1905.on v. massachusetts, there was a pastor in cambridge who refuse to get vaccinated for smallpox. said it was a religious objection. the supreme court said, too bad. tough luck. the bottom line is there is a point at which every person responsibility issue becomes a public health one. and the question is -- where is the line and what are the legal doctrines that govern the crossing over of that line? i would submit to you that we have surpassed that for this problem. yet we have not enacted any societal interventions that are meaningful to try to fix it. that is what needs to change. >> thank you, dr. lustig.

i was wondering if you could speak little bit to other disease in addition to obesity, such as autoimmune disease. >> autoimmune disease is a grab bag. this is being televised, taped. and i am about the science. andscience on auto immune disease is very much an open question. to tella little loaathe you how all of this might tie into autoimmune disease, other than to say that people are working on it. i am very interested, but i am not willing to go public on it. not until we have hard science. so i'm going to have to beg the question right now. sorry. , i just wanted to make one brief comment about the idea of if you are taking something away, what are you giving? if you take away sugar, what is the reward?

>> i have never said take it away. reduce availability. to a manageable level. a lot of people say i say that, but i have never said that. to not put words in my mouth. if we reduce the exposure to very smalls, in a a sample size, mostly middle-aged midwesterners in the united states, i can say one of the main rewards that these people are getting in a health education program i am running reduction, ands when you reduce your waistline circumference, people start to notice and you start getting a lot of condiments. to people really respond that -- you start getting a lot of compliments. and people respond to that. is oner modification piece when people start to be rewarded by observation. and i can speak from being a midwesterner myself and seeing a lot of people in this area of

the country and this age group specifically respond very well to that. >> i do not disagree with you at all. my mother had a famous saying -- a minute on your lips, forever on your hips. i got that a long time ago. still, that is the way it goes. you canom line is -- only change your behavior if the environment allows for it. 600,000 food items have 80% adulteration by added sugar, it is awfully hard to change her behavior in a toxic environment. the toxic environment has to improve in order for you to be able to manifest those changes in behavior. that is what i would say. >> and to sustain them over time. that is all, thank you. >> that is all the time we have. i would like to remind you -- rob will stick around a little

bit to sign his book. finally, i would like to thank him. >> thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> you are talking about litigation -- span, two up on c- supreme court justices. we begin with clarence thomas. he talks about his life before and after his appointment. kagan on the workings of the nation's highest court and that dedication ceremony for the winston churchill bust in the nations capital. and the head of google research shows how computers are being designed to learn.

on the next "washington journal," a reporter discusses efforts to raise the minimum wage. than an author looks at his book " america 3.0." representative a from the national endowment for the arts on federal funding for the arts. plus, your e-mails and phone calls and tweets. at 7hington journal," live a.m. eastern on c-span. >> a discussion now with supreme court justice clarence thomas. he spoke at the federalist society's national lawyers convention and talk about his life on the court and what it was like to get there. this is about 50 minutes. [applause]

>> thank you, david. could evening, everyone. evening. it is my great honor and pleasure to introduce our distinguished guest this evening. although much of what i might say by way of introduction is no doubt familiar to all of you. justice clarence thomas has served with great distinction on the united states supreme court for more than two decades now. he has been a friend of the federalist society for so long that most of you in this room already know him very well. [applause] but i think it is right for us to recall the extraordinary path that he traveled to reach the nation's highest court. not for what it tells us about him, but for what it tells us about our country. justice thomas himself put it in his remarkable memoir.

"i have never doubted the greatness of a country in which a person like me could travel all the way from georgia to our nation's capital." clarence thomas has dissented from west african slaves who worked at a plantation in georgia. he was born in pinpoint, a tiny settlement near savannah, into circumstances of extreme poverty and deprivation. there was no running water in the shanty where he lived. and only a single electric light. his father abandoned the family. when he was six, the house burned down and his mother moved with clarence and his brother to a squalid tenement in savanna, where the living conditions were deplorable and there was a shortage of food. his mother could not raise the boys on the $10 per week she earned as a housekeeper. and clarence was seven, he and his younger brother were sent to live with their grandparents.

their influence on him, especially that of his grandfather, myers anderson, was life-changing. as told in his wonderful memoir, his grandfather's self-reliance and ethic of hard work and personal responsibility, his insistence on the importance of education, and his personal dignity and strength in the face of the injustices of the segregated south taught our supreme court justice everything he needed to know to meet the challenges and opportunities that were ahead of him. the sisters at saint benedict and saint pius added a few things too. [laughter] initially, young clarence thomas was called to the priesthood and he entered the seminary. the call gradually lost its strength and eight cool and bigoted comment by another

extinguished. he enrolled at holy cross college. yeah law school came next. after earning the elite degree, he had difficulty finding a big- city law firm job. so he accepted an offer from the attorney general of missouri and served as an assistant attorney general in jefferson city from 1974-1977. after a brief stint in corporate law, he followed the then senator danforth to washington dc, just in time for the reagan revolution. over the next dozen years, terrence thomas served in all three branches of government as a legislative aide to senator danforth, as chairman of the equal opportunity employment commission, and circuit judge on

the united states court of appeals for the d c circuit. along the way, he met and married virginia, his soulmate. [applause] in 1991, he was appointed to this agreement court by president george h.w. bush. by this time, he had emerged as an outspoken conservative. so the confirmation process exacted a personal toll. by following the example of his grandfather, he persevered. and our nation is very fortunate that he did. on the court, justice thomas has been a steady and committed originalist, playing a pivotal role in the recovery and restoration of the original method of constitutional interpretation. he has made substantial and