well i'm tom foreman in washington d.c. here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture he has an extraordinary resume pastor a former congressman and c.e.o. of the nonprofit organization common cause bob edgar joins me tonight for conversations with great minds discuss his time in office the issues he's now taking on a war of peace and the corruption of the supreme court by any means necessary that's exactly what the republican party is doing to get their way and that includes using hostage taking tactics will debate that and more infamous rondell

romney campaign contributions appearing out of thin air it's not a mormon miracle and it should be illegal but according to the supreme court it's perfectly legal if it comes from a faceless corporation i'll explain in tonight's daily take. resides conversations in the great minds i'm joined by a policy choice in america dr bob edgar a former congressman from pennsylvania who served six terms in the u.s. house of representatives with a masters degree in divinity from the theological school of drew university as well as five honorary doctoral degrees it's going to lend his insight and talents to a number of organizations across america from families usa to the national coalition on health care to the center for international policy to name just a few currently he's the c.e.o. of common cause a nonprofit. nonpartisan organization working to strengthen our democracy and make

our government more accountable so we people he's also author of the book middle church reclaiming the moral values of the faithful majority from the religious right pleased to welcome here in studio is dr bob you're welcome it's great to be with you great to have you with us you served as the democratic representative one of them from pennsylvania for its careers in congress i'm curious what got you into politics and what advice you would have for today's politicians october twentieth nine hundred seventy three richard nixon fired archibald cox who was the special prosecutor looking into watergate i looked the word democratic up in the telephone book and i moved in one year from being vice chairman of my son's parent teacher's organization to getting elected to the united states congress as one of the watergate babies at age thirty one i'd never been to a political meeting before archibald cox was fired i had no experience in politics i was an urban pastor in philadelphia and i was

a chaplain at drexel university and i got mad at the fact that not i elected official who was good buddies with richard nixon i just assumed he would get reelected automatically in fact no democrat had won an election in my district since eight hundred fifty eight district had two hundred ten thousand republicans ninety thousand democrats i asked around the people and then who are you planning to run for congress and they said well we'll probably look for a lawyer and need some publicity and expected to lose i wasn't satisfied with that so i ran and won and the miracle wasn't the first election that was watergate ehrlichman holiday men john dean and richard nixon the real miracle was i got reelected five additional times and voluntarily left the congress by running against arlen specter for the united states senate in one nine hundred eighty six i came in second i got the silver medal for the senate and decided i wasn't going to spend the rest of my life. trying to get reelected to office i spent

a few years running the committee for national security and i spent ten years as president of the graduate school in california i spent seven and a half years as general secretary of the national council of churches and then about four years ago i came to be president of common cause and great organization that's been around for forty one years founded it frankly by moderate republicans who felt everybody had special interest and in washington except average ordinary people john gardner was the founder who had worked in the johnson administration and my job over the last four years is to try to recalibrate common cause to be the people's lobby to hold power accountable and to confront the issues in some new ways you've you've worked on a variety of issues and a variety of incur nations in your life you were also a pastor. i was a minister when i only church at age nineteen i went off to like herman college and

williamsport to get my education williamsport pennsylvania and my parents had no money my father was an assembly line worker at general electric and about halfway through my freshman year he indicated there was no more resource for a second year so i called the. bishop on the phone and discovered that the methodist church had churches that they gave to regular ministers and retired ministers and seven students but they had churches left over so colleague of mine in our freshman year were appointed to a church it was two weeks nineteen when i arrived at the gilbert united methodist church in gilbert pennsylvania it's a small coal mining town the gilbert coal company is pretty infamous in pennsylvania for doing bad things to the environment and the people of that congregation taught me a lot of thought i did so well the first year he gave me two churches the next year . on

a circuit near harris for i served churches for six years before i graduated from seminary and twelve years before i got elected to the united states congress what was your biggest lesson from that. and i think the biggest lesson actually happened around the corner from where this studio is in february of one nine hundred sixty eight i was invited by the chaplain at yale a guy been in the reverend bill kaufman to come down to washington and make a connection between the war in vietnam and poverty and he had a host of people at new york avenue presbyterian church just here in washington and the keynote speaker was a young clergy person by the name of dr martin luther king this is five weeks before dr king was assassinated and he so empowered me and inspired me that i dedicated myself to be an urban pastor followed his life and was devastated at his assassination and i'm one of the few people in fact i was one of twelve members

of the house of representatives on the select committee on assassinations looking into both the death of john f. kennedy and dr martin luther king i interviewed james earl ray the assassin i like the dreamer better dr king said you and i will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of bad people but for the appalling silence of good people so my life has been a series my vocation while being a person of faith my vocation is basically to be a person who addresses ending the poverty that kills healing the earth and bringing peace and throughout my career i've been focused on all three of those major casts i joke and say i can retire when we end poverty. have peace and heal the earth. it's. it's extraordinary you also went to vietnam to look at the situation. you know we we not only explicitly and overtly killed two

million vietnamese an. estimated two million we left behind a horrible legacy. in. american troops got a fair amount of publicity agent orange but not so much publicity about the impact of that of the news that so tell us about the sermons and what what brought you to the first let me say in april of one nine hundred seventy five i was one of the congressmen on the house floor shutting down the vietnam war the watergate baby class in one nine hundred seventy four that got elected was the first large class of congressman able to shut down the war many democrats from pennsylvania didn't think i had last very long so they put this anti-war activist on the veterans affairs committee and in the late seventy's i chaired the committee that did the research on agent orange the impact on our veterans about a year and a half ago the ford foundation found out that i had worked early in the late

seventy's early eighty's helping our veterans get compensation for exposure to dioxin agent orange but they invited me to take a delegation last may year ago may to vietnam to look at the impact thirty five years after the war now thirty six years and i have taken two delegations one of religious leaders and one of secular leaders first to visit with the children and grandchildren of the vietnamese who are still being impacted by the chemicals that we used to defoliate. and come back passionate working with both the ford foundation and the aspen institute on a u.s. the economy is the dialogue project to try to raise thirty million dollars a year for ten years in a row to clean up the hotspots in vietnam where the dioxin is still killing and

maiming. children and families in vietnam and set up some health facilities in vietnam but my passion is to remind americans that wars aren't over when the last soldier leaves the battlefield that we're going to have similar problems in afghanistan and iraq given the chemicals that were used the unexploded munitions the un mines and so the the diprivan plated iranian as well and i think vietnam is a good case for us there at a country that loves us which is really startling they're very frightened of china they want to increase trade with the united states they're an emerging economy travel and tourism is going to increase in that in that part of the world and with a little investment over a short period of time we can show the world that in fact you can go back in and clean up what was left as a legacy of the vietnam war so if there are still hot spots in vietnam if the

denying airport is a good example it was the busiest airport in the world during the vietnam war were troops were being brought in and where the chemical was brought in and the chemical dioxin was five times more powerful than it shouldn't be and many of our veterans were using the barrels that the chemical came in to cook food and they were rinsing the now and using them as basins many of them came home with all kinds of diseases and you can stand on the tarmac in an airport and you can actually smell the residual effects of the dioxin in the soil today today and we've been working hard to teach americans about that and there's a great partnership now vietnam and america work together to find the missing in action not just our missing in action but they are missing in action and now that that issue here. worked out between the two governments we think working between

the two governments to clean up the agent orange dioxin problem will be another way to to bind our relationship and also witness to the rest of the world that wars are terrible and inflict terrible pain long after the battlefield when i was general secretary of the national council of churches in december of zero two i took a religious delegation to baghdad before the war and this was a time of doing a humanitarian inspection and we even saw there before this latest involvement in iraq in iraq we saw the residual effects of the first iraqi war still impacting on children there in iraq but years of sanctions exact standing as a half a million children died as a result of those sanctions over the over the sanctions kept out equipment to repair incubators for babies because those parts could be used for get out storing

their they couldn't they couldn't make their water clean because it could be used to make chemical weapons unfortunately most americans don't realize when you put sanctions on a country what kind of impact that has that it doesn't just have an impact on the politicians or in iraq's case saddam hussein it has an impact on the children of that community. very real and lasting but we're talking with bob edgar start conversations with great minds will have more than just about. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right.

i think. even one well. whenever the government says they're going to keep him safe get ready because their freedom. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

welcome back to conversations with great minds of i'm joined by dr bob edgar the c.e.o. of common cause and the author of the book middle church reclaiming the moral values of the faithful majority from the religious right now you were arrested here last week and i want to get to that but first what is the middle church. when i

was general secretary of the national council of churches i was frustrated with people like pat robertson and other conservatives that robertson was calling for the assassination of the president of them as a way of they were making outrageous statements so a number of people jimmy carter was well jim wallace of sojourners was was a former senator who was an episcopal priest jack down for it and i all four of us wrote books that were very similar pushing back on the religious right and in my case the book middle church reclaiming the moral values of the faithful majority was pointing out that what the left hasn't done very well is evangelize the middle and if you put the religious spectrum alongside the political spectrum they're very similar those that think about the political right if you look under them you'll see the religious right and so i wanted to speak

a word of voice to middle america middle church middle synagogue little mosque many of whom have lost memory about the leadership of dr martin luther king and the blacks and whites and others that work so hard just fifty years ago to bring us the voting rights act the civil rights legislation. to to move away from segregation and i wanted to try to recapture the urgency of now that dr king talked about so i wrote a book that has become a neighborhood best seller my children of blood copies but it is a book that is trying to remind average ordinary citizens that they are going to take ownership of being the leaders that they that we've been waiting for i served in congress and i discovered after twelve years i loved being in congress in those days there was much more collaboration between democrats and republicans after election much more divisions by ideology the. by party affiliation it was

a great experience for me but i learned that congress often follows it doesn't lead and if we're really going to have a resurgence of democracy if we're going to have a resurgence of caring about the least of these our brothers and sisters average ordinary people are going to have to take back the agenda and you see this in the polling data where the polls say people are here but the politicians are way back here and even in this last debate on the debt crisis we saw time and time again people holding up charts talking about numbers and figures but failing to see the children who were going to be hurt because food programs were going to be cut or senior citizens that were going to be cut well and that's that's the essence so if we have these conservative politicians or who embrace the religious right or a race religion and wave the flags of the united states in christianity simultaneously and yet you just quoted from matthew twenty five it's the it's the

core essence of christianity it was the one time in the bible when the disciples came to jesus said how do we get into heaven you know feed the poor heal the sick visit those in prison tom one of the things you should know him in the book i wrote every time i use the religious right i always put the radical religious right or the conservative right there are a number of evangelicals who have read the bible literally enough to discover god cares about poor people and there are a number of evangelicals who have been heroes of nine who have discovered god cares about all of planet earth and once to be stewards of the fragile planet and that voice is very weak now the nature of the nominations are so busy putting themselves together that they are failing really to stand up and speak out with with a moral voice so what we did last week in the return the capital was simply get eleven religious leaders to say you know we're not for the senate or the house

position we're not for the. because of the democratic position we're here simply on behalf of average ordinary citizens the real people who are hurting because of high levels of unemployment underemployment the challenges for children and the elderly today hubert humphrey said the moral test of government is what we do for those in the dawn of life our children those in the twilight of life the elderly and all of those in the shadows of life the poor the sick and the disabled the group that gathered was very interesting we gathered we prayed we were arrested we did a faithful act of civil disobedience and i have gotten many many e-mails from people including just e-mail from someone who in one nine hundred sixty five during selma got arrested in the rotunda of the capitol praying and doing exactly the same thing and it's that that courageous remnant of people that have actually changed the world and we've got to reignite that spirit and help people in the mainline

churches and protestant catholic jewish and muslim traditions and other faith traditions to join hands and work together and really push back on some particularly the christian right that tends to say outrageous things that no one can find in the in the text of the bible. they're going to judge jeremiah. you know god doing be a human being's the ability to write the scripture but it seems to me that faithful jews faithful muslims faithful christians understand in all of those traditions that god loves the least and the poorest and the last and calls us to be part of healing the planet which is also is to ensure that's right. and it was the inciting incident for your arrest in the rotunda of the. so-called

crisis. exactly when the president came on the air and spoke and manere spoke after. a group of our staff got together and said what role should we be playing and we had just listened to a really courageous individual by the name of john raines former faculty member at temple one of the freedom riders he came to speak to the common cause staff and he really inspired us he talked about his days of getting on a bus as a white graduate student aged twenty seven going down to arkansas fifty years ago getting arrested. and he reminded us that he had just been reinvited arc and so he was brought in as a hero fifty years later he was honored for his presence and it just inspired the staff to say what can we do to visualize or middle america the fact that the cuts that are going to be made are going to have

a deep impact and we need balance we need people to pay their fair share of taxes we need to corporations to pay their fair share. bill moyers was helpful also in inspiring i see he said this is the most dangerous moment in american history we're either going to be a nation of and by and for the people or of and by and for corporations and that i think was part of a motivating force to get us started and i have to tell you that they're going to roll out demonstrations like we did at the capitol all across the country in august and september as different faith groups have prayer ins and sit ins and other opportunities in congressional districts and when the twelve are named in the super committee there's going be a lot of attention put on the common cause working with some other good government groups want each of those twelve to pledge that they won't be raising money from

the day they were appointed. the day they come out with their report from special interest groups and secondly that they would be fully transparent on the corporate leaders the lobbyist or all of the special interests that they meet with but that would be completely open and we're hoping that faith leaders across the country will go into their states into their districts into their regions with this message on behalf of the poor the children all of those who are being left out of the conversation our fear is that the twelve that will be named will in fact be inundated with corporate and labor special interests and not really speak on behalf of all the people of the nation we need a fair result coming out of this assuming that there's any reason assuming that. you know this theme of we're ality. not

a not sanctimonious reality but genuine reality has been running through this conversation another dimension of this that you've worked on is the issue of morality among been eyeing kings of america the people who since each you know three with the marbury case actually have more power than the other two branches of government clearly not with the founders intended but they have it and they have declared themselves above the law license way above certainly the judicial code of conduct we're talking with the supreme court. the constitution article three the constitution that defines this or the supreme court says that they shall act within the regulations. or you can fight it but it's somewhere in my notes here but i read it. the regulations defined by congress that congress should regulate the supreme court. with the abuses of particularly thomas and scalia the particular agree just ones deciding cases after having you're going to school you change for

example thomas' wife or brothers. we cover that morality for the supreme court if congress is on the way to assert the power of the constitution. most legal scholars say the only way you can get at the supreme court is to shine the light of media attention and raise issues with the supreme court and common cause got into this by accident we wanted to target some of the corporate leaders who were moving us in the wrong direction and we discovered that charles and david koch the koch brothers twice a year get corporate leaders together at spas and they bring in political commentators they bring in legislators to move our nation much towards a corporate agenda as opposed to the people's agenda they grabbed last september in their invitation that they had school the zero seven and thomas in zero eight at

their at their meetings so some of my staff went and started to investigate i discovered that in fact scalia and thomas did attend their meetings and so we sent a letter to the justice department said. is that a conflict of interest because. in zero nine they did an extraordinary thing they held over the citizens united case which gives corporations and labor unions the ability to use corporate treasury money for the first time. were they tainted in their visits at the koch brothers events and as a part of that we asked the justice department to investigate and we then found out that thomas had for the six years that we could see had filled out his financial statement wrong so we sent a letter to the judicial conference asking them to investigate within forty eight hours thomas was redoing twenty one years of his financial statements where he

had marked on a box saying no is right had no outside income and yet his wife ginni thomas have been known to have worked for a variety of organizations but that's not the end of it it was like six hundred thousand dollars range common causes discovered that the supreme court has exempted itself from the code of ethics that all other federal judges have been. obliged to abide by and so what we're asking is justice roberts to tell us what ethical code does the supreme court operate under and if a supreme court justice violates that or has a conflict of interest what are the principles that you use to check on conflict of interest and we were very surprised at what we found and so we're continuing to put light on to both justice thomas and scalia in terms of their political involvement

for example has met several times with the tea party went up to capitol hill in late january to then i michele bachmann if you read the judicial code of ethics giving money to political parties speaking at that. little the live events is all forbidden by federal judges but the supreme court seems to feel it's of that responsibility we want to shine a light on the supreme court and make them hold the highest court in the land should have the lowest ethical standards if anybody should be the rivers thanks so much for this race to be with you great to have you with us. coming up our big picture rubble joining me in the rubble or other servo joe madison and brian darlington discuss the stock market crash the recent g.o.p. hostage takers and fox so-called news defending erections but not contraception right after the break.