And finally there are two things that are not in No Child Left Behind that we’ve got to pay attention to. The best thing we can do to close the achievement gap between African Americans and white kids is pre-kindergarten. Quality, four-year old kindergarten children, especially focused on kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, where English is not the first language in the life. That would be my highest priority and I’m gonna try to see whether we can get some of that money out of No Child Left Behind to start doing demonstration projects on that.

And then, as we go through the school experience, we pay very little attention to high school. You know, the drop out starts as a child enters school behind in kindergarten and begins to feel a sense of failure in third-grade.

[Audio gap]

[The second questioner asked Clinton if she would close Guantanamo Bay as President an for her to comment on the recent passage of bill to expand President Bush’s surveillance program on international communications with terrorists.]

…I voted against the Military Commissions Act and I voted against it for a number of reasons, but perhaps, first and foremost, was its unconstitutional denial of habeas corpus, which is [embedded in our constitution]. And, we’re going to try and reinstate habeas corpus and reform the military tribunal/commission procedures we hope in the next months. We’re working – this is obviously being worked through to try and get a bipartisan coalition that it will actually give us the votes we need, because all of you know, I don’t have to explain to you, if you can’t count 60 votes, you can’t get it through the Senate. That’s one of our very big problems right now. So, we’re trying to get together a coalition in order to change the military commission and reinstate habeas corpus.

Secondly, on Guantanamo, I have said that we must close Guantanamo and I believe that there will be an increasing political pressure to do that. We’ve got some issues. We’ve got to figure out what to do about and that’s going to take some careful consideration, but we should start that now. We should begin to really look at all the implications and the consequences. So if we don’t get changes in the military commission act and the reinstatement of habeas corpus and we’re not on the road to closing Guantanamo when I’m President, I will start doing both of those things.

Q: My question is two-fold. If elected President, what kinds of warrentless eavesdropping would you permit and would you not permit and for what reasons, and second of all, why or how is your Attorney General going to be different than Alberto Gonzales?

CLINTON: Let me take the second question first! [break – applause] I would appoint someone that believes in the rule of law. You know, it’s been mystery to a number of us. Now there are a lot of qualified Republican judges and lawyers that the President could have picked for judicial positions, for justice department positions, and he has time and again gone with cronies and movement conservatives.

Look, I think President Bush has conducted a very dangerous experiment in extremism in our country and has turned away from our basic tenets of our Constitution like our separation of powers, our checks and balances. The fact that despite everything that everything that has come out about our Attorney General Gonzales, the White House just hangs in there and supports them speaks volumes about their contempt….

[audio gap]

The Attorney General should fulfill everything from enforcing civil rights and voting rights to actually giving the White House accurate information about legal precedent and about the obligations that a President should fulfill under the Constitution. So, I think that you know, Attorney General Gonzales should be removed, or he should resign.

--- I voted for a Democratic alternative last night, obviously it did not succeed, but I think the debate will go on because even the version that the White House was supporting has a sunset in it, so we do have the opportunity to try to get a better understanding of what is in these programs. I mean, one of the problems is - I’m not on the Intelligence Committee - but even those with whom I serve who are don’t have a very clear understanding of what it is we’re talking about. Now, I’m not saying that that information should be shared broadly or openly because there is a legitimate role for surveillance for those who might be part of some network that was planning action against our country, but there certainly should be checks and balances in both the Congress and in the courts and that’s what the FISA courts were designed for. So, I think that we have to, you know, address this. I don’t know what the House is going to do. They are under tremendous pressure and you know, we’ll see how they respond but in any event we’ve got to continue to try to come up with an appropriate, legally enforceable framework that does give people confidence that we can both protect our country and our security and protect our civil liberties and our civil rights as Americans under the rule of law. And I think that will be one of my highest priorities as President.

Q. I wanted to have the opportunity to ask you about four other pieces of legislation that happened under the Clinton years and whether you would be willing to also advocate their repeal: the Defense of Marriage Act, the telecommunications bill of 1996, NAFTA and the welfare reform of 1996.

CLINTON: First, let me say I’ve been on the record against “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” since ‘99 and I believe it was the best that could be done under the political circumstances that existed at the time. It has been in my view, not implemented appropriately and a lot of very brave and dedicated Americans have been discharged from the military at – I would believe - the cost to our military readiness, particularly those who have missions that are directly related to our security and it’s just mind boggling that we would dismiss linguists for example. So, I’m hoping that as President I can lead the effort to repeal it and to put the concerns about it behind us as I’ve said in acouple of different settings, you know I love this Barry Goldwater quote: “You don’t have to be straight to shoot straight” and we should give every single American that is willing to serve their country the chance to do so, under the code of military justice so that your behavior- not your status or your sexual orientation - determines your performance and your promotion.

Secondly, DOMA, I believe that DOMA served a very important purpose. I was one of the architects of the strategy against the marriage amendment to the Constitution and DOMA gave us a bright line to be able to hold back the votes that were building up to do what I considered absolutely abominable and that would be to amend the Constitution to enshrine discrimination. I believe marriage should be left to the states. I support civil unions as I have said many times with full equality of benefits. And so I think that DOMA appropriately put the responsibility in the states where it has historically belonged and I think you are beginning to see states take actions.

I think that it’s part three of DOMA needs to be repealed because part three stands in the way of the full extension of federal benefits and I support that.

Telecommunications of 1996? You’ll have to ask Al Gore. I don’t, you know, we’ve had a lot of media consolidation, we’ve had some good competition. We have a lot we need to do to begin to create a more competitive framework and, you know, Al was very involved in designing and pushing that through and he’s an expert, I’m not. So, I don’t want to, I like what the FEC is looking at doing about maintaining more competition by the auction of the spectrum, so we’ve got to take a hard look at this and I don’t want to say something that I may not really support, so I’ve got to look at that more closely.

NAFTA? You know, I have said that NAFTA did not realize the benefits that it was promised for a number of reasons, that in fact as a senator from New York, I issued a report that talked about all the problems that business people and farmers had in New York, getting their products into Canada. This is not just about Mexico. This is about the tripartite relationship. So, I think that we have to generally have smarter trade agreements that not only have labor and environmental standards which I fully support, but really have an ongoing evaluation of the impact of trade agreements. That’s why I have legislation to have the analysis of what actually has happened compared to what was promised both unintended and intended consequences part of the ongoing monitoring of trade agreements.

And I do think that we’ve got to find ways to work with our neighbors in the hemisphere more closely, including trying to think of ways we can stimulate job creation and economic development to the south, which I think is a win-win if we can figure out how to do it.

With respect to welfare reform, I think the positive consequences of welfare reform far outweigh the negative. The regret that I have is that in the last six and a half years, the work that we did to try and protect medical care and educational benefits for people getting off of welfare and working at low-wage jobs, have been the subject of attacks by the Bush administration. The education program which was key to my support for the original legislation was severely cut back. And I think that was a mistake. I’d like to reverse that. I believe that we should encourage people to continue with education as much as possible and we’re in this big fight now about healthcare for children. You know, a combination of Medicaid and the children’s health insurance program, something that I helped to start when I was First Lady. You know, we should obviously stand against the Bush threat to veto what we passed in both the Senate and the House.

[audio gap]

[The last questioner asked Clinton about what she would do to improve mass transit as President.]

CLINTON: ---We’ve got to take care and maintain and build new infrastructure. We are living off the investments that our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents made. Especially, if you are in the Northeast or the Midwest. You know, if you use the “L” or you use the subway, you are basically taking advantage of what previous generations -- Chicagoans or New Yorkers -- were willing to pay for. And, it is absolutely critical to our economic development that we improve our infrastructure.

Now, I view infrastructure as being not only physical, but virtual. We’ve got to do much more on bridges and roads and airports and mass transit and the ports and wastewater and clean water. We have about a trillion dollars of unmet needs and every year the American Society of Civil Engineers gives us a grade on our infrastructure and we’re always failing. Some parts are worse than other parts, but we’re always failing. And so we need to focus on our physical infrastructure and we’ve got to have universal high-speed broadband access.

The very first bill I introduced when I become a senator was to expand broadband in underserved urban and rural areas in New York because there are places in New York City and places in the suburbs and some of our cities upstate where, you know, you can get anywhere you need to go in milliseconds and there are places, where as you know, you can’t.

The Bush administration doesn’t believe in any kind of infrastructure support, whether it is physical or virtual. In 2000, we were leading the world in broadband access and universality. We’re down to 25 now. That is an economic and security issue.

So, I am committed to this. I think we should look at what some other countries have done. The European Union has used 50-year bonding authority. But we have to have a federal, state, local, private-sector partnership and we’ve got to do this in a hurry because every year that goes by that we don’t repair, we’re going to have more problems and we’re going to be missing opportunities.

In particular, mass transit must become a priority for our country. Now not every part of the country is as suited for it as many parts are. Certainly, the East Coast, our bigger cities in the Midwest, our West Coast, but the fact is that we cannot continue to have the congestion and the lost productivity time that comes from all of our traffic problems. We are losing money and people are losing time -- which is also pretty precious -- and we are wasting oil and we are adding to our energy problems and contributing to global warming.

We have had to fight for last six and a half years just to keep Amtrak alive, just to keep funding at current operating levels, you know Path and MTA and all the rest of our mass transit systems. If we could come up with this kind of long-term bonding, funding mechanism that I think would make a lot of sense, mass transit would be at the top of my list of what I would like to see states and localities invest in. And, I would like to see regional operations. You know, part of the reason we don’t have high-speed rail is because our tracks are so old that they can’t be maintained and they’re not safe to get above a certain speed. Part of our problem with mass-transit is that it’s expensive to do what we have to do. We’re finally starting some long overdue mass-transit work in New York city like the Second Avenue subway, it’s going to take years and years, but at least we’re getting started.

And, then we’ve got to make sure as we do more mass transit, we figure out ways to encourage and even incentivize people to use it. ---

[audio gap]

--- The war for the first time in history a President would not pay for it. If you look at what awaits us, I am incredibly confident and optimistic - although appropriately realistic - about the challenges we face. Doing what I am advocating in my campaign, the big goals I want to set: universal healthcare, a new energy agenda that protects our security, increases our fight against global warming. ---

[end of audio tape]