ms. murkowski: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senior senator from alaska is recognized. ms. murkowski: mr. president, are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: no. ms. murkowski: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i have come to the floor today to recognize a truly exceptional member of the united states senate, not one who has a vote on this floor but certainly one who has wielded great influence and who has generated great appreciation from many of us who have had the privilege and the honor to serve on the appropriations committee as you have. but today i am here to speak about an individual who has been serving on the united states senate on the interior appropriations subcommittee now for two decades, and this gentleman is a friend by the name of leif vonaspek. he started on the interior subcommittee under the helm of chairman slade gordon from the state of washington, and then also the chairman of the full appropriations committee at that tim
and early 70s, the spread of terrorism to become a global phenomenon, a second one would have to point to a landmark document that led to the overhauling of our national security infrastructure and protected our homeland from future attacks. and so, in the years since that report was released, we ve seen the adoption of many of their recommendations on a bipartisan basis that enabled us to successfully weaken terrorist organizations abroad and most importantly to protect the homeland from another mass casualty attack. but one crucial recommendation from the 9/11 report remains unfilled. we foresaw the need and included in the report the recommendation to develop a comprehensive strategy that goes beyond responding to violent extremism and focus on preventing its rise in the first place. in the words of their report, a preventive strategy that is as much or more political as it is military. we have seen that without the successful prevention strategy in place, that terrori
[inaudible conversations] you re watching booktv on c-span2. joining us now from chicago and the publishers convention is ron charles who is the editor of washington post s book world. mr. charles, what do you do for a living? guest: i assign most of the daily reviews in the washington post , and every wednesday i write my own review. host: of books? guest: of books, yes. host: how many books a week, seven books a week? guest: we review 20 books a week, and we get about 150 of them. host: about 20 books a week are reviewed in the post. guest: right. host: why isn t there a stand-alone book section? guest: there is online, but we decided about four years ago to spread the reviews out through the paper to try and see if we could find more readers. it seemed like a disaster at the time to me, but i have had to admit that we do, in fact, have more readers for book reviews now. we just put them in places that people read more. book world, the old book world, t
section. host: ron charles is the editor of washington post s book world. this this is booktv on c-span2. guest: thanks so much. here s a look at some authors recently featured on booktv s after words, our weekly author interview program. syndicated radio host dana lash contended the u.s. is dividing itself into two countries, coastal america and flyover america. wall street journal columnist kimberly stras el argued the political left is using scare tactics to silence conservative speech. eric fehr talked about his time in iraq working as an interrogator for a private military contractor. and in the coming weeks on aftercords, ann coulter will make her case for supporting donald trump for prime minister. georgetown university law professor rosa brooks looks at the expanded roles for the u.s. military around the world, and coming up former bush administration attorney general alberto gonzalez recalls his time serving in the justice department and as white house come
shiites and master saudi arabia with all sorts of horrible things are happening. i don t think so. and so there we are. you ask about the president not getting involved in syria. he just put 200 special forces troops into syria. as far as i know, recognized by the u.n. after reigning power and the russians are there with approval by the theory of government. the iranians are there with approval. hezbollah, the shia group from lebanon, they are there with approval. the precedent for 250 special forces into israel without that casualty? it s a point of view. the world sees what he does. i ll tell you something else. if you think the number of american troops into iraq is three or 4000, i m telling you this for a fact times that amount and maybe even more if you count the pilots and crews that are doing the bombing in the ocean. that s telling the truth to the people about some basic stuff. and that is that he had on the other hand, i also think it s going to be the greatest pre