let's go one more student from birmingham alabama. goerss at. >> i am from okoboji sparer like i was and i was wondering how obama's new plan will alleviate overcrowding of emergency rooms. >> guest: our emergency rams are struggling and their overcrowded and by the way there is probably overtreatment. don't ever look your bill when you come out of an emergency room because he will find lots of expenses that you might not have to have. it is an area of great litigation costs and malpractice issues and that they clearly to have to address the problems in emergency rooms that all and in general people need help, healthcare whether they have insurance care or not will go to emergency res. we certainly have seen an increase stress on the health system in massachusetts, who has had a mandatory program so that everybody is covered, so i think that what we have to do is back off and divide your question into two parts. one is let's see what we can do but emergency rooms. they should not have to deal with some of the lesser problems we have t

in the buildings here in washington and in the buildings in new york and in the buildings in birmingham, alabama, are lawyers who have far more extensive research to do and less time in doing it well. mrs. boxer: will the senator yield for a question? mr. schumer: yes. mrs. boxer: a very brief question because i know that we have to vote. i want to speak for a moment as a woman and from california where we have such excitement about this nomination. i know that we all agree this is a historic first, this nomination. and i think given that, and the fact that, you know, the women of this country comprise the majority and there is only one woman on the court, and we certainly have never had a latino on the bench, i'm asking my friend: does he not believe this nominee should be accorded equal treatment -- equal treatment as it relates to the others who have been nominated for the same most that's all i'm asking for. i'm not on the committee. but i'm supporting our chairman leahy here and the rest of the committee -- at least those who are moving toward this in a schedule similar to justice roberts.

our next caller is brian from the democrats' line, birmingham, alabama. caller: yes, i think that any regulation should be, of course, it will scrutinize -- it will scrutinize -- well scrutinized. i have had a heart attack, i am 37 years old, and it is simply because i was dumb enough to smoke cigarettes. host: what do you think would have stopped you? what would ban -- it would that have changed your attraction to smoking? caller: no, i think that ultimately you pick it up somewhere along the way, and you are hooked to. that is all there is to it. so i do not know what would change to stop me from putting a cigarette in my mouth. host: thank you for your call. our next caller is maggie on the republican line, calling from kingston, new york. good morning. caller: hi. thank you for c-span. your the only thing worth listening to are watching. i think this is ridiculous beyond belief that this country is falling -- i mean, it is nobody's business. now they are going to tell us what we can smoke, how much we can smoke, the next thing is how much we can way.

host: birmingham, alabama on our democrats line. caller: yes, back when i was going to school, we had a three month school vacation. you probably went to school nine months out of the year. look at how you came back. what would you want to punish children not to have any fun and get fat in front of a computer. you're not having any activities year round? that is no fun. everyone is going to say, it could have been worse. i graduated from school in the 1967. we have ph.d.'s and others who have graduated from a small school. , alabama. host: what kind of things did you doer 0er -- do over the summer? caller: we went on vacation. i would visit my relatives in selma, alabama. we had activities, baseball, softball. you just cleared your mind of all your school activities so you would be fresh and don't mind going to school, you liked it, you enjoyed it. guest: the research shows, and this goes back to 1906. there are over 30 empirical studies that show young people are at risk of experiencing setbacks when they're not engaged in construc

host: scott joins us from the independent line from birmingham, alabama. caller: i have a friend of mine who worked for years and the construction industry, made good money and had insurance, blue cross, got laid off, could not find a job so start working for myself. went to get insurance, $800 a month but they would not cover any existing illness and he had an existing illness from a car wreck. what do people like that do? people like that can get in to socialized medicine and have some kind of insurer to help them because it is wrong, it hundred dollars a month, and no existing alliances? -- $800 a month. what if he had cancer and lost his job? guest: that is something we were just talking about, you have the fragmented insurance system. if you had a thriving individual insurance market, you could buy a policy at 18, a relatively cheap policy and keep renewing it even as you acquired these new health conditions, that is what you are assuring against. the problem is you have a system that forces people to make frequent changes in their insurance policies,

host: birmingham, alabama. tom on our line for democrats. . if they don't have activities, and are studying year-round, that's no fun and they will get fat in front of the television, and then everyone will say, oh, well, that system doesn't work. well, i graduated from school in the '60's, 1967, and we had ph.d.'s, we have directors at my school, a small school in brighton, alabama. host: what kind of things did you doer 0er -- do over the summer? caller: we went on vacation. i would visit my relatives in selma, alabama. we had activities, baseball, softball. you just cleared your mind of all your school activities so you would be fresh and don't mind going to school, you liked it, you enjoyed it. guest: the research shows, and this goes back to 1906. there are over 30 empirical studies that show young people are at risk of experiencing setbacks when they're not engaged in constructive activities and for many parents and many families they are able to turn on a faucet of opportunities for those trips, enrichment, reading, all of those kinds o

host: next up, birmingham, alabama on the behind for democrats. caller: i am so glad you say that mr. dalton, because we in america, just the average person, we do not understand the culture of the middle east. you have scholars that understand this, and they have a better concept of this stuff. the lady that just got off the phone, that's what i'm talking about. we have to understand the culture of another people before we can interfere. why should president obama say anything? he doesn't need to say anything else. what he said the first day was good enough, but the republicans want to take this to a political deal. this is not what is going on. we need toens the culture of a country before we can interfere. that's what happened in iraq. while we're over there with our military -- yes, i have family in the military and i can speak. i have a mother and nephews over there. we have to understand that we are part of the problem and playing politics with this. let's get real, people, get real guest: i agree with you. we do need to understand the cultu

miles described taking a road trip with a group of young people to birmingham, alabama, to participate in a demonstration. and they saw one of these billboards on the highway, and then, you know, martin luther king at communist training school, and then they saw a second one, and miles was disgusted. but as the third one loomed up in the distance, one of the kids turned to miles and said, that's the dumbest advertisement i've ever seen, it doesn't tell you who to call. so here was the white citizens council, the ku klux klan trying to discredit king, and all they were doing was promoting communist. .. >> you could go to an oil rig and find five workers sitting round trying to read, trying to write their own stories. what an exciting kind of extraordinary thing. i think learning should go from okayed toll grave. i think it's one of the crazy things about our educational system, it's considered for the young, like the young learn and then what, go on automatic pilot? that's nutty. so i did admire that and i do admire that. so, yeah. i don't find that objectionable. >> host: we have way f

skype we will be with students from the national speech and debate tournament taking place in birmingham alabama, courtesy of our c-span civics bus. students are on the bus and they will communicate to west from skype. primmest kidnaper augustin, go ahead. >> i am gabrielle and i'm from blue fallin north high school. i was actually wondering, you are talking in your recent blog seven ways that health reform will affect the. you said that the new health reform is going to be focusing on wellness and not sickness and i was wondering if you wanted to elaborate on that? >> guest: i think there is always been the concern that madison answered my eye go back a long way in my own education as a doctor, let doctors learn about how to treat people who are sick and most of the money that we spend in the healthcare system is for sickness, not wellness. 80% in that general range, and there is increasingly, over years, if we could only prevent this. loan cancer when it is related to smoking, coronary artery disease, and i make cardiologists by training, when it is related to having high cholesterol and fat d

james andrews in birmingham, alabama, and obviously successful elbow surgery for heim they changed him from a starter to a reliever. as start, he probably had three real solid pitches. if he's going to be ranked the number one prospect in that organization and maybe he lost one of those pitches with surgery. not sure. i've seen him just pitch against us and then on a video when he was throwing just the fastball and a cutter. so, two-pitch pitchers, usually that puts them in the bullpen. he does throw a lost strikes. he has a lot of experience. threw over 500 minor league innings and 85 appearance combining last year and this year. actually finished 16 games last year for the pirates. this year, he finished eight, he has one save and in 39 innings that he's pitched, only given up 22 hits. it tells you he misses bats. >> if you watch this show at all, you know that ray and i are big, big fans of mike rizzo shall the acting general manager of the nationals and architect this have deal. let's go to south florida and debbi taylor is lucky to have mike rizzo sitting next to him. what a terri

remembered it as a postcard, miles described taking a road trip with a group of young people to birmingham, alabama, to participate in a demonstration, and they saw one of these billboards on the highway, and then they saw a second one, and miles was disgusted. but as the third one loomed up in the distance, one of the kids turned to miles and said that's the dumbest advertisement i've ever seen, it doesn't tell you who to call. so you'd think here was the white citizens council, the ku klux klan trying to discredit king, and all they were doing was promoting communism. that's the kind of feeling i had there. in terms of hugo chavez and what's going on in venezuela. there's a lot to say about what's interesting about it, and, you know, i was there several times. my son chess saw lived there and worked there, but i did find when i visited these, you know, venezuela's a place that has not had education for all, and it now does. and education in an interesting way, what i really admire about what they're trying to do is education goes from preschool through life. and so there are learning circles, lit

and while he was in birmingham he worked with the movement there. the alabama christian movement.ned he was talking to people and trying to get them interested in a voter registration campaign. you know, it's too dangerous, too risky. in 1965 he's able to get a couple of people to go down with him. he serves eventually as the chairperson of the buckled movement organization for human rights and as the chair person of the freedom organization, the independent political party was the valid symbol of the black panther. off in 1970 he is actually elected as the first african american. and the book talks about that trajectory of a black politics from that moment forward. the movement does not happen without him, or at least it does not happen in the way that it does without him. >> did the amount county freedom organization have success? >> no. >> why not. >> for a couple reasons. in the the november election they run in seven african american candidates for local office. all are defeated by a couple hundred votes for a myriad of reasons. one was intimidation. ballot fraud. sending peo