i'm glad to be here with molly reynolds. i don't know molly that well, but for important book is very well timed as you will hear from her comments and given my loose mastery of the senate rules i have decided to defer to molly on the whole rules question. bill did make one point that's a little sensitive. for a couple of years i have been planning to advertise my book, the new edition of my old book by using the reference to "house of cards". somehow that doesn't look as good as it used to. [laughter] i wasn't sure this panel would draw such a good audience and it's wonderful to see a spattering of old friends and it's wonderful to see a lot of people who i don't know. donald trumps extraordinary and dangerous presidency so dominates our landscape that sometimes it's hard to focus on anything else. that's particularly true now with the crisis at hand as the trump white house and house judiciary committee are on one side and the fbi and justice department and import institutions are under attack. we wait to see whether the pr

we'll then hear about ten minutes of commentary from brookings congressional expert molly reynolds, a fellow in our governance studies program. she's the author of the brookings book, "exceptions to the rule" the politics of filibuster in the u.s. senate, which will indicate why she's the perfect commentator. after she delivers that, we will convene on the stage about 15 or 20 minutes of moderated conversation, after which for the last half hour it will be your turn, questions from the floor and responses from these two wonderful scholars. as always, please quiet your cell phones. that doesn't mean turning them off necessarily, and certainly doesn't mean that you can't use them. for those interested in tweeting about this event, it is #u.s.senate. without any further preliminaries, ira, the podium is yours. >>> i couldn't have a more generous introduction than the one bill gave me. i thank bill for not only that introduction but for organizing this event, for moderating this event. i don't have enough time to go into bill's various credentials, so i won't, except to say that no one el