have been a lot of president obama gave a speech about it the night it happened here mind of congress and the entire country quite a few times in his state of the union address just this week so it's one of the biggest successes of the administration likes to claim in that light how her feeling these videos or these photos do any damage to national security this is by no means something that is a secret and personally i think a little bit of proof would be nice and so just get a load of what argument the justice department is making now to continue the excessive secrecy so they have filed papers asking a federal judge to rule against judicial watch saying if the cia's drone program which technically the cia doesn't acknowledge is also one of those things that everybody knows about it despite the fact that everybody knows about it they continue to keep it a secret and continue not to let out any details including the number of civilian deaths because if they did release any of the details to the public on a program with the public already knows about it would still risk jeopardizing national security now let me give you their exact statement here it goes as follows

the fact that the public may already speak freely of the existence of drones or speculate openly that such a program may be directed in part or in whole by the cia does not even masculine eight the cia's warnings of harm were forced to acknowledge officially the existence or nonexistence of requested records di really hoping that the rest of you out there pick up on the absurdity of such an argument but the problem is that we see the same argument being made all the time the way the state department refuses to declassify the state department cables even though they've been released in full for all to see by wiki leaks the same thing was done with the pentagon papers which are only last year forty years after being published in newspapers technically declassified so what's the point of keeping something classified or secret if everybody already knows about it it defies logic it's become an obsession it's an addictive habit of the government just can't seem to break and now while at times it can seem so ludicrous that it just makes you want to laugh about it we have to remember that it's also a very danger. a very toxic path to be heading down because you see the more the

government gets away with things like this the more they're going to keep us in the dark and while some out there might try to argue that these are classified missions and there are some things that need to remain secret which i think most anyone would agree with we have to look specifically at what it is that they're applying this argument to the use of drones that's something that needs more public debate not only is there a legal gray area to be applied but the more rally the ethics of firing from thousands of miles away and not disclosing it to the public who exactly was it was killed or caught in the crossfire that's questionable especially when drone strikes so often shape public opinion in other countries when women children neighbors are killed and yet we have no idea what's being done in our name so let's just let this be a reminder another example for you of how far the secrecy obsession is really extending hopefully the judge is going to rule against the justice department and for judicial watch for transparency and for honesty but if the government's done it so many times before they want to stop the judge from letting them do it again.

hi guys it's time for a happy hour trying to be this evening is r.t. web writer andrew blake and the reason foundation's anthony rand as oh thanks for joining me guys you're already feeling i don't know what you're so upset about we're not a good idea you're here ok ok sorry for being a masculine with his little friends these are what sorts of miniscule hearing about me was from scotch next time i would like i was carrying some scotch. ok let's move on to something a lot more fun. whatever as if having the death penalty and being one of the law and speaking us here in the country that still has this really archaic and like horrible way of killing people isn't enough this north carolina politician why. to

bring back public hangings just take a listen he said we need to make the death penalty a real deterrent again by actually carrying it out every appeal that can be made out to be made at one time not a serial matter if murderers and i would include abortionists rapists and kidnappers as well actually executed it will at least have the deterrent effect upon that for my money we should go back to public hanging hangings which would be more of a deterrent to others as well. yeah absolutely incredibly horrifically unimaginable if he really wants to you know school absolute you know most of his you know hated rivals people who think she's just hanging that's the best you can come up with what would you suggest i mean how do you know he's very clever and we need to guard you know the hunger games probably would be you know at least a start you know all that's been done you know don't hold back how would you kill someone you know this is you i'm not that dark inside my feet but i feel like with questions you have something and i feel like you've thought about this before no no no but other people have like down the down the coast in florida congressman last

year said that they should bring back the firing squad actually because they don't have a firing squad in utah until just recently and then there was a guy that actually chose this dude. just once probably yeah. he said this is kidnapping the thing is legal hits get the kidnappers and hang them like two people get kidnapped still like everyone's had an abortion as yes ok going to hang the abortionist but when i hear it all right with i think i'm just i'm getting to i don't think that people still get kidnapped but this is this is. just. you know city folk not understanding north carolina like we're not understanding the value of us public hanging and you know what i was you know shape in mind and children and nobody is completely horrific and you know i guess were missed the whole kidnapping epidemic of north carolina all right let's move on to mormonism get so much better use of the letters are you going to send me a lot there that are you know look i'm certain that mitt romney is

a mormon. mormonism is a cold and it would give credence to a cult to have a mormon candidate. all right so there have been a lot of questions as to whether his religion might affect his campaign but now check out this story that gawker is talking about today which is apparently mitt romney's militantly atheist father in law was posthumously converted to mormonism by his family despite the fact that when he was alive he regarded all religions as hogwash hogwash is it when this is existed because we can now this is just sort of the tip of the iceberg if we want to get into like an unusual thing in mormonism because as everybody who has seen the book of mormon knows you have all sorts of what you could to be god of your own planet and nobody telling you that has the right you can only get to the planet if your husband gives you the keys or something and i did as you know that if there is no majority that if we want to start grabbing like weird things and hold about people's religions and holding them

against them then we you know i'm a christian and we believe when we take communion that we are drinking the blood of christ and eating his flesh that's a cigarette i think you know the jews like to necessarily religion specific this is like oh the guy died let's just cover up his past for a political campaign the poor guy who is an atheist to save his soul they just want to save us all they waited for is. dragging a chicken around your head and transferring sins to it as the jews like to do about the poor i'm not sure we do or seeing any of those rows of as a second hand crazy art let's move on to something hey let's move on to t.v. is there so much fun. i have genital herpes. and i try to be. there in thirty years my doctor told me something surprising one study found that up to seventy percent of people who had genital herpes got it from their partner when they had no signs or symptoms of an outbreak. i always wonder who the actors are that actually agreed to be in these commercials because it's

like embarrassing right to be like a t.v. commercial out embarrassing ever and so now this kid you know what you're pretty is really angry kenneth clements a former student at ronald reagan high school in miami florida claims that the school newspaper wrote up a story about s t d's with the headline teen stay quiet about as t.d.'s and they just put a photo of his idea on it with an ax over his mouth and so he's obviously filed a lawsuit because he's saying you basically just labeled me as as t.v. boy and now everyone it's call me i mean the same i can't take a joke he's saying you can't take a joke like that's not bad if you're the one person that they made of body you know be the face of the story it's much the student but you know he could own it well perhaps you were clearly a bully unschooled it oh shit clearly if this is very limited this is this is this is coming across as very much so you would just laugh it off i would i would think you should be saying i think i think you should you know i would sue because i want

money because i'm a high school student and i want to embrace all that is america but i would also on it so i think he should step up like why not just start getting crazy late and have a bunch of protected sex and get it get these us t.v. so then he just take a look back at him is that now it's making it so he can't get laid in high school because he's already has the label of s.t.d. boy so that you know it isn't just in your best i don't know i mean if they are going to speculate about what he's going to get all this money from this lawsuit people are going to be flocking to him he's going to get these s.t.'s anyway so be able to look back on it in laugh all right let's just end this with a nice little clip of obama saying you got. i. i see. luke ha. are you know really tough about his policies but a little bit makes me. anyway after that al green's record sales were shot up by four hundred ninety percent but we don't time to talk about it so thank you for

joining me john lennon i'm sorry for all of our experience and here. are you guys that's every night thanks for tuning in make sure we come back on monday we're going to hear that are we hearing that we are hearing me the occupy d.c. might be cleared out so we're going to read all the latest and we time follow us on line on facebook on twitter and on you tube and coming up next is the new. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

more news today violence is once again flared up the from these are the images kobold has been seeing from the streets of canada. china operation to rule the day . and. to the future this month chunks by particles that make up the fabric of the

universe find what you're looking for in the deep siberian forest prevent a fire with the help of lasers in fibers plug your tablet of a new gaming religion and let the inventor begin all of that here in nova severe sputnik knology on day here on along we've got the future covered. oh i'm tom arbonne in washington d.c. and this is the big picture. coming up tonight on the big picture it's friday so that means it's time for conversations with great minds tonight i sit down with jeff kline mounts to talk about the impact that the citizens united decision is having on our mockers also from the state of the union to the g.o.p. debate and everything in between we've got it all. it's a night's big picture rumble and bank of america will modify your mortgage but at

what cost how will their decision affect your freedom of speech. for tonight's conversations and great minds i'm joined by jeff. jeff is the former assistant attorney general of massachusetts and has been fighting on behalf of people business and the public interest for more than twenty years currently he's the co-founder and general counsel for the organization free speech for people which is a national nonpartisan campaign with the mission of overturning the supreme court's citizens united decision and fighting back against corporate personhood this is a movement that is nearing a tipping point in america as tens of thousands of people rallied in front of court houses across the nation earlier this month on the two year anniversary of the citizens united decision to protest corporate personhood and too much corporate

influence in our democracy and as an issue the comedian stephen colbert has taken to its logical absurdity with his super pac including his most notorious super pac ad about mitt romney the serial killer. if mitt romney really believes what christians are people my friend. than mitt romney is a serial killer. mitt the ripper. as a result as a result of corporate personhood and the supreme court decisions like citizens united our democracy frankly is in peril and jeff clements as someone who can help us he's the author of the new book corporations are not people and he joins us now welcome thank you tom good to be here great to have you with us before we get into into the book what what got you into the law and into the massachusetts a.g.'s office well it's a long story i'll give you the short version and i was actually out of college

a canvas there with greenpeace really and i was going door to door in places of rural virginia to suburban washington d.c. and other places like that talking about environmental protection and the balance of people and and corporate power even then that's really what the environmental movement is about how we make it a more just better society for all of us and i went to law school because i saw that's where the battles were taken the we could talk about it but in the meantime the courts and the law were actually creating the results we all lived with and i wanted to have a more tools frankly to be involved in that and that effort and so i i went to law school tried to keep up the fight and when i was practicing law in my first few years i got him scott harshbarger an attorney general of massachusetts at the time was leading this effort to take on the tobacco industry with many other state

agencies across the country and i want to be part of it and so i banged down the door to let me in and i worked on the tobacco case in the mid ninety's in the a.g.'s office there that's great because if so great. in your in your own words what is corporate personhood this your book corporations are not people yeah you know it was quite well i start the book with some acknowledgement really that we. we need a book to say corporations are not people i think most americans know that the reason it does is a few who don't and unfortunately five of them are on the supreme court and so what corporate personhood is is a notion that corporations have taken on you've served are really the rights that belong to the people and when the due process clause and the equal protection clause and other aspects of the constitution use the word person the corporate lawyers have hammered away for years as as you know more than anyone to take the

rights of people and so that's the fight against corporate personhood now it shouldn't be confused with the state law of treating corporations with a metaphor of personhood so we we can sue them they can sue they can sign contracts and so forth but we the people make those laws when delaware corporate law is made it's made by the delaware state legislature and if if we the people decide a person metaphors useful one for some purposes that's fine but that has nothing to do with the constitution and so we confuse those two at our peril as the supreme court showed in citizens united the corporations along with other institutions governments churches typically it's been those three suppose you could throw in unions or non-profits. all the way back to seventeenth century british common law have had a person who had status as you point out so they could pay taxes on property sue

and be sued but it's always been a unique status separate from that of natural persons humans like you and me. when did that start to break down or before. well you know it is a. in my view it's constantly blurry and if we're not careful and so this has been a struggle in the american our american story back to the beginning of the revolution of course the tea party from my hometown of boston was about throwing the india corporate she is a corporate tea into the harbor exactly they had a special privilege from the british crown and. the settlers the colonialists wanted to be able to trade with whomever they chose and not have to deal with the corporate monopoly that the british were imposing on us at the time and that is a refrain throughout american history andrew jackson was fighting the first bank of

america i know you can talk more about the current iteration of bank of america but that idea that corporations get special privileges from the government and then use special privileges to leverage that advantage leverage the wealth and try to get more power i think is a constant story it's one of the things that go with a corporate charter is a threat and i think we always understood that and ok julie we forget it or we lose some battles like with santa clara in the gilded age took away our constitutional rights because we didn't keep an adequate eye on corporate power but we pushed back with the progressive era the new deal again in the sixty's and seventy's we had to push back and now we have to do it again i think this idea that there's a line gets blurred it will happen if we don't manage what in the book i call corporations are there a tool that's not a person nothing more exotic than a tool and they're like gasoline or guns they have purposes but if you don't keep

an eye on them they get out of control. i don't think most people understand what a corporate charter is or why the state charter laws even what state charter laws are. setting aside all the. oddities of things like the charter mongering era end of the nineteenth century or something but what is a corporate charter and and out of that i guess doesn't that define what is a corporation i think yes and so the corporate charter is quite simple actually you can incorporate without government permission and in fact there is no such thing as a corporation existing in nature a group of people cannot get together and form a corporation without government rules and the charter that comes from government anyone is free to associate you're free to start a business you can form a partnership we can do all kinds of activity we can organize as a church or

a religious institution or a nonprofit but if we want to be a corporation you have to go to the government by definition under the law and all of our states have state incorporation laws and i'm sure you know many many people know when you want to incorporate you actually go down to the secretary of state so you do it online now and you get what is it a corporate charter and it's. because i want to put it that way because they're not people of course exactly you get you get what the state what the people of the state have decided are the privileges and benefits that come with incorporation and we used to remember they come with responsibilities and duties back to the public to and that's what we are losing all in and i mean what's the reason why we would even have corporate charter laws why would why would a state in the first place the corporations that are very different than they were in the era of jefferson and washington. we didn't have i mean the early.

corporations were created in the early nineteenth century to do things like dig the erie canal i mean the they were not you know it was until after the civil war we were so so why would in the modern sense why would we even. have a corporation well there's there's good policy reasons for it and in my view. before i go there let me say that i have some debates with my libertarian friends about citizens united and corporate power and so forth and i tease them that you know no self-respect in libertarian would go down and ask the government for all these privileges and some of them actually are saying you know you're right maybe we should abolish corporations and take you know you shouldn't have limited liability and all of the government favors that come with a corporate charter basically and so i actually don't agree with that though i think corporations do serve a useful purpose limited liability is that sounds like oh that's not good people

get limitations on their liability but it does help bring capital to places where we need it to bring investment where it might not happen otherwise it does it is useful to have perpetual life so that when a president of a company is is fired or moves on the company doesn't have to disband and you know lay off the workers and return the money to the investors and start all over again that has some continuity which is useful so there are good policy reasons for it but that's certainly open to debate that's that's what we should that's the kind of debate we should have if we are going to give limited liability should we give it to coal companies that are taking five hundred mountains and literate in them and appalachian dumped in the mountains into the streams for twenty five hundred miles of streams are gone now that kind of limited liability maybe is not such a good idea should be p. shareholders really be exempt from the disaster in the gulf of mexico no liability

for when they got the profits for years of safety cut in there's a good debate to have and we maybe we should be exploring if we are going to have corporations what are the rules that we the people write for them and it seems that they've been writing the rules. for themselves for a long time i think that's right through through lobbying and through corporate through influence of all the titians i think that's right in the worst thing about citizens united in this constitutional speak corporate speech corporate rights is now when we try to write some rules they get struck down by the of the century the corporate takeover of our bill of rights so even when we're stepping up to say well no we're going to put some controls and and balance in the system we have this sort of corporate theory that allows the courts to strike those laws down i want to get into the the modern iteration of this you track it back to lewis paul i think it's

a brilliant analysis and let's get to that right after the break ok we'll be right back more conversations with great minds with jeff clements coming up right after this break. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right here. i think. well. we have the government says they're going to keep you 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. see some other part of it and realize everything. i'm tom or is a big. welcome

back to conversations with great minds i'm joined by jeff clements co-founder and general counsel of the group free speech for people and author of the new book corporations are not people let's go back to a brilliant book with a forward by bill moyers i should add and a blurb on the back from tom hartman. i find myself in good company who was lewis paul lewis powell was really the father of the new corporate rights movement he was a lawyer in richmond virginia in the one nine hundred sixty s. he joined the board of directors of the philip morris tobacco company the cigarette company he was on the board of about a dozen other big corporations

a corporate lawyer and in about nine hundred seventy after witnessing twenty million people twenty million americans come out into the streets to demand better controls on earth day april nine hundred seventy to demand better balance. about air pollution reverse catching on fire toxic waste dump basically corporate corporations externalizing everything poisonous and toxic and keeping the profits american said enough and we got a wave of environmental reform the first e.p.a. clean water act clean air act endangered species act and so on the incredible wave of reform with richard nixon in the white house the lewis powell the corporate lawyer in richmond virginia looked at this and was appalled democracy was working and he called it the attack on the free enterprise system and he wrote a memo to the chamber of commerce outlining a multi-year corporate funded organized corporations to fight back

and to fight back really against democracy work and put in some kind of balance into our into our system of economic system and the amazing thing about this memo i talked about in the book how explicit and detailed it was from using activist minded courts he called it to create corporate rights to change the political legal and economic structure of america that was his goal and the amazing thing is six months after writing this memo to the chamber of commerce president nixon appointed him to the supreme court and he got his chance to do just that did did nixon in your opinion no the paul was all about this kind of stuff you know let's because it causes so many things came out of this i mean from heritage and cato and all these think tanks and federalist. or did nixon just think he was a good because he had been asked before to be on the supreme court he turned it down yeah and at the time nixon actually had two nominations that had gone south.