and what's notable about social welfare groupsthe real reason, n the left was so concerned about citizens united is that they thought it meant more conservatives would form well for organizations. groups like planned parenthood and the sierra club, for example are groups like this. what is notable is that they do not have to disclose their donors, they do not have to disclose their donors. that was the main concern of the president and his allies, they were not interested in the integrity of the process. if they were, they would've been just as upset at left-wing groups for remaining private for their donors. they really wanted was a hoax to stir outrage about conservative groups so that they could get their hands on the names of the folks who supported them. as a longtime political observer and first women hop, i knew exactly what the democrats were up to with their complaints about this decision. i have seen what the proponents of disclosure have intended and that past and it is not good government. that is why the donor list has been protected of the socialist worker party since 1979. that is also why the supreme court told the state of alabama that it cannot force of the naacp to disclose its donor list back in 1958. the president could claim as he did six months after wagging his finger at the supreme court that the only people who do not want to disclose the truth of people with something to hide. he can claim that, but the fact is there is very good and legitimate reason that the court has detected folks from force disclosure. they know that failing to do so subject them to the kind of harassment that we have been seeing here the last three years. the political response to citizens united with the so- called disclose act was not about cleaning up politics, it was about finding a blunt political weapon to be used against anyone group and one group only. conservatives. those who doubt this have not and paying attention to the tactics of the left. they must not have noticed the stories about top administration officials holding weekly phone calls with groups like media matters. they clearly do not know their history, and they must not have noticed the enemies list of conservative donors on the obama campaign website. or the strategic name dropping of conservative targets by the president's campaign team. these folks were talking about the coke brother so much, you would think they were running for president. but six months after the president rated the supreme court, he called out americans for prosperity by name. it was like sending a memo to the irs that said audit these guys. all of these things together point to a coordinated effort to stifle speech, and that is why one of the most enduring lessons in the irs scandal comes from the timeline. we now know a team of irs specialist was tasked with isolate and conservatives for scrutiny as early as march of 2010. what happened before this party began is just as important as what happened after the targeting began. what matters is the atmosphere, what matters is the culture of intimidation, the culture of intimidation this resident and his allies created around any person or group that spoke up for conservatism or against the direction the president wanted to take us. the so-called special interest, he said special interest would flood the political process with money that would be coming from foreign entities. the problem he said his nobody knows who is behind these groups. they were shadowy, they might even be foreign controlled. these were the kind of unsubstantiated claims the president and his allied claim from early 2010 right up and threw the election. they were just as reckless and preposterous as harry sang mitt romney has not paid taxes in 10 years. they might have been wrapped and appealing rhetoric of disclosure, but make no mistake, the goal was to win at any cost. that meant shutting off their opponents in any way they could. i don't believe they picked up the phone and told someone at the irs to slow up these applications or audit anybody, but the truth is he did not have to. he did not have to do that. the message was clear enough. but if the message was clear the medium was also suited to the cause. and the public-sector unions have made a pact between those who tend to benefit from the growth of government. let us face it, when elected leaders and union bosses tell us that they should view half the american people as being a threat to democracy, it should not surprise any of us that they would look at it that way. why would we even expect a public and fully whose union more or less exist to grow the government to treat someone who opposes that goal to a fair hearing. when the tea party was public vilified, is it any wonder that members of the union would get caught targeting them? this is something liberals used to worry about. fdr himself was horrified at the idea of look workers conspiring with lawmakers on how to divide up the tax payer pie. the him it was completely incompatible with public service to the public to be cut out of a negotiation in which the two sides were bartering over their money. even the first president of the afl-cio was impossible to bargain collective league with the government. if that is is actually had today. over the past several decades, the same public employees have conspired with congress to expand those powers even more. and you endlessly increase the budgets that finance them. this is not done in the interest of serving taxpayers, it is done in the interest of policing them. because that is what happens when politicians start competing with the support of public sector unions, they stop serving the interests of people who elected them and start serving the interest of the government that they are supposed to be keeping in check. there is no better illustration than the news this week that the congressional hearings unionized employees at the irs about it $70 million in bonuses. $70 million in bonuses. the irs union is thumbing its nose at the american people, it is telling them in the clearest possible terms that it does not care about the scandal or how well the government works or how well it is even serving the public. all it cares about is helping union workers get theirs. it is pure arrogance, and it reflects a sense of entitlement better suited to an aristocracy then a nation of constitutional self-government. it is increasingly appropriate to ask whose interest these public sector unions have in mind? the taxpayers? or their own? on this question, i will say that public sector unions are 50 or mistake. years ago i saw the dangerous potential for collusion between lawmakers and public security and when i served as executive of my own county. i fought hard against the formation of public-sector unions and at the time there was a bipartisan agreement on this issue. most people realized it was not in the public interest. unfortunately, the appeal of union support proved too great for some and shortly after i was elected to the senate, they vacated my office and the dam of resistance broke. the existence of public employee unions is without question a big part of the reason people of so little trust in government these days. they are the reason so many state and local minas appellees are flat broke. they are behind public pensions. today i'm calling for a serious national debate about them. on the federal level, the first thing we should do is stop the automatic transfer of union dues from employee salaries at the taxpayers expense. [applause] if the unions want their dues, it should be incumbent on them and not us to pay for it. the assault on free speech continues, and it is fairly an uphill battle. but if we are alert to the tactics of the left, and take these assaults one by one, i am confident that we can beat them back. let me give you a few final examples of what i'm talking about. right now there is an effort over at the federal communications commission to get groups that buy campaign ads to disclose their supporters. this is utterly, utterly irrelevant to the mission of the fcc. and we need to say so. the sec is being pushed to display their public supporters. this proposal does not protect shareholders and it does not protect governors. for the left, this is not about good government or corporate governance, is about winning at all costs. even if that means shredding the first amendment and that is why we need to be vigilant about every one of these assaults. they might seem small and isolated in the particular, but together they reflect a culture of intimidation that extends throughout the government. a culture abetted by a bureaucracy that stands to benefit from it. the moment a gang of u.s. senators started writing letters last year demanding the irs enforce more disclosure upon conservative groups, we should have all cried foul. the moment white house proposed a draft order replying applicants for government contracts to disclose their political affiliations, we all should call them out. when the hhs secretary told insurance companies, back during the obamacare debate, told insurance companies that they could not tell their customers how obamacare would impact them, we all should have pulled the alarm. as soon as we learned that left- wing groups were manufacturing public outcry for corporate disclosure at the sec, we should have exposed that for what it was. there might be some folks other waiting for hand signed memo from president obama to lois learned to turn up. do not hold your breath. what i'm saying that a court made a campaign to use the levers levers of government to target conservatives and stifle speech has been in full swing and in open view for all of us to see for years. it has been carried out by the same people who say there is nothing more to the disclose act then transparency and no more two other disclosure regulations than good government. but the irs scandal puts the lie to all of the posturing. because now we know what happens when government gets its hands on this kind of information. when it is able to isolate its opponents and whether you are a pro-israel group, or a tea party group in louisville, they can make your life miserable. they can force you off the political playing field which is precisely what we cannot allow. there are a lot of important questions that remain to be answered about the irs scandal, but let's not lose sight of the larger scandal that has been right in front of us for five years. a sitting president who simply refuses to accept the fact that the public will not applaud everything that he does. this president expects the public to applaud everything that he does. my plea to you today is that you call out his attacks on the first amendment whenever you see them, regardless of the target. because the right to free speech does not exist to protect what is popular, it exists to protect what is unpopular. the moment we forget that, we are all at risk from right to left. if liberals cannot compete on a level playing field, they should make up better arguments. what is wrong with the competition of ideas? if your argument is so weak that you have to try to intimidate and shut up your opponents in order to win the game? look, the only way to beat a bully is to fight back and that is all of us need to do. be wise to the way of the left and never give an inch when it comes to free speech. thank you very much. [applause] >> we have time for some, comments. yes, ma'am. >> hi, my name is barbara from new york. is there any suspicion that intimidation goes beyond the irs and the things you mentioned? it is frightening considering that our government has things like stunt guns and star wars. >> i will not speculate where else they exist, where they already exist is pretty stunning. we have seen that at hhs. they sent out a directive to health recoveries that they cannot tell their policy holders with the impact of obamacare would do to them. this is the same secretary that is shaking them down for money in order to run television advertising supporting obamacare. then of course over the fcc obama proposed an initiative that require you a condition to pursue what ever cause you may have to disclosure donors you are making advertisement. and then we have seen what is happening at the irs. the president himself has been demonizing these people and so the point i'm making here today is that it is not surprising that the bureaucracy would pick up on that. and think they would pick up on that and say that is what we are supposed to do. the ceo has laid out the game plan, so i don't know what my else be going on, but the things we do know are going on our right in front of us and they are beyond disturbing. leave me, if this were a republican administration and these were liberal groups that were being subjected to this kind of treatment, this would be big news on the front page of "the new york times," on a daily basis. >> i am elizabeth, regular citizen. tank you for coming and educating us. day after day, we hear a litany of corruption and abuses which should not surprise us because we know that president obama has in his mind and is determined to fundamentally change and transform america. despite what karl rove advised, is there not any of these abuses which legally rises to an impeachable offense? i'm sorry to put you on the spot, but you will not answer my e-mails. >> i think we need a thorough and complete investigation and let the facts take us where we will go. i am confident the house of representatives will have a thorough investigation, at least two committees i am aware of. they are pursuing this and a methodical way and i don't want to jump to any conclusions, i just love the fax to take us where they take us. i am prepared to say that the president and his political allies encouraged this kind of bureaucratic overreach by their public comments, but that is what different from saying they ordered it. i think we need to find out who is responsible and the investigation will go on for quite some time. >> hello, a couple of your colleagues have proposed a constitutional amendment that would specify that no rights in the constitution would apply to corporations. i'm just wondering if you could react to that and maybe discuss some of the junta point is of that would be.-- consequences of that would be. >> give them some points for not hiding it. the constitution has been amended very rarely in our well over 200 year history. for good reason, it has served us well. they were not uncomfortable with corporate free speech when corporations that owned newspapers or television stations were engaging in it, they only become uncomfortable ones of report said why should there be a carveout for corporations that own the media out and for no one else? it is an absurd proposal. >> what you think about the efforts of michael bloomberg to encourage democratic donors a particular amount of votes in the senate. >> he can express himself, and i support the right for him to say whatever he wants to. i obviously, from a partisan point of view, i hope they listen to him. [laughter] >> i am part of the mccain institute and i'm currently a student at the university of texas and i am wondering about this issue, it seems like they are starting to notice obama's immortality is disappearing and that he is flawed. what will it take for them to go maybe it is time to see the light and understand that he is not all he's cracked up to be? >> i think it is keeping your eyes open and watching what is happening. simple observations. it is not surprising -- the biggest difference between the two parties today in america, they are the party of government and we are the party of the private sector. that is not that we should think there is no government at all, but they really trust the government. that is why they are in such a tight alliance with a look employee unions who are the principal benefactor of larger government and to have little or no interest in bigger and bigger debt. to the extent that they have become skeptical, that maybe this degree of government is not such a good idea, that is an encouraging sign. one of the great things about being young is that if your health holds up, you get older. it is amazing how your views change as you advance in age and i hope they will simply observe what is going on. this is what you get when you elect a government that believes government is the answer. and for two years they owned the place. they had a great election in 2008. they can do whatever they wanted to, and they did. $1 trillion stimulus, take over american healthcare, the student loan program, first four years of $20 deficits, they could do whatever they wanted to. the encouraging thing is that in 2010, they look to that initiative national restraining order. my guess is they were younger voters who began to have second thoughts. the president was reelected, but he did not have the kind of election he did in 2008. he did not flip the house am a change the senate much, it was status quo at the federal level. at the state level 30 out of 50 governors are now republicans. it was not a wiped out election. now we have divided government and divided government can do one of two things, they can do great things as reagan and tip o'neill did when they raised the age of social security and they did the last conference of tax reform, or even bill clinton when he joined a republican congress and did welfare reform. what has been missing during this time of divided government from 2010 until now is a president willing to tackle the single biggest issues in country. it can only be done on a bipartisan basis, and the transcendent issue of our time is the size of our debt. what i have been waiting for with this president, i have plenty of differences with the president, he will be here for 3.5 years and what will he do? if you want to pivot and help us solve the biggest issues confronting your generation in the future, we need to try and do that, but i've not seen any evidence of it. i've not seen any evidence that he is willing to leave this ideological place or he is put himself in for virtually all of his presidency and move in a different direction. i have wondered the field from your comment, but i think younger voters are getting more skeptical because they are watching what is happening. >> npr had a story this week where they quoted if you left- wing organizations that said they have undergone undue scrutiny as well, that they have been asked unwanted questions. don't we want the irs to make sure that those groups are not being given tax exempt status? >> i think it will be easy to get tax-exempt status whether you are on the left or right. i'll think the government should deny a status that should be rather easy to achieve. i am not a fan of harassing either right or left. >> i just want to follow up on that. this claim is being made that these groups are abusing their tax status, i'm not seeing any proof of those claims. if they were not 501(c) organizations, presumably to be 527 organizations and from the standpoint of revenue collection does this make any difference for the federal government and the irs? >> none whatsoever. good point. >> senator, you mentioned about the fact that 501(c) organizations do not have to disclose their donors, and that is true that they do not have to disclose them publicly. i represent the national organization for marriage. donors were released by the irs illegally. would you support a legislation that they would no longer have to disclose their donors to the irs? >> i have not thought about it, i assume you've given that case examples to the house republicans. >> yes, we asked foran investigation a year ago, but the irs will not give us a report because they are hiding behind taxpayer confidentiality and they are saying it is confidential. they are turning it on its head and saying they will not tell us the identity of the individuals irresponsible for that disclosure. of asbias is in favor much political speech as possible with a minimal amount of government interference -- interference and harassment for the left and the right and anyone else. the last thing america suffers from is too little political discourse. be mine general philosophical approach to all of these issues. fore is a rational basis groups like this not having to disclose. that is what the supreme court and the naacp versus alabama was all about. it is one thing to require disclosure when you give to a candidate or a party. i cannot oppose that. youink my voters and all of are entitled to know who supports my campaign in my party. these are not contributions to candidates or parties. these are contributions to groups that have entasis they want to promote. sometimes that hill-that have interests they want to promote. interests they want to promote. they may have opinions they think might be better represented by one side's point of view versus the other. this is not a subject we should be alarmed about. something that needs to be dealt with. it is something that needs to be incorrect. i have enjoyed dualing you over the years. you have been consistently wrong on everything. i have wondered, who eats lunch with you at this organization? >> i have more friends than you think. >> some of the worst things that have been said about me over the years have been said by norm orstein. what is on your mind? >> when things we agree on. some of the worst things that have said about me have been sent by you. >> i was just quoting him directly. . directly. the press youmeet ask why is a little disclosure better than a lot of disclosure. in the citizens united, we had 8 justices, including roberts, give an equalto defense of disclosure, including to shareholders, to know what they are companies are doing. >> of course that is not accurate. they did not say it as a matter of constitutional interpretation. if we passed a statute, they probably would not strike it down. that was left to us. with regard to disclosure, you have to go back to the 1980's to find the time i suggested -- i -- and i was wrong about it you have to go back to the 1980's to find the time i suggested the disclosure of 501- 4's was a good idea. i have been consistent for 25 years. it was left up to congress to decide and the democrats would pass a disclose act so they can get their hands on our critics. we will make that difficult for them. 501he law is busily says (c)4's are meant to be exclusively social welfare organizations. >> the interpretation that the irs has had going back 50 years i agree with. ist me tell you what norm really for. he is really for the government telling candidates for congress how much they can spend, government mandated spending limits, and using tax limits -- tax money to pay for it. he would push the private sector all the way out of the process of getting elected. you would file. the government would tell you how much you could speak, how much you could spend. the government would give you the money to pay for your speech. a total government takeover of the whole process from the time you file until you are sworn in. what kind of congress is that likely to produce? the kind that would grow the government because the government was in charge of how they got there. norm is a good old-fashioned far left to die. i like him. he has been wrong for as long as i can remember. it is great to see you. i have been wanting to spar with you for years. [applause] who is next? >> what you think of the proposal on immigration and how you think this will sort out? >> i am not doing an immigration press conference. we are going to be on that matter for another week or so and we will see how it comes out. how about that young lady right there? > >> thank you so much for coming. the the at mexico and how have had a lot of political turmoil, they are still pushing forward on a number of substantial pieces of legislation and things they want to get accomplished. they are still able to do that even though they have had a difficult political environment. you said the president has been unwilling to negotiate and deal with being -- with the divided government he is faced with. is there anyway we can work through that and accomplish some of the things he proposed like tax reform in dealing with the irs and things like that? >> i hope so. it is really up to him. the president in our system is unique. only one person in america can sign something into law. only one person in america can deliver the members of his party to support a deal he makes. the speaker and i have tried to engage the president for 4 1/2 years to tackle the transcendent issue of our time, our unfunded liabilities, our current debt, which is stunning. as part of his responsibility, what i hope is sometime in the next three and a half years, he will decide to engage in a serious discussion on how to get an outcome on the biggest problem facing the country. we have not seen it yet. i am -- i have not given up hope. we have to deal with the government we have not the government we hope for. i hope for a different government, but we have to deal with the one we have. >> the you have any thoughts about the authorizing independent counsel statute so we can get some these investigations out from under the thumb of the department of justice? >> i have joined chris dodd and happily let that expire in the late 1990s. i would not be in favor of bringing it back. it was one of the post-watergate reforms. most of those have not worked out well. going back to that would be a step in the right direction. >> hello. i am an intern at freedom works. i am curious about what your thoughts are on the nsa over reach. what are your thoughts on that process and how you think it should be addressed? do you think it should continue the way it is and should it be reformed? >> i would be happy to talk to you about that if you want to call my office. i will confine my remarks to the subject of my speech. the independent counsel is related to that because it was part of the post-watergate reform. any other questions on the topic we have been talking about this morning? how about right here? i just wonder, in relation to public employee unions and your desire to have been scaled you wouldnder if comment on scott walker's accomplishment in wisconsin and how that could be translated to other states. >> it has been a remarkable success story. i may not have this totally accurate, but i am roughly accurate. once the employees in wisconsin were given the option of not yhe dues --wo, -- plummeted.he support when they were given the choice of keep in -- keeping their money, they decided representation was not that important to them. regardless of whether you have god, i want to raise the question of the k off orate -- chec, want to raise the question of appropriateness. a every negotiation, there is missing person. they are reaching an agreement to obligate the taxpayers in the future and there is no attack. there. fdr ande that is why felt the unions were entirely supported in the private sector. i support unions in the private sector. they are done in a way that companies can convince their employees that it is a bad idea in a secret election. the winners win and the losers accepted. it seems to me it is fundamentally incompatible. if you look at the results of that, the pension problems throughout the country. almost every state and local government is awash in pension problems. people who work in government are actively discouraging and bringing the power of the peopleent down on the who think the federal government is too big. i think i quoted jonah goldberg. it is time to have the discussion again of the appropriateness of unionism in the public sector. unions in the private sector are fine. we are suffering the consequences. i will take one more and then i would head out. >> first an observation about hem's comment earlier when talked about social welfare. when congress set up that statute in the 1950's, there is no evidence congress intended to exclude political activity. i wondered about your thoughts on this. do political activities were people are trying to improve their government, could that improve the social welfare in of a nation if people used political activity? >> obviously, that is my view. we should be encouraging this sort of thing and not discouraging it. this disclosure thing has nothing to do with anything except going after your donors. they were never offended by this until the last few years and conservatives started doing more of that. this is a fairly recent outrage here. this is about nothing other than getting the names of your donors so you can go after them. we should be discouraging that in every way we possibly can and encouraging this kind of participation. the kind of this is involvement we ought to have. goodness gracious, to have the government itself picking winners and losers in the game of political speech is a true outrage. i appreciate the opportunity to be here. thank you so much. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] journal on "washington ," we will talk about the program,per of ram -- followed by a student interest rates and use unemployment useyouth unemployment -- youth unemployment. database of 120 million people was used to attend the five suspects. live atton journal" 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> this is a challenging time for people are conservatives. we have a democratic president and a quite liberal democratic president who has not only been elected, but reelected, after putting into place some ideas and programs and projects that i think our wrongheaded. the public had a chance to think about that and they reelected him. it is also an exciting time if ist you are trying to do modernize conservatism, bring it in line with the challenges the country faces right now, to help conservatives think about how to confront the challenges of the 21st century. neither party is doing a good job at that. there are a lot of opportunities for thinking about what america in the 21st centuries to change in how it governs itself to get back to economic growth, prosperity, a cultural revival we need. it is challenging, but it is exciting. >> war with national affairs editor, yuval levin sunday on c- span's "q & a." >> president obama nominated the fbi.ey as head of from the white house, this is just over 10 minutes.  >> ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states, accompanied by mr. bob mueller and mr. jim comey. >> good afternoon, everybody. please have a seat. for more than a century, we have counted on the dedicated men and women of the fbi to keep us safe. in that time, the fbi has been led by six directors and the second longest serving director of the fbi, for the last 12 years, an exemplary public servant, bob mueller. by law fbi directors only serve for 10 years, but back in 2011, when bob's term was up, i asked congress to give him two more years. it was not a request i made lightly, and i know congress did not grant it lightly, but at the time transitions were underway at the cia and the pentagon, and given the threats facing our nation, it was critical to have bob's strong leadership at the bureau. 12 years is a long time to do anything. and i guarantee you that bob's wife agrees. in addition to asking congress, we need approval from ann as well. today, as bob prepares to complete his service, this is a wonderful opportunity for all of us as a nation to say thank you to bob and ann, but also gives me a chance to announce my next choice for the fbi director, jim comey. every day their staff devotes their lives to keep us secure, from the streets of our cities to the battlefield of afghanistan. they embody the core principles of fidelity, bravery, and integrity. bob mueller has embodied those values through decades of public service and lived them every day as fbi director during an extraordinary time in our nation's history. bob, some of you will recall, was sworn in just days before 9/11. bob not only played a key role in her response to those attacks, he began one of the biggest transformations of the fbi in history to make sure that nothing like that ever happens again. like the marine that he has always been, bob never took his eyes off his mission. under his watch, the fbi joined forces with our intelligence, military, and homeland security professionals to break up al qaeda's cells and their plots. i will say it as clearly as i can, many americans are alive today and our country is more secure because of the fbi's outstanding work under the leadership of bob mueller. bob and the fbi had been tireless against a whole range of challenges, from preventing violent crime and reducing gang activity, including along our border, to cracking down on white-collar criminals. today, there are many in the fbi who have never known the bureau without bob at the helm, and like us, they have admired his tenacity, his calm under pressure, devotion to our security, and his fidelity to the values that make us who we are. it is a trademark attributed to his humility that most of you would not recognize him on the street, but all of us are better because of his service. bob, i cannot tell you how grateful i am to you for your service. i know everyone here knows you will be remembered as one of the finest directors in the history of the fbi and one of the most admired public servants of our time. personally, not only has it been a pleasure to work with bob, but i know very few people in public life who have shown more integrity more consistently, under more pressure than bob mueller. [applause] i think bob will agree when i say we have the perfect person to carry on this work in jim comey, a man who stands very tall for justice and the rule of law. i was saying while we were taking pictures with his gorgeous family here that they are all what michelle calls normalites. the grandson of a patrolman who worked his way up to leave the yonkers police department, he has law enforcement in his blood. he helped bring down the gambino crime family, as a federal prosecutor in virginia he led an aggressive effort to combat gun violence reduce homicide rates and save lives, and he has been relentless, whether standing up for consumers against corporate fraud or bringing terrorists to justice. and as deputy attorney general he helped lead the justice department with skill and wisdom meeting threats we know about and staying perpetually prepared for the ones that can emerge suddenly. so jim is exceptionally qualified to handle the full range of challenges a spy today's fbi, from threats like violence and organized crime to protecting civil rights and children from exploitation, to meeting transnational challenges like terrorism and cyber threats. just as important as jim's experience is his character. he has talked about how he and his brother nearly lost their lives. they were at home when an intruder held them at gunpoint. he understands deeply in his core the anguish of victims of crime, what they go through, and he has made it his life's work to spare others that pain. to know jim is to know his independence and his deep integrity. like bob, who has been in washington for some time, he does not care for politics, he only cares about getting the job done. in key moments he joined bob in standing up for what he believed was right and was prepared to give up the job he loved rather than -- as jim has said, we know the rule of law sets this nation apart and -- its foundation. jim understands at a time of crisis we are not just solely by how many plots we bring to justice, we are judged by our -- this work of striking a balance with security, but also making sure we are maintaining fidelity to those values that we cherish is a constant mission. that is who we are. and it is in large part because of my confidence, not only in his experience and his skill, but his integrity that i am confident that jim will be a leader who understands how to keep america safe and stay true to our founding ideals no matter what the future may bring. so to bob and ann, thank you for your service. i want to thank jim, his wife, patrice, and his family who are here -- maureen, katherine, brian, claire, and abby -- as he takes on this important role. he could not do this without you and he is extraordinarily proud of all of you, and i can see why. this is a 10-year assignment. i make this nomination confident that long after i left office our security will be in good hands with servants like jim comey, and so i urge as usual for the senate to act promptly with hearings and to confirm our next fbi director right away. i would like now to give both of them a chance to say a few words, starting with bob. >> let me start by thanking you for those kind words. i also want to express my gratitude to both president bush and president obama for giving me the honor and a privilege of serving as the fbi director during these last few years. i want to take the opportunity to thank the men and women of the fbi. it is through their work, dedication, and their adaptability that the fbi is better able to predict and prevent terrorism and crime of here and abroad. i want to thank my wife and my family for the support and their patience over the last 12 years, and i want to commend the president for the choice of jim comey as the next rector of the fbi. i have had the opportunity to work with jim or a number of years in the department of justice, and i have found him to be a man of honesty, dedication, and integrity. his experience, judgment, and strong sense of humility will benefit not only the bureau, but the country as a whole. again, mr. president, thank you for this opportunity to serve. [applause] [applause] >> thank you, mr. president, for this honor and opportunity. i am not sure i have words to describe how excited i am to return to justice and especially to get work again with the people of the fbi. they are men and women who have devoted their lives to serving and protecting others, and i cannot wait to be there colleague yet again. everything i am and have done in my adult life is due to the great good fortune of marrying up. thanks to the long and support and occasional constructive criticism of my beloved troops, of my amazing wife, patrice and abby, claire, brian, kate, and maureen, i am a much better person than i would have been without you. thank you for that. i must be out of my mind to be following bob mueller. i do not know whether i can fill those shoes, but i know however i do i will be standing truly on the shoulders of a giant, someone who has made a remarkable difference in the life of this country. i can promise you, mr. president and mr. director, i will do my very best to honor and protect that legacy, and i thank you again for this chance to serve. thank you. [applause] >> can we give bob mueller and ann one more round of applause? [applause] [applause] >> thank you. ♠["stars and stripes forever"] >> today on c-span, "washington journal" life with your calls, tweets and e-mails. later, the bay in the u.s. house on banning abortions after 20 -- later in the u.s. house, banning abortions after 20 weeks. a look at the federal reserve plan for its stimulus program. followed by issues important to younger americans with matthew segal. and later in the discussion that state officials used a photo of database of 120 million people to identify suspects in, of investigations. our guest is the newspaper's national technology reporter. is next.on journal" host: the united states files criminal charges against edward snowden. this is the headline in "the gu ardian." we look into the newspapers in just a few seconds. you are watching "washington journal." today is june the 22nd, 2013. charges include theft of government property and unauthorized communications of national defense information. if you want to get involved in the conversation here are the n