 Well, this all seems a little formal here this morning, standing at the podium above the riser. But I think we're doing this being webcast. So let me welcome you all. I am John Podesta, the president of the Center for American Progress. And I want to welcome and thank you for coming. We got a terrific bunch of people here today. We're glad to play host to today's law.gov conference. And many thanks to one of Capstar alumni, Carl Malamud, for his role in organizing not only this event, but the law.gov project, as well as for his dedication to the important issues we'll be discussing today. He's really spent an entire career doing it. We thank him for all the work that he's done. I also want to thank all of the participants and panelists for taking the time to come share their thoughts with us. Carl's going to introduce law.gov in more detail. But at heart, what it's about is making all primary legal materials in the United States more readily available from water districts, from counties, from cities, from states, all the way up to the three branches of the federal government. It isn't about building the ultimate website or putting Westlaw out of business. What law.gov aims to achieve is changing how governmental bodies that make the law present their work product, pushing government to meet the basic requirement that the public has right to know the law means that it has easy access to the work product of government officials making the law. Despite the first principle that there is no copyright on the law, today we'll talk about lots of examples of parts of government that store their materials behind substantial access charges or assert copyright or give an exclusive right to publish to one form or another. We'll also hear lots of examples of government bodies that do it right, states that publish their own final court opinions, moves by the federal government to release important primary legal materials such as the federal register and the amazing innovation that flows when that happens, when those materials are made publicly available. We have some of the countries leading experts on many of these subjects here in the room, but I want to take a step back to talk about one big reason why this is so important. One of Abraham Lincoln's first speeches in 1838 was an address to the young men's lyceum of Springfield, Illinois. And he was inspired by the lynching of a young black man in St. Louis that occurred a few weeks before. He recognized at that point in the late 1830s the growing divisions that were developing between the north, the south, the east, and the west over the issue of slavery and the role of the federal government. He feared, and quite presciently so, that mob rule and mass hatred would overwhelm the rule of law and engulf the country in chaos. Lincoln's remedy for such violence was respect for the rule of law. He spoke of an inherent contradiction he witnessed in the American psyche that Americans were strongly attached to their system of government and that they would suffer much to protect it, yet notwithstanding this allegiance, he saw the laws of the land continually despised and disregarded. Law, he said, should be our political religion. Let every man remember that to violate the laws to trample on the blood of his father and to tear the character of his own and his children's liberty. 100 years after Lincoln's death, the United States was again dangerously divided by deep splits, tremendous fear and anger, violence, gridlocking government and people who lost belief in their government's ability to do good. But the rule of law, again, prevailed in liberty, opportunity, and equality were expanded for all Americans. These impulses continue to reemerge with varying degrees of intensity and I think have done so again actually today, given that we are in a period of great change. And in some quarters, they're having, what I would describe as a toxic effect on the tenor of our national conversation, there are hard things that this country needs to accomplish, many of which President Obama has put on his agenda, reform of our financial system, how we deliver healthcare in this country, addressing energy policy and climate change. But there are some very obvious things that we can do that can help change the tone of the debate and involve citizens more broadly in a constructive dialogue and indeed in the workings of government. Our nation depends upon robust and free access to information, not simply so that we can cast our votes wisely, but also said that our leaders make wiser, more ethical decisions. So it is important that we ask whether our government is doing everything it can to foster open and transparent government. The president's open government directives are examples of a basic idea that can have genuine impact. We've been seeing some of the effects of government work already. We can see it in the agencies where computer people and new media staffers have become tremendously energized. We can see it in the nonprofits and new companies that have begun to exploit new government data. And we're seeing it in blockbuster conferences devoted to topics like government 2.0. We'll hear from a lot of those people today, including administration officials who were responsible for overseeing many of these open government initiatives. Law.gov, quite frankly, is even more ambitious. It goes beyond the federal government and in particular the executive branch in order to establish a national policy that says if it's the law, it needs to be accessible. The basic principle will need not only the support of the executive branch of the federal government, but also the support of Congress, the judicial conference, and ultimately the tens of thousands of governmental jurisdictions throughout our country. Law.gov started from the ground up with hundreds of participants in 15 workshops. It has been a totally non-partisan effort and has spanned left and right. In May, Eugene Meyer of the Federal Society spoke at a Law.gov event on the Hill. And today we're gonna hear later from Carolyn Fredrickson of the American Constitution Society speaking on the same topic. I suspect Carolyn and Eugene will be in violent agreement, which may be a rarity, and likewise the CEO of Lexis Nexus, who will be speaking this afternoon, will be in basic agreement with free law pioneers like our first speaker this morning, Professor Peter Martin of Cornell who created the first free law site in 1992. I'll close just by re-emphasizing that there's nothing more fundamental in our society and our system of government than the rules that protect it. Law.gov has shown us that there are many places we can do much better when it comes to how we tell citizens and lawyers what the rules of the road are. I'm glad that today we'll hear from so many phenomenal minds on just how we can do that. Thank you all again for coming and for taking part in this dialogue and the seminar. So Carl, now the podium is yours to get to it in depth. Thank you.