>> kim jong-il is probably the evilist person on the planet. he starves people by the millions and he lives the life of an international play boy. the idea that you can change him by writing him a letter is comical and the idea we should not be defending south korea against him is comical. i don't know where the idea has come from. it's comical. >> i think the issue is really one of engagement. adds ben well knows, his former boss, president nixon, engaged with a bad guy oning schi that. the issue is whether or not we are going to engage. writing a better of picking up the phone? i'm not going to speak to the mechanics. we have come off a foreign policy where we treated our interests like a video game. you don't like us, i am not talking to you. >> sent many messages to nixon about that. if that happened with kim jong-il, i would be with you. >> i'm close to ben stein's view. i would try sanctions and i think my friend ron was being too cavalier about this. south korea has become a democracy with our help. the people's republic of china is fail

if that happened with kim jong-il i'd be with you entirely.t hasn't. >> i'm very close to ben stein's view. i would try sanctions. i thought my friend ron was being too cavalier about this. this is a terrible man who has done terrible things. south korea has become a democracy with our help. we should be very proud of that. the people's republic of china which wants to be a responsible nation is failing on its responsibility by not helping us put pressure on north korea. north korea with nuclear weapons is a scary thought. >> larry: we thank barney frank, ron paul, tanya acker and, as always, ben stein. >>> african merps helped president obama get elected. how do they feel about him now? that's next. tightness in my chest came back- i knew i had to see my doctor. he told me i had choices in controller medicines. we chose symbicort. symbicort starts to improve my lung function within 15 minutes. that's important to me because i know the two medicines in symbicort are beginning to treat my symptoms and helping me take control of my asthma. and t

they probably started seriously with kim jong-il succession to power in 1994. the first shot october 2006. it was a fizzle but what they told the chinese and what we have learned is the design yield was not 20 kilotons a big fat man but the design yield was only four callow tons -- kilotons hopefully to be missile compatible and light weight. the north korea and tested again in the me 2009 they have to kilotons. a problem with north korea is not just that they are a nuclear state but pumping technology and materials to all of the other guys that we were about. pakistan and north korea is a fountain of nuclear weapons technology. so that is the short history. what lessons did we learn? in my opinion there is a very significant nuclear event in the western world during this president's term. nuclear weapons we have not spent time talking about them but i have seen them go off i have designed them. it is a release of energy that is incomprehensible and damage and destruction even a very efficient weapon delivered by a truck kills everybody south of central park. t

what does it mean when you say i was the message and the fact that you apparently didn't meet with kim jong ilor they sending you a message by not meeting with you? >> in my experience, kim jong il has met with two american officials both of whom were somewhat of both my status. one was the secretary of state madeleine albright when she met with him, and the offer was for our president bill clinton. he does not meet with a lot of people. he meets with bond north koreans very rarely. so we did not -- i did not ask to meet with him, and i did not meet with him. what it means when i say i am the message or i was the message i was conveying very directly to the north korean leadership and vision for the future which would be a lot different than the one than the present or past and ways in which we could improve both our bilateral relationship and improve north korea's overall relationships within northeast asia always provided they are prepared to move where the goal of the denuclearization. >> thank you. bg press. mr. ambassador how much did you discuss about peace treaty issue? did they demand

would be hard to deny that north korea is economically much more than south korea, but the leader kim jong-il is to empower. the regimes which are very much poorer than those of communist states of eastern europe, such as zaire under motegi, managed to keep going for decades longer than they deserve to. and without having such a system of rewards and sanctions, and surveillance as was available to communist authorities. over the long-term, it is true that market economies with all problems turned out to be more efficient than the command economies of communist days. but if we consider the long term for the regime change was not only the relative failures of commonest states, that were to be their undoing, some of their successors also contributed to the fall of communism. education for example was a success story. but the more educated people were, and especially the larger the higher education sector began, the more dissatisfied they work with the censorship, and the more dissatisfied they were with their lack of opportunity to travel abroad in the same way as their professional counterparts

he did not meet with kim jong il during his three day visit.t: on your screen is vali nasr, senior adviser to richard holbrooke, the special representative to afghanistan and pakistan. he is a senior fellow at also interesting, he was born in 1960 in tehran. i wanted to start because the president of pakistan has written an opinion piece that was published this morning about how to mend fences with pakistan. he writes that it is useful for americans and pakistani is to consider what has brought us to this point and what the conflicts true endgame must be. in the eyes of the administration, what is the endgame of efforts in afghanistan and pakistan? >> to bring peace and security the south asia. creating a circumstance in which afghanistan can have a normal government and its people can live under peace and security. also helping pakistan with its challenge of extremism. tell them that country to have a prosperous economy. host: as we attempt to do this i want to go back to this piece. it has some interesting observations about the challenges fo

when that i'm more like kim jong il, little did they know they got that wrong. let's go ahead.rather than comments, i want to ask general questions to get the q&a started. there are many questions but i'm struggling to narrow it down to one it is this, a question of three and i want to win on. there are many particular disagreements among our three panelists. let me ask a general question. if we agreed that there is such a thing as a disruptive moment, punctuation of moment, political scientist talk about political juncture is in turning points, two questions -- i ask this for a couple reasons. one is we turn to 1989 and there are questions here about whether the bush administration, bush 41 and the government responded in the right way or as well as they might have, the soviet union was still around in 1989 or 1991 was the big moment when the collapse. i'm just highlighting the disagreement on just how much potential there was a 9891 or 9/11 how much of a turning point was 9/11, that the argument, the leading argument the bush administration overreached they thought the world

robert park, 28, was caring letters calling one of korean leader kim jong-il to shut down the country's political prison camps and step down from power. there has been no word from lynne cents. those are some of the latest headlines on c-span reappeared -- c-span radio. >> all this week a rare glimpse into america's highest court, through unprecedented on the record conversations with 10 supreme court justices. >> quite often in many of our most famous decisions, are ones that the court took that were quite unpopular. and the idea that we should yield to what the public protest is is quite foreign to what it means to have a country under the rule of law. >> tonight chief justice john roberts and associate justice john paul stevens. interviews with the supreme court justices, it o'clock p.m. eastern on c-span. and get your own copy of the original documentary on the supreme court on dvd, part of c- span's american icons collection, a three-disc set including programs and the white house and capitol. one of many items c-span.org /store. >> this thursday, a day of tributes to u.s. and worl

word this morning from the state department that president obama has written a personal letter to kim jong-il, the letter was delivered by special envoy steven bons worth to restart the nuclear talks. meanwhile iran says it successfully tested its longest missile which says is faster and harder to shoot down. he says the missile will serve as a strong deterrent against any possible attacks. talks expected to focus on possible russian aid for the war effort in afghanistan, moscow has signaled its willingness to help on the concern that a taliban return to power will endanger russia's own safety. and word four afghan officers very killed until a an attack. in afghanistan. people "final" magazine has just named their person of the year for 2009. ben bernanke. last year's winner was then president-elect barack obama. those are some of the latest headlines on c-span radio. >> "washington journal" continues. host: on this screen now dale robinson, founder and president of tea party.org. and the rally that was held at the capitol yesterday which we covered live on the c-span networks, what do you th