general mukasey emphasized the supreme court case in which he quoted them as stressing that the supremeourt had always held court should be extremely deferential to the branch on national security and we pointed out that he left off the end of the sentence, comma, except when congress expressly provides otherwise, which was from the justice department brief in that case. but i wanted to go back to just two points. and raise a question. i shared david's optimism about the courts. i have been involved for 50 years, closely in judicial confirmations. and i think there are two things that bend the judiciary's arc toward skepticism. one, the older generation of judges from world war ii who saluted the commander in chief they have left the bench and secondly, all the revelations from the pentagon papers watergate, iran/contra, so forth, have made judges much more skeptical. there was a deflection from that path as the conservatives got a lot of young, very conservative courts of appeals judges. but now as the far right if you will is joining the left on civil liberties issues i think that pat