has voted repeatedly to approve the keystone pipeline which is a fairly easy thing for them to move through that chamber. senatorenate, you have mary landrieu from louisiana facing a difficult reelection campaign and senator hoben of north dakota and some others trying to get the vote on the senate floor. in a sense, this is about political pressure and optics more than forcing the president to actually sign a bill. i think they are a little bit shy of even the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. reid tocan convince bring something to the floor, what you would see is a majority of the senate and a number of democrats saying that we want this pipeline and that creates political pressure on the white house for sure. host: any idea from the white house as to when they want to make this decision? i know they're looking at

nebraska but what is going on as far as the timeline? >> basically there is not one. the most recent delay you referenced is indefinite. based in what's happening in nebraska, it almost surely pushes it to after the midterm elections in november. many people are starting to wonder whether the president may decide to punt this to the next administration and not make a decision. he would come under a lot of criticism for people who say you cannot say we need infrastructure and when he to cut red tape and speed up permitting and then have eight years of delay over a pipeline. on the other hand, you have a president who has made a rather historic commitment to fighting climate change and those things are opposites. host: thank you both for being part of "newsmakers." >> looking ahead to monday, the

center for strategic and international studies will host a discussion on mexico's efforts to boost oil and gas production. the mexican ambassador to the u.s. and a panel of energy executives will be the speakers live at 1:30 p.m. eastern on c-span. later the same day, there will be a discussion on the israeli-palestinian conflict and the topics to be discussed include the stalled peace process and the recent kidnapped israeli teens. that is live beginning at 4:00 p.m. on c-span. the internet content should remain free from regulation especially by if not totally from the fcc's regulation. as susan crawford has said, the conversation is infusing for the sidewalk. we want the conversation to be free and unregulated and the fcc has no place regulating content online. they have always made sure that medication pathways stay open so today we have a regulated phone system or the vestiges of one. the fcc does not regulate what i

say to you when i call but they pathwaysure that the open and affordable and available and nondiscriminatory and there for everybody to use. >> it's crucial to think about whether those platforms remain open the way they have historically. ae internet has grown up as network where anyone can communicate and anyone can get online. a teeny little company can get access to the company and become like google or facebook and become a huge business. it's vital that that not change as the internet evolves. >> more opinions on the fcc's open internet policy and the flow and speed of web traffic monday night at 8:00 eastern on "the communicators" on c-span two. the supreme court concluded its termed this past week by handing down a decision on health care laws contraceptive mandate. in a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that closely held corporations cannot be required to provide contraceptive coverage based on their rights

under the religious freedom restoration act. on the day of the ruling, we heard from two attorneys representing the two corporations that were challenging the mandate. i present the senior counsel for liberty. [applause] i am laurie windham, senior counsel with the becket fund for religious liberty and represent hobby lobby. today's decision is a landmark decision for religious freedom. recognized court that american families do not lose her fundamental rights when they open a family business. today's victory against this unjust mandate is important not just for families like the greens but also for religious ministries like the little sisters of the poor and all americans who seek to live according to their consciousness

-- consciences. the court decision was narrow and careful and the court ruled that families do not lose their religious freedom when they open a family business. this decision does not grant religious protections to large publicly traded corporations. the court kept the focus where it belongs-on families like the greens and the hans and everyday americans who seek to live out their faith. the court's reasoning was clear and it should have been clear to the government, too,. you cannot argue there is no alternative means for the government when the government wants you to pay for contraceptives and provide alternative means for other people. we don't know what the government will choose to do next but we know the greens are free from this unjust mandate. the government should offer the same protections to religious ministries like the letter said that like the little sister to the poor or a television network asking the supreme court for relief today. women like barbara green and elizabeth hahn fought for their

religious freedom and today they one. women like the little sisters of the poor will continue that fight. women's voices are heard standing up for religious freedoms. this case is about the freedoms of all americans, women and men and it's something that all americans should celebrate today. thank you. [applause] my name is casey maddox, senior counsel of the allies divining freedom and we represent conestoga wood

specialties, one of the victorious plaintiffs in the case today. >> congratulations. [applause] to paraphrase president obama what we found out today from the supreme court is that religious liberty is the law. [applause] beenious freedom has not vanquished. we still live in a country where people are free to live out their faith both in their churches and outside the churches. you cannot be forced into a government created hole where you are allowed to practice your religion. it gets to impact every part of your life and that includes your family owned business. this is a critical win for religious liberty around this country. we thank all of those who have family andthe hahn the green family and his battle for religious liberty and we celebrate today this win for the right that our founders fought and died for, thank you. [applause]

>> white house reaction to the supreme court's decision came from press secretary josh earnest or his daily re-think with reporters. can you give us your reaction to the hobby lobby case? >> i thought that might be your first question today. the supreme court ruled today employers can now withhold certain coverage for their employees. based on religious believes. president obama believes that women should make personal health care decisions for themselves rather than their boss is deciding for them. today's decision jeopardizes the health of women who are employed by these companies. as millions of women know firsthand, contraception is often vital to their health and well-being. that's why the affordable care act ensures that women have coverage for contraceptive care along with other preventive care

like vaccines and cancer screenings. we will work with congress to make sure that any women affected by this decision will still have the same coverage of vital health services as everyone else. president obama believe strongly in the freedom of religion. that's why we have taken steps to ensure that no religious institution will have to pay or provide for current deceptive coverage. accommodations for nonprofit religious organizations that object to contraception on religious grounds. but we believe that the owners of for profit companies should not be allowed to assert their personal religious views to deny their employees federally mandated benefits. we will of course respect the supreme court ruling and we will continue to look for ways to improve americans help by helping women have more, not less, say over the personal health decisions that affect them and their families. whatn you talk more about you are considering to make sure women have access to contraceptives? >> i'm not in a position to do

that right now. brantley, we are still assessing the decision and its legal implications. we are also assessing what practical implications there are from this decision including what companies are actually covered by the supreme court decision. as you saw, the ruling referred narrowly to closely held private sector companies. i described in my original statement that there are a range of other institutions treated in different ways. we are also taking a look at what kind of health care plans these companies have and how many employees are affected by this decision. as we gather more information, we may be in a position to better consider the range of options that are available to the president. it is our view that congress needs to take action to solve the problem that has been created and the administration stands ready to work with them to do so. c-spanover 35 years, brings public affairs events

from washington directly to you putting you in the room at congressional hearings, white house events, briefings, and conferences and offering complete gavel-to-gavel coverage of the u.s. house as a public service of private industry. we are c-span, created by the cable tv industry 35 years ago and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. watch us in hd, like us on facebook, and follow us on twitter. >> next, look at the supreme court's most recent term and how the cases were covered by reporters. the speakers include journalists from reuters, "the washington post," and "the new york times." this is 1.5 hours. good afternoon everybody.

>> thank you for coming. i am arthur spitzer. my day job is legal director of the local office of the american civil liberties union but i am here wearing my hat as a volunteer for the d.c. bar. the first thing i need to say as we apologize for the lack of adequate food for which you all paid. i understand that more sandwiches are being made. they will be up shortly and nobody should hesitate to get up and get some food during the program. nobody will mind. annual to the 26th supreme court the view from the press gallery program which is sponsored by the d.c. bar section on courts, lawyers, and the administration of justice. i have a few other preliminaries in addition to food before we begin. importer. to arnold for are hosting us again maybe the eighth or 10th year.

and thanks to marcia tucker, their pro bono coordinator for helping to host us and help with all the arrangements. thanks to c-span which is in the back for covering us again this year. you will be able to see the rebroadcast of this program and various odd hours for the next few days and then it will be in their archive where you can watch it on your computer at your leisure. if you don't want the back of your head to be a national tv, you are welcome to slink to the side. and avoid that. -- fritz so two frets mollhauser. for making the necessary arrangement but he is not responsible for the food situation. the d.c. bar tells me i have to

announce that this session is on the record but you knew the bar's approval in advance if you're going to record. c-span has the bars approval but if you don't have the approval, you are not authorized to record. the section on court lawyers and is administration of justice one of more than 20 sections of the d.c. bar to which much of the bars work is done. that section concentrates on matters pertaining to court administration and rules and the relationship between the bench and the bar in all aspects of the lawyers relationship to the profession enclosing -- including ethics and admission standards. focuses on also access to justice for everyone in d.c.. are cosponsorsns of today's program and they cover the range of legal practice and i would encourage all of you and your members of

d.c. view, become an active whoer and for those of you are future members, when you get back, you should think about becoming active in one or more bar sections. it's a great way to get to know other lawyers outside of your own firm or practice.

we are privileged to have with us a panel of journalists who have been covering the supreme court for 107 years. i will introduce them briefly in the order of how long they have been covering the court, beginning with tony morrow on my far left. tony has been covering the court since 1979, first for usa today. he joined the legal times in 2000 and continues as a supreme court correspondent after its merger in 2009. his undergraduate degree is from rutgers. his journalism degree is from columbia. david savage has been covering the court with the los angeles times since 1981. also in the last several years, covering the court for the chicago tribune. he is the author of a book called "turning right." he has recently authored the latest additions of congressional quarterly's guide to the supreme court. david has degrees from unc at chapel hill and northwestern. joan on my far right covers the court for reuters. she has covered it since 1989. before joining reuters, she

covered the courts for usa today and the washington post. she is a regular panelist on ebs washington week. pbs washington week. she earned her law degree at georgetown law school and specializes in presenting the supreme court through the lens of judicial biography. she has written sandra day o'connor, and more recently, american original, the life and constitution of supreme court justice anthony scalia. joan is within weeks of finishing a new book called, "breaking in, the rise of sonia sotomayor" which has a publication date of the first tuesday in october. robert barnes joined the washington post in 1987 covering maryland politics. since then, he has served as

deputy national editor in charge of domestic issues during the clinton administration. he returned to reporting in 2005 and began covering the supreme court in 2006. bob had been planning to go to law school but changed his mind after taking a journalism course. his biography on the washington post website says, it did not occur to him that he could do both. perhaps a better explanation is that he realized he didn't need three years of law school to not practice law. kimberly atkins is the washington bureau chief for the dolan company's publications, a nationwide group of specialized legal and business journals including the new york daily record, the wisconsin law journal, and about a dozen others.

kimberly has covered the court and capitol hill since 2007. previously, she worked at some daily newspapers including the boston globe. before her journalism career, she was a litigator. she is a graduate of wayne state university, boston university school of law, and the columbia journalism school. kim is also a fashion designer and the owner of kim eileen designs, creating custom special occasion and bridal wear. if you need legal advice or a gown, see kimberly. [laughter] last but not least, adam who covers the court for the new york times. he took over that beat six years ago. he has a long history at the times which he joined as a copy boy in 1984 after graduating from yale. in 1992, he joined the times'

corporate legal department, advising the paper and representing it in litigation. a decade later, he became a reporter, covering legal issues including justices roberts and alito, and a series of deep reports about the contributions, the connections between the contributions to the political campaigns of justices on the ohio supreme court and those justices' voting records. his work has also appeared in the new yorker, vanity fair and other publications. unlike most of the supreme court panels, this is not a bunch of legal hotshots analyzing the cases as lawyers, although they are all hotshots. we will talk about some cases. our plan is to talk mostly about the court as an institution and

about covering the court as journalists. i plan to save some time at the end for questions from the audience. i encourage you to think about questions you might want to ask and i will try to remind you about that as we get closer to the end. finally, you will be receiving through e-mail, an evaluation form from the d.c. bar. we would appreciate it if you would fill them out and send them in. we do read every one. we have made some changes in the program in response to comments and i encourage you to complain about the food problem so that the bar will do a better job next year. now i am going to sit down. let's start the discussion with yesterday's front-page story about the hobby lobby decision

on monday. it seems to me it is a great example, a challenge, of squeezing a complicated decision with many facets into a few paragraphs in a newspaper or on a website. the league of daily reporters on the panel was somewhat different. i am curious to ask the reporters about why they made some different choices. at the risk of taking up more time with my monologue, i am going to read some of the opening -- some of the story. the new york times story began, the supreme court ruled on monday that requiring family-owned corporations to pay for insurance coverage for contraception under the affordable care act violated a federal law protecting religious freedom. it was a decision of startling breadth.

the 5-4 ruling opened the door to many challenges from corporations, over laws they claim violate religious liberties. the washington post began, the supreme court struck down a key part of president obama's health care law, ruling family-owned businesses do not have to offer employees contraceptive coverage that conflicts with the owner's religious beliefs. the decision deeply split the court not only on its holding that the freedom restoration act protects businesses from offering contraceptive coverage, but also on how broadly the ruling will apply to other challenges. the los angeles times began, the supreme court ruled that private companies had a religious right to be exempted from federal law, saying businesses owned by devout christians may refuse to cover contraceptives for female employees. the ruling was a victory for social conservatives.

reuters, a story by her colleague, said the supreme court on monday ruled that the owners of private companies can object on religious grounds to a provision of president barack obama's health care law. the decision which applies only to a small number of companies means an estimated several thousand women may have to obtain certain forms of birth control. kimberly's story from one of her papers i found on the internet, says that the affordable health care act requirement that employer funded health care plans cover contraceptives violates the statutory rights of religious owners of private companies. some stories emphasize the potential breadth of it.

some stories emphasize the narrowness of it. some spoke about -- emphasized that it was privately owned companies. some said that it opened the door to challenges by many corporations. i am curious about some of the choices that were made and why. adam, would you like to start? >> i thought they all sounded pretty good. i think we can spend the rest of the session reading our stories aloud. the case had many moving pieces. you could focus on the first couple sentences on one aspect or the other. like the aclu's position on education, i think diversity may be a good thing. >> i was thinking about the emphasis. it is very slight in each of them.

from reuters point of view, we had several stories that day. the first one is going to have some emphasis on what it means for business because reuters has an emphasis on business. then, we followed up with another story that talked about where this fits into the whole scheme of the whole term and another story about how this might change the corporate landscape. even hearing you read, you thought there were a lot of differences. i thought they all captured the essence of the morning with slight nuances. we all serve different audiences. >> one fact that seemed to me quite important was the question of whether any women would actually lose free access to contraception. i didn't see anything about

that. anywhere near the top of any of these stories. david savage has it in the sixth sentence of the fifth paragraph, which was higher up than anybody else. he addresses the question of whether anyone would lose access. in other stories, it was much further down. >> i wrote about four versions of that story. we are all in the same business of trying to write a very quick version for the web and an updated version for the web and another version for the newspaper. with each version, i get questions from editors. are women really going to lose contraception? by the end of the day, we got a few sentences that says not many women will lose coverage. >> what you had here was, saying that this decision was very broad.

you had an opinion saying, it is actually very narrow. they went back and forth on these two things. some wondered, was ginsburg making it a bigger decision than it was in the way she wrote about it? others say, what she did was force the majority to go back and say, it is not about this and it is not about this. it is just about contraception. i think it remains to be seen. it was interesting that the two sides went back and forth at each other about this. it is a little hard to tell whether it is really broad or narrow. >> did you see what justice kennedy did? he writes a separate opinion that justice kennedy who usually straddles the middle, he stepped back and wrote a current opinion saying, let's just lower the temperature here.

the decision doesn't mean as much as my colleague, ginsburg says. but it is narrower. it was almost like he tried to bridge the rhetoric in that moment. >> justice ginsburg is not ordinarily an alarmist. having achieved the goals, she didn't have to keep those passages. yet she saw it the way she saw it. that kind of alarmist dissent, there is history of it. justice scalia in two big gay rights rulings, he turned out to be right. >> a broader question still focusing on hobby lobby, the cases for separate issues, any one of which could have been determinative, whether a corporation was a person for the religious freedom restoration

act, whether the law imposes substantial burden on their religious beliefs, and whether it was the least restrictive means, how do you deal with all that? is that only of interest to legal geeks? how do you make it understandable? >> i definitely had to get all that in my story. >> i definitely had to get all that in my story. i write in part for lawyers. the legal issues are definitely what they are interested in. i write for business papers, legal papers. we have a daily business paper in oklahoma city where hobby lobby is based. that story had a different focus