>host: douglas brinkley writes an opinion piece echoing what mr. isaacson has been saying about redoing the army corps of engineers layout for the wetlands and the mississippi river. guest: doug brinkley is great. he is a great scholar. his piece lays it out perfectly. many others have been working on it. let's flesh it out. let the water from the mississippi still go down there. let's do all we can to go down there. people in this town have a lot more courage and common sense and sometimes given credit for. -- than sometimes given credit for. their cost are external to what the consumer pays. in other words, the cost of oil is a little bit more than we really pay for it. it involves the military endeavors to protect oil to the carbon that gets spewed into the atmosphere to the oil spill. so let's put a tax. make it simple. do not get a huge government program. just put a tax on the use of oil. if we do not want to -- we could use it to reduce the federal deficit or rebate it back to citizens. abut let's do something sensible and clear but not get

it goes all the way back to douglas brinkley, and a book he wrote called "the magic bus." he took 17 student across the country on a bus on a six week tour to understand history hands on. seven months later, the first c- span of buses was launched in november of 1993. we weet to schools across america who are partnered with our cable affiliates. in 1996, a second bus was launched, and we continued with the education outreach. in addition to community outreach, the buses were fully functional media's duty as. -- media studios. today marks a new day for us. this is our brand new digital bus. it is totally different from our other buses. it is a hands-on, multimedia demonstration center. >> why did you launch this new vehicle? >> the older buses were outfitted as production studios. they had a lottof space for it the switcher, the audio board. we wanted to bring the bus into the 21st century. this vehicle has interactive kiosks, laptops, an area where you can sign up for c-span resources. it is interactive, hands-on, itself guided. it gives our users and visitors and differen

the genesis of the program came from a "book notes" interview with a story and the douglas brinkley, "the magic bus: an american odyssey." the story was about taking 17 students across the country on a bus on a six-week tour to understand history hands on. he thought it was a novel idea so seven months later the first c-span school bus was launched in november of 1993. we went to schools across america, a partner in with our cable affiliates. in 1996, a second c-span school bus was launched and from there we continue with the education outreach. in addition to the community education outreach the buses were fully functioning production studios, so they were used to do live programming on c-span, including american president series, american writers, and students and leaders. today marks a new day for us. this is our brand new digital bus. totally different than our other buses. this is a more interactive hands on multimedia demonstration center. >> house -- why did c-span decide to launch the new vehicle? >> the older buses were outfitted as production studios so that had a lot of sp