but there are no federalist society events on record we have scoured their their websites we've called their offices washington post offices to koku to do there are there you know there were no federalist society events that we can tell and thomas was reimbursed for four days of accommodations and meals and palm springs if you just drop by and you know we've raised the question where were you the rest of the time either you got a free vacation from the federal or you were at three treated you're not being straight with the american public are we we just have about a minute left i'm just a couple of things. goes with cheney and in the next week rules and cheney's favor there were at least three republican three conservative justices on wish me good or who had family members or close relatives who were working on the bush campaign thomas' wife jenny was soliciting people to work in the new bush administration an hour after the court took the case before they even decided it i mean this is just is this just the tip of the iceberg. i think it points to a bigger problem on the court. the st

they were the fellow founders of the federalist society who had grown up in more inintellectually elite circumstances than he had. he, of course, rose quickly to his level. another mentor was richard enstein at the university of chicago -- epstein at the university of chicago that believed regulation is best of somebody else. transferring assets, whether it is welfare payments or a prerogative tax system takes away from somebody else and therefore that person should be compensated. >> what about ralph reid. ? >> he didn't really have a mentor. he looked toup grover norquest. when he was a college republican, he very much looked toup grover norquest and the chairman of the college republicans at the time. a guy by the name of jack abramov. a guy still very much active in town. he looked up to thefment but as far as an older mentor, he didn't really have that. in fact, he went to emory and got his ph.d. in histo, and his professor there was a liberal, dan carter, who found ralph a very brilliant writer, somebody who could put together oquent arguments and kw history. >> who did you come c

to influence people and out of that memo came the heritage foundation the cato institute the federalist society which now has over half the judges in the country this whole huge right wing infrastructure and of course three months later richard nixon put him on the supreme court was that the genesis of this is that the starting point of this or is there some it is they're not even identifiable it's certainly true that the position we're in now where to supreme court is over and over and over again ruling in the favor of corporate law. didn't happen by accident you know in that memo that justice powell wrote forty years ago he said that the chamber needs to employ the best lawyers in the country pay them enough nih that they can get these lawyers of national rapper reputation and here we are forty years later and arguably the best lawyer in the contrary a man named hard. phillips who's argued more supreme court cases than anyone else recently said that his client the chamber of commerce has more influence and by the supreme court than any other entity except for the solicitor general of the unit

could yowl talk about the infrastructure that goes into this conservative assault, the federalist society and the ways in which this is funded, and there's obviously now we have conservative legal faculties, some of whom you're very close with, but is this part of the conservative assault on the constitution? >> i don't mean to imply there's anything insidious. what i was speaking of is the intellectual aspect of it, and i think that conservatives have done a terrific job since the early 1970s of developing a conservative philosophy of the constitution. it's one that challenges so many basic premises of constitutional law since 1937. since then, we've excepted a few aspects of law. one is, we give congress a lot of authority to adopt programs that benefit society. think of it in terms of social security or medicare and medicaid. the court has basically since the huge shift during the new deal to the business of the role of congress to be able to do. in few federal laws instructed is succeeding congress' power. the other thing is we accept the rule of the federal jew judiciary to expand an