please welcome, ed meese. [applause] mr. meese: thank you. thank you, john, and thank you ladies and gentlemen. it's a pleasure for me to join john to welcome you to the heritage foundation to welcome me to the distinguished lecture. this is one of heritage's most prestigious events of the year, and we are happy to sponsor this evening, particularly because of the guest i will introduce in a moment. the joseph story lecture has traditionally been held in conjunction with two other important events of the center for legal and judicial studies. one is the legal strategy forum. in the audience tonight, we have nearly 50 ceo's and chief legal officers from the freedom-based law firms of this nation. we are happy to have them with us on this occasion. the other event is a series that we started some years ago, called the preserve the constitution series. this is one of several of these types of events in which various aspects and issues of the constitution and the rule of law are discussed with various experts. this joseph story lecture really fit

thank generalo meese for the introduction. i met him in december of 1980. i have known him for now over 35 years. that holds true also for his family. i remember when you were being criticized heavily, and that is an understatement. your demeanor, your pleasant demeanor, never changed. your positive attitude, your willingness to talk to young people and persuade them to your ideas, but not returning it with fire. commendas much to itself as to admire. thank you not only for the years together, but for your example. [applause] i would also like to thank heritage and all who were involved with this evening. of course, my wife and i made lots of trips here. when she was working here, i would love being around her. i don't spend a lot of time thinking back over the time. we are too busy doing our work. i'm not a navelgazing. ers ine enough navelgazin society. over the last few years, we have had things that have happened in the court that changed the way that we work. we have to be focused on that. if i reflected back over the years, the thing i enjoy most are

you might associate that with conservatives like antonin scalia or clarence thomas or ed meese or robert bork who was my teacher i remembered an essay about him, the greatest originalist textualists in modern supreme court history, the greatest justice was a liberal who always carried a copy with him. i usually have them in my back pocket here's one, two, three. there's more where they came from, and this fellow, here's another one. always carried a copy of the constitution with him, saving liberal, the first was named hugo lafayette and here's what the world looked like a year he came before the court. we were not taking seriously stuff that really is in here. 1936 degrees no protection but there is a lot. the bill of rights has never been applied against the state as a general proposition against the federal government. come on defendants don't get appointed to the council. there is organized, free expression is never one and jim crow prevailed across much of america. hugo black says wait a minute, it says = and it isn't equal and the freedom of speech is should mean the freedom of spe

meese? called james watt an excellent secretary of the interior? provided support for some of these people, supported the nomination of robert bork to the supreme court of the united states? we've had dozens, we've had dozens and dozens of officials in this administration who have left under a cloud, who have left with the special prosecutor in their arm, have been indicted, convicted. this isn't the kind of administration we need. and one of the reasons our selection of a running mate is so important, it is such a test of the kinds of standards we'll set, is because it tells the american people in advance of the election just what kind of people we're looking for. i picked lloyd bentsen. mr. bush picked dan quayle. i think that says a great deal to the american people about the standards we'll set and the quality of the people that we will pick to serve in our administration. [applause] [cheering] bernard: to each of you candidates, regrettably, i have to inform you that we have come to the end of our questions. that's a pity. [laughter] bernard:

assistant to the president of man also served as a senior specialist to the attorney general edwin meese and and particular for today's program has the department of the interior for fish and wildlife. please join me to welcome my colleagues. [applause] >> is thought pleasure to see all of you today is an exception -- and exciting day when good friends and great people turned out great books. we have one today we will be introducing. is my pleasure to introduce the co-authors that allows them to come to the podium to make their remarks and we will have plenty of time for questions. the first co-author is kathleen white a distinguished senior -- senior fellow of residents and director for energy and the environment from the public policy foundation. as chairman and commissioner with that jurisdiction over air quality with the disposal of waste the staff of 3,000 with a budget of over 600 million to make it the second-largest retirement of regulatory agency in the world. and is our goal to make it the third largest in the world. [laughter] prior to the appointment serving as the george bus

they're just bombing squlen meese of assad -- enemies of assad. against isis, against fragmented forces of terrorism in southwest asia, with or without the war in syria is going to go on for us for a long, long time, as long as we're willing to pursue it, too. sending new forces southwest asia despite the fact the president said we're getting out, we're not getting out either. the next president will have some serious decisions to make in this area. >> colonel jake jacobs. always great to have you. thank you very much for your insight. >> my pleasure. >>> next month, nevada and four other states will decide when to legalize recreational marijuana use. the issue will draw young people to the polls. will it translate into votes for trump or clinton? answers next. ♪ using 60,000 points from my chase ink card i bought all the fruit... veggies... and herbs needed to create a pop-up pick-your-own juice bar in the middle of the city, so now everyone knows... we have some of the freshest juice in town. see what the power of points can do for your business

. >> let's put up if we could go back to the meese and holder memos. the focus of the panel is obviously who is in the white house and controls access to information and there was a major shift at least on paper between two different administrations. >> this is a great example of exactly how an administration can shape the way foia is implemented and impact very seriously the efficacy of the allow. the meese memo, he was the attorney general under ronald reagan in 1986 issued a memorandum among other things very famously put in place a policy that was in place for over two decades, department of justice and applied to all federal agencies that essentially told agencies that if records were requested that were excluded from foia, not subject to one of the exemptions but an exclusion, meaning it was -- someone requesting information about an informant, for example, then the agency could respond that there weren't any such records because there was a built in assumption that the request meant records subject to foia. so a lot of folks portrayed this as we

you might associate original intent with conservatives like antonin scalia or clarence thomas or ed meese or robert bork. robert bork was my teacher. there's actually a remembrance essay about him. the greatest originalist textualist in modern supreme court history, in my view, the greatest justice of the 20th century was a liberal who always carried a copy of the constitution with him wherever he went. i've got several right here, and i could pull some out of my back pocket. i usually have -- [laughter] here's one, here's two, here's three. there are more where they came from. and this fellow, justice on the supreme court -- here's another one -- [laughter] always carried a copy of the constitution with him. crusading liberal, fdr's first appointee to the court, his name was hugo lafayette black. i told you what the world looked like in 1786? here's what it looked like the year before be he came on the court, and it was a bad world because we weren't taking seriously stuff that really is in here. there's no judicial protection for the right to vote. and today there is, not robust enough,

benjamin, as well as the support of edwin meese fans and those two wonderful churchillian's, monroe and dick, we are at long last but rightfully merging with the national churchill museum in the united states at westminster college. our combined strengths are truly a classic case of two plus two equal in at least six. we have come a long way and we've reached an important milestone. to mark this type of change were making some name changes as well. from this moment we shall once again be known as the international churchill society. [applause] to increase our name identification with nonmembers, the bulletin will be renamed the churchill bulletin beginning with the next issue. we have a new logo, diplomatic of a fresh tomorrow -- emblematic -- tomorrow after decades of wishful thinking will officially open our national churchill library and center on the campus of the globally respected george washington university. [applause] this long-awaited event could not have happened without the support of two successive gw presidents who are far both great friends of ics. first, the inspiring st