mr. grassley: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mr. grassley: today the senate will vote on the nomination of john andrew ross to be u.s. district judge, eastern district missouri, and also timothy m. cain to be district judge, district of south carolina. both seats have been deemed to be judicial emergencies. with these votes, we have confirmed 36 article 3 judicial nominees during this congress. of these, 23 have been for such judicial emergency type districts. i am pleased that we continue to have great progress in lessening the burden of our overworked courts, particularly concentrating upon judicial emergencies. i'm somewhat surprised in the delay in bringing these votes that we're going to have today to the full senate. at the majority leader's request, senate republicans cleared these votes nearly two weeks ago with the anticipation that the senate would vote on these nominees last monday, september 12. so i hope everyone understands that these nominees could have been

mr. grassley: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mr. grassley: i would like to speak in support of the nomination of bernice bouie donald as a u.s. circuit judge for the sixth circuit. with today's vote, we will have confirmed 34 article 3 judicial nominees during this congress. we continue to make great progress in processing president obama's judicial nominees. we have taken positive action on 78% of the judicial nominations submitted during this congress. the senate has confirmed 63% of president obama's nominees since the beginning of his presidency, including two supreme court justices, which everyone may recall was a lengthy process. despite our protective efforts, we continue to hear unsubstantiated and unfounded charges of delays and obstruction on the part of the minority party of the senate. over the august recess, opinion writers and bloggers parroted one another in churning out this message of obstruction on the part of republicans. now i'm not surprised to see this from outside groups, but i was very disappointed that the wh

mr. grassley: two minutes. well, i think the senator from alabama has given me a reason to suggest the importance of the language of the bill that he wants to strike. because he said that law ought to be equally applied. well, the law for this one company is that they were not given justice by bureaucrats that acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner and they were denied their rights under the law. so that company is taken care of because there was an impartial judge that felt that they had been abused and their rights under hatch-waxman to be able to extend their patent. so you might be able to argue in other places around the country when you're likewise denied your right that you got this court case to back you up. but we can't have one agency saying when a 60-day period of time starts for mail coming in or mail going out, to exercise your 60-day period, and for another agency to do it another way, and that's basically what the judge said, that congress surely couldn't have meant that. so the language of

mr. chairman, thank you for your leadership. thank you for your and senator grassley's great work on an important patent bill. i support that bill, and i believe you moved it forward in a fair way. did you not put this language in to the bill. it was put in in the house. i know you'd like to see the bill go forward without amendments, but i urge you to think it through and see if you can't be willing to support this amendment. i'm confident it will not block the final passage of the legislation. mr. president, i thank the chair and would yield the floor. mr. leahy: mr. president -- the presiding officer: the senior senator from vermont is recognized. mr. leahy: i have seven unanimous consent requests for committees tpo meet during today's session of the senate. i ask unanimous consent these requests be agreed to, these requests be printed in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. leahy: mr. president stph-p. the presiding officer: the senator is recognized. mr. leahy: i will speak later about the comments made by the distinguished senator from alabama

mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator grassley. senator franken. >>thank you, mr. chairman for the extremely important hearing. first of all, i want to start out by saying i love google and i said that the last time google was here in front of my subcommittee, but i think it bears repeating. google has transformed the way we use information and google will be among those setting the standard for innovation in this country for decades to come. but in many ways, google's unprecedented growth and success is also one of the reasons we need to pay attention to what you're doing. and as you get bigger and bigger and bigger, i worry about what that means for the next larry page or sergey brin who are struggling to build the next innovative product in the garage. i am admittedly skeptical of big companies that simultaneously control both information and the distribution channels to that information, and for me, that is at the heart of the problem here. when you completely accommodate how people search for that -- for information and you own separate products and services t

mr. chairman. >> thank you much, senator grassley. the next questioner will be senator blue men tall of connecticut who has a distinguished career in law enforcement as you-all know. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you, chairman whitehouse, for your distinguished career in law enforcement and holding this hearing. i think that we are all gratified by the progress that has been made in this area, particularly in combating the financial institution's potential complicity in these transactions that involve financing terrorism, and i recognize that progress has been made and i want to thank each of you and the people who work with you for your continuing work and your accomplishment. all three of you i believe have made reference to the guilty plea by muhammad unis and the information that was developed about the sources of funding for the shazad plot, and apparently a major source was in pakistan, possibly with the complicity of the financial institutions there, possibly with the knowledge of officials in pakistan. i wonder if you c

note that we have been working with chairman leahy, ranking member grassley, and their staffs on a common solution to address this issue. mr chairman and members of the committee, this is an important topic as you-all know. the country is at risk and there is much work to be done to better protect critical infrastructure and improve our ability to stop computer crime. i look forward to answering your questions today. i would ask my full written statement be made a part of the record of the hearing. >> thank you. full statement will be part of the record. i appreciate the statement. and first we'll hear from mr. martinez. he serves as deputy special agent in charge of cyberoperations for the criminal investigative division of the united states secret service. nearly two decades at the secret service, he oversaw the agency's first major cyberoperation, operation firewall. in which over 30 online criminals from across the globe were apprehended. incidentally very impressive. . prior to his assignment, he supervised the new york electronic crimes task force, oversaw multiple transnational fraud cases, pointing out that none of