tell senator heitkamp and president obama no. >> they say the people should choose. you're response? >> well, the people have chosen. the president was elected overwhelmingly, resoundingly, to a four-year term in 2012. i'm not surprised to see that pouring a lot of money into this thing. happen is have these unelected special interests determine the fate of someone who is a patriotic man, someone who has dedicated his life to the protection of law in this country. have them determine the outcome. there's a way that these things get handled. if people have the questions about the judge's positions and the judge's remarkable experience, including prosecuting timothy mcveigh, and prosecuting the unibomber, they should have hearings. they should vote in the committee. and then they should vote in the senate to make sure that he can assume his seat on the supreme court. >> the senate does have a right not to act. if the senate fails to act before the election, would president obama like to see judge garland confirmed in a lame duck session? some republican senators, like

roberts: absolutely. >> senator heitkamp. sen. heitkamp: thank you for letting me go first. i think when we usually go to these hearings, there is one agency who is setting in front of us hope we can hold accountable for outcomes. one of our great challenges is the following of services for the tribes, whether it is health care which is really hss. whether it is housing and hide. whether it is all of the issues that fall and with the above. i want to say i applaud this administration for doing the most that i ever seen to try and courtney among all of you, to try and build relationships across the agencies to change outcomes. with that said, we continue to see incredible challenges, whether it is housing or indian education, indian health care, , respect fornt sovereignty and respect for consultation. so i start at that juncture. it is going we rapid fire because there is so much to talk about. miss mason, we have extended the invitation to director call me to come to north tacoma -- north dakota, even montana to see what is happening with the lack of law enforcement personn

tell senator heitkamp and president obama no. >> they say the people should choose. you're response? >> the people have chosen. they elected president obama to another four-year term. i'm not surprised to see that pouring a lot of money into this thing. and, what we don't want to see happen is have these une lektded special interests determine the fate of someone who is a patriotic man, someone who has dedicated his life to the protection of law in this country. have them determine the outcome. if people have the questions about the judge's positions and the judge's remarkable experience, including prosecuting timothy mcveigh, and prosecuting the unibomber, they should have hearings. vote in the committee. vote in the senate. >> the senate does have a right not to act. if the senate fails to act president owe bama like to see judge garland confirmed in a lame duck session? some say confirming gar lapd hillary clinton the pick? >> the average length from nomination to confirmation is 67. days. we have more than enough time to get that done. between now and even the ea

by many democrats, including senators durbin, gillibrand, heinrich, kaine, mccaskill, blumenthal, heitkamp and cardin. but the democratic leader objected to completely uncontroversial, commonsense amendments offered by two republicans that would be in the package. senator johnson and senator kirk. why? simply because these republican senators are up for reelection this year, and under those circumstances we couldn't reach an agreement. so all these democrat amendments didn't go because the democratic leader had objection to two republican relatively noncontroversial amendments, one of them absolutely noncontroversial. how noncontroversial amendments were these? so let me give you one example. senator johnson wanted to add the indian health service as a member of the task force, the bill creates to develop best prescribing practices for opioids. i suspect many americans, including even people living in the state of nevada, would think senator johnson's idea is a good one. addiction is a problem for so many in our country, and the native american community is unfortunately no exception. but

heitkamp: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from north dakota. ms. heitkamp: i ask that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. heitkamp: mr. president, i come to the floor today to talk about one of our most cherished rights as united states citizens. that is the free speech, and why allowing our children and young people to exercise this right at a young age is critical to learning and understanding complex and tough issues and ideas. the ability to effectively teach and learn journalism and for other students to be challenged to engage in a public discourse on tough issues was severely hindered by the united states supreme court ruling in 1988 in a ruling called hazelwood school district versus colemeyer. the case legitimatized a school's decision to remove material about divorce and teen pregnancy from the pages of a student newspaper on the grounds that that material was overall mature for a high school audience. justice william brennan, one o

now, this was the subject of bipartisan legislation that senator heidi heitkamp of north dakota and i offered last month. it was an amendment to the energy bill legislation. our amendment bipartisan would have expedited the permit process for natural gas gathering lines, the lines that gather this gas on the federal land and on indian land and then help take it to market. gas-gathering lines are essentially pipelines that collect unprocessed gas from oil and gas wells and then ship it to a processing plant. at the plant, different kinds of gases, methane, propane, they're separated from one another. they are then shipped out again to locations where they can be sold and used by people. that's what the producers want to do. the problem is we don't have enough of these pipelines now to gather up the gas and to send it to the processing plants. lots of times there's only one option, and if you don't have the gathering lines, it's to flair or vent the excess gas at the well. now, if there were more gathering lines, there would be a lot less waste of energy. we would have a lot less of the