political scientists have thought about it, historians have thought about it, philosophers, it helps to explain the majesty of the american victory over demagogues. the number one fear of the founding father was a demagogue with chapel the constitution and establish a tyranny, we have not seen that. time and again, americans in our constitutional culture have overcome the most pessimistic expectations of what might happen. fbi tried to pack the courts and take over the supreme court, american people snapped back at him so hard, he tried to pass the law anyway. >> would you do during the john edwards campaign? >> i am a national -- i was at the center for american progress in washington, i have been a long time, part of the book comes from a dissertation, i have a doctorate in political science and a law degree, i have been a long time political activist and an activist on social justice issues including electoral reform, issues dealing with democracy. that partly explains the fascination of the book. i was john edwards's foreign policy adviser on his presidential campaign, issues of

i thought, "that's so interesting. he's not like -- he's not the one-dimensional demon we're -- we're led to believe." i thought -- i wondered if other extremists would be like that. so then i spent a lot of time with a klan leader who was giving his klan an image makeover. he kind of figured that the klan had a bad image, so he wanted to, you know, ban the "n" word and ban the robes and the hoods and the cross-burnings and -- and replace those things with personality seminars, teaching -- teaching their klansmen to be -- you know, to work out whether they're melancholics or sanguines, and so on. so again, he was very unlike my mental picture of a -- of a ku klux klan leader, this guy. he was nebbishy. he reminded me of woody allen. and i thought there was an irony there. so then i figured, well, maybe there's a -- there's a whole book in these unexpected portraits of extremist leaders, and i thought it would be funny and -- and there'd be an interesting narrative. and i thought that maybe it would be an interesting wa

he thought the they were trivial, in a way. stump speech that was based on that announcement, it began to get unwieldy. his age was creeping up on him. he did -- he did not like this public attention, which was kind of weird. he told a friend that the experience of being a candidate was his public colonoscopy -- was like a public colonoscopy. he missed his family. he was raising money the old- fashioned way, doing back to back to back fund-raisers, as well as trying to manage the media. by the summer he was losing a lot of altitude. host: every campaign has its moments. we want to share a few with our audience and get the back story from you. our phone lines are open. you can e-mail us or use twitter as well. november 10, 2007, here is what he said the democrats in iowa. >> i am running because the democratic party is what america needs right now. [applause] a party that offers not just a difference of policies, but the difference in leadership. a party that does not just focus on how to win, but why we should. [applause] a par

he told his friends he thought the experience being a candidate was like a public colonoscopy. and he missed his family. his family it must have been hard. in spite of the height he was raising money the old-fashioned way. it wasn't the internet. he was doing back-to-back fund-raisers as well as trying to manage the media and deal with this d8 initio and by the summer he was losing altitude a lot and frankly people in washington thought he was never going to make it. >> host: eckert campaign has a couple of moments and we want to share a few with you and give the story and remind you the phone lines are open and we will take your e-mails at journal@c-span.org or you can send a replete but this is the dinner that took place in the fall of 2007, november 10 to be exact. here is what the intent of the barack obama had to say to these democrats in iowa. >> i ron for the presidency of the united states of america because that is the party america needs us to be right now. what [cheering] a party that offers not just difference in policies, but difference in leadership. a party that

bernanke believed that your thought to invoke a mac was not credible. take a look at the following e-mail from chairman bernanke dated december 21st 2008, i think the threat to use mac as a bargaining chip -- we don't see it as a likely scenario at all. you did get a specific amount of assistance when you dropped the threat to back out of your deal, isn't it true? >> yes, we did. >> tell the committee houp. >> $20 billion. >> you got the promise of 118 billion in asset protection for a combination of merrill and bank of america toxic assets. >> we hadn't settled on an amount until sometime -- the wrap wraz being considered. >> that was in addition to the 15 billion of t.a.r.p. moneys you received in october, 10 billion in t.a.r.p. you received upon acquiring merrill, is that right? >> we didn't sign the agreement on the wrap. >> contrary to your representations to the fed, you were concerned primarily about the losses at merrill lynch. merrill's losses were less than half of the problem you faced. losses orng orng naturing at bank of america itself were

. >> we all thought it was a ball. andy thought it was a strike. i mean if he messed it up i'm pretty sure he'll admit it. we all make mistakes but i mean situation like that, game on the line, concern see is up there battling facing a closer who is tough. i mean we felt like he got screwed right there. but at the same time i don't feel like the umpire did it intentionally and we all make mistakes. >> deb: on a bright note stephen strasburg got drafted by this team. did you feel any of that energy and excitement throughout the day being draft day here at national's park? >> kind of sort of, not really when you're facing a guy like cueto. i mean for strasburg it's obviously a big day for him. we're all excited to have him in our organization and can't wait to see him. i personally can't wait to meet him. but at the same time we still have to you know prepare ourselves a around here and try the get ourselves ready for the next game. >> stephen strasburg a pitcher from san diego. aaron harang going to be faced by horizon risks. >> he is a horse, a big

and i thought i was going to be a lawyer because my father thought that was the only way i could afford to buy a home in newport beach, the community in which i lived. when i made the decision i didn't want to fight battles in the courtroom, that i would rather fight battles in the classroom and not those safe classrooms i grew up in the classrooms that had kids that were struggling, struggling with civil strife, discrimination and racism and abject poverty my father didn't take the news so well. in fact he commented teachers don't make any money, which is true. he said i would never afford a home in newport beach, which is still true. and he thought i needed to wear a bulletproof vest every day. i'm here to tell you i quickly learned there is a huge disconnect between theory and practice, which i learned in my halls of academia. because of on the very first day when i walked into my classroom in long beach, california i was absolutely clueless. the first day i wore polka dots and pearls and as i was about to go to the 45 minute drive from my home to the city my father called in panic a

they thought the bush people thought they were going to win new hampshire and win big. just the opposite happened. and, they made a decision that the way they have operated as governor, the way they had campaigned as governor and the way they campaigned up until that point was apparently not going to work and they decided instead of going for votes in the center, going for the moderates, they would turn to the right and try to energize the base of the party. they did that, and it really change the character of the campaign. they went on to win. i have always argued that they would have won anyway, that john mccain did not have the money to sustain his campaign. he had to win every single primary, they didn't. that was the decision. the campaign turned bright, they won narrowly, narrowly. they continue to govern from the right. i think the fact that he won by such a small margin had a great impact on his presidency and the success or lack of that we saw after that. i think had there been a solid win, if he had won by a certain margin, that he would have been much more su

i thought that is a great name and i love that the two. to love the name kean, which existed in mexico, old mexico. i said that as a great name, so she became for a time can, but then shirley q. to becomes q in the book for this reason. when a husband decides he's going to write about a spouse or a wife decides she's going to read about a spouse and if that spouse is an attorney and if that's spouses train to understand and libel and invasion of privacy, that writer had better know what he is doing. [laughter] i am a fellow who writes not knowing what i'm doing, that is the purpose of writing to find out how i am doing so i said i'm going to make assertions in here how many of these might be liable and privacy invasion but if she goes by another name that could change things so for a while i struggled how to present her and finally i thought she will be q, i was free and i felt free to write things. i did run everything by her so she put her stamp on everything sign that as acrid but when you're writing you don't know that since she was q.

and my thought was, this guy -- my thought -- and then i began looking harder at his record, what core values does this man really have? what makes him a democrat other than that he is -- you say populist. i tend to look at him and his record as opportunism. he was forming himself as a candidate not as someone who actually had a core set of principles. >> i think that's a good analysis. i think it's a very good analysis. you know, another surprising vote that he took, he was the only democrat, illinois democrat, in the congressional delegation to vote for funding the iraq war. and that was a surprising vote as well. >> so you have this man -- and if i can rewind a little bit to patti mel -- or patti blagojevich, what do we know about her and any influence she might have on him? who is she and what's she all about? >> the whole story of patti mel, dick mel and rod blagojevich is really -- has shakespearean tragic overtones. [laughter] >> it does. i mean, patti -- dick mel was a very strong family man. he has three children and a lovely wife, very strong family. and when patti met rod in

the government even thought that you are making the threat to move mac as a bargaining chip. the government had already given you $25 billion before you approached it about merrill lynch. if the government believed all of that about you and your management team, were you surprised that the fed arranged for you to receive an additional financial support in january? it did that surprise you? financial support in january, does that surprise you? >> we received 15 billion, not 25 billion from the original t.a.r.p. package. it did not surprise me they were willing to give us more. we talked about coming to a solution to get the merrill lynch deal done. >> there was a financial crisis and they thought it was necessary -- unanimous consent for twoore minutes. >> without objection. >> there was a financial crisis and they thought it was necessary for the system, for the deal to go through. if there's one thing about your record that's clear, you have experienced negotiating deals. what do you believe your leverage with the government was at the end of 2008? at the end of 2008? >> the

what they come away with is they are singing someone with thoughtful. -- saying someone who is a thoughtful. -- seeing someone who is thoughtful. in washington, that may be a rare commodity. does anyone else want to add to that? i want to be sure that we do not concluded today without a word on the retiring justice. >> i will say one word. he is a very decent, thoughtful man. david souter had a lot of empathy. he gave a farewell speech to his third circuit. the speeches -- he spoke with ron -- he spoke in a very passionate way about a justice and what a justice is and what a judge is, what it means to be that. what separation of power meant to him. this was in new hampshire. both of those speeches -- i will hope there is a record of them. >> he would not allow them to be recorded. >> that is too bad. everyone should hear the speeches. >> this was the most marvelous panel. i want to thank them. [applause] this discussion has been most enlightening and stimulating. we have learned about a fish that only died temporarily. [laughter] it is no wonder that this panel has become one of the popular

i thought that was pretty good. these shows all be competing directly with governor schwarzenegger's new reality series, i'm a celebrity, get me out of here. [laughter] that's how i feel tonight. it's nothing personal. but this dinner conflicts with my day and night. -- date night. i was posted well with michelle for thai food in bangkok. [laughter] but i have been doing a lot of traveling. i just returned from a trip abroad, as you know. in egypt, we toured the pyramids. by now, i'm sure all of you have seen the pictures of rahm on a camel. i was a little nervous about the whole situation. i said at the time, there is a wild animal known to buy tickets that, and who knows what a camel might do. [laughter] -- bite, kick, and spit. who knows what a camel might do? [laughter] no matter where i went, there was one thing i heard over and over again from every world leader. no thanks, but have you considered -- [unintelligible] of course, most of my intentions have been focused year back home. as you know, we have been w

i thought of all the skylines, i thought of the president's, i thought of macy's day parade, the rose bowl parade, the small towns, the farms, where i grew up of route 66. allen did all these 76 new american citizens and as of the fireworks climaxed i realize that for me my journey to capture and to photograph democracy could never be taken as a single image. it never be accomplished in a single iconic moment. instead in my portrait of democracy would be an gigantic mosaic. if you think back to your art history and think of pointless some each single little got if you look at every single little thought it doesn't tell anything. tell you back up and you get that bird's-eye view. if you look down and suddenly all those dog start to come together to create a larger vision of america. we are all docks and the 1300 pitchers that appear in my book basically began as a singular vision of america, but the khatami,, what i came away with is that basically it is not my vision of america. it is a plural because its visions of america. because you and i are part of that mosaic so every time you

[laughter] anyhow, i had not thought about women. i thought about blessed oda but not the trajectory of women. as i wrote this as a for this big humongous takeout we were doing, i really focused for the first time on the fact that the historic attitude toward women, towards the difference between the gender, that women were less intelligent, women were weaker, women belonged in the home and men had control of the public sphere, the business and religion and politics and everything else. but all of that stuff had been with us since the beginning of western civilization just ingrained in the core of our societies and that that enormous claw long progression of century after century after century and did in my lifetime that all this stuff was shattered while i was a life of all those billions of women who traveled through the world and it's just not me. today when i think about it it cheers me up through almost anything. so i thought that was the thing i really wanted to write about in some way, and after the millennium, after we had al

because the minute i read that, i thought, gee, this is interesting. so there are people that you can find some resemblances too, -- to, and we can't produce the next one. we have to be sure that the opportunities there are and that when the knock on the door, those doors will open. yes? >> yes, joe. >> at the moment that we speak, we have two books on hand very much on hand, chris buckley's book and your book here. and chris buckley's back has now been on the bestseller list for maybe four weeks or whatever it's been out. >> i haven't looked. >> well in each case -- [laughter] >> seriously, in each case, we have two brilliant writers, writing about the great man, at least the current great man, and journalistically speaking, many of interviews on television and other media for chris' book have in my view, and my wife's and my son's view come out rather negatively on bill. why? because the excerpts in journalism so often are just picking out the negativities and coming along. there's danger there, and i'm saying to you -- i read only one review of your

what was his thoughts as to why he opposed so much? >> some people thought that he didn't have very strong feelings about it before he became secretary of state but he was very influenced by the state department once he did become secretary of state and kind of adopted their attitude toward the middle east and a partition and israel. >> also, he had -- he had a long it talk right before the leaders of the jewish agency were going to vote in palestine about whether to proclaim a jewish state. he had a long talk with mosha and he came to see him in his office and the text is available. and he gave him analogies between his experience trying to negotiate between the nationalists and communists in china. and the chinese civil war. and the chinese armies and how everything he believed collapsed as a reality hit him in the face in the strength of the mao's army and he tried to warn him and he seriously gave him long armies saying, serious long, long argument using that situation in china as an analogy. as to why the hagana would not be able

speech to the american constitution society in june, 2008, you, sir, said the following, i never thought i would see the day when a president would act in direct defines of federal law by authorizing warrantless n.s.a. surveillance of american citizens and the president himself several times as a senator and during the campaign said the program was illegal. now that you are the attorney general, is there any doubt in your mind that the warrantless wiretapping program was illegal? >> well, i think that the warrantless wiretapping program as it existed at that point was certainly unwise in that it was put together without the approval of congress and as a result did not have all the protections, all the strength that it might have had behind it as i think it now exists with regard to having had congressional approval of it. so i think that the concerns that i expressed in that speech no longer exist because of the action that congress has taken. >> but i asked you, mr. attorney general, not whether it was unwise but whether you consider it to have been illegal. because that's certainly the

abigail had given careful thought to the form in philadelphia from which she as a woman was excluded. and there were a number of issues about which she was irritated because slavery was one. was she was ruminating on this paradox of the delicate talking and writing about liberty and freedom, while all the while excluding some groups from the benefit of ideological mission, she introduced another delicate topic. alone at kitchen table ed night, writing by candlelight as our household slept, abigail had the time to focus her mind and your thoughts directed to the formic philadelphia and to her husband. this was a moment to consider issues that were important to her. and so she initiated another seditious topic. i long to hear that you have declared independence she wrote, and by the way in the new code of laws, which i suppose it will be necessary for you to make, i decide you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them then your ancestors. do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. this was an audacious move. again, as she sat, her thoughts car

i thought they were wrong. i also thought there was something phony about the exercise, simultaneously bringing an copycat. the moratorium supporters presented themselves as the dissidents, but they were tagging along with a national movement mimicking their elders. i decided to put counter posters, anti-protest protest on the school walls. i imagined myself as a latter-day martin luther, taping rather than hammering out criticisms of orthodoxy for all to see. i generated my posters by typing them out over and over on the black typewriter using carbon paper to produce more copies at a time. i had only 12 contentious theses, not luther's 95. after a nights work, i gave my posters to the world on the 15th. . . deer bob off the beginning of my letter, added a conclusion and send it away. months passed without a word from national review. i assumed they had not liked the submission and thrown away. this was standard procedure in journalism. after the new year, i got a letter from a c hçó simon, the managing editor,

so anyway i thought these different kinds of manhood were very interesting and i thought there was a book there. >> did you ever consider writing just on walt whitman in the war or is it in the course of the research that you expanded it to include his family? >> no, it was the parent -- when i realized they had written so much to each other and taken -- had such different experiences of the war that i thought there's something here. >> so that was part of the genesis of the book itself? it >> yes. >> richard, obviously, we all know you through your political work. this latest book technical, scientific? what special challenges did that pose and what are your thoughts on telling history through biography? >> well, i think that if you're going to tell the history of science, which i think is the least well-told story of the 20th story you almost have to do it through biography since much of the material that scientists produced or discovered in the period, which we now call the heroic age of physics is too complicated for most people to stick with. so that it is not an accident that p

we thought we'd share a few thoughts about the sotomayor nomination. i think judge sotomayor deserves fair treatment. and we're going to ensure that that happens. the nomination to the supreme court always raises quite a number of important questions, and some of those questions have been discussed in recent days. i think it's quite appropriate that senators who have concerns, who want to or who are concerned about matters that they come to the floor and raise those before the hearing even. it gives the nominee a chance to be ready for the expressed concerns of senators. and also i think advance as national discussion on issues of great importance. today we talked about the second amendment, the -- i would just say a lot of people think the he willa case was a defining, decisive decision that i guarantee the individual right to keep and bear arms, and it was. however, it explicitly applied only to the federal law, and federal government of the district of columbia. and so in a footnote they note that had they were not deciding on the second, incorporat

chairman, i thought we were going to do this next week and the coverage section of the bill. >> is not her amendment. >> feet mccain an amendment. >> i know but i have a an amendment for modification but it wasn't filed, this is an mine is not a i thought the deadline for coverage a section was next week. last week the deadline came and went. some of us were a little confused about that in regards to the process and the modification i had a is very quick because i think some others have shown the same concern and we're talking about drugs coming in from the stoning of a slovakia, hungary, bulgaria, albania is cetera and any move to the mideast against shaky. we even had that one case in your remember the bottle or that prescription bottle that came in from iraq of all places so i think it is a very real threat. my modification since i had missed the deadline on the eminence but again i thought we were going to do this under the coverage section of my deadline on the amendment would be next week. but simply said this act shall become affected only the secretary certifies to the congress

they thought, an jefferson was particularly sympathetic with the french revolution, because he thought it was going to be another american revolution, that what was happening over there was its same thing that was happening over here and it took a very long time for them to discover that heads were flying, that heads were being chopped off and there was a reign of terror in france and it was in fact a civil war. but jefferson was most sympathetic to france, and it took him a long time to become disabused of france. and adams, during that time, exercised a kind of diplomacy that kept the country out of war. this was the end of the 1790's, his administration. jefferson and his party would have gone to war against either france or england. it was touch and go, because both of them were stopping american ships on the high sea. and adams wanted to pursue a policy of getting peace at any cost because he said, this nation is in no position to have another war so soon after the revolution. we couldn't sustain another war. so there were difference -- that was the major reason for the breach bet

toward hawaii, if he thought there was accuracy toward that? if that was to occur, would that be a situation where the u.s. would use a missile defense system to eliminate that threat? >> we are obviously watching the situation with respect to missile launches very closely. we do have some concerns if they were to launch a missile to the west, in the direction of hawaii. i have directed the deployment again of thad missiles to hawaii and the sbx radar has been deployed to provide support. based on my visit to fort greeley, the ground-based interceptors are in a position to take action. without telegraphing what we will do, i would just say i think we are in a good position should it become necessary to protect american territory. yes? >> mr. secretary, is there evidence and reports that mistakes or problems that you both mentioned contributed directly to the civilian casualties and does it rise to a level where there needs to be disciplinary action? >> again, without going into the specific details of this, this was a light the fire fight -- th

i thought it might be some time in the middle of 2010. i can envision it peking by the end of this year and then coming down -- peaking this year and then coming down. i think we will see positive growth rates and the second half of this year. growth rates will be sustained in 2010. the dichotomies behavior between the beginning of growth and effective job losses continue for an uncomfortable time frame is always a source of concern. it is something we had today with less time in 2003 and 2004. it is in our mind how to respond to that. in terms of the regional economy, we have the state of michigan in my district. the auto industry has been difficult. chicago is attractive -- is tracking the nation very well at the moment. >> it got about the economy turning positive in the second half which many forecasters agree with now. the idea of whether or not it is a jobless recovery or not -- many people are arguing that there is an opportunity for the real time losses in employment make them back because they were over shot. what issues perspect

than i thought i did. that's good news. mr. president, i wanted to move to a second topic in the remaining time with regard to the american recovery and reinvestment act but especially in regard to some of the attacks leveled in recent days. in just over 100 days now the recovery and reinvestment act is at work doing many things but in some reform providing immediate relief for communities an hard-hit families, secondly, creating and saving jobs fl thirdly, jump-starting thousands of shovel-ready projects across america. our economic problems were not created in 100 days and they will not be solved in 100 days or a little more than 100 days. thanks to the recovery act, we're meeting the greatest economic challenges in a generation head on. the early signs of progress across the country. a couple of examples of immediate relief measures under the act that are providing stability for hard-hit families. first, the making work -- the making work pay tax credit has increased take-home pay for 95% of working families. 95% of working

i never thought about it that way. a lot of americans are so predisposed this other society that they don't understand well, the men worship there. the women are stuck in the back as if that's never happened in christianity or synagogues. i think different societies are on different tracks as they reform and evolve and become more modern, you know, and we've all been there. maybe we're a little farther along that evolutionary track in our culture and our religion, whatever. on the other hand, when you think about the women's position in iran, more women are going to the greatest universities than men. women outnumber men in the great professions. men dominate the military and the political world like they do in our society. when you think of going to church or mosque it's a very physical thing to pray in a mosque. half the time your butt is sticking up in the air. you stand up you bend down and you stick your butt up in the hair. i liken it to jazzercise on saturday morning. if i'm in the back row, i cannot think of go

i thought i would give you a glimpse. some of these will be fanl yar, sots not, not so much about how the court has changed in doctrinal terms, but in many ways what a profoundly different court it is from the court it was in 1969 in terms of who is on the court and how they do their business. the first place, there has been a complete turnover. there are no warren court justices left. indeed, i believe there is no one on the court who behaves like a warren court justices. there are no brennans or thurgood marshalls on the court. secondly, i was impressed by chief justice's roberts answer to the question put to him a few minutes ago by the fen phenomenon that all nine of the present justices came to the supreme court from the federal courts of appeal. that is unprecedented. i think the chief justice was nuanced in suggesting that that actually masked the fact of the professional background of the nine were fairly disparate before they came to the appellate bench. if you go further back again, if you go back to 1969, there

i thought they were wrong.lso thought there was something phony about the exercise, simultaneously preening and copycat. the moratorium at my high school helper considered dissidents but they were tagging along with a national movement, mimicking their elders. i decided to put counter-posters on the school walls. i imagine myself as a latter day martin luther taping rather than hammering up criticisms of orthodoxy for all to see. i generated my posters by typing them out over and over on the black typewriter using carbon paper to produce four copies at a time. i had only 12 contentious thesis, not luther's 95. after a night's work, i gave my posters to the world on the 15th. all my efforts and the more organized protests i hopeyydñ t deflate went into that weekend's letter of my brother. it made for a longer story than usual and in his next letter home he said he enjoyed it. my father said, why don't you said it to national review. no one in my family knew anything about journalism. we knew william f. buckley f

these -- so i've written for 30 years about abigail adams and along came the clinton candidacy and i thought wow, now is the time i should start writing about the marriage and focus on the marriage of abigail and john, which i did do. of course, history changed in three years. and hillary has become instead secretary of state. but that was -- that was my starting point for this book. nevertheless when i started, i was left with the same challenge that i had faced when i wrote chronologically about abigail, that is how to write a double biography and keep the focus on abigail and not let it move over on to john. and the way i did that, the way i decided to do that, was to move john adams out of the political or the diplomatic sphere and move him into the domestic sphere, the family sphere. and so mostly this book is about the marriage and john as a family man, although it has to do, to be accurate history, and to tell the context in which the marriage took place, it has to tell the history of the period as well, and it does tell about john's diplomatic and historical participation in the revo

the thoughts thank the wrong ways. everyone knows mir hossein mousavi. i know him before, not only after the islamic revolution. i know mir hossein mousavi. i have known him for 52 years, closely. mir hossein mousavi is one of the main elements of the revolution in the course of the islamic revolution. he is one of the most serious and active supporters of the revolution before the islamic revolution. and after the revolution, he was one of the most effective political figures alongside the late amann and after the departure of him he has been alongside the leadership to date. several times on several locations he nearly got assassinated. and before the revolution he gave away his belongings for the cause of the revolution. our youth should know these facts. after the revolution he had different responsibilities. eight years he was president before that he was parliamentary speaker, and in some other major positions. and all through this time i do not know of one incident in which he accumulated wealth. i do not know anything like this. these are the fac

washington thought america had to score a decisive victory in 1781 or there would be no other chance, and john adams, who was in europe, was writing that the french would not remain in the war beyond 1781. they were looking for an hon. exit. had there not been a decisive victory, what probably would have happened, a european peace conference, and the european powers, who had no sympathy for an american republic. would have devised some sort of solution for the war and it would not have been a very rosy solution for the americans, and the americans would have had to accept a bad solution or fight on by themselves, which would have been unthinkable. so cornwallace's decision to go north into virginia, and rauchambeau's brilliance at seeing the opportunity to ensnare cornwallace in the summer and fall of 1781, turned everything around, and made a war that in january of 1781 had seemed hopeless, a winnable war. washington understood that. the american victory was little short of the standing miracle. thank you very much. [applause] >> we have some time for questions. i would like to ask a

they told me they never thought the day would come. i began to think again about what it means to be a woman involved in a leadership role. there is a need for more conservative women to be involved in leadership roles and there's a need for them to be encouraged and trained to undertake more challenges within the conservative movement. let's face it, women are particularly busy. and sometimes we prefer a more behind the scenes role in this leadership institute that i started in richmond for virginian women i always asked at the first session how many of you would consider running for office? one, maybe two will raise their hands. at the last session i asked the same questions, how many of you would consider running for office, the entire room raises their hand. we need encouragement. we need training to get more involved. we don't hear at clare boothe luce of anythinf

guy that early. >> was the -- [ indiscernible ] >> i thought the ball hit the bat is what i thought. jeff said he thought he swung and then it hit the bat. i said we can agree to disagree. [ indiscernible ] >> you know, that's just something that didn't happen for us. obviously, if we do it over again, we're going to make that -- we're going to make that 99% of the time. i just look at that as part of the game. it's not something that -- it's an oversight or anything. it just happens. those things happen. >> kind of still going the way that reimold in left field and -- looks like he could have doaf for that thing -- dove for that thing -- >> i haven't seen it. you guys get a better look at it from up there. it's just unfortunate that the mistakes that we made cost us some runs. that's all. we had some very good at-bats. reimold had some great at-bats tonight working the count fouling them off not chasingpitches. i mean, the things that are obvious, everybody can see them. i hate to dwell on them. they are things that are veryobvious. the game -- you know, jeremy kept us in the game.

how much thought when, how do we exit? how do we get out and i think the term was used earlier could this be an economic vietnam where it's easy to get in, hard to get out. >> i think that's a very fair question, senator. and again, i want to try to talk about our process. there was a tremendous amount of thought and debate about whether or not an equity stake was the proper vehicle. but again i think when you walk down a decision tree, if you decide that you're going to invest in the company because today's capital markets are not going to provide capital for this company, the need of the company for capital is not determined by us. it's determined by an analysis of the business, but at the end of the day the company has a forecast, you beat it up all you can but eventually you got to decide there's a certain amount of money that's needed. once you decide the money is the act, then you either have to do it as a debt or equity. you can do as a gift but that seems crazy. so it's going to be debt or equity. the problem is wh

and many generally thought was going to make a safer. one of the regulators tells me that when he first found out about credit derivatives he sought a presentation of one of the characters in the book had put together on this and 1995 and was very excited, he called her up and said this is going to transform the face of banking. there's a sense of having discovered amazing technology that can only be good like the guys who'd first bit the adam and it did it medical genetic dna. you've actually had the technology that can only bring back good things and, of course, these are bankers. they had an eye for this and a word angels and their two, they were cheered workers but the jpmorgan group were not in any way driven by the sense of us try and get a big pm el this year, was try and be as good as we can. they like a lot of young people bring excited by their ideas and swept away by it. it was a very heady time and then they were in a sense, up by the sense of being pioneers. so of the initial impetus behind these ideas were not bad, the prob

paulson sd was thought of as coming from you, and there could be some of this coming about. so, confusion coming about after the fact. >> the chairman's time has expired but the witness can answer the question of course. >> could you describe the conversation you had with mr. paulson about his conversation with mr. lewis? >> he reported back to me that mr. lewis as i recall, had decided not to invoke the mac and that laid upon the basis for developing the transaction but again i never told anyone to threaten mr. lewis. >> i thank the gentleman. the chair recognizes mr., of maryland. you may proceed. >> thank you very much mr. chairman. as i listen to you very carefully i think i get it. you were so intertwined in this thing and following up on mr. mchenry's questions, that it is hard to see for your participation and did and where paulson's began and i tiki to your own statement. one of the first things to say in your background is, bankamerica announced an agreement. i did not play role in arranging this transaction in the federal reserve assistance was promised are provide

maybe they thought they were courageous, and did something great. but we have seen some of these actions happen, under the power to regulate business and commerce, the government is given, the supreme court recently ruled that carbon dioxide, and nationally eckert -- naturally occurring substance in the environment, when the plants decay they -- they set this off -- they ruled that this was a pollutant, as a result of this. regardless of how you see this matter, they gave the regulation to control pollution, long before global warming was a thought. congress had no contemplation, that this would be used to limit carbon dioxide, some years later. i only say that because this was a huge economic decision, is called on an agency of the department of the united states government, to regulate every business in america using fossil fuels. right or wrong, i just say what five members of the court can do, the ruling was five members. they also -- they have the supreme court, at least two members of the supreme court, have concluded that the death penalty is

i don't know how far those thoughts went. clearly is a ritter, he loved that tempo, that routine, all of the stuff, but to me, clearly, there was in him, at least a doubt, maybe some of this clutter, but was he going to change it? no. he put his chips on it and he was good at so much, he continued on with it. yes? >> my earliest memory of bill buckley was when he ran for mayor of new york in 1965 on a conservative line. i was wondering why he never again ran as a candidate for public office. >> he thought about it. i remember one of our director's dinners, van galbraith visiting from paris. much wind had been consumed. van was the most in bullion person i had ever met. he made bill look like john calvin. this was late in reagan's first term. it was not clear that reagan was going to run again. there was real doubt. there was a very bad recession and she didn't want her husband to risk the feet, that fuel lot of uncertainty and speculation. so vance said you should run. he was kind of serious about this, kind of serious. bill

that is not something i thought of. that is something the director of central intelligence was telling us. we know for a fact that saddam hussein was a sponsor, a state sponsor, of terror. it was not my judgment. that was the judgment of our state department. we know that, for example, he was making $25,000 payments to families of suicide bombers who would blow themselves up and kill as many as really is as they could. we know that there -- to kill as many israelis as they could. the notion that, say, there was not a collaborative relationship, i do not believe, and i have never seen any evidence, to confirm that he was involved in 9/11. we had that reporting for a while, and eventually it turned out to not be true. saddam hussein being a terror sponsor and someone who provided sanctuary and safe harbor and resources to terrorists i think is without question a fact, and it was of sufficient concern that, of course, you saw in the till end of the clinton administration -- tli

i have two thoughts on this. either creating an ombudsman in a sense that gives people an opportunity to understand all of this, dedicated loan modification or programs we ought to ask the special inspector general to oversee compliance with foreclosure prevention programs. i wonder if you might share some thoughts. this goes to the heart of this in so many ways. if this fails and we're not making the kind of effort -- not only making the effort, but iffest is not succeeded in this area and we end up with a new wave of foreclosure coming in, as we could, swamping the kind of efforts being made. this thing is beginning to gain traction. things are beginning to improve. confidence and optimism clearly seem to be getting better, and what none of us want to see is this all of a sudden stalling out and falling back. if it does, to regain that momentum again i think will be a lot harder than it was in the initial effort. so, this is a critical moment, it seems to me, not to lose that momentum, however slight it may be,

he believed the universe created itself, he wasn't materialist or atheist but he thought it was equallythe virgin birth, give me a break already. so delight any possible rational jesus the moral teacher. religion is a process in the united states and above all the milledge of course has been instrumental in the african-american community with self-determination both from the noble period of antebellum slave charities of way through to the civil rights movement. you can't possibly think of the civil rights movement having been affected with a preaching the teaching of riverside churches around the corner from where i teach at columbia right through the involvement with the church both for jeremiah rights but the church more generally. so it wasn't a surprise to me it may have been on palatable to some of my friends to find obama actually wanting to continue george bush's policy of the faith based initiatives keeping with the sense that is not necessarily reactionary move. so to put this restored the desperation part was trillion to write a book not, you know, that would explore stories w

as i thought about this woman who was about to become our first woman president of united states, i realized she had been a first lady and i had worked on a first lady 30 years of my career and i had worked on the political relationship of a very famous first family, the adams and it seemed appropriate to write a book about them. there had been no prior double biography of abigail and john wonderful biographies of john adams and some nice ones of abigail but none of the marriage so i decided to write about the two of them in tandem. my interest in abigail goes back 30 years to the beginning of the women's movement. i am trade is a colonial history and i did period since the entire 17th and 18th century. then the women's movement came along and i was teaching in southern california and i did not know how to do women's history. there were very few bucks if you went to a bookstore 30 years ago and looked on a shelf of woman's books there were very few. the only way i can think to do women's history was to write a biography of able men. i looked through who were the possible well-known women in

that he looked for the holes that he thought that the public wanted -- he wanted to be what he thought the voters wanted him to be. that he didn't -- that he was forming himself as a candidate, not as someone who actually had a core set of principles. >> i think that's a good analysis. i think that's a very good analysis. another surprising vote that he took, he was the only democrat, illinois democrat, in the congressional delegation to vote for funding the iraq war and that was a surprising vote as well. >> so you have this man -- if i can rewind a little bit to patti mel or patti blagojevich. what do we know about her and any influence she might have on him or just -- who is she and what's she all about? >> the whole story of patti mel, dick mel and rod blagojevich is really -- has shakespearean tragic overtones. it does. i mean, patti -- dick mel was very strong family man. he had three children and a lovely wife, very strong family. and when patti met rod initially dick mel was very pleased and thought this was going to be a terrific match. he was -- he was all for it. his wife on

>> let me finish the thought. i supported this proposal in the past. 108th congress we had this matter up. i think the case has been made on re-importation. >> sorry? >> is this on? >> just pull the mike closer. >> i supported this in the past. 108th congress we had a vote on this and i supported it. i would again today. i think this is an important provision moving in that direction. obviously, members here -- i also, i disagree with john at this point. i don't think the cochran or language necessarily kills the bill at all. it does raise the iue many of us have concern about the effectiveness, but nonetheless, i want to be on record as being supportive of this effort. i know there's been an effort in the past to talk about this and different vehicles and so forth, but this is certainly a major cost factor in dealing with health care. i'll leave my colleagues to express their views on the matter. that's where this senator stands on the issue. senator brown. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i support mccain amendment a

i thought they were wrong. i also thought there was something phony about the exercise simultaneously copycat. but they were tagging along with a national movement mimicking elders. i decided to put counter poachers -- posters anti-protests protest on the school wall i enlarged -- imagine myself a latter-day martin luther hanging up orthodoxy for all to see. i generated by posters by typing them out over and over on the black typewriter using carbon paper to produce four copies at a time. i had only 12 species, not withers 95 procter one night's work i gave my posters to the world on the 15th. all of my efforts on the more organized protest by helped to deflate that went in my weekends letter to my brother it made for a longer storey than usual and the next letter home he said he had enjoyed it but my father said why don't you send it to "national review"? no one in my family knew anything about journalism. we knew william f. buckley, jr. from television and we had been subscribing to his magazines for happier