Well, whiskey coming fame my paynys right, Oh whiskey, don't you let
me? From power Line blog dot com and produced by Ricochet dot Com,
this is the three Whiskey Happy Hour with your bartenders Steve Hayward, John You,
and power Lines International Woman of Mystery Lucretia. Have you gotta giving?
Let that whiskey float when you're being in love down in loon? Guys?
Was I ever write in my New Year's Predictions for twenty twenty four claudey kay
just resigned? You know I have to give it to you. John.
It kills me to do this. I'm sure it kills Lucreese even more.
But you were right, and it took less than a week for it to
come true. But maybe for listeners who missed last week or who have forgotten
already like I do. Here's what John said last week, just for the
record. So I mean maybe my my my low probability prediction is that all
of the university presidents who testified before Congress and that hearing will be relieved of
office by the end of the year, even if they're not saying so.
So I would expect clauding gay Gosh she looks like she's going down. But
I think also the president of MIT will have to leave in the end too.
I think I do think we have had a turning point in woke ink
and even if the even if they're not, I think I think Clauding Gay
would have been gone by now, except the Penn president resigned and so they
couldn't force her out right away. So I think they're going to have a
decent interval, and the same for the MIT president too. So there you
go, John, take your bows. Now that's the last, the last
place we're going to be nice to tonight, Right, Lucretia, I thought
you were going to say the last time you'll ever be right. I know,
Well, I'm keeping track because I know if any your crazy predictions come
true, I will have to confess my predictions down before last year, John,
remember, but you're right. Yeah. So this is uh John you
if you didn't know already, And this is the three Whiskey Happy Hour Harvard
President Edition, and I'm joined as always by uh Steve Hayward and Lucretia,
the International Woman of Mystery. How are you guys doing tonight? Happy?
We didn't go to Harvard? I see John, Are you actually drinking lefroy
tonight? John? Along with me? I am, I felt everybody.
I felt so bad about the beating that Steve takes regularly that I actually found
an old bottle of Freud unopened so you can hear it opening it for the
first time ever. Smell like a cigarettes in an ash tray. We go
again. Is that what it's like to you? Oh? God, it
does have a little gasoline smell to it. Oh, guys are terrible,
all right? Wow? Wow, it really does have a strong paty taste
to it. It does taste like moss. But you know what it makes.
What it really works well is if you don't have any of that artificial
smoke flavoring for your barbecued ribs, you pour some of the froug in and
it works. It is everywhere I have to put up with at this show,
all right. I also didn't realize that Steve was drinking the whiskey approved
by the Prince of Whales. I assume embarrassed. Well, William is the
Prince of Wales now and he's by this bottel is old enough. It was
pre Charles. It's also Charles's favorite with whiskey. Yeah, that's what I
mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And he's a knit whin. I
know what you guys, Yeah, you weren't talking about the guy who died
Philip. You were talking about Charles Charles. Yeah, okay, you yeah,
he's a netwit. Yeah, I know. There's no taste in anything,
including women. I have an architecture Oh yeah, yeah, no,
no, he said it was the one thing Rob's favorite tradition. Yeah yeah,
and yeah classic. Let me say something about modern architecture done more to
destroy beauty in Europe than the Blitzkrieg or something. Yeah, you know,
maybe it's a stop clock being right twice a day, but still we got
to give him something. God give me Steve. What are you drinking?
Oh, same court, the same thing I'm drinking drinking Yeah yeah yeah,
and the cre what are you drinking? I am drinking the rest of the
bottle of the fifteen year old Glen Fintag. But my son was trying to
talk me into drinking a bottle of whiskey we got last week by WoT do
you guys know who? From Black black Hawk down, The actual guy,
not the actor, has his own whiskey and his own cigars, his own
Cuban cigars, of which there's only like one hundred left to be bought,
and I think we got a dozen of them. I should also just know
for the listeners before we get into the rest of the edition, that there
should be a photo being hosted along with the podcast of all three of us
with weapons, and as usual. The only reason Steve and I did it
is because Lucretia goaded us into it by showing off her guns, which he's
doing right now, only one. It's a Nighthog custom. Anyway, enough
of that, it just happened to be here, so I'm glad to say,
John, the surprise to me is how quickly to get back on our
thread, how quickly Claudine Gay's determination occurred. I thought it would be dragged
out a while for a whole bunch of reasons. But I think that's the
only place where John might be a little I don't want to say he was
off on his prediction. I think he thought that the other issues plaguing her
would would be her downfall. But what actually happened, if you'll recall,
is that dozens more instances of her plagiarism came out, and that you know,
there was really nothing they could do. Not that John was wrong in
any way, shape or for medn't think you even you thought she was capable
of that much plagiarism. And yeah, fifty fifty counts given how says someone
I heard someone says, given this, she only had eleven articles, that's
a lot of plagiarism per page. Well, yeah, the my favorite of
the you know, of course, a torrent of great memes. My favorite
one late in the week was the one the picture of Martin Luther King out
of his great speech before in Washington and San Claudine Gay was hired for the
color of her skin and fired for the content of her character. And I
thought, boom, that's what is really good, right, because she was
utterly intransigent, and you know, between her resignation statement and her New York
Times ed, she's utterly unrepentant. It's all right, let me, yeah,
go ahead of it. Let me read you a few choice quotes from
her New York Times op ed explaining her resignation, just to get your juices
flowing. So first, she said she hoped that by stepping down, she
would deny demagogues the opportunity to further weaponize her presidency in their campaign to undermine
the ideals have animated Harvard since its founding excellence, openness, independence, truth.
That's one, And she said she this part. I think she got
right. The campaign against her was about more than one university and one leader.
They are merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith
and pillars of American society. Campaigns of this kind often start with a tax
on education and expertise, because these are the tools that best equipped communities to
see through propaganda. Y She compared herself to other trusted institutions being tacked like
Lucusha, like this, public health agencies and news organizations, which are also
sol falling victim, she says, to coordinated attempts to undermine their legitimacy and
ruin their leader's credibility. Yeah. So, so, Steve, what hold
on? You just disappeared? Or did I disappear? Sorry? Steve?
What do you think about it? Yeah? You commute yourself for second?
John, Well, so I think we're missing a bigger picture here. I
guess my headline would be and I've got to work as an article. Is
that what this has exposed and her her utter lack of self awareness about how
all these institutions have brought this on themselves is what I'm now calling the metaphor
is it's the it's the the universities have autoimmune an autoimmune disease right there,
destroying themselves within and don't see it, and so on the business it was,
let's look at everybody, and there's a lot of nervousness. And you
know, apparently a couple of conservatives have been called out for some plagiarism,
and Bill Lackman's wife, instead of obfuscating, said, yep, I didn't
properly cite somebody, and I was a mistake, and I apologize for it.
No obfuscation in dancing around like gated. But I think the broader story
is someone said, look, cluting gay may have copied some language, but
she didn't borrow anybody's ideas, and I thought she doesn't have any Well that's
that's a variation of my point, which is when everyone has the same idea,
you can't steal them, right, And so I actually think the broader
plagiarism quote unquote scandal in a broader sense is that, Well, let me
give you one example. I always note about how the all the declarations of
diversity equity inclusion they sound the same. Are they plagiarizing? No, it's
because it's become a catechism, like the nice seeing creed. Diversity equity inclusion
has replaced the Father's son in the Holy Spirit, and nobody get used,
as you of plagiarism for saying the Lord's prayer correct. But that's a different
context. That's about worship and not about you know, original knowledge and ripes.
I actually think they're the same context in this case, do you,
Well? Maybe so. But I remember a year or two ago when there
had been a shooting at Michigan State or somewhere, and the DEI office at
Vanderbilt University put out a public statement of condolence and support, and it turned
out had written by Chat Gpt. And I'm wondering, first of all,
were they so illiterate and competent they couldn't write their own original statement? Well,
they either would have copied someone else's or just have Chatt Gpt do it.
And they all sound alike. The more serious version of that is is
that all of the main ideas are all the same idea. It's all you
know, sex, race, suppression. So many of the job ads in
for the social sciences and humanity say, we want someone who's going to work
especially on race, racism, white supremacy, postcolonial studies. They all want
people cut from the same mode and the mode mold and the same ideology.
So I think if you really do a plagiarism screen, you're going to find
lots and lots of copying, even if the language is different. And at
that point it becomes even more embarrassing than simply not giving proper attribution to somebody
so much shadow immune disease. Yeah, Sean that in some ways the deeper
issue though, the lack of self awareness. One of you said that,
you know, it is astounding that they are so that they appear to be
so unaware of how incredibly hypocritical, etcetera, etcetera. They sound. But
last time, I know, we talked quite a bit about Larry Summers.
The one we didn't talk about was Charles Freed, and it reminded me of
my last encounter with Charles Freed. He came to the law school and law
school asked me to be on a panel with him, you know, and
so the guy he was Solicitor General under Reagan, right, that was a
big thing. So this was this was actually in twenty twelve, I want
to say, March, before the before the Obamacare decision came out, the
Civilius and if I versus Sivilius, and so there was some you know,
questions and speculation about how the Court would decide, and Charles Freed gave this
moronic, idiotics incredibly stupendously stupid statement about how we expected that a couple of
the justices on the Court to take this conservative approach and overturn it based upon
the commerce clause blah blah blah blah blah, but that this person and this
person were you know, I think it was Kennedy and Roberts of course were
unknowns, so we didn't know how they were going to vote. And he
walked talked on and on and on about how partisan hackery this was on the
part of the Supreme Court, and did this for a while, and finally
when he stopped talking, I said, really interesting to me that never once
did you mention the fact that the at the time, for liberal hacks on
the Supreme Court, nobody questions which way they're going to vote, And you
don't find any problem with that, You supposed conservative Republican can only find it
in your heart to criticize the possibility that maybe the principal side on the right
on the court might actually act in a principled way. And he sat there.
He really didn't know what to say, because it never occurred to him
to criticize the liberals on the court for being liberals the conservatives for not being
more bipartisan. Yeah, so the reason I mentioned sorry, he's the one
who came out and said that he would take these accusations of pilagiarism more seriously
if they weren't part of a right wing propaganda smear. In other words,
I won't I don't consider them a problem because the people accusing her of them
are conservatives, right wing conservatives, is what he said. Can I add
a point about Go ahead, Steve, this is a great example, or
at least a great example of my autoimmune disease analogy. Just in the last
forty eight hours, a new controversy is erupted at Harvard. Apparently they have
something I think it's called the open enrollment Extension School where anybody can apply or
it's sort of easy to sign up for the school and you can get a
master's. Was a great from Harvard in certain subjects. Now apparently once you're
there they flunk you out of you're no good. It's not unusual. I'm
quite familiar with the adult education program the University of Chicago has had for decades.
Harry Jaffa taught in that as a graduate student or a young professor in
the late forties in Chicago. Daniel Allen taught in it when she was at
Chicago twenty years ago. But the problem is, Chris Rufo got a degree
through that extension program at Harvard. The Harvard people are they're curious about this.
They're saying, well, it's not really Harvard. I mean it's not
really you know, that's not a real Harvard degree. And apparently faculty who
teach it now at each other's throats at Harvard saying, wait a minute,
so serious program, don't be running down. So the point is you're not
having facts at Harvard attacking each other because participated in one of their programs.
As a Harvard graduate myself, we can all agree that the worst school of
all is not the extension school, of course, it's the education school of
course. Right, The school that's probably done the most damaged for a degree
candidate in the history of Western civilization. I actually be a teacher's school wins
that one Harvard's Piker compared, but they're still bad. I'll agree with that.
But but Lucretia, you were getting onto the deeper message before you made
your point about how this Yes, sorry, I really made me. What's
your deeper? What's your deep? The deeper point is that gay I mean,
I would be embarrassed to have said her resignation statement, or to have
written that piece in the New York Times. I would be so embarrassed to
know the lack of self awareness. There has to be some self awareness there.
There has to be some idea that she is unqualified for the job in
her own mind, unqualified for the job. She was always unqualified for the
job. She got the job because she's black, no end and doing the
right kind of scholarship, even if it's lousy, third rate scholarship that's mostly
plagiarized. She had to have a sense of that, and yet she could
come out and make those in your face. I don't even know how to
describe them statements or write the piece in the New York Times. Why Because
people like Charles Freed and Larry Summers and others who are bipartisan or at the
very least, you know, not looked upon totally askance by the right have
come out and supported her, along with of course, the entire faculty at
Harvard and the Harvard Corporation. What about the Harvard overseers? What do they
have to say about her? So let me can I jump out? Sorry,
that was supposed to be a joke. You guys are supposed to laugh?
Well, right, well, can I can I throw in a little?
This goes way back to my college years when I was actually a cub
reporter for the student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, and I used to cover
her from time to time. The Harvard Corporation and Harvard has this archaic,
archaic system of self governance. There's no board of trustees who are selected by
say, legislature or by alumni. They're governed by this mysterious thing called the
Harvard Corporation, which is this self perpetuating body where the new members are just
chosen by the existing members. Where you know, you can get a group
of people who seem so out of their depth they thought Claudie Gay would make
a great president and stood by her after the testimony she gave before Congress then,
and I was laughing about Lucretia's mention of the Harvard Overseers is that there
is this body called the Harvard Board of Overseers, which I think is really
nothing more than a Harvard alumni popularity contest. So as alumni, you get
to vote on these but they have no power. So you really didn't have
to recuse herself. As what you're saying, I mean she was on the
Board of Overseers. It is you're got some position at Harvard, but you
don't actually have any power. You have no authority to make any decisions on
the Board of Overseers. Corporation is the And in fact, I don't know
if you saw, but mister Ackman, who's been the one who you know,
the financier, has been attacking Harvard and Penn and mit Is, called
for the Harvard Corporation to be changed and for the state of Massachusetts to intervene.
I'm not this question. What do you think about the future, What
does this mean for a future of higher education? Do you think this is
going to produce good things? Or maybe it'll make well make things worse.
Yeah, I don't know how much longer people like Charles Freed and others can
keep up that that, you know, the defense that stands on nothing.
I mean, wouldn't you be embarrassed as someone who had been a former solicitor
general actually to make the argument that I don't care what's true, it's not
true, or it doesn't matter if it is true because the claim is being
made by somebody with a political position. I mean, and that guy was
solicitor general of the United States. That is what the solicitor general does.
That's what the solicitor general does. Actually, his brain has been freed.
Okay, Sorry, what about you? What about your thoughts about that?
John, You would at least have some self sorry before you went. You
would have some self awareness about that. You might make that argument as a
lawyer, but you would know that outside of court of law would make you
look like an idiot, right, I mean, I actually think putting but
putting aside the the solicitor general part. As a good professor, you don't
you know, we've all taught, and we've taught in the classroom together.
We don't denigrate an idea because of the source of the identity of the person
who makes it and right. But you recall that's also what Claudine Gay did
where I think in a resignation letter she said that these attacks were motivated by
racism. She had lot of people have been saying. But remember he said
he couldn't take them seriously, no matter what the truth about them came out
to be, because they were initiated by a right wink of all against her.
Yeah, I think, well, yeah, I think he Well,
maybe he's not sufficiently embarrassed. What I think, John, to your question,
is I mean, look, last week I made the case that maybe
this is a big turning point, and you know, I said, it's
nineteen fifty four all over again, just to Lacretia. I don't know.
I could see things getting worse. I do think, narrowly speaking, though,
even Harvard has to see that whatever their governance structure is, however their
board is composed, it has to change for this reason. By all accounts
that I think are true, Penny Pritzker became the chair of the Harbor l
Well, no, that's her. Well, brother, I forget it's not
her. Her husband's not the governor. Yes, I thought it was his
son. Well, I'm not quite sure that there's a whole lot of Printzkers.
The point is way too many, obviously. Yees. Well, I
actually I actually know the one Printzker who's next generation, who's descents for the
rest of the family. But never mind that she's terrific. But she,
by all accounts, she bought her position. She made something like one hundred
million dollars donation to Harvard and wanted to be on the Harvard Corporation. She
became the chair, She was the driving force behind appointing Gay to be the
president. I've got to think that elite universities are going to say, we
can't have that kind of thing happening. We have to have a serious board.
And even if the board is Larry Summers and you know, eminent liberals,
at least they are people who aren't in political hacks, who aren't going
by a partisan political agenda, who aren't lightweights. And if they don't figure
at least that out, then there isn't much hope. Okay, take it
back, it is your brother. Yes, you're right, brother, Penny
Prisker's younger brother. But you know she's been in the Obama cabinet. Right,
and you know we called a ringing endorsement. I know, Secretary of
Commerce one of those important jobs. Right. I'm sure she bought that one
too through generous donations to the Obamas. Right, and your family is from
Chicago. I'm sure they supported Obama for years and years before you know it's
worked. Gonna mention just briefly. The Apartment of Commerce, I think was
a creation of Herbert Hoover. He was the first Secretary of Commerce. I
mean he had created but and periodically Republicans have said in the nineties, and
I think maybe Reagan said, what abolish this department? And hasn't happened,
because what do they really do? We need a Department of co much we
have always regulatory agencies. And I had a good friend it was the point
into a fairly senior position in the Department of Commerce under George W. Bush,
and I came to Washington and he took me to lunch and said,
do you have any ideas of what we ought to be doing? Because I
don't even know what we're doing or why we exist that we are, right,
So let me let me ask Lucretia this because there have been a number
of stories by newspapers about how this is just the beginning of a conservative effort
to reform universities. Who've had Christopher Ruffo, you know, at the Manhattan
Institute, who has who did publish a number of the stories outing the plagiarism
accusations. Although they had been on professor blogs basically, right, they've been
on blogs of political scientists like your crowd, have some blogs about jobs and
so on. And this has been in the rumor mill for many, many
years apparently. And then there's stories about how the Heritage Foundation is going to
start to try to lead an effort to try to get at at least red
state governors and legislatures to take this opportunity to try to undo wokeism, to
uproot the dei bureaucracies at their universities. What do you think of that,
Lucretia. Do you think there's any hope of this working? Do you think
that the Harvard right, the Harvard resignation is just the beginning of a conservative
counter revolution at universities. So if you look at it the way you described
it, John, you know, sort of the big picture, seeing what's
coming into much more mainstream in the media and so on, as opposed to
on those obscure political blogs Steve and I like to pay attention to. You
might think so, But all I can do is from kind of an anecdotal
point of view, which is to say that in Arizona, our governing board
is actually, you know, a better one, what a little bit more
like what Steve described a governing bo or should be. It's appointed by this
a governor, and you know this and that, and you know they're made
up of people that not that people who gave huge amounts of money, but
have some reason to be in a position of power over the universities in Arizona.
One of the things that they did after the Harvard case was to they
stop the use of diversity statements. They stopped the use of diversity in any
kind of hiring action. So the stupid diversity questions we used to have to
ask were no longer allowed to. They really pushed hard to get rid of
the overt expression of the DEI regime that much, I mean from the point
of view and not getting deep down into things. They don't do that,
but they did sort of put out a statement that no more, no more
diversity as a condition for getting or keeping a job, all right, immediately,
at least at my university, you know, backroom deals are being done,
Things are being done behind paywalls or you know, behind the stuff that's
only available to people in the university with access inside the intranet and so on,
and so they're still managing to do a whole lot of what they always
used to do, even though Arizona's had, you know, much more restrictive
laws in that regard for a long time than other places have. So my
guess is it's going to take a really long time because it's not Harvard might
be leading this, and Harvard might be so awful that they can push someone
as incompetent as Clouding Gay up as their president, you know, because of
their standing in higher education. That standing has fallen. But it's everywhere.
There are very few universities that are not just absolutely built entirely upon the die
structure these days. That I think is going to be very hard to get
rid of because you end up with that kind of I'm not coming up with
the right word to describe it. You guys called it a lack of self
awareness. These are not people who are playing a game and playing with a
trend. They believe that stuff in their heart of hearts. They do not
Sorry, I almost lost it there. They do not question that diversity is
our strengths. They do not question that inclusivity means that everybody should have a
seat at the table, and that equity means we need to do what's necessary
to make sure when they come to the table they're all now in in exactly
the same place, and so meritocracy's gone and slipping away, not coming back.
That's what I see, And maybe I'm wrong. I'm helping. I'm
wrong, Steve, I'm helping. Your eternal, infernal optimism tells me that
there is a possibility of undoing some of that, but I'm not seeing it
yet. You know, John, I've been looking forward to tonight because I
realized that there's several places where I me may take a harder line than lucretia,
which is hard to do. So well, this is this is one
of them. I think I think you actually understate how in city is the
de I people are. It's not just that therefore diversities are strength and other
superficial silly bromides like that. A lot of them believe this is a mission
for remedial justice, and so they really do believe the Candy's line that the
remedy for past discrimination is present discrimination. They're most of them disguise it better
than Kennedy does. But uh, you know, you'd think right now that
the de I people would be hunkering down in their bunkers and hoping the storm
would pass. Uh. On the on New Year's Day, I had a
conversation with a friend of mine who's a conservative at community college one that's actually
in the Central Valley. I'll just say more than that that's run sensibly as
a decent governing board because it's not in you know, Long Beach or somewhere
stupid. Uh. And he said, the de I people are on a
rampage right now. They insisting that someone from the DEI office be on every
department faculty search committee for hiring someone, and the departments have been pushing back
saying no. So they've been demanding, can we have a meeting, a
secret meeting with you to discuss your concerns. And my friend sent back a
note saying what you're asking is a violation of the Brown Act in California and
is illegal. So no, but this has happening, you know, are
they not paying attention to what's happening around the country with the whole DEI edifice
the answers, No, they're barreling ahead, pressing even more aggressively at a
fairly conservative community college. That's a relative term conservative community college, right,
But you know it's I don't think they're deterred at all, because I think
they're true believers of the worst kind. How's that lucretia? Does that mean?
No? No, I don't disagree with it, and I'm not sure
I just didn't express it as well as I probably could have. I'm a
little brain dead after today. That's a whole other story, but I do.
I mean, it's incredibly incredible to me how quickly this insidious sort of
disease became so well entrenched across higher education. I know the reasons for it,
but I still I look at it and it's incredible. Here's the problem.
You have a very difficult time actually criticizing that in most cases, and
if you're just the normal junior faculty member, perhaps trying to get tenure,
you're not ever going to say a word. You're not going to try to
publish in a journal that it's not going to be recognized by your superior faculty
judgers as you know, the appropriate kind of journal. You're not going to
do the wrong kind of research. You're not going to if you're in the
public health realm, question any of the crap that the public health communities putting
out there. Now, it's just on and on and on. It's impossible.
We know what's happened to people of stature who have questioned our friend Amy,
who question what it is that DEI wants to do across the board,
And you're right, Steve, my characterization of it's not very good. It's
not very thorough, it's not very enlightening. But I'm hoping people know what
I mean when I say that it's awful and it's going to be hard until
because you don't see a new generation of people coming into higher education who don't
think that way. If they think that way, they're not going to college.
That's one of the problems. You know, They're not going to go
to Harvard and shake things up. We saw that right before clotting Gay resigned.
A majority of Harvard students thought that this was a right wing attack on
her, and she did nothing wrong. Yeah. Well, I mean,
now some people said that's because they don't want to be called out, but
that's my point. They don't want to be called out and they know they
would be. Well, the Harvard student body, as we know from the
Crimson Annual Survey, is skews heavily, much more left than most campuses.
And that's saying something right. The other thing is you mentioned people not going
to college. I almost hesitate to mention the statistic, but the latest figure
I saw is that a higher percentage of black girls are now going to college
than white men or white boys. And yeah, and of course there's still
because the white population's bigger. Still many more white males in college than black
women. But still the point so a couple questions, where are the black
men? Well, we know the problem there. The second thing is if
that continues, if that persists, and I think it's now a minority of
college age white men are going to college, you know, under fifty percent,
And you know that's just going to make the whole working class laptop class
divide get wider and wider as time goes on, and the left will deserve
it. But that's that's a longer story. But sorry, I don't want
to bring this to death. But the last thing I'd say about what Steve
just said, it's why you're seeing this programs engineering and computer science and physics
especially. They are recruiting and they have the most draconian policies. I won't
mention who it is, but someone I know very well went off to you
know, had the opportunity to be really a star physics student. And after
two weeks, the first two weeks as a freshman in college and being told
we don't want white males here and if you're going to stay here, your
only job is to make sure you help minorities and especially minority women get through
the program. And the next thing, you know, he changed his major
to something stupid because he just didn't want to put up with that. So
even the tendency to want to go to college because you're very smart, you're
very capable, you have real talent in math or science, you're not welcome
anymore. You're just not welcome, and they don't care. The departments don't
care. They're much more likely to brag about the diversity numbers than they are
about their I don't know their full right scholars or whatever. Right, Sorry,
that's all right, say about that. Here's maybe a question for you
that bring this segment to an end with a little bit of the gaming of
New Year's Eve that we did about predictions. Who do you think, Steve?
I ask you first, who do you think Harvard will pick as its
next president? And then I'm not going to ask you who should Harvard pick
because both of you going to say Harvey Mansfield. And while I admit Harvey
Mansfield, like Nixon and sixty eight, is tanned, rested and ready.
Yeah, I don't think it's going to be Harvey Mansfield, you guys.
Or I could go out on a lim and say, nor will it be
any follower of Strauss? I'm afraid to say, oh, that's quite well.
What kind of person do you think Harvard will But you know, I
have two facetious suggestions that aren't entirely facetious because you could see it happening.
The first would be Kamala Harris. There's no chance he's ever plagiarized anybody.
And it would solve ab right, it would solve a problem for President Biden,
right, get rid of his you know, albatross of a running mate
and on. Yeah, there you go. And my second one, Lucreatia's
gonna love it ought to be Jean Kareem Pierre, what's your name? The
press secretary. She'd be perfect for it. By the way, there's a
great story out today that she's not happy because Biden seems to like John Kirby
better. But never mind, that's just gossop. But Steve, both of
your choices are black women. Do you think it has to be a black
woman. No, But but the serious point is if it, I mean,
if Harvard decides that they have to stick with the program, it should
be Daniel Allen, who was interviewed apparently in the first round and dismissed and
she wasn't left enough. You see, she's actually you know, she sounds
fairly conventional, but if you read her closely, tell everybody about Dan Allen
you've mentioned here before. But all right, I mean, I know what
right, she's Bill Allen's daughter. She has her PhD from Princeton in the
classics, which means she learned Greek and Latin because that used to be required
the classics at Princeton, and then got an advanced degree at She was a
Marshall scholar at Cambridge, I think for a couple of years, and then
I think that a second PhD at Harvard under Harvey Mansfield, I think Harvey,
and then taught for a while at University of Chicago, then was brought
to the Princeton at the Institute for Vance Study. She's written several books,
lots of articles. She's written, you know, from a liberal but sensible
liberal point of view. In the Washington Post, She's written some very good
articles recently about a lot. And the point is she wasn't radical enough because
her view of diversity is includes ideological diversity. She said so in some of
her documents at Harvard, and I think she wasn't left enough for them.
I don't think she wants the job, just a sense I have, and
I haven't bugged her about it. I don't know well enough to ask her
point blank and put her on spot, but nott to be her otherwise are
going to take months and months and months the corporation, Steve, When you
say that, I mean again John's question to you was, why does it
have to be a black woman. It doesn't have to be. But I'm
going to say there's someone in their ranks who no one would say as an
affirmative action hire who would be largely reassuring across the spectrum that she's a serious
person and is not given to ideological crusades. It would disappoint the left.
Uh, and that's why would be a great choice. I think that there's
zero chance she's going to be offered it. I doubt she wants it because
she can see how screwed up things are, so I after that I have
I might be a politician, John, I wouldn't be surprised somebody not on
the on the Epstein client list. That's the only disqualified part. Right now,
we'll get to the Epstein list. I know you're I know you're chopping
it the bit to talk about the Epstein list. But we'll get to that
leader in the show. I don't know, John, I'm not good at
these things. I turned down four offers today to apply for presidencies from head
really really from Harvard, so where where. Oh I'm not gonna genuine headhunters
calling me up and man, but no, I've you the listener, you
know, you know the Lucretia fanclub out there. Can you imagine if she
was the president of university? I mean, applications from power line readers would
trimple quite truple the applicant pool for any of these universities right away, especially
when they see the picture of her with the gun. Steve, both of
you, like McLaughlin says, both of you are wrong. They will want
I'm not sure he'll say, yes, here's the I think here's the pick.
Barack Obama. Oh, Barack Obama would be And you talk about a
lack of scholarship. Man, Wow, what is this picture that you've played
here and somebody took it agred graduation? Yeah, listener in a gown looking
but I'm just kidding graduation gown. I know it's an academic gown. We're
gonna put it on the front of the calendar and I will post it on
the show notes. I think unless I edit this out, Okay, Okay,
I'm trying to unshare and oh, there we go. Okay. I
just actually I don't know who to but I wanted to make a comment about
the current interim president, who is a despicable pos by the way, and
was an absolute I mean, I know he's supposedly a little more liberal arts,
et cetera, et cetera, but he was an absolute tyrant, every
bad word you can think of when it came to the whole COVID policies at
Harvard and just awful. And so I don't think it will be him,
but not for that reason. I certainly hope it's not. But I'm I
don't know about Obama. I mean, come on, Obama is such an
intellectual dummy. He's such a lightweight. He taught one class. Hell,
they call him a Connaw lawyer, john law professor, a con law professor.
Do you know what he taught? I believe it was civil rights impact
from the fourteenth Amendment. That was it. He didn't teach the Fourteenth Amendment.
He didn't teach equal protection, due process, and privileges and immunities.
He didn't teach any of those things. He didn't teach sweat versus painter,
go on and on and on. He taught disparate impact for an entire semester.
You know what this from a student who are well, yeah, I
had a friend of mine shootings in Ohio and I'm blanking on his name.
I know him really well. Who was a student of Obama's at Chicago,
And he told the story of one day Obama class said something about disparaging about
you know, the fat cats of the cigars and the road do this and
that, and so the next class, my pal walked in with a big
fat cigar. Boma thought it was funny. Actually, okay, anyway,
that's my problem. Maybe they'll make Michelle. Didn't she go to Princeton and
write a dissertation? Yeah? Wells, as Christopher Hitchins put it, a
thesis written in no known human language. I was sorry enough of that.
I know nothing to offer there. Okay, Well, speaking of plagiarist John,
I mean, yeah, let us move, let me. Why don't
we take a break here for a note from our sponsors, and we'll come
right back with the next big topic on our podcast. Well, this hasn't
been a quiet newsweek or even a quiet news day, because our second topic
is President Biden launched his re election campaign with a speech allegedly from Valley Forge.
So, having grown up fifteen minutes from Valley Forge, I know that
he didn't give it there. He gave even in a town called Bluebell,
Pennsylvania, which is not in Valley Forge. It's actually quite a pleasant little
suburb of Philadelphia, and I have to say, I think Joe Biden missed
the point of Valley Forge, because you might have seen the press reports that
originally the speech was planned for tomorrow, January sixth, the anniversary of the
attack on the Capitol, but they moved it a day forward because apparently there's
going to be a snowstorm in Philadelphia tomorrow. Yeah, that's the point of
Valley Forge, of Washington's doing snowstorms. But anyway, right, but anyway
in the speech, I think maybe I'm wrong, but I think this is
Ben Biden's most direct attack on Donald Trump. He said, for example,
he called Donald Trump an insurrectionist, right, He said that he says he
led insurrectionists to attack the Capitol. He said, Donald Trump's campaign is obsessed
with the past, not the future. He's willing to sacrifice our democracy to
put himself in power. And you might be forgiven if you look through the
speech and did not find any discussion of policy on any major national question.
The entire speech was pitched as this coming election will be a choice between democracy
and authoritarianism, and that Donald Trump is willing to use political violence and use
any means necessary to win back the presidency. In all that standing, between
America and totalitarianism, it seems is Joe Biden. So, Steve, what
was your reaction to the speech? Did you think actually it was rather successful
or did you think it was well written, well deliberable, a good theme
to kick off the campaign on. What would you have told him to say?
Well, that's what I said to you, speaking of plagiarists. As
we go on about that a while, look, first of all, some
quick points. One is you're absolutely right he missed a chance for great drama.
If you'd given the speech tomorrow in a driving snowstorm in the background,
that would have been great television and a great visual. The problem is he
couldn't get to his beach house of Delaware for his week and forty eight hour
NAPSI needs to carry on a second. You make a The point you made
about nothing about policy is really significant. It's an astonishing thing to see a
president heading into a reelection year, and we hear, by the way lots
of stories that Biden is frustrated that people will appreciate his accomplishments. But on
the surface, if you told me, as a political scientist to do these
stupid models, you have unemployment at three point six percent, a fifty year
low. You've got positive economic growth, not great, but not bad.
Certainly, all the numbers are better than when George H. W. Bush
started nineteen ninety two, and we remember what happened to him. So lots
of good news on the surface, but people are unhappy about it for sensible
reasons that will have to pass over for now. Normally, when a president
launches a reelection campaign, they talked about the bright spots of their record,
and he did none of that. The speech is a reflection of what deep
trouble is in. I won't go through all the poll numbers that people may
have heard about how badly underwater he's been the worst of any president at this
point, even Jimmy Carter. The one number from the last three four weeks
that jumps out of me is that a poll out of New York shows Biden
leading Trump by eight points. Biden won New York by twenty points in twenty
twenty. The fact that he's only leading Trump by eight points in New York
shows you how much trouble is in. So what do you do? You
attack the other guy. I think the speech is kind of shrewd but may
not work because if you make Trump the issue. Biden has an inside chance
of winning. If the issue is Biden, he's going to lose. Uh
well, hold on, let me okay, well Bay, let me finish.
I got to do one more sort of big point to make and then,
which you may like, I think, and then do you like it.
He's trying to bait Trump. He's trying to get Trump upset about things,
and Trump may jump for the bait. I did see one little clip
of Trump today mocking Biden, and this is why I think the speech in
this line of attack may not work. He mocked Biden, and I think
Trump said something like he says, I'm a threat to his democracy. I
thought, typical Trump, genius. He's going to make fun of and he's
going to get under Biden's skin about Biden's sinility, and I think that's going
to work. I think Trump is going to drive Biden out of his mind
and make lots of mistakes. But then about the substance. Finally, last
point, Lucretia, Sorry, I'm going go on too long. The last
point to Trump being a threat to democracy. You know, I keep looking
at the survey numbers about all the public distrust of the federal government and Trump's
going to be Trump's great line about how I'll only be a dictator on the
first day in office to clean up Biden's mess. I remember I wrote an
article recently about why Prop thirteen made it possible for me to stay in California,
and I remember back to Prop thirteen. Two stories, one a local
office holder who went around opposing Prop thirteen saying, I'd say it's going to
cripple local government, and all I saw in the audience were smiles, and
I changed my mind and supported it. It was a famous story in the
La Times then. And my dad was on a school board saying, this
is going to wreck our school finances. I don't know how we're going to
get our budget together for this year and next. I said to my dad,
a commercial property owner, So you're going to vote for it? He
said, God, damn right, I am. Because you know the point
is, I think, you know Trump's a threat to democracy. I think
a lot of people out there believe it or aren't going to say, you
know, it's about time we had somebody like that in office. It's a
little bit like Harvard. I think people are out of touch with how angry
so many, and I think a majority of Americans are with Washington that that
line of attack is going to fall flat. It only works with the media
echo chambers at academia. And that's why if I'm Trump, I'm sitting back
in. The question is can Hump be disciplined enough to exploit this rudely and
not go overboard with his responses? Sorry, I'll shut up there, Lucretia,
and you can deca. I just wanted to ask both of you,
actually, I mean, I thought I probably would have given a similar kind
of analysis of Biden's Satan speech, right, And we all thought that,
I mean I maybe maybe I shouldn't put words in your guys's mouth. I
certainly thought that that was a major, major error on his part. And
guess what we turned out to be if you shook your head, yes,
So I'm saying we I turned out to be utterly wrong about it. I
mean, stupid people out there when voted for Democrats after that speech. I
mean, I honestly I couldn't imagine voting for somebody, but but that was
that was what he said, and that's what happened afterwards. And I'm guessing
whoever's pulling the strings there probably said that it's worth trying again. Number one,
Number two. Some of these, some of the lies in his speech
are just so obvious. To give you just one. This is even worse
than something John would say this. He says, this wasn't a group of
tourists. This is an armed insurrection. One of the things that even the
media has not been able to spend. The FBI has not been able to
spend. The stupid committee January sixth committee wasn't able to spend. Nobody in
the crowd was armed. They were not armed. And I mean so to
say that and to imply that somehow, you know, this whole violent thing
blah blah blah blah blah are people. Does he think people are just not
paying attention or is he talking to people who aren't paying attention. I don't
know, But I don't know. This whole thing between the Claudine Gay and
the Charles Frieds and the all of that. Just believing that if you say
something it automatically means people as people are going to accept it as true,
even though it's a baldfaced lie. This seems something so trite to say it,
orwellian, it's so Orwellian. Well, sorry, yeah, go ahead,
that's all I really had to say about it. Well, I left
out. I didn't leave it out. I didn't mean to include in the
first place. There are some again survey numbers, and you know, I'm
the first person to bash polls, but it's interesting several surveys showing the narrative
is slipping away from the left, rising number of people who think that there's
something suspicious about it, a rising number of people who rejected the narrative that
this was a deliberate insurrection at the trumpet. So this has to be alarming
Democrats in a big way. And then add to this something we mentioned before,
the hypocrisy we see in front of us. So earlier this week in
Sacramento, the opening day of the state legislature was disrupted by pro HAAMAS demonstrators
who crowded the galleries and shouted down the proceedings to the point they had to
adjourn for the day. Was anybody arrested under the criminal statutes about disrupting public
business? I'm pretty sure the answer is no, not a single one.
No one will be prosecuted. It's not going to be lost on people that
we're going to enforce the maximum extent of the law against people on January sixth,
including people who just walked into the building. In some cases, it
seems it was one thing about people who broke windows and you know, did
vandalism and whatever, But it seems like they were trying to maximize a number
of people they can charge for reasons Lucretia has laid out, which is intimidation,
and then no enforcement of law against the pro homasque demonstrators disrupting legislatures,
disrupting you know, the Golden gate Bridge, et cetera. So at that
is not lost on people that whatever you think of what happened that day and
how it should be thought of, we have once again unequal justice being delivered
in the country. And you know, go ahead, Biden, if you
want to keep pressing that line. I think a lot of people are going
to resent it. So my just quick tick on it was that there's a
big difference between the speech, what Biden says and then what his administration does.
So, yeah, you really thought that Trump was guilty of all the
things that are said then in the speech, Then why hasn't the Justice Apartment
charged Donald Trump with insurrection? Why is it charged him with these uh you
know, you know, I just unprecedented ill fitting charges like defrauding the United
States like he was a medicare provider, or obstructing Congress in the way that
you know, accounting agencies might by destroying documents U this. You know,
the Justice Apartment doesn't think it's an insurrection? Is is? Lucretia has pointed
out to me, none of the people convicted for January six were charged with
sedition or insurrection. Uh, and then just hasn't tried to prove it.
Was there one? Oh yeah, that's like the prowdboy. Yeah, the
pro the Proud Boys guy. One guy. But they didn't, they did
not try to charge all the people with insurrection. And then at the same
time I thought it was And this would lead us to our next story to
discuss. If Joe Biden thinks this is a choice of democracy versus authoritarianism,
then why are his members of his party trying to prevent the democracy from voting
on Donald Trump? Right? Why are they using the courts to try to
take Trump off the ballot? I mean that seems awfully antidemocratic in a way.
So, John, I actually want to ask you something about that.
I'm what worries me most about that, that whole thing, along with what
happened in January sixth I see it as a bit of a piece a continuation
that we are fighting. We are fighting these partisan battles in a very different
way than than to me what I what I my reading of history recent and
even you know, you know, early constitutional days. It's one thing to
make up lies about your opponent, it's you know, all of these other
things, but to manipulate the levers of government against your political opponent, which
is what I think Biden is doing. Like you say, if he really
believed that there was an insurrection caused by Trump, there is every capability of
prosecuting Trump for that. But on the other hand, all of these prosecutions,
what are we up to eighty one or ninety charges now felony charges against
Trump across the different indictments and so forth. At some point it's only going
to be people like us and our very intelligent listeners who understand the difference between
all of those ninety one charges and an actual charge of insurrection being prosecuted in
him being convicted of that charge. So I think that that how do I
say this. The comment you made is almost a little naive. I think
Biden knows exactly what he's doing. And the more they can talk about indictments,
the more they can talk about felonies, that Trump can is going to
be in jail and all of that, even though the people like us who
look at it and say there's no there there, it doesn't matter. And
as mister Lucreati used to like to say, you can beat the rat,
but you can't beat the ride, and they're counting on the ride being the
thing that sinks Trump. Whether you're right about the fact that it's not working
as well as it used to, I might agree with that. I just
wonder what you thought, Well, you are definitely not going to agree with
what I'm about to say. But I think actually both Trump and Biden are
exaggerating what January sixth was. So Trump is out there now saying, I
mean he's gotten you know, he's you know, he's doubled down on January
sixth, or he is now saying that this was a legitimate exercise to try
to stop, you know, a stolen election from being legitimized. And he's
calling he's now calling January people convicted January six as heroes. He's just used
that phrase, So I think I don't think that's what January sixth was.
But I also think Biden is exaggerating the other direction by calling it an insurrection.
I mean, this was I mean, this isn't The Civil War was
an insurrection. This was not an insurrection. This was just right. This
is just something going to be handled by normal criminal prosecution when it's required.
But I think Biden, so I hear, I agree with you. I
think Biden is going to press this line because he's taunting Trump. He's hoping
he's trying to get Trump to explode and say something right, unwarranted and crazy.
He's trying to get him to lose his temper in public. That's what
that's That's what I think this speech was all about. Maybe it'll work.
I don't know, but because I do, I do, I don't.
I mean, I do see these polls that are out today and this week
that say that a majority of Republicans now believe, as Lucretia was arguing just
a few weeks ago, that January six was a lot of there were a
lot of FBI agents involved, and that January sixth was not necessarily right,
a illegal conspiracy to stop the peaceful transfer of power. I don't happen to
agree with that, but I do think that both sides are exaggerating what January
six was for their own purposes. Yeah, see lucreatia John has followed me
what I call the David Brooks disease of both sides is no, no,
it's not just I just I just don't think January six was an insurrection.
But I don't think it was a legitimate protest either. I think it was
just sort of any trespassing in crime, it's just a riot. Well to
maybe maybe last point, it's probably not first. You know, I've given
the thought experiment before, what if there not been the January six incident and
that Trump would be ten to fifteen points ahead, they'd be like twenty points
ahead exactly. But now let's try another thought experiment. What if you'd had
the January sis January sixth protests the way Trump had always described it, which
would show up and make a lot of noise, and there'd been no violence,
no broken windows, no vandalism, no perceived threats against the vice president.
It's just a very suppose suppose no one had entered the Capitol building.
Yeah, yeah, fine, I'll go with that too. My suspicion is
the left, the Democrats, and the media, they would still be freaking
out about it, and they would they wouldn't be able to use the insurrection
language, but they'd be rapped the water's edge on this course. They wouldn't
well, well, well, I don't think they would. Well, they
wouldn't lie. Okay. The point is is, I think then the dynamic
would be different too. But that raises the second contradiction here. The first
wasn't the contradiction, but the contradiction at the heart of progressive ism from the
very beginning a hundred years ago under Wilson. On the one hand, they
said, we want more democracy, that's why we want reform, we want
more primaries, direct democracy, recalls that kind of thing, ballot initiatives.
And on the other hand, their theory said more and more government must be
done by experts who are insulated from political accountability and from the vicissitudes of changing
electoral fortunes. Those two things don't go together. They do, and you
think they do, Oh yeah, they absolutely do. You're missing Explain that
to me because social element of progressivism is that more democracy. But what more
democracy means is the will of the people led by those experts and by those
leaders. First, of course, Tom Wilson, it was congressional government.
Then of course it becomes presidential government. But it's never about, you know,
sort of enlightened statesmen at the helm. It's always about basically somebody leading
a bunch of sheep around and having the backing of democracy, not representation,
but democracy, the will versus the enlightened representation of the people. I get
that. That's the that's the Hagel and Rousseau part of progressivism. I've never
thought that that that that was comprehended very well by the people at large.
I think you have to be intellectual like us to see that attempt rulers.
Yes, I mean right, I mean this is one reason why Biden or
Obama or name any liberal president has no trouble at all saying I'm for democracy
and I'm also for experts ruling you against your will without your consent. Right
that Okay, that's my point, So let me let's let's uh move to
a third the third issue, last issue for our packet. That's quite related
though, I mean, this has been a very busy day today. The
Supreme Court at the end of the day announced it would here the Caller Rado
Supreme Court case about whether Trump can be disqualified from the ballot under the fourteenth
Amendment. We've talked about on the show, the Fourteenth Amendments, Section three
claim which are the Colorado Supreme Court eventually agreed with that Trump was involved with
in insurrection so therefore could not run for the presidency. Steve, Actually,
we just heard from Lucretia. What do you think about the court? Grant
you, John, if you're interested in what you think, because I was
reading part of what the what Trump's lawyers were arguing to the court, and
I'm wondering, however, you know in their appeal whether the court will even
consider any of those things. You know that this is not the definition of
democracy and state court that insurrection should never be decided by state courts. You
know, Congress is the one who should make the termination. Do you think
that the Supreme Court will actually drill down into any of those kinds of issues
or do you think they'll find a very easy, relatively uncontroversial There's no way
they're not going to find for Trump in this case, in my opinion,
I really can't see it any other way. If they do, oh,
it's going to be tough to be around Lucretia for a while. But what
I am can I point out Lucretia If they actually agree with Colorado, they
will basically be saying that Trump was an insurrectionist and he will be banned from
all fifty states ballots out of finding the other will effectively end the election.
I mean, the election will continue, but it will have to be disantas
or Hale, but Trump will be able to run. Well. Well,
I have two questions for you payback. One is important fact they're they're agreeing
to an accelerated schedule for oil argument, like in a month from now,
right, And yeah, oil argument is going to be on February eighth,
which is incredible. Yeah, but you've got to have a little bit of
time for lawyers to make serious arguments. And so I'm thinking the briefs are
due in thirteen days. Yeah, okay for the for Trump's right, Well,
the point is is, uh, the question is it sounds to me
like go see what you could think I am. My hunch is that are
going to want to rule very quickly on this, like that in Bush by
Gore, because time is of the essence, you know, the Bush Bey
Gore case on the longer they take, the more they are interfering. Correct.
But then the second question is, in my case, I'm with an
increase on this. I can't see any other outcome but that Colorado will be
rebuffed. But my question is, you know, the political one. Is
it going to be nine to zero, which is what it ought to be,
or is it going to be a six to three partisan split the way
Bush v. Gore came down, which is going to you know, settle
the matter in the their term, But it's going to lead to a lot
of the left is going to go nuts about the quarry and so forth.
And so I mean that's there. This is a good blowback for Charles Free.
The question there is are the three Democrats going to side there part of
some loyalty is more important than actually standing up for a proper separation of power
and all the other principles or or well, Lucrezia's question is are they going
to rule on some narrow ground of voice, so narrow that Roberts can get
a nine zero opinion on it? Yeah, right, So what are your
expectations. Well, I would think the Court's easiest thing to do happens to
be the right thing to do, which is just to say the provision doesn't
apply to the presidency. It's just so obviously correct that, I mean,
this is but it also provides the potential ground for a unanimous opinion. And
it also the Core won't have to make a decision about whether Trump participate in
insurrection or whether there was even an insurrection. It could just say whatever happened,
whatever Trump did, it doesn't matter because this provision just doesn't apply to
people who were president or people who are running for president. And that's but
I also think that is the correct answer. Yeah, and the subtext areas,
there's this thing called impeachment. People, if you've done your job,
we wouldn't be in a sticky wicket. Yeah. And look, this is
the other thing is it goes to Lucretia's point also earlier that uh, right,
if people thought that Trump committed insurrection, there's plenty of ways to go
after him. There was an impeachment for Trump having been involved with an insurrection,
and he was acquitted by the Senate. That is the only decision he
was he was impeached. He was impeached by the House for incitement to insurrection,
but incitement of insurrection. But then, but know, it's the only
the only decision by any branch of the federal government about Trump being an insurrectionist
was his acquittal by the Senate. Yeah, right, not been charged in
any other proceeding by federal government of insurrections. So that I think is the
easiest way out for the Supreme Court and what they could likely do, and
they could do it fast, because, as you both pointed out, the
primary calendar is chugging along. Yeah, But what do you think about I
think the other question, though, is do you think this or tends a
greater role for the Supreme Court in the elections, Because this is just the
first of other things, Right, they are going to be called upon to
decide about Trump and immunity from prosecution. There might be other questions that come
out of you know, can he be even prosecuted in Georgia at all as
a federal official by a state government and so on? Do you think this
is a good idea for the Court to intervene in? But I think the
question has to go a little lower and that is I mean, it's a
lawfair, it's lawfare. And so if you're going to turn every one of
these political battles into a legal battle that ends up in court at lower courts,
with our distributed federal system of courts judiciaries across the United States, with
you know, we've discussed briefly the difference, say between the Colorado Supreme Court
that's elected and so on and so forth, you're going to end up with
when when you want to turn these political questions into legal questions, you're going
to end up with a lot of different opinions and whatever else we expect the
Supreme Court to do in matters that involve the whole United States, when you
have differences of opinion on important matters, we expect the Supreme Court to help
us handle that, right, We help this. We expect the Supreme Court
to decide between differing circuit opinions by differing circuits and so on. And so
I'm the Supreme Court and I want to stay out of politics. And I'm
looking I think Steve might have said this, one of you guys said it
last time, because I heard you. I'm on the Supreme Court, I'm
gonna be pissed about this. What the hell are you guys doing sending all
of these ridiculous political cases, making them ultimately something that the Supreme Court has
to decide instead of handling them in politics like you're supposed to. Is that
unfair? John? Well me so. Lucretious point is the Court has to
intervene to get the courts out of the election because all these lower courts are
sticking their noses in and prosecutors too, and it's the Court's traditional job is
to restrain the power of government, then states and prosecutors. So Lucretia's point
is if the lower courts weren't screwing this up so badly, then the Supreme
Court wouldn't have to get evolved. Yeah, I see. I just keep
my mind keeps running back of that line of Tokville's, which I don't quite
remember exactly, but it runs something like, sooner or later in America,
all political questions become judicial questions, and it's taken a while, but here
we are. So I'm not surprised for at this point. I think that's
a bit trite, Steve. I think this is of a difference. That's
my specialty. I know, I don't say that to be insulting. I
really don't. I think this is different. I really do. How so
I think this is different? Well, I mean I think Busha's versus Gore
was probably an early indicator of this bad kind of situation. You know,
I don't want to go in and we're running really long. But I don't
think there has been this attempt across so many different venues and jurisdictions and so
on, to turn these political electoral questions into judicial questions. I mean,
remember, prior to I'll get my case right Baker versus car Court, the
courts said we stay out of these kinds of questions. These are political questions
for the political branches to decide. And so I mean, that's in the
scheme of things, that's not that long ago, and so I don't necessarily
think that in the same way that what Steve was talking about, I do
agree with it. Every political question kind of ends up a legal question in
narsis in American constitutional society call it that. But this is of a different
character to me, it really is. And maybe you know, maybe I'm
just I'm just grumpy or something, but I don't never I mean, I
see this, I see it similar to Bush versus Gore, that whole debacle
in Florida. But remember too, what happened there. Florida fixed itself,
not because it got some sort of court order from the Supreme I know that
that was the election that had to be resolved right then and there, that
there wasn't time. But it was ultimately a political solution to a political problem
in Florida, not to the election itself, but to the way the election
was conducted. And I don't see political solutions to a lot of these problems
that are being brought up. I see the attempt to go to the right
kind of court to get the right kind of verdict for your side, you
know, the right judges, the right verdict court judge, shopping and all
that other stuff. So anyway, I won't say any more about it.
So there, don silence John. Do you guys really disagree with me but
that you don't see this as different? No? I think I agree with
that. Yeah, So we have gone long, and we were we had
on the docket a fourth issue, the release of the Epstein list, But
I don't know if we need to talk about that or whether we could talk
about it very quickly. Another issue I think we should two more issues that
we should flag for next time is Lucretia has Lucretia is our dutiful three whiskey
happy hour archivist, and she says we have long promised a discussion on the
establishment clause and the free exercise of religion clause, and whether Jefferson's statement about
separation of church and state was really accurate as a national law. You brought
it up. You're the one who said it, John, whether or not
freedom of religion is a natural right, freedom of conscious freedom of religion.
That's where we kind of left it, and so we ought to like that.
Also, I also thought totally ignored by the press today because of the
grant of cert on the Colorado disqualification case. The court granted an abortion case
today, and Steve and I actually we wrote a series of pieces at the
time of the leak of the Dobbs opinion, and Steve, I think quite
preciently included a piece about how this would not get the court out of abortion
that court is going to continue to have decide about. And this is a
great example of this, because a court granted sert today on whether the federal
government's regulation of hospitals can allows it to require hospitals as a price of receiving
federal funding and federal support and federal regulatory approval, to provide abortions if medically
necessary, whether they override state anti abortion loss so that's a normal Yeah,
would be a huge issue, but not today. And the case involves Idaho.
It should be said, right Idaho, which you know, so they're
picking on states where you know anti abortion feeling is the strongest. So yeah,
that shows you where the wilfulness is on this thing. So all I
want to say about the Epstein list is it's been a profound disappointment, very
much like watching Heraldo Rivera open up al Capone's vault. So far, anyway,
that's all I have to say about it. I'm still, like most
people, amazed that is Lane Maxwell went to jail for sex trafficking children to
nobody. Yeah, but I am surprised that the Cholera of Supreme Court didn't
require that Bill Clinton's name be taken off the Epstein client list. That was
one thing that So to get you guys out of this podcast, I'm only
going to be reading from one Babylon Bee today. And that's the Babylon Bee
that came out today. The ten most shocking revelations from the Epstein documents.
I'm not going to read them all, but a couple of them are actually
very, very good. The Babylon Bees compiled the following list of some of
the more shocking revelations. Bill Clinton Number one. Bill Clinton was only mentioned
fifty times. Everyone figured that number would be way higher. The most frequent
visitor to the island was a guy named John Doe. What a sicko.
All the billionaires kept accidentally grabbing Bill Gates boobs. Gates is rumored to be
cooking up a new virus to get revenge. Wait, just a couple more.
Chris Christy was banned from the island after the buffet incident. Rumor has
it the island was never able to fully restock the kitchen. David Copperfield was
unable to make his name disappear. Some magician he is. And finally Epstein
actually did kill himself. He knew, oh no, this is this story
is not over. It's going to go on forever. So do you ever
any good camalisms this holidays? So the ECONML has been quiet, although she's
lucretia like this. She is apparently going to give a big speech tomorrow on
the anniversary of January sixth in South Carolina, where she's expected to go even
harder at Donald Trump than President Biden did today. But we don't have those
remarks yet. We've just got some previous stories running here and there. So
what I did, actually, this was an interesting exercise for a commalism.
I did not rely on the media to identify it. I just pulled up,
I think the most recent speech on the White House website remarks by Vice
President Harris a culinary workers even in Local two two six in Las Vegas,
which she gave two days ago. I highly recommend it to everybody. But
it just, you know, the thing is, there's so many commalisms in
every speech she gives. That's the thing. I mean, here's just like
she starts it out with saying, Elena, I guess this is the person
who introduced her. I'm telling you you just you are just nothing but power.
You are just full on power. I mean, just so powerful.
Thank you. And it goes on. I mean, there's just so many
different things I could pull. Here's a nice one. Then she says I
think Attorney General Ford, thank you for what you do on behalf of working
people, because the power of law can be very persuasive when necessary to talk
about what is right and what is consistent with the values that we hold dear
as a shrine in the Constitution. Yeah, I'm a sip now, John,
thank you. Here's one last one. It is the work of understanding
that, especially in these moments in time where you know a lot of people
are feeling really alone, and when you feel alone, you feel powerless.
So she's now, you know, you know, veering off into psychobabble.
You know. Anyway, So those are my komalisms of the week. But
you know, maybe that's what I'll do from now on is every week I'll
just pull up her latest speech and just pull out all the pomalisms as she's
inflicting on audiences everywhere everybody. You know. Fifteen or twenty years ago,
somebody stumbled across at the UN gift shop the quotable Kofi Anon. I thought,
you know, in hardcover. I never thought that could be top.
But we need the quotable Kamala Harris. John, And I remember my old
mentor had a volume in his Office called the Wit and Wisdom of Spiro Agnew
and it was all blank pages. That's is funny, It's true, except
I have to say I did when I was checking I think how far how
long ago this was? I was checking out of a Borders, which,
for the younger listeners was a bookstore once upon a time, a huge bookstore.
Everywhere there were borders, and at the checkout counter there was a tiny
little book, you know, these little like almost joke books are like five
inches big. And it was called Wit and Wisdom of Bob Dole. Oh
I had to buy. And actually it was damn funny. Oh yeah,
Bob Dole was a funny guy, and it was just filled with all these
great jokes. The one I still remember most was he gave when at the
funeral of a president and he saw sitting together Jimmy Carter, Jerry Ford,
and Richard Nixon, and equipped off the top of his said, he said,
hear no evil, see no evil and evil equal? Right. Yeah,
that's a great joke, so so that I have to follow on to
that. Then, Sorry, John, about this is a breaking protocol with
a statistic I heard today from Bill Hammer on Fox where he said that or
maybe it was yesterday he said that no Democrat, let me get this right,
No talking about Iowa and talking about, you know, whether Nikki Haley
is going to be able to pull something up in Iowa or Ron Dessent is
whatever. But no Republican has ever won more than fifty percent of the vote
in Iowa in a contested caucus except for Bob Dole. Yeah. Really yeah,
And no one voted for Bob doll that year. I think I did,
But that's I actually joke about how conservative Asians are because Asians were the
last minority group to vote Republican and they voted for Bob Dole. The majority
of Asians voted for Bob Dolean ninety six. And I was like, and
that was hard because no one voted for Bob Dolan ninety six. That's right,
Okay, Well let's oh, we drink your whiskey, meat, let's
go Brandon and Steve. God save the Queen man and our democracy. Apparently,
why by everybody, bye see you next week. Every day I could
have prayed to John and he increases a number of flocks by exactly won everybody's
coming home for lunch these days. Last night there were skinheads on my loan.
Take the skinheads, bully, take them bully, take the skin heads,
fully, take them, bully. Some people say that Bowling Alley's got
big Lanes got, big Lane got. Some people say that bowling Alleys all
look the same. Love the same, love the same. There's not a
line that goes here. The rhymes with anything. Had a dream last night,
but I forget what it was, what it was, what it Take
the skin heads and bulling, take them falling, Take the skinheads and falling
take them balling. Ricochet joined the conversation