if they were going after thurgood marshall the way that they were, i would be right there and i would say that they are not going to do this. i am not nominated for the supreme court. >> justice marshall could trade body blows with anybody. i think that his legacy can more than stand up to these -- this is like shooting the mosquitos with an elephant gun. tavis: this kind of talk about thurgood marshall, does it do anything for the launching of this stage play? >> it is nice to have his name spoken. we were in washington just before we came here, performing for three weeks at the kennedy center, and this was a real triumph. we had a standing ovation every evening, and we had the supreme court justices, sotomaor, the president -- sotomayor, the president, and any time that we talk about their good marshall, this is a good thing. -- the road to marshall -- marshall, this is a good thing. >> i saw you on broadway, and you had a great time there. what was the slight, playing him, in washington? >> i do not think that i will ever have as good of an experience as playing thurgood marshall a

they are thurgood marshall high school like school crew. -- light show crew. they were formed to demonstrate asian culture through the art of glow sticks. glow sticks are synonymous with the buyer dancing from hawaii. they did a great job with those close sticks. -- with those glow stick. i am going to serve as your mc. the first rule of thumb i get to ask of all of you is please turn off your cell phones. we would really appreciate it if you could check right now to see that yourself bones are on silent mode are completely off. -- that your cell phones are completely off or on silent mode. we have some great performances coming up. they deserve your attention. we ask you the favor to check your phones right now. i am delighted to have been asked to serve as your mc today. i am from hawaii, third generation. i am all about asia/pacific. it is so important to me. i know it is to all of you. to start us off right away, i want to say please welcome a wonderful performer. she will give up her heart and soul. she is going to sing our national anthem. would you plea

the military tried 50 of them for mutiny, and thurgood marshal represented them in court. >>> at yosemiteational park all crowneds -- campgrounds are open again. and yosemite has a mobile plaiks that features the height of the falls and 22 points of interests round the route. and visitors can easily locate restrooms, shuttle bus stops. a possession of the proceeds will go to the conquer conservancy. >> an unusual day. the mercury rose above 90 degrees in 38 states. >> alan: this weekend, scorching hot temperatures are affecting people from coast to coast, especially in the northeast and central parts of the country. this heat wave follows the month of june which was the hottest on record. >> reporter: it seems like the hottest summer ever. >> we're looking at least 48 states, at least one city in each state reaching a high of 90 or more and that's extremely unusual this time of the year. >> reporter: most americans agree. >> too hat. hot. >> reporter: doctors say the old and young must be careful by staying indoors and only exercise in the morning and evening, and watch out for sign offic

exposure to the court came almost a quarter century ago when i began my clerkship with justice thurgood marshall. justice marshall reveered the court and for a simple reason. in his life, in his great struggle for racial justice, the supreme court stood as a part of government that was most open to every american and that most often fulfilled our constitution's promise of treating all persons with equal respect, equal care and equal attention. the idea is engraved on the very face of the supreme court's building. equal justice under law. it means that everyone who comes before the court, regardless of wealth or power or station receives the same process and the same protections. what this commands of justice is even handedness and impartiality. what it promises is nothing less than a fair shake for every american. i've seen that promise up close during my tenure as solicitor general. in that job, i served as our government's chief lawyer before the supreme court arguing cases on issues ranging from campaign finance to criminal law to national security, and i do mean argue. in no other place i kn

future supreme court justice thurgood marshall represented them in court but the men were convicted of mutiny. they were given clemens say after serving two years in prison but never exonerated. >> a piece of art hanging in a lie library is creating a controversy. the work is called, more values. it shows a picture of a bible with a label reading, warning, may impair judgment. one local ground says it's antireligious and they wanted removed. >> the government can't do anything to overtly support religion. we all heard that a lot. but it also means that the government can't support things that are openly hostile to religion. >> alan: the art sold yesterday for $500, but it's scheduled to remain on display until december. >>> a judge allowed a controversial roundup to resume and 250 wild horses were removed from a nevada range. horse advocates tried to amount the -- halt the roundup after several horses died. but the bureau argued 500 horses could die because they were already starving and dieing in the brutal summer temperatures. the agency is in the process of removing 12,000 horses to

while she didn't say what she thought, she did identify former supreme court justice thurgood marshall as a role model and as she follows marshall and i think she will based on her background, she'll be in the right place ideologically and then her answers on television which i think are very important inituti institutionally as we look at the issue of separation of power, wch is of great, great concern to me and it has been of -- a concern to me in the many nomination proceedings i have participated in in pressing -- in pressing for answers, because colleagues, we have seen an enormous reduction in congressional power, and it has gone on under the radar, and candidly we haven't paid enough attention to it institutionally, and we complain about activist judges and it depends upon whose ox is being gored. i am sorry but not surised to see the partisan split on this nomination because that reflects the ideological battleground that is going on in the supreme court today. but whether you are on one side or the other of this ideological battle, the country is being hurt, the constitution i

du bois, langtson hughes, thurgood marshall, walter white, a.us garvey, and mary mcleod iii. >> by being at the courier, i had a chance to have luncheon with nat king cole. >> while working at the courier, i had my picture taken with duke ellington, billy eckstine, lena horne. >> and lionel hampton and ella fitzgerald or cab calloway, marian anderson. >> joe louis, jackie robinson, jesse owens. >> satchel paige and roy campanella and many, many others. after a while, you got so used to it that you didn't look up especially, but i just remember that part of it. it was as if the whole world, and particularly the people in the black world, all walked through the editorial rooms of the pittsburgh courier. >> narrator: celebrities shared the spotlight with the courier's own reporters. >> the courier paid better than many other black newspapers, because it was very large. it was highly successful, but the main reason they did it wasn't for the money. it was because they were stars out there. they were known. their names and pictures appeared somewhere

, closer and closer into -- into contaminating the mainstream, doing things like criticizing thurgood marshall. >> larry: ben, you are a conservative. does the tea party movement help or hurt your concept? >> i think it's going to hurt us in the election because it's going to divide the vote frankly. >> yes. >> but think it's -- but i admire their attitudes. and it is not even slightly about racism. the people who carry guns at those rallies are in parts of the country where people just habitually carry guns. my wife and i live in north idaho during the summer. when we go to restaurant, people just have guns laying around in their cars because there's a lot of hunting there. >> ben, that's just not honest. >> it's completely honest. >> that's not honest. >> there was a black -- >> larry: one at a time. hold it, one at a time. >> just a minute, nancy. >> nancy's not talking. >> i was there -- nancy, i was there, you weren't with all due respect. these are very fine wonderful people. they happen to carry guns in their cars. >> ben if it was a black rally -- >> you're not -- i didn't say it was a

justice thurgood marshall argued brown v. board of edge kucation you and senator graham discussed, correct? >> yes, he did. >> and if i lumped brown v. board of education in with a list of cases i just mentioned, most people in the room would balk, don't you think? >> well, brown v. board of education is the kind of iconic case that doesn't belong on any list. >> well, there's a reason th that -- i mean, it is an exemplar of overturning a precedent that needed to be overturned. is that correct? would you say? >> yes, sir, mr. franken, yes. >> and that's because there is a place for judicial review in our legal system. i'm trying to make the distinction between judicial activism and not judicial activism. there are certain situations where the supreme court really should subject the law to heightened scrutiny. and this is what i think justice marshall was talking about when he said that the court should show, quote, special solicitude for the despise and disadvantaged. the people who went unprotected by every other part of gov

>> it was the last in a long line of decision and one of justice thurgood marshall's -- his greatest accomplishment was to lead up to brown, step-by-step-by-step, case-by-case-by case. as an advocate, of course, you can have a strategy like that and he did. by the time the court got to brown, upholding plessy actually would have been inconsistent with a series of other holdings that it had reached over the years. and i do think that that sometimes happens in constitutional interpretation. and it also happens, i mean, we have talked a loot about the ctrine of precedent and about one reason to reverse the decision is when its doctrin support has been completely eroded and i think that is what happened in brown -- >> and i think most americans, if not universal as clo to universal we will ever get as a nation, glad it happened, in this case. now, there's another court decision called r v wade, that's being changed over time. being interpreted differently over time. the court basically held that before viability, the is right to hve an abortion was of a state-imposed limitations on abort

the left of the court, we don't have the true liberals of a thurgood marshall or justice brennan anymore. you have the left of the court holding on by its fingernails, almost, trying to say don't change the law any more. don't move campaign finance. don't pull back on the miranda warnings. the left doesn't have an energetic movement to try and advance the law. >> brown: let me bring in naomi on that one. where do you see the intellectual energy? >> i think i would agree with tom. it seems that much of the intellectual energy is on what's characterized as a conservative wing of the court. and you can see there are a number of interesting debates amongst the conservative justices. so for example in the mcdonald case which dealt with handgun and whether the second amendment should be incorporated against the state, there were four justices who wanted to decide that question on substantive due process grounds and justice thomas concurred in the opinion and suggested it should be decided on privileges and immunities ground. which is really which i think displays a lot of intellectual ener

kagan evidenced this hostility to the people's right to bear arms as a law clerk to justice thurgood marshall. i'm familiar with that case because with dan peterson i filed the only amicus brief supporting the case. i searched for my file. and here's what i found. he was an african-american man who worked at a laundromat. he had been robbed previously. when arrested, he was carrying a pistol to protect himself. miss kagan urged justice marshall to deny the petition for one reason. i'm not sympathetic. supreme court rules set forth the standards for granting -- i'm not sympathetic is not among them. if miss kagan meant that she was not sympathetic with his legal position, remember that the court had ruled that the second amendment was only a collective right, not an individual right. had miss kagan meant she was not sympathetic, she turned her back on a man who was made into a felon for exercising his right to keep and bear arms. in 1997, in prince v. united states, the supreme court struck down the brady bill requirement that state and local law enforcement officers must work for the federal

while she didn't say what she thought, she did identify former supreme court justice thurgood marshall as a role model and as she follows marshall and i think she will based on her background, she'll be in the right place ideologically and then her answers on television which i think are very important instituti institutionally as we look at the issue of separation of power, which is of great, great concern to me and it has been of -- a concern to me in the many nomination proceedings i have participated in in pressing -- in pressing for answers, because colleagues, we have seen an enormous reduction in congressional power, and it has gone on under the radar, and candidly we haven't paid enough attention to it institutionally, and we complain about activist judges and it depends upon whose ox is being gored. i am sorry but not surprised to see the partisan split on this nomination because that reflects the ideological battleground that is going on in the supreme court today. but whether you are on one side or the other of this ideological battle, the country is being hurt, the constitu

in cases in which she was the opinion, she said, it was that the supreme court's justice thurgood marshall." jerrick is joining us from maine, good morning. caller: good morning. myself, i am a moderate fiscal conservative. happening at the federal level and at the state level, there are too many executive agencies. to many executive agencies that are spending money when we can combine all those into larger departments to save money. i am a student here in washington, d.c. i am studying political science. it is one of the things that i see, there are many executive agencies that can be folded in to save money. a lot of these states have executive agencies that can be combined. host: "politicians are constantly keeping -- making promises they cannot keep just elected." the author of the so-called " rule -- volcker rule, writing in the business section of "the new york times," "he made periodic visits to washington to persuade members of congress to make the legislation more far reaching, emphasizing that he never engaged in lawmaking. for everything that he described as the strengths, it do

guest: yes, she was a clerk for thurgood marshall. host: will you explain?uest: this is a very inside, baseball queetion. the court gets about 150 bills per week. you can petition. there are about 8000 per year. the justices, rather than having each, all their clerks in each of nine chambers go through these appeals, they divide them as sort of a pool among the different chambers. so that there is one clerk in the building who does, who reads the appeal, the lower court opinion, writes a memo about the issue nd says why we should or should not take that. it has always been the case that one or two justices for example, john stevens, did not participate. with that, elena kagan did not say she will take time to think about that, whether to joon the pool. if you do not join, you are a newcomer to the court and have only three or four clerks and also have to sit through 8000 appeals. the court will ooly decide about one of the cases of those. it is a lot of work. my guess is somewhere along the line she will say she has decided to join the pool. but i think she

thurgood marshall was a man who stood up for all minorities, and also, clarence thomas was a man who had the deciding votes to get george w. bush in office and you see what happened with eight years of george bush. i see -- i think that we have to understand that the supreme court is a very conservative supreme court, and if we continue to go this way and not think about the fact that diversity made this country great, then the country is going to hell in a handbasket. host: more of the history. four of the six most conservative justices, of the 44 will have set on the court since 1937, are serving now. chief justice roberts -- justice anthony kennedy, the swing justice is in the top 10. the roberts scored is finding laws unconstitutional and reversing precedent, two measures of activism, no more often than earlier courts. another point he makes it is that until she retired, justice o'connor was very often the court's swing vote, and in later years, she drifted to center- left. justice kennedy has assumed that role. oklahoma is next on our independent line. caller: what i was wonderi