was concerned, it was all fine. he said essentially that a president can do anything he wants. on national security, no law can constrain a president. that was the one dissent filed to the congressional investigation. that was the minority report, the wyoming congressman. fast forward two decades to a december after in 2005. you were on board air force ii with the vice president of the united states, en route to the middle east, the new york times has just broken the news that the government has been secretly wire tapping americans without a warrant and while he is being questioned about that on board air force ii, vice president dick cheney interjects this advice to the reporters questioning him. he says essentially, hey, listen, if you want to know why i think what we re doing is kosher, why i think it isn t illegal for us to do this, even though it sure looks illegal, if you want to know my feelings on what a president can and cannot do, go on and look at the minority report i aut
act white. other than that they talk a lot of bad things about black people. that s witness number 9 who later turned out to be a cousin of george zimmerman. what is this something that s going to be admissible in court and do you think that this is something that s going to be relevant or important to your particular case? well, soledad, that s the reason why i have an attorney for the martin family talking about robert zimmerman s tweets. it s not to prove or disprove somebody is racist because being a racist isn t illegal. however, his tweets bolster if testimony of potential witness number 9, which, in fact, is his cousin, soledad, his family member who within 72 hours after trayvon was murdered called the sanford police department and says she knows george zimmerman, she knows he s confrontational, she knows he doesn t like black people. she said his father, mother,
indictments, administration officials went to jail. amazingly, reagan himself avoided impeachment, but when it came time for congress to investigate this scandal, it was pretty much a slam dunk. they condemned not just what reagan had done, but the outrageousness of that defense. the idea that he could get away with breaking any law, just because he was president. it was not a close call. it was not seen as a particularly partisan verdict by congress, when congress investigated this scandal. but there was one dissent. there was a minority report, a dissent to congress findings was filed by one congressman, who said that actually, he agreed with the administration on this. he agreed that if the president does it and it is about national security, then by definition, it isn t illegal. he agreed that to a commander in chief, laws mean nothing. a president can do whatever he wants when it comes to national security. that was the little-noticed, pretty much totally overlooked minority repo
doug, what about the precedent? there are concerns if the state shells out some money this time the next time this happens, or, you know, something similar happens, the state is going to be on the hook? no, i think that s right. they may fight it on a couple of legal fronts theoretically. lis is right. they owe obviously being a duty not being negligent and owe that duty to the citizens. then there is another additional step, what they did specifically caused the damage. most people would say it did obviously but there could have been some intervening factors. you re making a very good point, jon, they will defend it as vigorously as legally possible so there isn t some wide-scoping precedent in the future. jon: lis, you say the state is culpable here but really from the description i read what started this thing, they started this controlled burn. they dealt with it for five days. they thought it was out. and then all of sudden, i mean from nowhere, wind kicks up embers and launch t
earlier, were these campaign contributions or were fred baron and bunny mellon providing private gift, you know, to cover up all these nefarious, the affair and child and not wreck his campaign? i think it s a very close case. but i want to make one other point which is when andrew young s wife testified she also said john edwards said he checked with campaign lawyers. i don t know whether that is true or not but it does raise a question, maybe lis, advice of counsel. theoretically. they also said they believed john edwards because john edwards is a lawyer, okay? neither of them are lawyers. they believed him. he said as a lawyer i m telling you this isn t illegal. lis, he said he checked with other lawyers. i think that is huge distinction. in other words if the defendant says it i agree with you 100%, he is bad and he is covering things up. he said he checked with campaign lawyers, i doubt by the way my own view that is true. he said it was his