Well, welcome back to the Bill Bennett Show. I'm coming to you live from the West Coast. Interesting out here.

And I'm delighted to be joined by my friend and colleague Brian Kennedy, president of the American Strategy Group.

Brian, good morning.

Good morning, Bill.

Brian will join me throughout today's episode as I share my thoughts on the big political

stories of the week and then we will turn to topics related to the American Strategy Group.

I'm proud to say I'm a fellow of the American Strategy Group and if you want to

learn more about our work, please go to AM Strategy.org or Facebook.com slash AM Strategy.

So I have been traveling, boy I left home a while back Brian and

been traveling out west a good bit.

Do you like the west of course Bill?

I do like the west.

I like parts of the west.

I like the open spaces as we say.

I love the mountains and I like people you know they're a little more

which I say a little more expansive not so not so crowded and eastern I guess that's that's so crowded and eastern I guess that's that's to a tottologist the people out west are

ambitious very often that's a nice quality in people to want to be somebody in this world. Now you were in Denver too, weren't you?

I was in Denver at Alec, the American Legislative and Exchange Council. This is a group of state legislators, mostly conservative, and I was asked

to come out and speak to them. We were doing some work for conservative leaders for education and I moderated a panel of

state legislators who were doing very interesting things in Kentucky and in Florida and in well actually in a lot of different states.

And you know this federal legislation, ESA Every Student Succeed act, may actually be working,

he has something from Washington may actually be working, sending legislation back to the

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