very honored to have both of these accomplished speakers tonight so please help me in welcoming richard reeves and thomas childers. [applause] >> it is a pleasure and an honor to be here at the national constitution center and to be able to have a conversation with richard. i will look restraint to keep my temptation having read your work about the president's to ask you about the current president but instead talk about this new book of richard's which is a remarkable book about an absolutely astonishing series of events in 1948, 49. it's particularly important to me i left several years in berlin but as a student and teaching at the free university which was founded precisely during this period, so in one of the things that was the major event every year and the year i was in berlin was the chairman of american friendship day held in the temple of airport and the spirit was always recognition of the men who were involved in the airlift and berlin was a great place to be an american throughout even the roughest times in the postwar period because of the airlift. so i think we will have very i

. >>> richard reeve is live in tysons corner. >> the snow is follow -- falling steadily. this tree is coated with snow, but this is also ice. the big issues with the road, route 7, it is getting the icy glaze underneath. that is a big concern. things will get a lot worse tonight. it is round two with the snowfall in northern virginia. >> tired of it. >> in tysons corner, the snow is falling thicker and faster. the road surfaces right now are slowly hardening slush. >> virginia is really bad. >> barbara jackson is just trying to get home to gaithersburg. >> i work at fairfax hospital. i have to go to work tomorrow and sunday. just make sure i have my four- wheel-drive on. >> vdot has 1800 plows, sweepers, and trucks out. the interstates are the priority and they urge drivers to stay off the roads. it gets around well? >> yes, but cannot do anything about the ice. >> the beauty shot of the snow. it is coming down good. the big deal is what happens on the ground. vdot calls this kind of snow a plow drivers worst nightmare because it is wet and blowing. it is great for snowba

. >> rose: and we continue with author and journalist richard reeves. his new book is called "daring young men," it is about the berlin airlift. you'll learn a lot about your country and about the people who came forward at a historic moment. >> my students had never heard of this great american adventure. i mean, it brought out as lincoln said, the better angels of our nature and i'm not sure any other people in the world could have or would have done what those young... the daring young men, those young americans did when they got phone calls in the middle of the night saying they had to report within 48 hours to save the people who'd been trying to kill them. >> rose: peter orszag and richard reeves coming up. ♪ if you've had a coke in the last 20 years, ( screams ) you've had a hand in giving college scholarships... and support to thousands of our nation's... most promising students. ♪ ( coca-cola 5-note mnemonic ) captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: peter orszag is here, he i

that includes richard reeves, the issue bomber. that includes the 20th 911 bomber. republicans applauded that. dick cheney supported it. the real question is why the change of attitude? the reason they were tried is because it was in most effective way to bring people to justice, and in terms of giving rights to these prisoners, the judge who became the attorney general under the bush and administration ruled there were certain rights that even enemy combatants had, rights to a lawyer, and various other procedural protections -- habeas corpus and so on, so this is not new. we're actually not be giving any differently than the last administration, which raises the question -- is this about politics, or is it about dealing with the incident and hand? >> speaking of politics -- maybe the most important thing is happening in tennessee were the tea party is happening. what does that movement tell us about the political mood of the country, and what do democrats do to take the advantage of it? there is a lot of talk about how the republicans want to coopt the tea party mo

system if we have politicians to work with us and that is where we had fred grays, the richard harrington's they joe reeves to set we have these politicians who are responding to new voters. let's see what we can do to push this idea ford and that is what i would like to act on. they would have to discuss, they were talking about politicians who have a significant number of black voters in their district. immature dewhite but significant number of black voters in the votes did make a difference. we have people who said they would have never paid, never paid the black road and there were black people who got the vote in started paving the road. >> let me just underscore that quickly by saying, some of these districts when you have significant numbers of black people in your district aware disenfranchised the could ignored but the voting rights act change that and made it far more difficult to do. >> you know, i am not sure of the voting rights act changed. there is a good argument to make, and i make no conclusion on it, but south carolina is an example. we have one of the brightest congressman in the congr