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Oh for the baby, but ahead
of the bold. You know, a

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wise man once said to me that
lies circle the globe before truth can take

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its first step. Some in the
media the last few hours has been tying

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this tire around the neck of Bill
Sites, claiming that Bill Sites wants to

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eliminate the skirt game in del High
of which yours truly has been a participant

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for many years. So let's go
to the source. Let's go to Bill

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Sits, who's the conscience of the
Ohio House also the House Majority leader about

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the bill. Bill Sites, welcome
again to the Bill Cunningham Show. And

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first of all, at the top, let's talk about your efforts, according

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to some to ban the skirt game. Can you talk to the ridiculousness of

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that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, it's an absurd proposition.

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It's categorically false. This is a
new bill that has been introduced by two

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of my colleagues, one of whom
is a very good attorney from Toledo,

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the other of whom is a very
accomplished businesswoman from Salina, Ohio, and

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it has forty three co sponsors along
with the two main sponsors. Both the

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main sponsors and our House legal counsels
have assured me before I signed on as

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a co sponsor that in no way
does this prohibit things like the skirt game

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or even the drag queens reading to
the little kids in the libraries. Rather,

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this only applies in the event that
the performance is of material that are

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harmful to miners or obscene, both
defined in current Ohio law, which has

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long been upheld as constitutional, and
that the performance appeals to the purious interests,

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which, as you know, willie
as the standard of Miller Versus California

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and a long line of US Supreme
Court cases about when the state may act

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to restrict adult oriented entertainment. And
I know this to be true because in

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two thousand and six, Lou Blessing
and I worked on a bill that came

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over from the Ohio Senate was plainly
unconstitutional. We changed it to make it

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constitutional, so a lot of these
definitions that are in current law were put

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there. Back in two thousand and
six, the strip clubs asked us to

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please pass the bill in the form
the Senate sent it over, so they

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could run off to court and get
it and joined. But Lou and I

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said, we have too much professional
pride for that, so we changed it.

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It was passed in revised form.
It's been held constitutional. This bill

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simply builds off those definitions, and
in no way, shape or form does

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it in any way sanction or criminalize
the venerable old skirt game, which I've

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witnessed myself, or even drag queens
reading to the kids in the library.

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Men can dress up as women,
women can us up as man. That's

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not prohibited in any way, shape
or formed by the bill. It doesn't

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criminalize the production of Missus, Doubtfire
or any of these other movies that have

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featured performers in drag. We are
talking about performance that is obscene, or

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that involves material harmful to miners,
or that appeals to the purient interest,

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and in those circumstances, just as
we require adult strip clubs to have a

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license from the state and to restrict
admission to people eighteen and over, so

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also we are going to say that
these sexualized obscene performances must be done in

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an adult established license environment where children
are not permitted in That's all this bill

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does. Frankly, I'm not sure
it does all that much, because if

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the performance is obscene, we can
probably go after it under current law without

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requiring that they get a license.
But this bill, the bill sponsors,

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believe it's important to shield our young
people from overly sexualized performances. Where these

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folks are running around waving giant salluses
in the air, some of them are

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going topless. That's the kind of
stuff that this bill seeks to regulate through

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saying that you have to do that
in an adult entertainment establishment like a strip

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club, and children under eighteen are
not permitted. In no way does it

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have a damn thing to do with
a skirt game or missus doubtfire or any

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of the other nonsense that the organized
Left is promoting on their blogs today.

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And the sadness is legitimate. Media
outlets want to mislead the easily misled.

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You create this diatribe that somehow the
skirt game or even a drag queen and

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a library reading to kids is somehow
prohibited but by the stick in the mud

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bill sites types. And so now
we have media outlets calling the head of

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the skirt game talking about this as
ridiculous. I've business skirt games. Are

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they sexualized presentations? No? Are
they obscene? By definition? They're fun.

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Is literally it's got nothing to do
with it. But see that's not

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a story. And this relates to
what's going to happen on January. On

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August the sixth, So this is
part of the effort by the media August

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eighth, This is part of the
efforts by the Media's great this background that

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the moral Hezbollah are people like Bill
Sites that want to criminalize put in prison

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the first baseman at the skirt game. And so what you just said is

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reasonable, but that's that that couldn't
excite people. So you understand the game

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the media plays well, I do. And and you know what disappoints me

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is they go running off half cocked
with this story without ever having actually read

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the bill. They also don't realize
that only about fifteen percent of all the

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bills that are ever introduced to become
law, and that bills before they are

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ever passed, go through a long
series of committee hearings and vetting and amendments.

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And that's why I told the story
about the two thousand and six stip

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Club Bill. When that bill came
over from the Senate, it was an

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unconstitutional mess. And lu Blessing,
you remember, good old Lue Blessing lou

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and I were on the committee that
was assigned that bill, and we changed

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it and we made it constitutional.
And the strip clubs were very unhappy with

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us, because they wanted the bill
pass just in the form that the Senate

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pass it so they could get it
declared unconstitutional. We didn't do that.

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And in this case, the bill
sponsors have worked very carefully with our House

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Legal Counsel to distinguish what's in this
bill from similar bills that overreached and were

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declared unconstitutional in Tennessee, in Arkansas, and possibly Florida. We learned from

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the mistakes made in other states.
We craft the bill so as to meet

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these constitutional objections, and that's what
we do. That's what I've done.

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And you know, anybody in the
adult entertainment business knows that I was the

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one defending their First Amendment right,
but regulating it to the extent we could,

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just to the extent of obscene material, material harmful to miners, material

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that appeals to the prairie and interest. You and I as lawyers know that

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those of illegal standards, and we
have to be very sure that we have

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defined those we do in current law. This bill simply builds on those current

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definitions that have passed constitutional muster time
and again, no story there, there

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is there, no exploritation, well
there and there. Yeah, well well

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you know, I mean it's it
really is kind of a shame. And

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like I say, they're jumping on
this bill right out of the gate to

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make some sort of a statement.
But the fact of the matter is this

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bill. Before I signed up for
it, I said, oh my god,

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what are we doing this for?
But I talked to both the sponsors

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and our House legal counsel, and
I was absolutely assured by all of them.

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This does not criminalize cross dressing.
It does not prohibit the gay drag

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queens, readings of the kids in
the library. Certainly, nobody even thought

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about the start game down here.
That's that's not even remotely what this was

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about. Okay, well that's not
a news story, so you got to

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make things up. Secondly, I
know who he is. John Legend came

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to a Cincinnati today. John Legend
is a clown. Nonetheless, he had

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two hundred people around him at the
Board of Elections saying that the vote August

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eighth is about freedom of speech,
that the Republicans don't want you at freedom

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of speech the Republicans on August eighth
to want to have one man, one

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vote that somehow you've lost democracy.
I see signs around Madeera that says democracies

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on the ballot. Vote no on
August eighth, to vote yes in November.

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Here we go. Can you give
us a synopsis as to why John

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Legend talking about the First Amendment and
talking about women's rights and democracies on the

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ballot one man, one vote is
a bunch of bovine scatology. Well,

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well, well it is. Thirty
two states in this country do not allow

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any citizen initiated constitutional amenders, thirty
two of the fifty. Of the remaining

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eighteen, many of them do have
supermajority requirements for approval of citizen initiated constitutional

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amendments, including for example, Florida
is it's a sixty percent threshold. The

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United States Constitution requires a two thirds
vote of both the US House and Senate

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and then seventy five percent, not
sixty percent, seventy five percent of the

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states to ratify that constitutional nument.
That's what Madison and Hamilton and Jefferson devised

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when they came up with our constitution. It served the test of time over

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two ur and forty seven years.
I want to be like Madison and Hamilton

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and Jefferson. The Democrats don't want
an Issue one to pass. They haven't

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been successful in electing any statewide officials
in a long time. We have supermajorities

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in the Ohio House and Senate as
Republicans, So the only way they can

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push their leftist agenda is by trying
to hoodwink the gullible public into passing all

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kinds of leftist initiatives at the polls. And that's what we're trying to cut

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off at the path with this U
one. It's true to the founders,

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it's true to what the majority of
states in this country already do. And

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frankly, you know, I agree
that timing is less than ideal. But

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at the same time, I'm going
to vote yes. My guest is most

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Republicans will vote yes, most Democrats
will vote no, and the battle,

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as always, will be over the
independent voters. But that's really what Issue

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one is all about. And I
don't know who died and make John Legend

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a constitutional expert, you know,
but I guess people can listen to him

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if they want to. But it's
really not nearly as egregious as the organized

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left is making it out to see. So right now, there's thirty two

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states that have none of the constitutional
initiative. That's sixty four percent of the

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states have none of it. And
the states that do have it require shall

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I use the term a supermajority,
because there's not many of them do how

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many do it? I said,
many of those eighteen have some kind of

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supermajority requires. So there at fifty
five percent, summer at sixty some require

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it to pass on two successive elections. That's another way to make sure we're

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not doing things in haste and stupid. So, so you know this is

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nothing radical. Ohio put this fifty
percent plus one provision in its constitution back

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in nineteen twelve. That was the
era of Woodrow Wilson progressivism. It was

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a very bad era in the American
history. It was the birth of the

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organized liberal group. And people say, well, we've had it since nineteen

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twelve. Well, I would submit, we made a mistake in nineteen twelve,

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and we're trying to correct them.
Well, plus e versus Ferguson was

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in eighteen ninety six, and that
was a mistake. We're trying to correct.

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So the great majority of states have
either no constitutional mission in process,

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or if they have one, it's
much more than fifty percent. But democracy's

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on the ballot. It's one man, one vote, no other ones.

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If you're stupid, if you're really
stupid, vote with Planned Parenthood, which

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is you know, well, yeah, yeah, if you're really stupid,

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you're going to vote with Planned parenthood. If you're really stupid, you're gonna

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believe this new bill is all about
shutting down the skirt game. So they're

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counting on a gullible public to believe
the breathless news stories that are rarely grounded

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in any facts whatsoever, written and
spoken just to gin up a fury over

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nothing. And you know, I'm
not even the main sponsor of this bill,

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but I'm telling you, as a
lawyer of over forty years standing,

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been in the best lawyers in America
for fifteen or more years, I'm telling

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you I've done my homework, and
the bill we're talking about is in no

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way, shape or form anywhere near
what is being breathlessly reported. And so

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my friends who dress up for the
skirt game can go about their business free,

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clear and unencumbered. Unworried by what
happens when this bill passes, they'll

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still be able to have their funding
games over there at Delhide Park. So

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if the skirt game begins, topless
start having failing symbols running around the basis,

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if they're gyrating and public halfmaking,
if there's kids present, that would

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be different. They might have a
problem. It would be different. But

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that's not the third game that I've
witnessed. It's it's just a bunch of

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guys with mustaches and beards, dressed
in dresses that are more befitting for your

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grandma. And it's funny, and
they have still fitting wigs on, and

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and it's a it's it's meant to
be a parody and a fun thing,

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and it is a fun thing.
So nobody is trying to shut that down

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no way, shape or form.
See, reality is not a news story,

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though, isn't. I guess not. It's it's it's really enough to

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make you shake your head about what
happened to real journalism in the United States.

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Well, thank god John Legend has
come to town to talk about the

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constitutional issues relative to State Issue one. I'm glad John Legend appeared and that

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that dumb ass. I mean,
it's unbelievable. People lap this up like

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a cat with milk, and I
guess we get We get the government we

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deserve, we get the news media
we deserve, and that worries me.

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Well, you know, I'm a
believer in the idea that we elect elected

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representatives to the House and the Senate
and the governor, and we will determine

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what are the appropriate laws, and
if you don't like it, you can

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vote us out. That is the
way the republic was set up. We

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never intended to have all this so
called direct democracy. Some would call it

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mobocracy because the public lacks the ability
to really comprehend some of the finer ins

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and outs of constitutional and statutory law, and they'll be swayed by multimillion dollar

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ad campaigns. And I'll be the
first to admit there's plenty of hyperbole on

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both sides of issue one, but
I'm just giving you the fact. Thirty

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two states don't allow this at all. A substantial number of the renting states

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have supermajority requirements. Constitution should not
be easy to amend. It requires a

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lot of sober deliberation before you decide
to mess with your founding document, Bill

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Sites, you're making too much sense
to make news. Well, all we

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can do is try Bill and put
it out there for good people like you

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that are willing to entertain a dispassionate, sober view of the situation. Bill

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Sites, the truth will set us
all free. So many are enslaved.

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Maybe, Bill Sites, thank you
for setting the record straight this afternoon on

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the back Cunningham Show. Thank you, Bill, good deal, Thanks Bill,

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yeahye. That will not make the
news. Two twenty seven, Bill

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Cunningham News Radio seven hundred WLW The
Reads take on the Arizona Diamondbacks in a

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three game series July twenty first through
the twenty third on Saturday July twenty second, Fans twenty