We are now lucky enough to be joined by scott nelson and Robert Mcnamara. Nelson filed the brief in support of the president of the United States who is a petitioner in the second case we which is bar versus American Association of political consultants. He filed his brief on behalf of Public Citizen in the public foundation. Scott nelson is an attorney at the Public Citizen Litigation Group in washington. Hes been there since 2001. He is a former lawyer for Justice Byron white on the u. S. Supreme court and we are honored to have them today. Is senioramara attorney with the institute for justice and he has filed a brief in support of the state of pennsylvania who is the respondent on behalf of the institute for justice. Since 2006 with them and litigates constitutional cases to protect free speech, Property Rights and economic liberty and we are honored to have him as well. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Thanks. With the basic argument in this case about robo
So now, to go back and listen to what has happened to weapons from truman to trump is really remarkable. All from the midwest and college thinking he would be a literature major but watergate changed him to Political Science and then he went on to graduate school at mit and it was International Relations and nuclear strategy. Then he moved to washington with the house of representatives house policy advisor but you know government work, he decided that wasnt for him so then he left and wrote the widely acclaimed book of armageddon. And t then spent time at the boston globe because they were looking for experts inn defense he stayed there 20 years as bureau chief in moscow, bureau chief in new york city. And by the end of 2002 started writing stories and has written for previous books before tonight what i am really excited to have is our guest fred kaplan and his book the bomb. [applause] thanks for coming out. Just said my first book was 1983 about the small group of defense intellect
Nick some. Good afternoon everybody. Can everybody hear me. Im very short. Good afternoon. Welcome to politics and prose, i am travis cohen a bookseller here and also in charge of the on cyprus Traditions Club at the store. This to quick housekeeping and they will jump right in. Between politics and prose there is three location at the wharf, union market, we host around 1000 authors a year. So if you need help tracking that as we do if you want the full last we have flyers at the info desk in an updated calendar on our website which we highly encourage people to check out. Please remind everyone to silence your cell phones, thats always not fun, as we open the floor to questions and we have two standing microphones here just that one. And we are both recording audio and video today. So thats good incentives to one silence your cell phone and also asked sissy into question so we can get to as many people as possible. And also a good reminder after were done here if you want to pick up
The Recordings Program. It is quite wonderful actually to be here with everybody. It is something of a reunion in fact since kent was with us for years and years and spending his time at university of South Carolina. For the next 75 minutes, well share with you insights from the secret white house tapes. And well look to explore the dynamics therein and to relate them to see what kind of questions they prompt us to ask about contemporary dynamics about the history they contain, about parallels to todays events, about the practice of democracy itself. Just a word about the Recordings Program, we were established in 1998. And our goal, we are the only institution of its kind doing it, is to analyze and transcribe the secret president ial tapes that president s made from 1940 through 1973. That is from Franklin Roosevelt through Richard Nixon. We do this work at the Miller Center. We actually do it off site as well because so much of the work these days is browserbased. But we publish our
Vietnam is widely considered Lyndon Johnsons tragedy, failure, betrayal, depending on your position on the political spectrum. There are two books in print, both entitled Lyndon Johnsons war and both advancing compelling, if sometimes contradictory analysis of the reasons why the series of decisions made between 1964 and 1968 that led to the official justification for escalating the vietnam war, of incidents of august 1964, the first landing of u. S. Combat troops to defend the base in march of 1965, the stepped up escalation of American Forces in country over the next few years until the total was greater than half a million men, change from a military strategy of base security to enclave strategy to what was finally and unfortunately if accurately titled, search and destroy. The shock and humiliation of the 1968 tet offensive and johnsons decision to turn down a request by general william moreland, commander in vietnam, for 200,000 more troops and johnsons decision to withdraw from t