positions when it comes to speech. one is as a citizen of the united states. but the other is also in her position as clerk, where she essentially speakers for the government. so her argument is that she, as a person, cannot execute her duties because of her personal beliefs. but her opponents say, it s a pretty strong argument, once you are an elected official, you are, in many ways, an arm of the government and you are there to perform official government duties and i ve reviewed the kentucky statutes and it appears that the coat clerk is responsible for issuing marriage licenses. there wasn t doesn t appear to be anything in there that that disagrees with their personal views and there are many, many government jobs that if we had people refusing to do them because of whatever their personal beliefs were, then the offense result could be chaos. imagine if all kinds of
nearly 3 and a half million hours of official time on labor union activities and not their government duties. the workers were paid more than $155 million of taxpayer dollars of course coming from you. that s for their work with the labor union. they introduce legislation that would track how the government officials use the official time. michael bloomberg sewedoda ban falling fat. it bans sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces is unconstitutional. the judges said bloomberg plan to over step authority of his office. supreme court judge struck down the soda ban this spring. bloomberg says it s a temporary set back. a bitter taste for reality for a new jersey housewife. teresa and her husband were released on 500,000 dollars bond each after they appeared in court on federal fraud charges.
get through their government duties that they can then trade on or perhaps more importantly, let a buddy know or let someone else know who can then trade on it. you pointed out, just only recently are we seeing even some members who were accused of behavior that could be similar to insider trading or insider trading get on board to bring in some legislation to control what i think many americans, many voters would see as something that certainly borders on what we would call wrong or even unethical. reporter: that s the issue. there has been a bill to outright ban insider trading. it has a total of about ten co-sponsors, in fact, less than that. now there are 120 co-sponsors so it is gaining real momentum. a hearing tomorrow, a hearing next week. and we ll see where it goes next year. thank you very much. we greatly appreciate you talking here. police take down two of the country s largest occupy camps.
heard of in years. it s essential to see the demonstrations against the sunni minority but demonstrations across the region calling for freedom, calling for civil rights and calling for dignity. it s important following president obama s speech to recognize that this irony every where. i would like to see president obama address demonstrations in bahrain. i would like to see support for the people. brett, you ve been in the white house, on the ground in the middle east as part of your government duties. can the president and the administration have to deal with sort of a revolution a week? what s the right way to think about this? any president has to address different audiences. they are starting to catch up now. i think this goes beyond the middle east. there s this global awakening of the possibilities for a better life. the rise of china, india, social media networking.
is a boom town. in the united states government we are paying government union workers to work from their couches at home on government duties. that s the problem. david: be bill, on the other hand he wh you look at $20 trillion debt it s like chipping away with an iceberg with a little tool. that s a lot of money we have to pay off. i think this is a frivolous gesture that distracts us from what john is talking about. how about eliminate the department of education and return that power and that money to the states. that s a good place to start and i ve got more departments to start with. david: and the good place to start, appointing john tamney to cut these details. steve, the next step. that s a good first step. what does he do after that step to show that he s serious about shrinking government? two things, the budgets of the departments aren t getting the bloat up.