On the presidency, will here of five years in which Thomas Jefferson served in paris as the minister of the united dates. Author James Thompson describes it as a transformative experience with his friendships with french revolutionaries and progressives turns him from a political loner to an activist. Mr. Thompson is the author. He spoke at the Virginia Historical society. This is about an hour. The summer of 1784, Thomas Jefferson traveled to paris as minister of the united dates to friends and lived there for 5 states to france for five years. He made a series of excursions , an influential member of French Society. He appointed johnson not only to the city and its people but when the enlightened ideas of french thought. Today speaker will talk to us about this transform is period and Thomas Jeffersons life. James thompson studies philosophy as an undergraduate and graduate student at the university of virginia and as an grad student, he lived on a farm of Thomas Jeffersons eldest ma
The outstanding faculty award for the washington law reviews so he must be doing something right in the classroom and he also writes a weekly First Amendment news column for the concurring opinions blogger. Please welcome Ronald Collins [applause] jamie raskin, that is not a typo, that is how you spell his name. Egos by ginnie. I want to make sure theres no confusion about that. Graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and harvard law school. They couldnt get into the university of virginia law school. He was also editor of the harvard law review. Jamie is professor of constitutional law at Washington College of law and state senator in maryland where he is majority whip of the center. He lead successful efforts to pass the Marriage Equality repeal. Just Marriage Equality. Lets be careful about that. Let me try is that again. Led the successful effort to pass the marriage ecology built repeal the desk at wiki comment aunt and ban assault weapons in the state of maryland. [applaus
Incredibly highly organized, strategic efforts actually can make a difference. There are so many different examples i could use of recent organizing that i could mention which are important. People post on tracking, started organizing about seven years ago. Checking in new york state. They were not supported by the National Democratic party not supported by a lot of the big green organizations which were silent on hydrocracking against so many foundations and groups the funding for the foundations was complicated, people did not know enough. Instead use our groups around the state forming highly local groups forming and then connecting to each other. It is true grassroots. This is really, really crude, but there is organizing work tasks and distributed and organizing were power is distributed. A lot of are organizing i love move on top of a lot of the organizing tasks are distributed. That is all well and good, but power is still concentrated. When you when you have distributed power p
We kind of expected that. Gillian ive made it a practice not it. This comes a day before roger stone was set to report to prison. Now several democrats and at least one Senate Republican says the move was politically motivated. Mark joins us from the white house. Gillian, ive come to expect a busy saturday. President trump says that he believes that roger stone was unfairly targeted by prosecutors and commuting the sentence days before roger stone was is et set to go to prison. He hes convicted on witness tampering and lying to congress. And the white house released a statement roger stone was treated unfairly as were many others in this case. Roger stone is now a free man. This decision drawing immediate bipartisan outrage on capitol hill. That the president cannot issue a pardon if the crime that is the person is in jail for is one caused by protecting the president , which this was, its appalling, appalling. Utah republican senator mitt romney weighing in saying unprecedented histor
Is urging President Trump to show restraint this morning. As nuclear tepgsz are escalating with north korea now. President trump initially called president xi last night to pressure him on a trade issue. He wanted to warn she that u. S. Investigation into chinas practices could start as soon as monday, but she in return pressed President Trump to tone down threats like this one. If anything happens to guam, theres going to be big, big trouble in north korea. And japan now ready to respond with massive missile interceptors that are in place this morning should north korea make good on their threat to strike guam. But aside from the north korea challenge, President Trump is signalling possible military intervention in venezuela. Officials there calling the president s warning, quote, cow wardel, insolate and vial. We have many option for venezuela. And by the way, im not going to rule out a military option. We have many options for venezuela. We have correspondents covering all angles fr