i would also like to thank christine varney and her colleagues for suggesting this meeting. it is part of what i think is a main part of transparency and town hall meetings. today's format, i will very briefly introduce our panelists and turn it over to christine. afterward most of the program will be a q&a. save your questions for that part. we will have a dialogue. i want to mention the spring meeting for the antitrust here in d.c. on april 21st and 23rd. it will be at the marriott. over 2,400 attendees. it is a great chance to hear what is happening globally on competition matters. christine has promised me that she is not going to take all of the thunder away from that meeting. we will save some interesting tidbits for when we get together. coming down the train i prepared a little bit for my intro. i always like doing intros on people. you learn something from them. you pull up their bias. you do a little bit of research. the one, and you can look at where they went to school and other things. that is what you usually hear. i saw one interesting little link that went ac

let me also take a moment to compliment you and the assistant general for christine varney. under your and her leadership the antitrust division of the department has made it clear after many years of neglect and enforcement of antitrust law as a priority for the department and i am especially grateful for the department is focus on agriculture issues and partnership with the usda and i was pleased to hear the department will be holding a workshop in wisconsin. it means a great deal to the producers and others in the state of wisconsin senator kohl asked to about the cops program. as you know, strongly support that pergamon and other federal law enforcement assistance grant programs. i hear repeatedly from the law enforcement of wisconsin just how important a grant programs are particularly during tough economic times. the copps hiring agreed and recovery act allowed my stick to how your and rehire 58 police officers and these are certainly needed in the jurisdictions where they were provided but i do think it's important that these dollars are distributed fairly different c

let me also take a moment to compliment you and the assistant general for christine varney. under your and her leadership the antitrust division of the department has made it clear after many years of neglect and enforcement of antitrust law as a priority for the department and i am especially grateful for the department is focus on agriculture issues and partnership with the usda and i was pleased to hear the department will be holding a workshop in wisconsin. it means a great deal to the producers and others in the state of wisconsin senator kohl asked to about the cops program. as you know, strongly support that pergamon and other federal law enforcement assistance grant programs. i hear repeatedly from the law enforcement of wisconsin just how important a grant programs are particularly during tough economic times. the copps hiring agreed and recovery act allowed my stick to how your and rehire 58 police officers and these are certainly needed in the jurisdictions where they were provided but i do think it's important that these dollars are distributed fairly different c

antitrust division that has shown itself to be aggressive appropriately aggressive headed by christine varneyare looking at this transaction. .. >> mr. carney, he testified about previous d.o.j. antitrust actions and discussed some of the significant conditions at d.o.j. and post on the parties. now i'm skeptical but i still open on potential comcast nbc merger. but i have problems with imposing conditions. first, it's hard to the and fore them. someone has to know it has been violent and report it to the d.o.j. and secondly, conditions almost inevitably expire after a few years. so i want to make sure that the department of justice makes sure that conditions, merger conditions would actually have enough teeth and have enough, had a long enough live that they would really impose real conditions to prevent the very thing i was fearing. >> well, again, maybe i should take myself away from the nbc-comcast situation and simply say that when we look at these matters, we have a wide range of things that can be done from barring, stopping the merger itself, to putting into place a variety of conditi

antitrust division that has shown itself to be aggressive appropriately aggressive headed by christine varneye looking at this transaction. .. >> i am skeptical but i am still open to imposing conditions on the potential comcast and an merger, but i have problems with imposing conditions. first, it is hard to enforce them, since someone has to know the condition has been violated and reports that. secondly, conditions almost inevitably expire after a few years. so i want to make sure the department of justice makes sure that conditions, merger conditions, would actually have enough teeth and have a long enough to life that they would really impose a real conditions to prevent the very thing i am fearing. >> again, maybe i can take myself away from the nbc-comcast situation and to simply say that when we look at these matters, we have a wide range of things that can be done from stopping the merger itself to putting into place a variety of conditions that parties have to agree to in order to allow the merger to proceed . to proceed. again that is nbc contests. but more generally i think we can