama is seen here to be sort of sympathetic

to the middle east. actually in the middle east, he's seen to be unsympathetic. initially they were optimistic with him in 2009. beginning in 2010, we began seeing things going the other way. i recall appearing on an egyptian television show, popular egyptian television show quoting from a "washington post" article which was emphasizing president obama's christian religiousity, that he was a quiet religious person to project his religiousity, people were wondering if he was closet evangelical. what people were accusing him of being -- of having muslim roots. so, you know, their judgment is primarily based on policies. and the policy that matters most now is the israel-palestine policy. over the decade, it has been primarily the iraq war plus the israel-palestine question. host: we should point out our guest posted a piece "what do

the egyptians want" available on line at politico.com and also this from one of our viewers. do economic problems play a large role in this -- these egyptian elections? guest: yes, they do. we see that, the chant in the square is three fold. it's bread, putting food on the table. freedom, justice, dignity. those are the things that people chant all the time. when we ask them in the polls, what drove their behavior in the parliamentary elections and what is driving the behavior towards the presidential election, we find that the economy, you know, is up there as one of the top three issues. the other two in the parliamentary election was first party affiliation interestingly. that's why the brotherhood did

particularly well. but followed by the economy and the presidential election, personal trust but again, the economy and unemployment is pretty high up there. yes, they are major factors. tied to that is the sense of part of the economic uncertainty is tied to security uncertainty. the absence of security is a factor. shafiq, the number two candidate who is going to face off with the muslim brotherhood candidate most likely, remember, these elections have not been officially -- the results have not been officially announced. we know largely. he has made shafiq made the security issue as a paramount issue and as -- as a kind of a necessary condition for economic development particularly tourism and he seems to have a lot of people who supported him specifically on that issue. host: our next caller is brian on the phone from iowa. good morning to you, sir. caller: good morning and thank you for taking my call. just a quick thing on your last

caller about the media coverage. with obama. 90% of the media in the united states is pro obama. it's nice to have fox network to see the other side. now, as far as egypt goes, i think what we're looking is a two-headed snake if you're the muslim brotherhood. it's which one is going to bite you harder and if you can give me a real quick history lesson. who is behind the anwar sadat assassination in 1981 in thanks. guest: well, the anwar sadat assassination was carried out by an extreme islamist group. it's not the muslim brotherhood, an offshoot of the muslim brotherhood that was militant. and they -- in fact, some of the members of that group which

obviously horrific in using violence not just against that but in egypt itself, has since actually said they've made a big mistake in assassinating sadat because in retrospect, they thought he was far more encompassing and tolerant than mubarak so it's very interesting that they've had a change of heart. but that particular group is no longer a major force in egypt. never really was a major force in egypt but at least it asserted in very ugly ways including the assassination of sadat. that may have been a turning point in contemporary egyptian history. host: our next call is from hollywood, florida. good morning to you. caller: good morning. guest: good morning. caller: yes, i'm speaking as an egyptian-american so i've lived in both countries. and i kind of see both sides of the story. and one of the things that i wanted to point out is that , you know, egypt has suffered

from lack of education. most of the people there have been programmed not to think politics but to make sure what they're going to have for dinner and that's how they've been manipulated and held on to the regime for so long. the other side here in the states, i see, you know, obviously egypt is very important to the states and i agree with that but the problem i see it is, again, kind of another way of lack of education not in terms of illiteracy but in terms of how the media and the states is portraying, you know, the egyptian people and the egyptian mindset. and also, the role of the americans to kind of reach out to the people in egypt and give proper education about what the states stand for. people, like the doctor said, they're not worried -- they don't hate the u.s. they just want to make sure that they -- that there's a fair play in terms of the foreign policy of the u.s. but i think the media here is

very important factor as well as reaching out to educate, you know, the peoples of egypt. it's a double-sided edge. i see a lot of uneducation here in the states regarding what islam is and what the arabs are and i just wanted to make that comment. and elaborate a little bit on how the u.s. should move forward in terms of what the u.s. should do to move forward. thank you. guest: let me actually just talk very briefly about two aspects of what you said. one is the education which you referred to education, although you're focused more on the media but education system in egypt and the second is the media environment that you're referring to. the educational system, i think, is in big trouble in egypt. i think every candidate understands that. and a few years ago, there was a global ranking of egyptian -- of all universities, cairo university rated, i think, number something like 30 in africa.

i mean, that is quite remarkable for a university that was a leader in the region and in africa during the movement of nonalignment, the emergence of africa. they need that -- that is a big challenge, i think one of the biggest challenges for egypt but the media environment is really interesting because since the revolution, something really did happen in egypt. i mean, the media opened up. there's a proliferation of newspapers, independent television stations and even the official papers now have far more variation and independent writers than before. i actually enjoy reading the egyptian press every single day multiple times whereas in the openlied -- old days, i used to go a couple of days a month to see what the official lines were. i would scan it. but i followed a couple of, you know, commentators who were very thoughtful but by and large, i did not look at it. and i think what the egyptian public is getting now is something very different.

we don't know exactly how this is going to work itself out. but i'm very impressed, you know, with the quality of some of the shows, the talent that is being put out there both in writing and on television and the degree of professionalism that seems to have emerged very quickly. now, of course, when i say the degree of professionalism, you're also going to get a lot of people who are not professional when you have such an open environment that is changing. but i think that is going to be a core factor in the way politics evolve in egypt in the next month and years. host: couple of quick follow-ups. one of our twitter followers saying what percent of eligible voters casting ballots. i think i thought you say 50 million eligible to vote in egypt. how many turned out? guest: as you know, we don't have the official results. the unofficial results is 43% turned out, 43% of the eligible voters turned out so that's why

it's surprisingly low and i think surprisingly, i say surprisingly because a lot of people anticipated a higher level of participation, some of the polls were showing something like 90% of the public was saying they're going to vote. clearly, they didn't turn out and that's why i've always believed, in fact when i worked my piece for politico just before the elections, i said we don't -- we can't predict how people are going to behave. we might know what the trends are in public opinion because all going to be about turnout. we don't know who is going to turnout much the people who are going to turn out are the ones that will determine the election. the story may be the muslim brotherhood were able to get their people out there in higher numbers than everybody else which is one reason why they were able to have the candidate do well enough, i wouldn't say well because in comparison to parliamentary elections, they did miserably. they didn't expect to be in this position. they felt there would be king makers and now they're having to scramble to create an alliance to be able to win the election in three weeks. host: quick snapshot of egypt,

how many people live in the country? geographically how large is it and what are some of its biggest exports? guest: first of all, in terms of the population, it's roughly 80 million. some say 85 million. it's evolving by day, it's expanding and by far the largest arab state. in comparison, if you want to put it in perspective of other countries in the middle east, it's roughly the equal of turkey. and just a little over -- bigger than iran. so those are the countries to compare, both, i think, in terms of population and roughly also in terms of the economy although the turkish economy is stronger and the iranian economy is actually stronger overall than the egyptian economy but clearly, that is -- i don't know the exact square mileage of egypt. it's actually quite large geographically but as you know, egypt is mostly desert. and so the concentration of the population is all along the nile river.

and the nile delta. which is north by the mediterranean so the cluster of the population is really concentrated along a relatively small region, you know, the running across the nile river but particularly in the northern -- in the northern region. host: last call from brad in cleveland, ohio. good morning with shibley telhami of the university of maryland. caller: good morning. thank you, c-span. i had a question. the egyptian presidential election is important to the egyptian people. i was wondering, does your speaker think the natives of america, if they had natives within their own government across america, do you think that would be important to them? guest: as i said, i think the primary thing for the elections is really american policy in the middle east, particularly for the palestine question.

most interestingly, our own public has started to see egypt now a little bit differently. i call it the beginning of a change of the 9/11 prism that was a very painful prism and negative prism for the whole region but the square model incited a lot of people and it is generally in terms of -- i've done public opinion polls in the u.s. that show most of the american public now sees the revolution in egypt to be primarily driven by public -- by people who want to improve their lives and actually, they have more positive views. 77% of americans have a positive view of egyptian people which is interesting. that is, i think, the tahrir square prism sxnt the 9/11 prism. host: front page of the wash -- "washington post" and inside "the new york times," a picture of those killed of the government forces already. included in 32 children, the gory images of the bodies

wrapped up. many shot in the temple. guest: that's so painful to watch. syria has been, you know, a heartbreaking situation. and i think it is -- it is really kind of demonstrating the failure of international institutions, international organizations. i think what we've had over the past couple of decades is informational revolution that brought all these stories to the forefront and therefore, there is a rise in public expectations not only in america but around the world of somebody to do something to stop the atrocities and yet, we have not had an evolution of international institutions, of organizations including the u.n. in a matter that would correspond to these rising expectations and we find that the international community appears paralyzed given where it is right now and that is so painful to watch and yet, there doesn't seem to be any prospect of dealing with it effectively any time soon. host: shibley telhami of the university of maryland, always a

pleasure. thank you for joining us and please come back again. guest: i will. host: coming up in a moment, we continue our series conversations with leading columnists in just a moment, colbert king of "the washington post" will be here at the table to talk d.c. politics and general election politics in this campaign. but first, live coverage as we continue to show you the scene around the pentagon. rolling thunder, it began 25 years ago with about 1,000 cyclists. today, in excess of 500,000 here in washington, d.c. on a picture-perfect morning as they make their way into the nation's capital. we'll watch some of the preparations from the pentagon parking lot just across the potomac river as we continue "the washington journal" for this sunday morning.

host: rolling thunder to pay tribute to those in the vietnam war and other wars overseas and to remember those p.o.w.'s. it began 25 years ago and now honoring those veterans from the wars in iraq and afghanistan. live coverage from the pentagon parking lot as they gather before heading to washington, d.c. if you don't see them here in our nation's capital, you will certainly hear them. they began arriving on friday and will stay here through tuesday morning. by the way, one other note on memorial day weekend, in case you're interested, the origins of memorial day, you can find inside "the new york times." the birthplace for memorial day? that depends where you are from. waterloo, new york, is the official birthplace of memorial day but there are more than a dozen other cities that claim to be the birthplace to commemorate those dating back to 1866, the

one-year anniversary of the end of the civil war. we want to welcome colbert i. king as we continue our series with columnists. welcome, thanks for being with us. guest: glad to be here. host: your piece yesterday, a district election sabotaged dealing with the election that you moderated, the debate that you moderated with the current mayor and the former mayor and then from today's "washington post" here, this headline. mayor grey's trouble focus early attention on the 2014 mayoral race and your colleague giving mayor vincent gray the worst week in washington. what's going on? guest: this past week, two of his top aides in the political campaign of 2010 pleaded guilty in federal court to federal felonies and more than likely they'll spend some time in jail

but the question -- the big question now is because they engaged in really a fraud in the 2010 campaign, they paid a minor candidate who was running for mayor of the district also, money, substantial amounts of money to stay in the race and continue to remain there in the city. i moderated the debate where it took place where brown just lambasted time after time with some scurrilous comments and i gave him an opportunity to respond. he wouldn't respond. we didn't know at the time that sulliman brown was being paid by the gray campaign to behave that way and did the same thing the next night at another debate. host: you ask him that as well. you asked candidate gray at the time -- guest: i asked him, what's this all about? and he said i wish i knew.

turns out maybe he didn't know it but we don't know whether he knew it or not but we do know there was something going on now that we didn't know then, that was really a conspiracy for campaign of the mayor. host: your paper already looking at 2014 and indicating that there's a possibility that washington, d.c. could have a white mayor, jack evans is one of the leading potential candidates but there's another piece this morning from robert mccartney also in "the washington post," explain or resign? will mayor gray even survive the next two years? guest: that's a good question. i don't know whether he will or not. there is a question about his own involvement, what they were doing. at this point, we know that there was a person who according to the federal court, a person who instructed the aides that

make the payments to suliman brown, the prosecution has not yet identified who person a is. the speculation that the person could be another close aide of vincent gray or vincent gray himself. we don't know the answer to that yet. the problem he's got now is that he was once -- he once talked extensively about this effort and denied any involvement at all. any knowledge at all and now he's not talking since the two aides were arrested. he's gone to ground and says he can't discuss the active investigation. well, he knows it's been active for sometime but his lawyer has told him, prominent lawyer to clam up and that's what he's doing. i'm not sure he can get by with clamming up. as a matter of fact, his hand is going to be forced sometime in the next two days, two weeks maybe. host: we are focusing on

columnists all this week and one of the things we're trying to get from everybody in the table is where you come up with your ideas, how you write and what's the best way to put your ideas on paper? guest: well, as columnists, you're always trolling for something. you never stop thinking about what it is you want to write about. i'm also forced by deadline to come up with something because my writing day is thursday, generally. i file in the evening of thursdays. friday to deal with my editors and sometimes most of my columns sometimes get run by the lawyers, so it takes another day to get that done and then it's probably still saturday. and in this town, it's not hard to become a subject. i tend to write on national matters but i will write on local matters. but this has been a rich place for good, good copy.

host: let me ask about your column about mitt romney, he spoke in virginia. you say "mitt romney fails to see america." why and how? guest: the romney campaign has folded up until the trip to lynchberg is primarily before largely white audiences. he didn't -- with the exception of maybe black secret service agents, he didn't see any color in his audiences. and my concern was that he only has a narrow focus of america that america is more than that. the audiences that he's speaking to, he's speaking to in the republican primaries. and it happens that the weekend he was speaking in lynchberg, the post published an article based on census article shows by 2040, this country is going to be a majority minority.

country. the country is changing. and you need to have a candidate speak to those changes and talk about the america that's going to greet those graduates during their lifetime. he didn't do that. and this past week, he made a foray into the african-american community in west philadelphia. it didn't go well. he wasn't well received but he went there with a sort of 1950's expression saying i'm here to listen and learn. listen and learn at this day and age? this individual wants to be president of the united states and has to go into the african-american community and listen and learn as if this is an alien territory and, you know, take me to your leader and tell me what -- what's going on here. he should know better. at this point, he should be an informed individual by all

segments of american society. this is no time for a would-be president to start discovering large percentage of the population and trying to understand what they're all about. he should know. host: conversely, this morning tom friedman in "the new york times" critical of the obama campaign strategy thus far is saying he's not running on the success he's had in a number of key areas including the auto bailout and likewise which goes to this comment from our viewer on the twitter page saying what is president obama running on? he can't blame president bush this time. all he can do is blame himself and say, he will try harder. what is the president's message and how would you size up his campaign? host: -- guest: i think his message was going to develop during the campaign. recently, he spent some time on bain capital. i think the objective is to show that mitt romney is not the successful businessman that he claims to be but he's going to have to talk about his own record, too. what's happened in the last three years and it seems to me,

he has some things to say. he can talk about the auto industry and the fact that it's turned around. the fact that the financial sector is performing much better now. he can talk about the number of people who have access to health care who wouldn't have had it without the health care act as it passed. he has to talk about, he can talk about on foreign policy and where it's the biggest threat that we've faced since 9/11, al-qaida and where al-qaida is now and torn up enemy and he's got things to talk about. we saw four years ago, that's for sure. host: you're on wtop which is one of the most widely listened to radio stations here in our nation's capital. what is more difficult, writing an essay for 30 seconds or a minute or writing an editorial in "the washington post"?

guest: a one minute essay is much better. you have to get it said fast. you don't waste a lot of time. you're not trying to do 150 words, you're doing one minute so it's a quick hit on something that you care about, you know about, you say it in a few words and it's over. host: graduate of howard university. you have a long resume so i'm not going to go through all of it. tell the audience your own business background. guest: well, i had 19 years of public service including the state department and vista and department of health, education and welfare. i had almost 10 years of privacy experience in banking. i was the vice president of a local bank and ended up as vice president and board of directors of the bank and worked at the world bank as u.s. representative there. you can't hit a moving target.

host: our conversation with colbert king, we'll call him kolbe king. good morning. caller: good morning. can't believe i'm on c-span. love it! and mr. king, i am honored to talk to you. read you in "the post" all the time. my question, sir, do you think mayor gray should resign in light of these last revelations? and there's a larger question i want to ask you about. host: stay on the line. we'll get that question answered and come back to you. guest: this is not the time for him to resign. this is a time for him to explain himself, explain what has happened, how he feels about the two campaign aides who have pled guilty to the felonies. he's got to step up and talk about this. he can't dodge this question. caller: ok, thank you. so many issues with the gray -- mr. gray being in office and he talked to them. it just seems like on and on and

on, there's one thing after another and in a way, maybe it's too hard to spring the office of the mayor of d.c.? guest: the problem in the district of columbia this year i think is more serious than the one we faced when marion berry as mayor was arrested at the vista hotel using crack cocaine. it's more difficult because when berry went to trial, he was a private citizen and he was out of office. d.c. had a functioning government and a functioning mayor. in this case, we're confronted with something else. a politically damaged mayor at this point. we don't know whether it will get worse for him. he's politically damaged and we have the chairman of the city council who is under investigation as well for several activities including campaign finance but also, perhaps, some other things on his own personal life. so we face the prospect of having our top two elected

officials executive branch and the legislative branch in serious trouble. i don't know where we're ending in the election. host: can legal election be taken in the recall election? guest: i don't know enough about that situation to comment intelligently. host: featured later this month and early next month on the new book on president barack obama and i mention that because you had a column in early may and in the book, he reconfirms what barack obama wrote in his book about his frequency in using marijuana, the so-called gang when he was a high school student in hawaii. your thoughts? guest: his use of marijuana as a high school student? at least he was candid about it. i don't know what the consequences -- what that means for us as current president is

concerned. he's already acknowledged what he did. & it's over. what does he say now about the use of marijuana and the use of any kind of illegal drugs and i think his views on that today would be probably more relevant than what he did in high school. host: stewart is on the phone, good morning with colbert king of "the washington post." caller: thank you very much, mr. king. good morning. i have two questions that may be tied together. one is what's your perspective on how your business has changed, the advent of cable news and the internet? and the second question is my observation is that reporters largely tend to have a democratic bias. i have a little more balance now but i'm wondering if you see a connection to those. thanks. host: thanks for the call. cable news, first and foremost. thanks for being on cable. guest: i like cable news.

it revolutionized the way in which generals communicate with the public. it's revolutionized the way in which the public now sees public affairs. cable news is just been -- you add to that the internet and you have an explosion in the news available to the -- to the consumer. the question is whether some of that news is really well developed. whether it's properly researched, whether it can be really nicely written and exciting to read and titillating maybe but is it solid, is it based on solid reporting? some of the things that you see up on the blogs, for example are impressionistic, they're quick hits, they may not be well researched. and as a consumer, i think you want to be very careful about what you -- not only what you

consume and how you regard it when you take it in and i find it as a journalist, i have to do far more research now and far more checking because the information comes so fast and you make a serious mistake by running what you see coming across the internet. you better check it out yourself. and i think that goes for consumers as well. host: as part of this overall cable chatter, the trayvon martin case, is this a cable driven story or is it a legitimate national debate? guest: well, it's a little bit of both. it's driven by cable and by the internet, but it was a legitimate question in the sense of how young are regarded in society. particularly those who have a lifestyle that seem to be at variance with what the majority would think. i think the concern i had about this is we were making it a

proxy for everything. and it's not a proxy for -- for race relations. it's not a proxy for relations between blacks and police. we allowed to get it out of hand there. it's very much a florida issue. it's very much peculiar to that neighborhood in which he was living and working and walking. and that's where we tend to make a mistake in some of our coverage, we allow individual incidents to take on more significance than they warrant. and that's not saying his death is insignificant. i'm not. i'm not suggesting that the crime was insignificant. but i do think that we have allowed that issue to get almost outsized to proportion. the issue is important but not to the extent of it being the national figure that he is. host: as you point out in one of

your pieces last month, to paraphrase, what would a discussion be with trayvon martin without a contribution from patrick j. buchanan. explain what this is all about. guest: well, patrick buchanan has a penchant for jumping into situations like this and then making real broadside as far as races is concerned, broad observations that apply in a very generalized way to everything and i have written about pat buchanan over the years because he does have an ability to -- to take an issue that is -- could be understandable and to inflame it with his own rhetoric. and that's what i was commenting on. host: our next caller is from michigan. todd is on the phone with colbe king of "the washington post." good morning. caller: how are you doing? a previous caller was saying

that the media is biassed to the liberal side, the left side. you know, it couldn't be farther from the truth. you turn on cnn and they're talking about lady gaga's latest cancellation. it's not nothing but we're being fed garbage. i grew up in the city of detroit. this is a suburb just outside of the city of detroit, michigan and detroit used to be the economic hub for the world. and you go down grand river and all you see are people just hanging out, nothing to do. stores closed. buildings destroyed. vacant buildings and you got three gigantic casinos downtown. ok? i don't know if you've been in the city of detroit. but it's not about black and it's not about white. it's about green. you know? the people that pull the strings have all the money and they have all the money to pump into these campaigns and all of the

deceptions, misinformation that's put out there. people don't want to hear what's going on in egypt or what's going on over here? they want to know how they're going to put food on their table. host: thank you, todd. we'll get a response. guest: yeah, first of all, as far as the bias in the media, i think -- i think the media today is probably more diversified. you go to c-span, you get a straight news, straight news, straight commentary. you go to fox, you're going to get a particular, in my view, particular ideological slant with fox news starting first thing in the morning until the end of the evening. you get a slightly different slant from another perspective political perspective from msnbc. which tends to be more on the left. fox is more on the right. and then it strikes me as being in the mushy middle. is c-span. a little bit of pandering. but c-span sort of gives it to

you straight but you can pick the poison. in journalism. as far as what's going on in detroit and how capital gets deployed, that's going to vary from -- that kind of thing varies from city to city. and i don't think it's quite true that people even in dire circumstances at home, don't give some thought to what's going on outside of their own communities. they do care about afghanistan and our involvement in afghanistan and what's true of iraq. people are concerned about issues that affect their lives, life and death issues. i think no one is going to ignore the story about syria and finding those bodies there in syria that c-span had in the newspaper earlier, the earlier segment. people are not immune to that

kind of activity whether you're a middle class or whether you're a -- climbing the social ladder, you're concerned about that as well. people are not narrowly focused. host: how often are you asked to appear on cable programs? guest: i was a guest for a while, a few times with chris matthews, msnbc but i don't think he particularly cared for my role i chose to play which was to speak for myself and not to represent african-americans 100% so chris hasn't had me back on for a while. i do a regular show with abc "inside washington" here in this city. it runs on public broadcasting and on commercial tv. host: our next call is jordan from maryland outside of baltimore.

good morning, dorothy. caller: good morning. i'm glad i got on this show. i want to ask you this, i wanted two parts. please, this is going to be quick. mitt romney is running on cut taxs and cut regulation. what is the regulations he's going to do and what is the taxes he's going to cut on cutting the deficits. you have no questions about what is he going to cut? what is he going -- the regulations he's going to get rid it was and how the taxes he's cut are going to help the deficit. give us a chart. give us some facts. no one is answering those questions. just say cut. host: dorothy, we'll get a response. you want to stay on the line? stay on the line and we'll get that one issue and follow up with you. colbert king. guest: asking about mitt romney's position on taxes? he supports the continuation of the bush tax cuts that favored individuals with large incomes,

millionaires and above and he thinks that's a way to stimulate the economy by taxes -- actually raising taxes that will actually slow down the economy to what they want to make. it's a notion of a trickle down approach to economics. by reducing taxes, you free up capital for investment, and investment will stimulate growth, stimulate job creation and more income for people across the board. that's what he was supposed to do and that's what the republicans in congress are supposed to do and opposed to the spending programs probably in the defense area. that's essentially his position. host: are you still there?

caller: i'll do one quick follow-up. let's talk about mitt romney's foreign policies. now, mitt romney said out of his mouth and americans should listen to this, that dick cheney had good judgment and dick cheney should be the president of the -- could be the president or should be the president of the united states. now, i don't know how foolish that is when we know, we know, we don't have to guess what dick cheney did when he was in there. guest: i don't recall when romney said that, i don't think he would have said it this year because he wants to be president of the united states and i can't imagine him suggesting dick cheney becomes president since he wants the job himself. but to the extent of what i know about this campaign, i think dick cheney is a nonissue this year. romney's foreign policy is going to be much more vigorous. i think it's -- it would probably assume the kind of foreign policy that george w. bush pursued because foreign

policy to the world, you know, bring it on. and we'll take care of it. i think it's that kind of foreign policy is -- is not what we have seen for the last three years from this administration. but you can expect, i would think, a romney administration to give you a much more aggressive foreign policy with postures resuming those of john wayne. host: you have created a lot of debate on our twitter page, saying fox, msnbc are all infotaninment. they have traded in their craft. citizens are the losers. guest: no, i don't think so at all. depending on the shows you're talking about, if you're talking about talk shows and panels, i -- the show we do on "inside washington" four panelists one of whom is charles krauthammer,

a noted conservative journalist. and we have a diverse group of people that tend to like each other and we enjoy the show but we are not there to entertain, we're there to exchange views and i think you see that is true of most of the networks that i've been watching. although sometimes charles krauthammer says we're like -- we're more like a sitcom. guest: another viewer saying to the earlier caller, there's no difference between a romney and obama or a bush. can you see a difference? would we see a difference from this president to a romney administration? host: i think we would. romney has -- has vindicated -- indicated that he would by word and deed he would be a much more

assertive individual, asserting u.s. interests first, not so much relying on diplomacy. but really on demonstration of american power. host: deborah is on the phone from richmond, virginia. what does the i stand for, by the way? guest: isaiah. caller: isaiah, ok. how y'all doing? guest: fine, thank you. caller: i have a question. i wanted to know what are the limitations that y'all have? as journalists and i want to know the qualifications that a person has to have to be a journalist and also i wanted to know how much of the writer's opinion is allowed vs. the truth? host: he is a columnist. you're a journalist but you express a point of view.

let me paraphrase your question, stay on the line if he didn't answer your question from your standpoint. being accurate and expressing your point of view. guest: yeah. whether you are a -- an opinion writer or whether you are a straight reporter, you have to be accurate. you have to tell the truth. you can't libel. you can't slander. but as a columnist, i express opinions. that's what i'm there to do. and give you my point of view, as a reporter, though, that's not part of the game. the reporter's job is to report the facts and report what the reporter observes but not to put him or herself into the story to where they're trying to tell you what to think. that's not what journalism is all about as far as the reporter is concerned. host: deborah? caller: yeah, but they do that, though. host: who does it? caller: the journalists who a

lot of times when you'll be reading what they write, you know, it's a lot of, you know, it's a lot of their opinion that i see and it's -- and they do slander. host: ok. let me put on the table one example she might be referring to. a straight forward piece this morning in "the washington post" and he has an analysis piece which is different from your commentary, explain. guest: yeah. an analysis behind the story -- this is about as cut and dry an answer but give an explanation of what you have read in the story as opposed to and that's here is how i see it. the analysis is supposed to be a rather objective approach to an issue but goes beyond just who, what, when, where and how. but the why. but the why of it in the analysis is not supposed to

reflect necessarily the bias or the opinion of the writer but that individual has assembled the facts and presented the facts in front of you and given some explanation as to why it is the way it does. it's enough of a line to in my mind to draw distinction. host: as you indicate, the internet is a quick fact checker. so are our viewers and listeners and one of our viewers saying mitt romney on dick cheney. "this is a man of wisdom and judgment. he could have been president of the united states." guest: could have been. but the caller before said he should be president of the united states. that's why i said i don't think that's what he said. and he didn't say that. he said he could have been. and i don't argue with that point of view but that's not what the caller asked before, as i remember. host: and the two have been and will continue to appear at some closed door fundraisers during this campaign. let's go to clayton on the phone from arkansas. republican line with colbe i.

king of "the washington post." good morning, clayton. caller: good morning. my question has to do with energy policy. i was surprised on what mr. king indicates that one of the things that president obama should run on for his re-election campaign would be the turn around in the oil and gas area. do you think that within areas like coal, oil and gas that president obama has strong industry support for his role in his administration in the energy sector and also what do you think he's going to do in terms of running with the alternative energy and what's the plan for the next four years? we've obviously all talked a lot about solyndra and things like that. but what's the plan for the next four years and is there a conversation about oil and gas and gas prices one that he wants to have in this re-election? host: thank you. guest: i remember him running on

not that he was going to turn around the oil and gas industry but turn around the auto industry, automobile industry. that's what i had said and that's what i meant to say. i had not mentioned the energy policies at all. as i follow what i said on the energy policy, check the different categories and obviously checks all of the above. he says we want to do oil and coal, we want to do -- look at nuclear. we want to look at conservation, we want to look at drilling. but they're not prepared statements in the sense that here's where i want to go with the policy with respect to some alternatives, you know, he talks about getting fuel economy into the -- into the -- into the cars. but if your suggestion is, caller, that it's hard to get a good fix on the obama administration's energy policy, in terms of where he comes out with the alternative, you're probably right because at the

end of the day, the obama administration checks all of the above. and it's hard to pin him down on which ones would get priority over the others. that's hard to discern at least from where i sit. host: your column from april 20th, it the burban democrats rise again. who are the burban democrats? guest: i was referring to the burbans of the post civil war era in south carolina, the deep south. they were the ones who led the efforts to undo reconstruction. and they did it successfully doing so. i cited them because i see in some of the actions taken by some of the republican party there's a return to that. one wonders to what extent are

they going to try to undo some of the games that are going to be made in the last 30 years in this country particularly early in the civil rights era. host: our last call is mark joining us from dallas, texas. good morning to you. caller: good morning. host: good morning. we have a minute left. caller: real quick, mr. king, in your remarks -- in your opinion, your response on the trayvon martin situation, can you explain how his remarks were different from al sharpton's remarks? and reaction to it. host: thank you. thank you, mark. guest: remarks different from who? host: al sharpton from pat buchanan. guest: which remarks from al sharpton are you referring to? host: he's not on the phone anymore. he has his own show on msnbc so i'm sure he's referring it some of the remarks that he has made on his own program.

guest: i'm sure he has. i'm not familiar with those remarks. host: let me conclude where we began which is the discussion about mayor vincent gray and robert mccartney of "the washington post" explain or resign, mayor gray. what's going to potentially happen this week with the d.c. mayor? guest: i think we're going to see something happened that week that will not involve the d.c. mayor but other elected officials in the city. it could very well involve the chairman of the d.c. council, kwame brown. he's under investigation as well. and it's my understanding that that investigation is going to come to a very crucial point, perhaps this coming week. and that's going to be the news. host: stay tuned. guest: stay tuned. host: they call that a tease. colbe king of "the washington post." thanks for being with us. appreciate your time on this sunday. come back again. colbert king as we continue our week long series of columnists.

tomorrow, matt lewis of "the daily caller" will be joining us. clarence page of "the chicago tribune" on tuesday. wednesday, s.e.kupp of "the new york daily news." she's been getting a lot of attention later and thursday, katha pollitt. all these programs available on our web site at cspan.org. we'll continue the conversation tomorrow morning on "washington journal." among our guests will be colonel robert norton, now retired with the military officers association to talk about the g.i. bill and the conversation with the author of the book "the troops need you, america". lieutenant colonel eric eggland will be joining us and finally matt lewis as our spotlight on columnists continue all this week on c-span. a reminder, live coverage of the memorial day ceremonies at 10:50 tomorrow and then at 1:00 from the vietnam veterans memorial all day monday. thanks for joining us on this holiday sunday. hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend.

have a great week ahead. live scenes from the pentagon parking lot as rolling thunder prepares to move across the memorial bridge to the monuments in washington, d.c. have a good sunday. [captions copyright national satellite corp. 2012]