Documents influence on american law. The men spoke at the library of congress where a 13th century copy of the magna carta is on display. King john originally signed the document under pressure from his barons in england. American revolutionaries looked to the rights guaranteed by the magna carta as they rebelled against the british crown. This is 40 minutes. [applause] justice breyer, thank you very much for taking the time thank you. To do this. Were going to talk about the magna carta, but before we do so, id like to talk about a few other things because we rarely get a chance to interview a justice of the Supreme Court. Since i rarely get this opportunity, let me take advantage of it now and say that when you grew up, you grew up in california and went to stanford and harvard law school, but did you always intend to be a law professor and then want to be a judge . How did that come about to be a judge . I wanted to go into law. My father was a lawyer. You may not remember that you
And that was hed asked you about mindless austerity, mindless sequestration cuts, ndless which was both in your written testimony and your spoken testimony. Do you really mindean mindless or was that a misspeak . What i mean by that is we sspea should look to make smart cuts hould in programs that arent working. It doesnt say smart. It says mindless. The implication of mindless is that it t applies a kind of across the board one size fits all approach to cutting spending as opposed to what i think were trying to do in our budget, which is to be much mortar getted. Fair enough. But i guess the point the chairman was getting at is given that bob woodward wrote about it and he says it was the brain child of jack lew in the white house. Was the president not smart in offering that proposal . I think the history was it was something that was thought to be so bad that it would neverd neve go into effect. So i dont think anybody at the time thought it was a smart strategy for reducing our bud
Republicans economic agenda, included massive unpaid tax cuts for the rich. Two unpaid wars and a doctrine of no regulation no supervision of wall street. It is this radical agenda that precipitated the financial meltdown and shattered our economy. How bad was it . On the night of thursday, september 18th 2008, the secretary of the treasury came to the capital for an emergency meeting with congressional leaders to inform us of the severity of the meltdown. When i asked the chairman of the fed, at the time ben bernanke what he thought of what the treasury secretary was telling us . He told the leaders, if we do not act immediately, we will not have an economy by monday. This was thursday evening. Thats where we were, september 18th 2008. In order to stop the meltdown of americas financial institutions, it was necessary for us to pass the troubled assets release program tarp supported largely by democrats and later we enacted historic consumer wall street reforms with dodd frank regulati
The speaker pro tempore pursuant to the order of the house of january 7, 2014, the chair will now recognize members from lists submitted by the majority and minority leaders for morning hour ebate. The chair will alternate recognition between the parties with each party limited to one hour and each member other than the majority and minority leaders and the minority whip but in to five minutes, no event shall debate continue beyond 1 50 p. M. The chair recognizes the gentleman from American Samoa, mr. Faleomavaega, for five minutes. Mr. Faleomavaega mr. Speaker, i ask unanimous consent to extend and revise my remarks. The speaker pro tempore without objection, so ordered. Mr. Faleomavaega mr. Speaker, i rise today to thank our fellow americans and the people of American Samoa for the opportunity they gave me to serve them. Having grown up in a small village in American Samoa and graduating high school in hawaii, i never expected the people of American Samoa would choose me to serve the
First got elected was the issue of the National Guard came up and i was on armed services. A lot of those guard folks were being deployed multiple times. And it was very, very difficult for their families. And a number of us recognized that what we needed to do is build facilities, upgrade facilities, get rid of those old facilities and replace them with Readiness Centers to train and equip our troops in the event that we had to send them overseas on a mission, which we id many, many times. But we needed to construct those facilities also for their families, for their spouses and for their children. On the Appropriations Committee what tom latham did was make sure we had the funding, to make sure we built those facilities as well. So we were able to work on that issue together. And then when the great flood of 2008 hit across iowa, but mainly across the eastern half of iowa, it included a lot of tom lathams district and a lot of it included my district, about half of the damage was in