began their careers as teachers, the average administrator has served in the administration for a decade and most experience is beneficial to effectively lead public education and improve student achievement and, whereas, public schools operate with lean management systems across the nation. public schools employ fewer managers and supervisors and most public and private supervisors, including utilities, construction, publishing, and public administration and, whereas school leaders depend on a network of support for school communities, followed administrators, teachers, parents, the students, businesses, community members, board trustees, colleges and at universities, community and face-based organizations, elected officials, a district and county staff and resources to promote ongoing student achievement and success and, whereas, research shows great schools are led by great principles, these sites leaders are supported by extensive networks throughout the state and, whereas the state of california has declared the first full week of march as the week of the

the obama administration. if they did not agree to rejecting the turkish/brazilian deal and by that forgoing the u.n. security council sanctions, then congress would pass its own sanctions, and that would have created a significant conflict between the states permanent five at the u.n. security council. and keeping a unity within the p5 against iran was a very central objective of the obama administration. congress would have destroyed that unity and instead iran would once again be able to take advantage of the fissures between the p5 members. but he also showed that political space for diplomacy as the obama administration from the outset knew was limited, could not grow on its own. one of the biggest mistakes in my assessment that the obama administration did was that it never actively went out to really argue for diplomacy and create political space for it. make a comparison between what bush was doing and what obama didn't do. the bush -- president bush gave, i think, about 16 speeches, major speeches in w

here's the administration's mistake. here's the administration's mistake. in attempting to preserve all options, it has inadvertently blurred the most important one, and that's a determined military campaign to end iran's nuclear program. [ applause ] the administration has used the same language about preserving all options in developing its policy toward libya, iran and now syria. clearly the threat has lost its intended purpose. and the markers this administration has identified whether they be a program to enrich uranium enrich uranium t weapons grade levels or a decision to construct a weapon are only truly red lines if crossing them only brings about painful consequences. another way to put it -- another way to put it is that the administration's mistake has been to pursue negotiations and sanctions consecutively than simultaneously. without articulating a clearle ml tear consequence for crossing those red lines. but in my view, the only way, the only way that the iranian regime can be expected to negotiate to preserve its own survival rather than dela

. >> in the bush administration. >> clinton and bush. >> clinton and bush. so thank you very much. the honorable allen larson. thank you very much. >> chairman baucus, senator kyl, distinguished senators, thank you for the invitation to testify. my testimony is informed by many experiences. formally as undersecretary of state for economics during the clinton and george w. bush administrations. currently as senior international policy adviser at covington and burling. and currently as chairman of the board of directors of transparency international usa. in 2009, my transparency international counterpart, whom i'm very pleased you had the opportunity to meet, mr. chairman, and i participated in a private sector group that prepared and submitted a joint report to president medvedev and president obama. entitled russia u.s. joint working group on joint institutional integrity. simply in 2009 i served as co-chair of a public sector advisory committee that provided the administration with recommendations on a new bilateral investment treaty, new model bit. my written statement describes t

the obama administration is the first administration to use congressionally mandated sanctions on iran in a robust way. and you deserve considerable praise for that. i know that the president and you and numerous officials at state, treasury, defense have put in literally thousands of hours trying to persuade foreign officials and foreign thousand of hours trying to persuade foreign officials and foreign business men to help isolate iran all for the purpose of implementing a policy intended to lead iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program. in that regard. i think it would be helpful to put to rest concerns of some observer s that the administration is resigned to iran becoming a nuclear threshold state. i think it's important for us to be reassured on that point. based on my understanding of the administration's policy, i think you should be able to do that. three months ago, secretary of state burns -- a joint statement was spoken of -- and a pentagon publication said that u.s. seeks to prevent iran's development of a nuclear weapons capability. close quote. so, when senator graham

could incorporate elites who populated the nixon administration, kind of bought this wholeheartedly as a tool kit for managing complex systems, like daniel patrick moynihan, who was influential in the nixon administration was always trying to sell nixon on comprehensive policies for the cities, for the environment, something of a nightmare of planning but it had this ecological ethos to it which was really central to things like the national environmental policy act, senator henry jackson's bill, but also the epa both interested in managing the total environment and the epa as well a vehicle that would prevent sort of the capture of any particular -- by any particular industry of the administration or the regulatory agency because it oversaw the whole thing. and in a strange way, it appealed to nixon, and here's a president who really didn't have as much of an ideological core as others, and he kind of found this systems thinking very appealing, and in many ways to fueled his grandiose and dare i say kennedy-esque rhetoric on environmental matters. when you hear about him talk about

you know a heated point where republicans attacked the administration they were accused of. basically providing the enemy al qaeda with you know or are sources and methods and i think administration learned its lesson at that point and learned its lesson by stating we are not going to release any information on certainly our national security. you know or the war on terror that would. reveal the way the you know the policies that were put into place to you know to to prosecute certain individuals to interrogate certain individuals. you know there there this is ministration i think it it believe that it could make some changes. it it learned its lesson and i think that that moment in time when those memos were released that's when everything changed and we saw it happen with the photographs. in those recently a poll of the lead investigative reporter for truthout dot org. now british forces may have torched washington d.c. back in nineteen twelve but two centuries later it's probably safe to say that the leaders of both countries are burning with love for one another but the b

the obama administration new it is difficult before the election. already it took several months with the policy review then should the u.s. and gauge before the election or after? at the end the winning argument u.s. did not want to do anything to affect the elections especially seeing cannot win the election and why is verbal especially a the proximity in washington. but what is critical the obama administration said by june 13, there would be political clarity. some would have one and they could quickly get on with diplomatic initiatives. they did not expect the of their clarity. they had the election the people viewed as fraudulent, a human-rights abuses, those that the unprecedented level. iran had become paralyzed much critical time was about to be lost again. this was critical because not only the civil-rights abuses you could see on the tv screen but critical because it has a dilemma. how does it deal with it? it took a full 10 days before the administration condemned human rights abuses. those references were few and far in between. i had t

i yield back my time. >> the obama administration is the first administration to use congressly mandated -- you deserve considerably praise for that, i know that the president and you and numerous officials at state, at treasury at dpoef have put in thousands of hours trying to persuade foreign officials and foreign businessmen to respect our sanctions and to isolate iran. all for the purpose of implementing a policy intended to lead iran to abandon their weapons program. i think it would be helpful to put to rest that the administration is resigned to iran becoming a nuclear threshold state. i think it's very important to reassure us on that point. based on my understanding of the administration's policy, i think you should be able to do that. three months ago, on december 1, secretary of state burns and israeli deputy foreign minister issued a statement and i quote preventing iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. and a pentagon published paper says that iran seeks to -- when senator graham yesterday asked whether the adnien iran to becor threshold state you respond by sayin

in the budget the administration just released a few weeks ago, they would add ear $37 trillion on top of it. what is most ironic is we convene a hearing that will largely focus on the european debt crisis is that when you look at the numbers, the u.s. has a worse debt-to-gdp ratio than does the eurozone. there is no greater threat to our recovery than our own fiscal trajectory. unfortunately, the president's approach to europe appears to be do as i say but not as a do. now, the president knows what the cause is. he has said, quote, the major driver of our long-term debt is medicare, medicaid and our health care spending. nothing comes close. i agree. but there is nothing in his budget to reform, save and secure thee programs and i'm not the only one to take note. the los angeles times says it's past time for the administration to lay out a credible plan for bringing the deficit and debt under control. sadly obama's budget proposal shows he would rather wait until after the election to have that reckoning. the boston herald said president barack obama has apparently decided he is not g

there was a wistful longing for liberal policies after the conservative administrations of ronald reagan and george bush the first and the moderate administrations that racqueted them by democrats jimmy carter and bill clinton and domestic policy in particular here was an opportunity to say something fresh about the nixon presidency. major works in this school of thought include hugh davis graham's massive and extremely important the civil rights era in 1993 which documented the nixon administration's role in developing affirmative action. graham did a lot of work looking in the nixon papers but looked at the records of the labor department. joan hoff's book "nixon reconsidered" in 1994 delves into this train of thought. her book was especially strong on white house decision making. melvin small's "the presidency of richard nixon 1999" again took an integrative approach blending nixon with his advisers to study motivations and actions and policy break-throughs and s setbacks. my own book "nixon's civil rights" published in 2001 i put in the revisionist camp tried to account for nixon's s

the obama administration is the first administration to use congressionally mandated sanctions on iran in a robust way. and you deserve considerable praise for that. i know that the president and you and numerous officials at state, treasury, defense have put in literally thousands of hours trying to persuade foreign officials and foreign businessmen to respect our sanctions and to help isolate iran. in that regard, i think it would be helpful to put to rest concerns of some observers that the administration has resigned to iran's becoming a nuclear tl threshold state. three months ago the israeli deputy minister issued a joint statement that spoke of preventing iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability, end of quote. and a pentagon publication last month also said that u.s. seeks to "prevent iran's development of a nuclear weapons capability." so when senator graham yesterday asked whether the administration seeks to deny iran the ability to become a nuclear threshold state, you responded by saying that it is the position of the administration to prevent them, meaning the iran

that's the national nuclear safety administration. it's charged with maintaining the nation's nuclear deterrents capability, securing vulnerable materials and the president has requested a budget for fiscal year 2013 of over $11 billion for the nnsa. the national academy of sciences has a report saying that the nnsa security of sites such as lawrence livermore is affecting the work of the labs. talk to us about security. >> security of -- specifically you're referring to in terms of security? >> it says -- here's one that says put a little trust in nuclear lab, maintenance of nuclear weapons stockpiles z is the core mission, but according to the national research council last month, lab employees say contracting oversight, and capital strains have diluted the primary goal and are putting research at risk. >> yeah. the real issue is, you know, how much nnsa -- how much oversight is on the labs. several years ago, the congress forced the nnsa to compete the contracts for those labs. >> so they're privately managed? >> yeah, they're priva

through his work in the office of price administration. but the setting of rubber tires -- the prices of rubber tires in 1942 is one thing. seeking to control the prices and wages in the united states economy in 1971 was another. it was a dramatic move and it was accompanied by the exit from the bretton woods system. the temporary imposition of import surcharges. and by the continuation of a spectacularly successful campaign which the president led to pressure the federal reserve board and particularly the federal open market committee under the chairmanship from 1970 of his chosen lieutenant arthur burns to pressure the fed to ease monetary policy to the point where unemployment fell or would fall in 1972 and be accompanied because of the imposition of wage and price controls by low and falling inflation. precisely those two things happened. politically, it was, in my view, a master stroke. indeed, a master clause. the wage and price freeze -- by the wage and price freeze, richard nixon abandoned his former conventional policy tools to con

the bush administration adopted red line of zero enrichment essentially identical to that of the current israeli government. obama has kept this issue quite vague and ambiguous. there's actually no statement from president obama until today in which he clarifies what his position is. there's no statement enrichment is unacceptable, nor is there a statement enrichment will be acceptable. this has fueled fears on all sides. on the israeli side there is the fear this ambiguity is masking an american desire to accept enrichment on iranian soil at the end of the negotiations. on the iranian side, the fear is this ambiguity is there to mask an american desire not to accept any enrichment at the end of the day but the u.s. needs to adopt this position now in order to get negotiations started because iranians won't even come to the table if it was clear the american position was not to accept enrichment at the end of the negotiations. there's been several examples during this last three years in which obama tried engagement and israeli government under netanyahu's position was quite clearly to m

the obama. administration sees fit you just might get a response. now there's a lot of focus these days on the ever increasing amounts that are spent on political campaigns the millions that are poured into television ads by candidates or super super pacs and while t.v. ads reach anyone in the area they might be sitting at home watching on their couch there is an entire world of micro targeting specific voters campaigns are going to send out e-mail blasts and while your husband your wife your sister brother whoever be each get an e-mail you might be asking for your money in different ways i got an e-mail from the obama administration pointing out the g.o.p. is war on women's health targeting planned parenthood and the like but how do you know that i care about topics like that television program where my opinions on a daily basis aside the email address that would give it away so let's talk about this fairly new and increasingly integrated world of voter targeting both democrats and republicans are trying to use to their advantage before the two thou

it was the administration's response that changed what was simply a historical report into something that became an important artifact of history. it was something that ultimately destroyed his presidency and these are the things that historians have to deal with, and there's no way that they can attempt even to deal with those things without analyzing the standard attitudes and typical responses of officials, including presidents. thank you very much. >> in 2009 katherine scott earned a ph.d from temple university after writing a dissertation of civil society, congress and the movement to democrat ties the national security state 1970-1978. scott is an adjunct professor with cornell and an assistant historian with the u.s. senate historical office. she has spoken on dissent and national security at many scholarly conferences so it was a natural to rewrite the chapter on nixon's dissent and a richard nixon companion and it was edited by mel small. ladies and gentlemen, katherine scott. >> thank you for that kind introduction, and thank you all for attending our panel today. thanks to

first, i'm not in the obama administration. so i don't speak for the administration. they have plenty of spokes people. i'm not one of them. i would say, though, i mean i was in the administration for most of what went on on libya including the intervention and its aftermath. i think that there is a continuing hope that what can emerge in libya will be a government that is largely representative. it will be a government that is not a government of tribes or sectarianism but a government that will be largely represented and inexclusive. representing there are, you know, this is not a simple process to generate. the prime minister of libya was recently here and saw the president. when you speak to the people in what is an interadministration in libya right now, they are very much committed to trying to produce what will be a representative democracy. now, you know, coming after gadhafi and the absence of any institutions, it's both in some ways easier and harder because, you know, in other places, there are what i would describe as sort of air satssad's instituti they'r

the desirable thing would be to have an interval sufficiently long enough to mask the administration's role, if any, in saigon's defeat. those few authors, daniel elsburg, david landau, frank smith, who address the topic in the 1970s before the documentary declassifications of the mid-1990s and afterwards could only rely on memoirs, interviews and bits of bureaucratic information and surmise to inform their discussions. remember, i mentioned nixon and kissinger, you know, making the key decisions in secret intent. this absence of key evidence for these authors i mentioned unavoidably restricted their understanding of this byzantine counterintuitive and highly secret exit option. and i don't have time to discuss the misunderstandings. working with an abundant cache of declassified documents and tapes, i've argued from late 1970 to 1971 when the nixon/kissinger strategy had clearly failed to force the other side to make vital c concessi concessions, the ones nixon and kissinger wanted, and as the administration continued to withdraw troops unilaterally, nixon and kissinger prioritized th

, everyone since literally since the ford administration. and during that time, they presided over some tremendously significant geopolitical events and also relevant to our purposes today, worked on some profound democratic transitions whether the democratic transitions in asia, latin america, certainly in eastern europe at the end of the cold war. and now more recently the arab spring. now lest that make it sound like the panelists are long in the tooth, they are still young and have many of their best years ahead of them. anyway, i think they'll start in the ford administration when they were 8 years old. anyway. so what we'll be doing is a structured conversation here. i'll be putting a number of questions to our panelists as a whole as well as to individual ones. then after a suitable amount of time, we'll turn it over to the audience for questions from the audience as well. first question is for steve hadley. steve, during his presidency, president bush spoke often of his belief that the people's of arab world both desired and deserve

and for me, an indicator of the administration's appetite to enforce russia's wto commitments might be found in looking to the degree of interest we've seen in enforcing the eligibility criteria for the generalized system of preferences, what's known as gsp. and i want to just spend a quick minute looking at how gsp has applied to russia. now, gsp is a preferential program, we looked at it on the trade subcommittee, that provides duty-free treatment of imports from russia so long as russia complies with the eligibility criteria that congress established in the program. and the criteria includes effective protection of intellectual property, equitable access to russian markets, and a requirement that russia not expropriate property. i want to ask a question of you, mr. williams, and you, mr. larsen because you've touched on it. so you've had some experience, mr. williams. this is not an abstract kind of question. you've had experience with respect to the intellectual property question and i just like to ask you about what happened when you brought your concerns about russia's lax enforc

whereas the state of california has declared the first full week of march as the week of the school administrator and, whereas the future of california's public education system depends upon the quality of its leadership, therefore, be it resolved the board of education recognize the first week in march as school of the minister's weak in the san francisco unified school district and commands highly all school leaders of this district for the many contributions they make too successful student achievement. mr. president? >> yes. >> we are very honored this evening to announce we have a number of administrators to have been recognized by california's school administrators specifically for region five. we own the of these awards, as you will soon see. i would like to recognize our president and the superintendent, i would like to join him to recognize our award winning administrators. >> good evening, commissioners, mr. superintendent, members of the public. this is my 13th annual trip to the podium for the last 13 years to join in this annual celebration of the week of the administrators. we have

. >>> the obama administration's budget request for the state department next year totals $52 billion. the slight increase over this year. secretary of state hillary clinton testified before the house foreign affairs committee recently about the budget and u.s. foreign policy. this is two and a half hours. >>> the meeting will come to order. because the secretary must leave at 4:00 after opening remarks, i will ask the secretary to summarize her testimony and then we will move directly to the questions from our members. given the vote situation the ranking member will be recognized to deliver his opening remarks, if we are going to be interrupted by votes but here you are and there's no problem. i want to give my remarks and then yours because you were going to be -- without objection members may have five days to submit questions for the record. madam secretary, welcome back to the committee to discuss the administration's foreign relations budget request. all of us have great respect for you, madam secretary, our nation faces unsustainable deficits so we must justify every dollar we

every day it's sunshine week so politicos josh gerstein is going to join us to break down the obama administration's distal record on transparency and the internet has proven to be a tool that can be used for good and for evil so we're going to speak to an author that looks at the power dynamics between governments corporations and the public to figure out how we can keep the internet free so we have all that work tonight including a dose of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to me it's. no surprise here the day after more primaries and the mainstream media is just but sad itself but how much there is to discuss about the results. rick santorum it's a double win in the deep south he wins the alabama and mississippi primaries a true for tuesday sweep deep in the american south a rick santorum celebrating twin victories of the super you know the bama so why did santorum come out and talk he over perform he did really well with conservative voters and there are a lot of them and in mississippi alabama white evangelical voters very christian voters flocking to him inste

and they were turned down by the bush administration. we can go back to some of the memoirs, we discovered there was an active debate inside the administration on that issue. but one of the questions that came up was, if they went over iraqi airspace, which would be the most direct way in, which is the time the united states controlled. would they try to stop them? i think the answer they came to was probably not. the bigger concern i hear within the administration now is not just what happens that day, but as admiral fallon said, there will be an assumption by the iranians that the u.s. and israel worked together at least in sharing intelligence. and then the question is, does the u.s. get sucked in to whatever happens that follows? i'm only seeing young classifieds. war gaming, there was one done in brookings a few years ago, one done in harvard. in almost every scenario i've seen of these. the u.s. does get sucked in sooner or later. because somebody tries to take a pot shot at american ships and you're off to the races. i think that's

you know a heated point where republicans attacked the administration they were accused of. basically providing the enemy al qaeda with you know or are sources and methods and i think the administration learned its lesson at that point and it learned its lesson by stating we are not going to release any information on certainly our national security. you know or the war on terror that would. reveal the way the you know the policies that were put into place to you know to to prosecute certain individuals to interrogate certain individuals. you know they're there this is ministration i think it they believe that it could make some changes . if it learned its lesson and i think that moment in time when those memos were released that's when everything changed and we saw it happen with the photograph. and i was jason leopold the lead investigative reporter for truthout because org. right now the the special relationship right the so-called special relationship between the u.k. and the u.s. has come under increased scrutiny in light of a number of issues issues like seeker see extr

the administration's budget reverse this is trend and cuts the funding by $13.7 million. the average cost to maintain a usar team exceeds $2 million, leaving local governments with bsh which sponsor the task force to fill the gap. many localities facing budget short falls themselves, sponsoring the teams is a burden they struggle to afford significantly straining task force capability and readiness. for a minor investment, congress can significantly enhance the nation's preparedness to respond appropriately. we encourage the subcommittee to increase the funding in usar over fiscal year 2012 appropriation. lastly, we wish to express our reservations regarding the administration's proposal to consolidate 16 homeland security grant programs into the new national preparedness grant program. each of the homeland security grants was established in order to serve a specific and important public safety need. giving limited federal funding, merging these home lapped security priorities until a single block grant could cause such priorities to go unserved. as a major metropolitan a

at least at the start of the administration. triangular diplomacy, the nixon doctrine and other elements. yet other authors including me have doubted or downplayed the reality of a grand design. instead, i've argued, others have argued, the nixon/kissinger so-called design was composed mostly of a bmodis operandi. a related question to this question of the grand design is did triangular diplomacy bring about the satisfactory solution to nixon's vietnam problem? was that the reason? some say yes. my short answer is no. of course, it's complicated. a fourth issue, set of issues, has to do with the nixon doctrine and the mad man theory. the conventional historical wisdom has been that vietnamization was the central strategy of the administration in vietnam. and that it was the prime example of the nixon doctrine at work. but the documentary evidence reveals, it seems to me, that although vietnamization was a key option, it was not the only option. it was one of many interrelated, important alternative strategies or policies in the n

the past. we are not infallible. this current budget proves that this administration, the obama administration does not support this program. we have to go to the legislators for that support. we are asking for their support in this. federal flight deck officer program is the most cost-effective program for counterterrorism that we have at $15 a flight. it represents the third largest group of federal law enforcement officers in the nation and a group of people willing to spend incredible amounts of their own money to protect the public, protect their airlines and protect themselves. any changes to this program right now would be done at the expense of all of us. >> thank you. again, questions from the floor, and again, if you would raise your hand and be recognized and state your affiliation and your name, that would be great. okay. >> brian darling, heritage foundation. my question is when you look back at the history of the creation of the program, this is not a partisan issue. the leadership of senator barbara bach in california, many democrats stepped up in support of this shows it has bipartisan support. the overwhel

the counselor. did not warrant a suspension. february 13, administrator has a latino student searched because she was laughing loudly in class, minker's didn't have an illegal substance. the only item they found was a petition not to fire the for -- for teachers we ask you to fire. an administrator undermines the authority in front of students. i could go on and on. a teacher yelled out in front of students has a nervous breakdown and has not returned. these things need to stop. we need you to return the drink to our school. thank you. -- we need you to return the dream to our school. >> i know you know my face. i have been here all last year over and over again. last year, this time, the board deputy superintendent, you guys to the stand and acknowledged for under serving our communities and you were going to make a change. we have not seen that change. the only thing i will say is when i came to you at closed session before you made the appointment, i came to plead with you. i am here to say and i do not want to say i told you so. i told you so. you hav

>> the key thing is that the administration did not overreact. if you're going to change your policy, you don't want to do it under duress. the other thing that happened is this enhances president kars i-'s bargaining power -- karzai's bargaining power. you've seen us agree to transfer more of the prisoners from bagram. you've already seen us willing to say we'll put some constraints on the night raid and if you want to stay past 2014, you're going to have to do that. öz#f forces in afghanistan is saying i need all nonsurge troops to stay this entire year which means he's basically boxing in the white house to not make some big announcement at the summit in may. now you have members of congress like senators mccain, lieberman and others saying that we want this long-term presence and they don't mean, you know, 10,000 troops, they mean a significant amount because they don't want a repeat of the bungled negotiations that left no u.s. forces in iraq which gave up our ability to see into iran. so the white house is feeling pressure now from its own c

i believe congress and the administration should be partners should be all three sides of the rule of law triangle become firmly established. in my system, in my written testimony, i urged that six actions be taken. one relating to trade, two recommendations relating to investment and three recommendations relating to institutional integrity and controlling corruption. i believe congress should be engaged in and exercised continuing oversight on these actions which will strengthen the rule of law for business. first, congress should extend permanent normal trade relations to russia. doing so is in our foreign policy interests and it is in our economic interests. second, the administration in russia should initiate and vigorously pursue negotiations for a bilateral investment treaty which both countries legislators then should ratify. russia failed to ratify an investment treaty negotiated in 1992, and as a result, u.s. investors in russia lack important rule of law protect n protections. third, the administration should advocate for u.s. investors in russia and vigorously espouse the

the administration's budget proposal further reduces funding for safe fire for $670 million. reversing recent funding cuts to safe air and fire will insure that communities have the resources they need to protect the homeland. therefore, we recommend that the subcommittee provide $810 million evenly divided for the two programs in fiscal 2013. in addition to safe air and fire grants, the urban search and rescue system is crucial to our nation's homeland security. these systems comprised of 28 national task forces equipped in exercised personnel capable of responding in natural and man made disasters. the state of texas is a proud sponsor of one such force. congress provided modest increases to the ustr and funding the program at $41.25 million in fiscal '12. unfortunately the administration's budget reverses this trend and cuts the funding by $13.7 million. the average cost to maintain a usar team exceeds $2 million, leaving local governments with -- which sponsor the task force to fill the gap. many localities facing budget short falls themselves, sponsoring the teams is a bu

the directives i am giving my administration today on how to interpret the freedom of information act will do just that for a long time now there's been too much secrecy in this city the old rules said that if there was a defensible argument for not disclosing something to the american people they should not be disclosed that era is now over. well passport and now critics are claiming that the obama administration is the worst in the years when it comes to fulfilling freedom of information act requests as some of the same groups the author of the obama administration's commitment to transparency and a meeting that was closed to the public and the press want to talk about irony they're no longer feeling the open love. it seems like the obama administration is a little less for transparency and a little more for selective filtering shocker now seventy complaints from open government advocates in reference to the obama administration's transparency include administration lawyers aggressively fighting requests it ministrations one whistleblowers the justice department going after reporter

that's the administration's stance. a couple weeks ago, jim miller, who is a pentagon official, said he believes we could maintain our security with potentially smaller numbers. so that's the direction we're going. there's a lot of republicans that feel we need to put the brakes on that, make sure we're modernizing and make sure what we have is safe and taken care of. there's a tremendous debate going on in congress about what is the right path forward and some of the budget cutbacks hav administration's case recently. >> glenn, democratic caller from vermont, good morning. >> caller: thank you for making my call. >> please go ahead. >> caller: todd, i was wondering what your knowledge is on broken arrow incidents and what current effort on the part of the d.o.d. is to monitor those sites and possibly recover any material that might still be in the ground or in swamps off georgia? >> that's -- that is a d.o.d. effort, not something that the national nuclear safety administration does. i focus on the sites that ta the bro

that's the administration's policy. with at least 7 thought 500 and possibly more than 10,000 dead with the side using thanks gaining momentum according to general mattis, would you agree that mass atrocities have occurred and are occurring in syria? >> i don't think there's any question na we're experiencing mass atrocities there. >> so the president said yesterday he's taking no options off the table and you said in your opening statement that in xwoets as i mentioned potential military options if necessary. can you tell us how long, how much longer the killing would have to continue, how many additional civilian lives would have to be lost in order to convince you that the military measures of this kind that we are proposing necessary to end the killing and force to leave power, how many more have to die, 10,000 more, 20,000 more? how many more? >> i think the question as you stated yourself, senator, is the effort to try to build an international consensus as to what action we do take. that makes the most sense. what

in contrast, the administration did the right thing by enforcing u.s. law and cutting off funding to unesco after an undermined peace by admitting the nonexistent state of palestine. your request to now change the law and send $80 million to unesco would be a grave mistake. any weakening of u.s. law would undermine our credibility and give a green light for other u.n. agencies to grant recognition of a palestinian state. u.s. funding for unesco must only be restored if unesco votes to unadmit palestine. the budget for the western hemisphere is another example of misplaced priorities. the administration has requested an increase in funding for the general budget of the organization of american states, yet you cut u.s. contributions to the oas fund for strengthening democracy by almost $2 million. the administration is proposing increased financial assistance to nicaragua, bolivia, and ecuador, three governments that continue to undermine u.s. security interests in the hemisphere, disregard human rights, and ignore the rule of law. there can be no justifi

the obama administration is the first administration to use -- sanctions and a robust way and you deserve praise for that. i know the president you and numerous officials have put in literally thousands of hours trying to persuade foreign officials and foreign businessmen to respect our sanctions and to help isolate iran all for the purpose of implementing a policy intended to lead iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program. in that regard i think it would be helpful to put to rest concerns of some observers that the administration is resigned to iran becoming a nuclear threshold stay. i think it's important to reassure us on that point based on my understanding of the administration's policy. i think you should be able to do that. three months ago on december 1 secretary of state burns and israeli deputy foreign minister ioloni it should joint statement that spoke of in a quote preventing iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability end of quote in a pentagon publication last month the u.s. seeks to quote prevent iran's development of nuclear weapons capability"

having started way back in the ford administration and being able to see the character of the ford administration back then and how it changed in the carter administration, then ford to reagan one, reagan two, bush 41, clinton one, clinton two, bush 43 part one, bush 43 part two, okay, which administration do you think was the most effective and forthcoming and successful with respect to foia administration? >> sure. most effective and forthcoming was head and shoulders the administration all eight years of janet reno. >> oh. and there is the cheer leader right there. that's carl stern. he did one heck of a fine job of holding both dick's feet and dan's feet to the fire saying, wait a minute, you got to release this. the privacy exact went let us, there's criminal sangs involved. cart would say nobody ever get prosecutednd that. i know people in the criminal division. bont worry about that. >> that's funny but it's also true. carl was fronting for the attorney general on the that. the attorney general coming from florida where they had a s sunshine statute with exemptions. they practically protec