but rod mccutcheon, a toxicologist at the texas department of public safety crime lab, was willing tory. >> so i started thinking about the possibility of detecting arsenic in a cremated remains sample, and decided it might be possible. there were a lot of things to consider. >> mccutcheon knew that arsenic is actually a metal and some metals survive fire and intense heat. >> you may change its form from a solid to a gas but you aren't going to destroy the arsenic itself. >> so he took the sisters' ashes and added an acid solution to dissolve all of the organic material. what was left was primarily sulfuric acid. in a process called colorimetric testing, he added hydrochloric acid and zinc to the mix. >> as it bubbles through this device, the arsenic will react and form if it's present a purplish violet color. the more arsenic present, the stronger the more purple the color is. >> rod mccutcheon's chemical cocktail made forensic history. conclusive can proof of the presence of arsenic. the depth of color in the reaction showed that cordelia norton ingested a massive amount of arsenic.

first, the mccutcheon decision is plainly correct. as you know, the campaign-finance regime contains two types of contribution limits. these limits impose a dollar cap on the amount of money a contributor may give to a candidate per election or political committee per year. congress has determined that the non-corrupting amount an individual may give to a federal candidate is $2600 per election. 5200 dollars for a primary and general election. the aggregate limits impose the cap on the total amount of money a contributor may contribute to all candidates and all political two-years in a election cycle. her contributions to candidates, the aggregate limit is 48,000 $600 per cycle. once a computer is $5,200 to nine candidates, he is at $46,800. he maketh only $1800 to all

first, the mccutcheon decision is plainly correct. as you know, the campaign-finance regime contains two types of contribution limits. base limits impose a dollar cap on the amount of money a contributor may give to a candidate per election or political committee per year. congress has determined that the non-corrupting amount an individual may give to a federal candidate is $2600 per election. or $5200 for a primary and general election. the aggregate limits impose the cap on the total amount of money a contributor may contribute to all candidates and all political committees in a two-year election cycle. for contributions to candidates, the aggregate limit is $48,600 per cycle. once a contributor gives $5,200 to nine candidates, he is at $46,800. he make give only $1800 to all other candidates. if it is perfectly legal to give $5,200 to the first nine candidates, why is it a felony to give $1801 to the 10th candidate? this makes no sense. put simply, you cannot corrupt candidate smith the 10th candidate by having already given a leg

citizens united, mccutcheon decision and supreme court decisions that occurred made this a mockery. what's left doesn't look like democracy. democracy is when the government represents the people. today it seems big money and big donors pull the strings while ordinary people find it harder for their voices to be heard. you have a chance to restore this democracy, restore the first amendment and make clear our government should represent all the people, not just the wealthy few. i urge you support senate joint resolution 19. >> thank you very much, senator. the next witness mr. floyd abrams is senior partner at the law firm cahill rydell in new york and not a stranger to this committee or this senate over the years. please go ahead, sir. >> thank you, senator leahy. i appreciate your invitation to appear here today. the description of the constitutional amendment that is before you today states in its text that it, quote, relates to the contributions and expenditures intended to affect elections. that's one way to say it. i think it would have been more revealing to say that it actua

, this case as we have talked about wouldn't just overturn the citizens united decision and the mccutcheon case but as we said it would overturn the buckley decision, the case from 30 years ago, because it would also overturn what the supreme court said in that case about expenditure limits. what a lot of people don't realize back in the 1970s, congress didn't just pass contribution limit, you know, that's what we've lived under now for 0 years. back then they limited the amount you could give to a congressional candidate to a thousand dollars. it stayed that way for 30 years. it was raised to $2,000 in 2002 and indexed to inflation but at the same time, back in the early 1970s, congress at that time also put in an expenditure limitation and said people running for congress and for president would be only be able to spend a certain amount of money to run for office. now, the supreme court threw that out because they said, look, that is a direct limitation on your first amendment rights. because when you limited amount of money that a candidate can spend, you are directly limiting their spe

n-l m-v-p andrew mccutcheon hits a two- run homer to the opposite field for his 8-th of the season.ighth when starling marte doubles down the line for another run. starlin castro went three- for- four with two r-b-i, but the cubs lose 6-2. they fall to ten- and- 22 on the road. game- three of the stanley cup final in new york. kings and rangers scoreless late in the first when jeff carter scores with four- tenths of a second left in the period... it's l-a's first lead in regulation since game- six against the hawks. jonathan quick was unstoppable between the pipes, making 32 saves for his second shut- out of the playoffs. kings win three- nothing and can win their second cup in three years tomorrow night. game- three of the n-b-a finals is tonight in miami. and derek fischer will retire from basketball to become the head coach of the knicks. a baltimore orioles player has apologized for throwing his bat at an opposing player. the orioles were losing, 10 to nothing sunday to the okaland a's... and third baseman manny machado was angry that the a's pitcher threw two pitches at him. so

led right straight line from seventy seven right up to two citizens united twenty town and now mccutcheon this year. so in a way if you think of free speech in the way that lewis powell did back in one nine hundred seventy six and in the buckley case which really began the serious you know this this current field of age of corrupt politics you know i suppose you could use that phrase but this seems like anything but free speech but that a high cost to the american people yeah ok so it's explicit misspeaks for us expensive speech for choke chance for these guys some change for them was alec represented there or is that just. one of the groups that they funded makes things happen at the state level they're buying directly at the federal level but it's one of the groups that they find also interesting lee of the current owner of because of the pacifica is gavin herbert who is the founder of allergen a medical device company and so. i should say pharmaceutical company it's botox that they're most well known for anyway allergen is major funder of alec so there's a lot of labyrinthine ties you

chief justice roberts in the mccutcheon opinion reserve -- observed that it may be repugnant to some but so, too, does most of the, much of what the first amendment vigorously protects. at the first amendment protects flagburning, funeral protests and not see parades, despite the profound offense that such spectacles cause, it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition. the proposed amendment before you today deals with nothing except political campaign speech. it does not deal with money that is spent for any other purpose other than persuading people who to vote for or against. and as such it would limit speech that is at the heart of the first amendment. and the fact that the amendment is proposed in the name of equality makes it no less threatening. the supreme court observed, i think, with particular precedents in the buckley case an opinion joined by great liberal jurists, justice brennan, justice marshall, justice potter stewart, stalwart defenders of the first amendment, but the concept the government may restrict some elements, may restrict the spee

amendment a series of rulings since the buckley decision the most recent being the citizens united in mccutcheondecisions the supreme court has expanded its made up fantasy doctrine of money as speech which has been given billionaires like the koch brothers an unprecedented power over our election process threatening the very integrity of our democracy to preserve our constitution and our republic we need to put an end to this corruption of the first amendment by five unelected men in the supreme court who fancy themselves the new king of america we need a constitutional amendment eclair in the money is not speech and the corporations are not people you can find more information on that over move to amend or and that's the way it is tonight friday june twenty seventh two thousand and fourteen keep e-mailing us your video quite. to your take my take it g.-mail dot com we're the wife every thursday night it's easy put your phone in video mode flip it sideways and record yourself a video question or comment and e-mail it to us at your take my take a g. mail dot com you can also tweet your question

yes i would i did not believe this a year ago but i believe particularly with that and now the mccutcheondecision does come down that there we simply have got to re empower congress with the authority to regulate political spending the court has just made mincemeat out of any effort to try to regulate spending so that the voice and the involvement even the small donations of average people can't they just have been washed away yeah i think we're going to have to do something big hedrick smith thank you so much sir for being with us tonight my pleasure tom thank you for having me up here. it's a great book you've written i hope a lot of people read it to see this and other conversations with grapevines go to our website and conversations with great minds dot com coming up monster of wildfires in california have brought home what once again the reality of global climate change how much time do we actually have to stave off total climate does devastation the answer right after the break. are you like me and once you come to the news with some tea what's a comedy news to be a bear fisted no h

as the supreme court's recent campaign finance decisions and citizens united and mccutcheon illustrate economic discrimination are as likely to fall on deaf ears now as they always have. i also fear that substituting race neutral for race conscious strategies to recommend racial discrimination is as likely to re-enforce the impression we now luff in a post racial society where racial minorities themselves, rather than continuing inertia of structural discrimination, are the cause of minority disadvantage. i agree with professor cashin that in=[< the current political climate, with the current supreme court, race conscious efforts to end discrimination are not likely to meet with much success. that's unfortunate. but by continuing to press for them, perhaps we can at least remind people that the ongoing problem of racial discrimination is real. ironically this might also have the collateral effect of giving credibility to those who favor socioeconomic affirmative action by causing them to be viewed as proponents of a moderate rather than a radical approach to the problem of racial discr

it comes in the wake of the supreme court's mccutcheon v. federal election commission. the five justices, five of the jus is that limits on campaign contributions in the elections to be on constitution, in violation of the first amendment. they are on the second panel. they heard first this morning from harry lead and testimony from the republican leader mitch mcconnell. we will stay here live, live coverage continuing on c-span. and later our live coverage will bring you a number of senators talking about the veterans affairs department. senators mccain, coburn, play, andberg of north carolina using legislation to deal with the veterans affairs department. issues relating to the v.a. the news briefing coming up at 1:45 eastern. this is the senate office building on capitol hill, a recess of the committee. they're traveling back in shortly. we expect a vote on the senate floor for the nominee to be the ambassador to the u.n. human rights council. effort is underway, and we expect this hearing will ca gavel back in. it is election day in eight states across the country.

well, when you read as bobby burchfield mentioned the dissent in mccutcheon it seems you can ban some speech and not other speech. it seems far-fetched that somehow speech equality to lead to come being banned and some not being banned. when the federal election committee considered fahrenheit 911, michael moore's movie the s.e.c. said it was fine because it was a commercial movie for profit so that was not prohibited but when citizens united came in and asked about hilly the movie the s.e.c. said, no, sorry, that's banned. i cannot for the life of me tell the difference except one says bad things about george bush, a republican, the other says bad things about hillary the democrat. if you say bad things about the republican you are fine. if you say bad things about a democrat, perhaps you're going to be banned. what about pastors and churchs? this is an issue that comes up every so often. can the government get in there and tell a priest he can't talk to his congregation because it may have something to do with politics? this amendment would seem to permit the congress to do that. wh

basically restore us back to that moment in time before the citizens united decision, before the mccutcheonsupreme court decision which would allow the federal government and the states to regulate campaign spending. it is content neutral in terms of the efforts to be made by the government, but it establishes -- tries to re-establish new standards in terms of contributions and spending across america. i would ask the senate majority leader, who has followed this closely, as he has followed the amount of money being spent on elections in this country, what you can foresee as the ultimate result if we fail to undo the citizens united decision? mr. reid: we're already seeing that, i'm sad to say. one state, the koch brothers have spent almost $20 million against one senator, and they say that's just the beginning. mr. president, america should not be for sale. i agree with the republican leader when he said there should be limits put on this. i agree, as i read the quote in the earlier remarks. it is not right that we have two of the richest men in the world trying to buy america. and they're

in citizens united and mccutcheon throughout this period the court has said by much bigger jorts, evenhat disclosure woff who is behind this spending is a critical factor in allowing it to take place in the first place. host: a tweet says, i get it, but seems to me a reasonable compromise would be to disclose donations in exchange for no cap on the donations. >> that's one where it would probably with stand constitutional muster, the courts based on what they have done so far would probably not object to those kinds of contributions butal as long as there was full disclosure. the dilemma is twofold. we have a process now where there's an opportunity for a lot of people to be involved in a very small level. a lot of people giving $25 or $50. we saw that in the obama campaign in 2008 and 2012. there's nothing unique about president obama that means he is the only person who can take advantage to that situation. he raised hundreds of thousands by -- in that way. there's less incentive for on? try to reach out of the in that way to larger populations and really the people that will actuall