U. S. Maybe moral sport, but thats a real threat, domestic threat to regime, to regime in moscow, to regime in belarus. Again, kazakhs are in a different group. So its the its a possible, potential adversary. One reason for that politics, and another one is to preclude successful, mostly orthodox country the become democratic. So democracy and ukraine, sometimes for good reasons but sometimes not for good reason at all, is portrayed just as the case. And thats the message that is sent to the domestic audience. Over here. [inaudible] yes. Thank you. William. I was going to ask a question about gorbachevs legacy, but the gentleman before already did. Now i want to talk about putins legacy. Beginning of the next decade, where do you see his policies, where do you see him . And especially recently an economic coup with china in terms of gas and oil and, i guess, commodities going both ways. Thank you. Okay. Well, you ask me to predict future [laughter] and i was so many times wrong predicting future. [laughter] that i decided that its a blessing that i am being paid as a historian and not as a [laughter] as a fortune teller because i would be broke. But what i can say is the way how i understand putin looks at himself and how he sees his legacy. And this is, as far as i understand, the first time in the russian soviet history that leader is interested in history and reads books the First Time Since josef stalin. Kruschev was not an avid reader or brezhnev for that matter, but gorbachev read all different kind of books. So this is the person who is now in his third term who is, as far as he knows, is assured of another ten years. And one of the legacies that he wants to leave in russia and in the world is not only stabilizing russia and precluding it from the complete collapse something that hes credited with doing in the first years of his, during the first term as the president but also he looks at himself as a basically someone who will bring russia back more or less to the level of the soviet power in the world. Not recreation of soviet union, but recreation of the russian power in the postsoviet space, and in that way bringing back russia as a major maybe not second superpower, but certainly major player in the world with europe, United States and china. So thats, thats the way how i see and how i read his goal, and he reads books on russian history, on russian emperors, you know, he reads books on international history. So he looks at his legacy as savior of russia and bringing russia back to the summit of world powers. Thank you. John richardson. Weve talked a lot about moscow and kiev and minsk, and its the old part. Could you just address a little bit do they have any plan or any concept of what to do with the vast territory out of the pacific other than supplying gas to china . [laughter] well, ill go back to my lack of ability to predict things. I started this presentation by talking about teaching course on the ussr in crisis in canada, and when the course came to an end and the soviet union was falling apart, we played game with students, and they said, okay, now you are a soviet citizen, and you can move to any part of the union that you want, but soon there will be 15 different countries, and where do you think youd want to toly with the chances for Economic Prosperity would be the best and things like that. At that time everyone was talking about pacific rim. That was a big thing, and quite a few students decided that [inaudible] would be the best place to go, to move to, to have business and things like that. So that was not my prediction [laughter] that was prediction of one of my students. So it didnt work out that way. The for a number of reasons, militarization of the area is one of them, certainly, moscow control is another one. So its a big issue. What we see now, there are other [inaudible] that are going up and down trying to resettle people to the far east. So inviting russian emigres from brazil. Or there was again, i dont know how correct they are or not, but there were some attempts now after crimea is taken over also to talk about that. I dont think that crimeans, many create me januaries would like to move to the far east. But certainly there is an understanding that potentially there is a problem and potentially because just sheer numbers of chinese population and russian population on the border there. And, again, economic challenges are enormous. But thats the only thing that i can say about the far east. Thank you. [inaudible] don simmons. Thanks to the government, ukraine has a very large hard Currency International debt, and its also in a position where it can be strangled by russia either through the price of gas or through declining to allow ukrainian exports into their country. My question is what do you think are the prospects of ukraine developing a successful, selfsustaining National Economy . Well, ukraine was bankrupted by the previous government of president yanukovych, so the estimates are different, but apparently between 5 10 billion were taken out of ukrainian economy by that government alone. So ukraine is today in deep crisis. So one thing that is clear that ukraine on its own will not be able to overcome that crisis. Mr. Yanukovychs choice was to take 15 billion loan from russia, and the current government certainly relies on support and Financial Support and derives wealth from the European Union and the United States. And thats where the hope lies, that actually they would be able to to turn around economy. I like western money much more than russian money not only because its dollar ruble, but because western money comes with Strings Attached and with control. And after dealing in postsoviet space for 20 years, actually, the landon institutions now have much more expertise and know how to handle this money and how to control it to see what the results are. But thats, basically first of all, shock to the Ukrainian Society as a result of lost territories and this war, something that should mobilize, mobilize support for economic reform. And second is the support of the western community. If these two things, one of them doesnt work, ukraine is really will be year from now even in more difficult situation, position than it is today. Well, thank you very much for providing us a window [applause] thanks for the questions. Thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] heres a look at some books that are being published this week. Professors dorothy call and its trade its trade henry in feminism unfinished. Look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv and on booktv. Org. Next on booktv, former federal prosecutor Andrew Mccarthy discusses his book, faithless execution building the political case for obamas impeachment. He spoke at the Eagle Forum Collegians Leadership Summit in washington d. C. This is about half an hour. We have a very exciting afternoon, and were going to lead off with a wonderful author named andrew c. Mccarthy who has written faithless execution building the political case for obamas impeachment. He is a bestselling author and a senior fellow at National Review institute and a contributing editor at National Review. Hes also a writer for the new create tier on. Mccarthy was a chief assistant u. S. Attorney in new york and best known for prosecuting terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He served as supervisor to u. S. Attorneys command post near ground zero after the 9 11 attacks. His previous works include willful blindness, the grand jihad how islam and the left sabotaged america, and spring fever the illusion of islamic democracy. Please welcome Andrew Mccarthy. [applause] well, thank you so much for having me here today. Im a great admirer of mrs. Schlafly, and its always great to be down at the heritage foundation, because a lot of times when i go around to talk particularly about National Security as you might imagine its usually a college setting. So this is more like a home game for me. [laughter] so its great, its great to be here. As you might imagine, ive gotten some flak over the book, and in particular over the subtitle of the book. The book is called faithless execution, and the subtitle is building the political case for obamas impeachment. So, naturally, the word everybody focuses on is impeachment, and thats an explosive term in washington. In fact, i have a vignette that i describe in the book which involves a congressional hearing that happened here in washington probably about six months ago where you had this crazy juxtaposition of Progressive Law professors who were called as witnesses, and the hearing was about president ial lawlessness. And theyre throwing the word impeachment around across the room. One of the, one of the law professors called the Obama Presidency the uber presidency, said it was the most significant constitutional crisis of his life type. Lifetime. Said verge they a that eventually that obama was the president nixon always wanted to be. So you have that was the tenor of what you were getting from the witnesses. And you had republican and conservative representatives, members of congress who were running the hearing seemingly diving under entire desks every time the word impeachment was mentioned. In fact, one congressman who i think is a particularly terrific congressman on most things said to one of the witnesses who said, you know, look, you cant be afraid to say the word impeachment. Impeachment is one of the remedies to rein in president ial lawlessness that the framers put into the constitution. If youre going to have a conversation about president ial lawlessness, you have to talk about impeachment. The congressman replied, you know, a word that we dont say up here. Thats a thought that we dont even want to have up here. So i think its actually some progress that weve had in the last six months where weve gone from the word was an up mention able unmentionable to now that its actually out in almost polite conversation. I wouldnt say that weve yet gotten to the point where anybody is seriously considering impeaching the president , but i do think impeachment is again entering the space where it ought to have been all along which is as a real remedy that the framers quite intentionally put into the constitution in anticipation of the problem that they were most deeply worried about. And that is the power of a runaway presidency, the power the problem or the potential danger of a lawless presidency. The framers having lived under the articles of confederation and having tried to do National Security by committee realized that that was one of the big flaws of the article. And one of the things they wanted to do in the constitution was create an executive branch that was actually capable of protecting the country and executing the law on the domestic front. But they also recognized that any presidency that was that powerful, so powerful that it could summon up all the awesome power that the government can muster in order to defeat threats to the United States and, remember, at the time of the founding unlike today, they didnt assume the United States was forever. They very much recognized that they could be conquered, that this was a brand new country, and it was anything but clear how things would go. So they understood that to create that kind of a powerful office, you also had to create a Great Potential danger which is if those powers fell into the wrong hands, into hands that were either corrupt or incompetent, that that could have the effect of destroying the republic. And as a result, they decided that it was indispensable in madisons words to have an impeachment remedy in the constitution, something that would give congress a real meaningful check on the possibility that the executive branch would fall into the wrong hands. Wasnt the only check. In fact ors there in fact, te were three in the constitution. The first, of course, is the ballot box. And there were some of the framers who thought that the fact that you could have elections coupled with the fact that because the president runs an executive branch any misdeeds that really get committed, subordinates have to be to involved in that. So if you took the possibility that you could always prosecute the subordinates coupled with the possibility that the voters could vote the president out if he did anything as egregious enough to warrant it, they thought that maybe an impeachment remedy wasnt necessary. That turned out to be a minority position among the framers because, as people like madison pushed back and said, a president who is apt to be corrupt would be most apt to be corrupt in getting himself reelected. So that it wouldnt be sufficient just to rely on the ballot box. So theres two other remedies. One is impeachment which ill get to a little bit more in a second, and the second one is the power of the purse. And that was the power really that the framers thought congress would most often rely on to check president ial lawlessness, the idea that you put congress in charge of not only all expenditures of the public money, but obviously, all expenditures of the,tive branch. Executive branch. So that if the president exceeded his authority, the congress could either cut off the money that he was using to the agencies that exceeded his authority, or if more was needed to pun bish the president in the sense of bringing him back into line, you could slash the budget much more dramatically. But the idea would be the president had to to look to the congress, to the means to carry out his agenda, and if he overstepped his bounds, the congress would be able to crack down on that by its power of the purse. And then finally, impeachment would be the ultimate remedy, the ultimate ability to remove somebody who was illsuited for the position. And when they were discussing this and debating it, the two things that they were concerned about were, number one, that there would be a very clear Legal Standard for what was required to impeach. And secondly, that it would be hard to do. Because they didnt want impeachment to be done frivolously, they didnt want it to be an exercise in part son or ideological hackery. They wanted to make sure that if a president was to be removed, there would be a consensus of the American People who would want the president out of power. So in order to take on those two missions, clear Legal Standard and make it hard to do, they did two things. First, as far as the standard is concerned, they adopted a british term of art of the time; high crimes and demeanors. Misdemeanors. Now, high crimes and misdemeanors, people hear crimes and misdemeanors, they think of the sort of conventional offenses of a penal code like used to deal with when i was a federal prosecutor. But the term really has very little to do with that. High crimes and misdemeanors can be violations of the penal law, but the term means a lot more than that. As hamilton put it, what high crimes and misdemeanors refers to is the misconduct of public men. And the idea that they meant to convey was grave breaches of the public trust that is reposed in high officials, particularly high executive Branch Officials and none higher than the president. Much more than a penal code, the concept is actually more redolent of terms or concepts that we find in the military code of justice. Concepts like dereliction of duty, violation of an ohs oath. The thing they were mainly concerned about was the president s obligation to uphold rather than undermine the governing framework of the United States, the governing framework of the constitution. The president is the only official in our government who is required by constitution to take an oath to uphold it, to preserve, protect and defend the constitution and to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. So they thought that was a fairly paramount thing in terms of what the president s responsibilities were. So the idea was a breach of those responsibilities, a breach of that public trust would qualify as a high crime and misdemeanor. You dont have to be indictable to be impeachable. A president who is derelict in his duties as commander in chief has committed a high crime and misdemeanor. A president who misleads Congress Even if its not in an tithe bl way indictable way has committed a high crime and misdemeanor. Ca president who defrauds the people of the United States commits a high crime and misdemeanor. To so that was what the concept was. Now, as you can tell thinking about the concept, it takes in an awful lot of potential misconduct by a president. So they wanted to make sure that you parsed the stuff that was really Senate Significant in the way of misconduct from the things that were frivolous or at least not of great moment. So the second condition that they attached was this notion that in order to ore move the president from that in order to remove the president from power, a president can be impeached on a simple vote of, a simple majority vote of the house of representatives. But to remove the president from power requires a twothirds vote of the senate. And that was quite intentionally done to make certain that if you actually ever did remove a president from power, it would be because there was a broad consensus in the public that it was appropriate to remove the president. It wouldnt be enough that one faction or one Political Party wanted him out, it would have to be something that was egregious enough to make the public convinced that we could no longer abide having the power of the presidency in this particular individual, whoever it was at the time. So that was the twopart test. And what my book is about mainly is trying to explain what that test is, how it came to be and why its important, why we all have a stake in it. The second half of the book actually attempts to plead articles of impeachment in the way a prosecutor pleads an indictment. It kind of reads almost i try to make it a little b