Speaker 1: Well, whiskey, come and take my pain, the money, my way,
Speaker 1: o whiskey. Why think alone when you can drink it
Speaker 1: all in with Ricochet's three whiskey Happy Hour. Join your bartenders,
Speaker 1: Steve Hayward, John, You and the international woman of Mystery, Lucretia, where.
Speaker 2: The laps it oppen live it ain't you easy on
Speaker 2: the should tap, got a giving and let that whiskey blow.
Speaker 1: It's the three whiskey Happy Hour from all corners of
Speaker 1: the globe, at least in the northern hemisphere. Lucretia is
Speaker 1: in Anchorage, Alaska. I'm somewhere in the Barren Sea, steaming
Speaker 1: to the farthest northern points of Norway. And John is
Speaker 1: holding down the fort in some undisclosed location in the
Speaker 1: Bay area. So ah, and we're coming to you as
Speaker 1: in case you've been hiding under a rock in the
Speaker 1: midst of the modern day War of the Roses that
Speaker 1: pits du Elon of Musk against Viscount Donald of trump
Speaker 1: Land in that big fight. You know, I don't have
Speaker 1: too much to say about it except for a couple
Speaker 1: of crazy things. But are you Are you guys paying attention?
Speaker 1: Is there anything about it that is either surprising. I mean,
Speaker 1: I kind of expected sooner or later they'd have some
Speaker 1: problems for obvious reasons, I think, But is there anything
Speaker 1: notable about this or is this all just social media
Speaker 1: circus and nonsense? Lucretia, do you want to go first?
Speaker 3: Okay, two things. The number one the problem was when
Speaker 3: you stuck Elon Musk with Doge and he actually started
Speaker 3: looking at how horrendous the whole situation is with federal
Speaker 3: spending and the way money is spent, to whom the
Speaker 3: money is distributed in all of those things. You know,
Speaker 3: you'd have to admit that had to be an existential
Speaker 3: crisis from Musk to have his kind of a brain
Speaker 3: and realize that are subtle budgetary spending system is so
Speaker 3: messed up, and then to see the big beautiful bill
Speaker 3: that does really nothing about it, and then you know
Speaker 3: they're not even going to take up the Doge cuts
Speaker 3: and so on. I imagine that his his turnaround here
Speaker 3: is perhaps so real that he, being the somewhat autistic
Speaker 3: guy that he is, he just can't move past it.
Speaker 3: That's the one possibility or explanation. But then the other
Speaker 3: one is I'm hoping it's all just fake.
Speaker 1: Oh, right, Okay, Well, that's one of the conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: is that it's all fake, you know, and it's not
Speaker 1: beyond Donald Trump to patch things up with somebody that
Speaker 1: he's yelled at, right, I mean, he's hired all these
Speaker 1: people he formally attacked, and so by the time this
Speaker 1: reaches listeners, it could be all over. Who knows.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's a conspiracy to get Tesla back in the black,
Speaker 3: you know, give a lawn musk a chance, let people
Speaker 3: go back to buying Tesla's.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, uh, well, I could go on about that,
Speaker 1: about how the Tesla has always been the outlier on
Speaker 1: electric cars, and that that's the profitable company. It doesn't
Speaker 1: need the subsidies and text credits anymore.
Speaker 4: Whereas I'm talking just about sales, because as long as
Speaker 4: he's tied with Donald Trump, there's a very significant portion
Speaker 4: of the population who'd buy an electronic vehicle who won't
Speaker 4: buy it because of his association with Trump.
Speaker 1: Well that might be, I might be he might well
Speaker 1: he might have been not eve enough not to have
Speaker 1: expected that. He should have expected.
Speaker 3: That, I think, But this is the whole game to
Speaker 3: get him to to people to think he hates Trump.
Speaker 1: So Okay, well I remember, well maybe I remember, you
Speaker 1: know the famous line from Michael Jordan when he was
Speaker 1: pressured by Democrats why don't you support Democrats? And Jordan said,
Speaker 1: because I want to sell my shoes to Republicans too.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm not going to get involved in politics, right,
Speaker 1: So you know he had a sense of that. So John,
Speaker 1: The other crazy conspiracy I've heard is this is really
Speaker 1: the tech community. It's an inside deep state tech community
Speaker 1: conspiracy to get Trump impeached or ousted so that JD.
Speaker 1: Vans can be elevated to be president right away because JD.
Speaker 1: Vans is in the pocket of Silicon Valley. And at
Speaker 1: this point I can't decide if this is for real
Speaker 1: or if this is some Russian troll farm doing this.
Speaker 1: Do you have any goofy theory you like, or even
Speaker 1: a serious one.
Speaker 2: No, I can't think of any goofy theory. But I
Speaker 2: was gonna ask you guys, and is this a bigger
Speaker 2: deal than just a you know, a spat between I
Speaker 2: think Ted Cruiz was like, I feel like a divorced
Speaker 2: kid with mom and dad just yelling at each other
Speaker 2: all the time. Can't they just make up? But I mean,
Speaker 2: isn't the Musk reppers. I mean, and I was asking you, guys,
Speaker 2: doesn't Musk represent a substantial portion of people who support
Speaker 2: it for supported Trump? You know this our young male
Speaker 2: you know video game playing, you know tech support. They're
Speaker 2: involved in technology, group of young men who in all
Speaker 2: racial groups voted for Trump in large numbers last election.
Speaker 2: And won't this hurt Trump going to the mid terms
Speaker 2: because these are probably that people who aren't going to
Speaker 2: vote generally in a mid term unless you get them energize,
Speaker 2: and so, you know, Musk and Trump fall out. Musk,
Speaker 2: I mean the things he said in his tweets right,
Speaker 2: talking about forming another party, Trump, impeaching Trump, Trump's in
Speaker 2: the Epstein files. This is a right, this is a Trump,
Speaker 2: this is a I'm sorry, this is musk uh leaving
Speaker 2: the coalition? And isn't that bad for a governing party
Speaker 2: as it you know, that has a one seat majority.
Speaker 2: It seems to have like barely a one seat majority
Speaker 2: in the House and trying to govern well.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that although Trump is by far, sorry,
Speaker 1: Musk is by far and away the most prominent tech
Speaker 1: person associated with Trump. I think a lot of the
Speaker 1: other people who have made peace with Trump or even
Speaker 1: support him, you know, Zuckerberg Bezos to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: Mark Andres and others in Silicon Valley. I think they
Speaker 1: came by their reversal and support for Trump honestly and
Speaker 1: on their own. I don't think this was necessarily the
Speaker 1: key to that, although he certainly helped. I think I
Speaker 1: guess I had a second point about that. Oh well,
Speaker 1: maybe it'll come back to me that brain cells dead
Speaker 1: from the whiskey already.
Speaker 3: But I think it's just the same thing as the
Speaker 3: three whiskey happy hour. I mean, you know, I call
Speaker 3: you guys names and make fun of you and point
Speaker 3: out your flaws on a regular basis, but we still
Speaker 3: care about each other deeply.
Speaker 2: I still wouldn't buy a car from you used or knew.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if you're driving, I'm not sure, but
Speaker 2: if the autopilot's driving, probably yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I mean I always just thought that the
Speaker 1: two people with very large egos, very strong views, idiosyncratic
Speaker 1: and all the rest, that sooner or later they were
Speaker 1: going to hit the wall. Uh, And I didn't know
Speaker 1: if it would be this spectacular a splat, but but
Speaker 1: so it is. But all right, I want to move
Speaker 1: on to since we get Lucretia back. She's just going
Speaker 1: to get her third cup of coffee since it's too
Speaker 1: early in the morning for her.
Speaker 2: Oh now, just by the way, that behind her in
Speaker 2: the window, there's like some kind of bird of prey
Speaker 2: flying about to catch kill some poor in the field.
Speaker 2: It's on the window and when she leaves, the bird
Speaker 2: still stays to frighten Steve to keep him in.
Speaker 3: Did you see the text I sent you this morning,
Speaker 3: John with my visitor.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, that was so had a moose.
Speaker 3: Yeah, moose came up to the back of the deck
Speaker 3: and one to say hi to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: When I was in Alaska, I saw those an elk too,
Speaker 2: and I think I had elk burger and moose sausage
Speaker 2: and all kinds of things like that.
Speaker 5: It was good up here, the popular thing. I'm sorry, And.
Speaker 2: This judge took me up in a god. I think
Speaker 2: it was like one of those balsa wood plains where
Speaker 2: where the propeller was a rubber band and you'd spun
Speaker 2: it around and let it go and then it would
Speaker 2: fly around. I held on so tight, I mean it
Speaker 2: was the plane looked like a car. The inside of
Speaker 2: the plane looked like a car dash and steering wheel
Speaker 2: from the sixties. And he just took me up. Here
Speaker 2: was Fairbanks, so he said, it was like the farthest
Speaker 2: north that human beings actually settled. And he took me
Speaker 2: up and this was the summer. And then we went
Speaker 2: like a mile north and he said, and you could
Speaker 2: see where people tried to like build little homesteads or
Speaker 2: you know, living trailers, and then it was just unsuccessful.
Speaker 2: They couldn't do it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 3: They're a little bit of a garden in the backyard.
Speaker 3: And because of we're at twenty four hours of sunshine
Speaker 3: right now, because we're almost at summer solstice, things just
Speaker 3: grow by leaves and bounds in the summertime. And this,
Speaker 3: you know, this far downwards warmer, lots of lots of
Speaker 3: water obviously, and so it's very interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm having fun, all right, So now just have a
Speaker 1: speaking of having fun, I'm gonna let you have a
Speaker 1: little more fun, Lucretia, because I want to get your
Speaker 1: quick reaction released about mop ed about the release this
Speaker 1: week of Kareean John Pierre's book, where she dumps all
Speaker 1: over President Biden and the democrats, declares herself an independent
Speaker 1: because she wants to tell it straight. And the funny
Speaker 1: thing about this is that she's getting dumped on by
Speaker 1: a lot of people on the inside and the Biden administration.
Speaker 1: Uh tim Wu, who's you know, kind of a presence
Speaker 1: in the democratic world? He said, Oh lost his quote here?
Speaker 1: Uh he said here. It is the real problem with
Speaker 1: Kareean John Pierre was that she was kind of dumb
Speaker 1: kind right, No, So I mean, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you want to take a victory lap Lucretia because Democrats
Speaker 1: are now Democrats are now saying everything that you've been
Speaker 1: saying about her for three years.
Speaker 5: Yeah, duh, I know. Uh there's a reason.
Speaker 3: But that let me just say if while I engage
Speaker 3: in my lookism, that I will give her a compliment
Speaker 3: because I made fun of her hair, which is just nasty.
Speaker 3: She doesn't have to do that. That's a political statement.
Speaker 3: But otherwise, she's quite an attractive woman and you know,
Speaker 3: in good shape and so on. She's fifty and I
Speaker 3: was actually surprised. Yeah, yeah, she's fifteen years old, so
Speaker 3: so credit to her for looking that good at fifty.
Speaker 3: All right, So that being said to play, she dumb.
Speaker 3: I just think it's rats on a sinking a sinking
Speaker 3: ship right now because the Democratic Party has had message
Speaker 3: discipline across the board, not just what their political messages were,
Speaker 3: but they're internal politics, such discipline for so long, and
Speaker 3: now that it's showing itself to be, you know, just
Speaker 3: a sinking party. The rats are not just leaving the
Speaker 3: sinking ship, but they're turning on each other because you know,
Speaker 3: they're starving to death. And I think that's what's happening
Speaker 3: with Kage. I mean, give her some credit. She managed
Speaker 3: to take the dumbest things, the most the worst things
Speaker 3: that were happening in the Biden administration and put a
Speaker 3: spin on them that was so dumb nobody could question it.
Speaker 1: Well, well, maybe that's an interesting theory. Well in my
Speaker 1: because I one question I've had all along is how
Speaker 1: do those supposedly self respecting journalists sit there and take
Speaker 1: that dribble from her day after day and don't seem
Speaker 1: to be outraged about it? But I think maybe you
Speaker 1: just explained it. You were so dumb that they were speechless.
Speaker 1: But no, here's the.
Speaker 3: Series parallel to their it's parallel to their supposed Oh
Speaker 3: my god, did you see, maybe he was, after all, uh,
Speaker 3: senile the whole time.
Speaker 5: It's they they.
Speaker 3: Purposely they knew she was stupid. They knew Biden was senile,
Speaker 3: and the fact that she was so dumb allowed them.
Speaker 3: It's probe questioned, somebody so stupid?
Speaker 1: Okay, But.
Speaker 2: Lucretia is actually saying she was truth teller because when
Speaker 2: she said I can't keep with Joe Biden, she was
Speaker 2: telling the truth.
Speaker 1: Oh that's good. Well, look, here's a serious question for
Speaker 1: both of you. The fact that the Democrats are saying
Speaker 1: the kind of things we said, not that she was
Speaker 1: dominate bad answers, but they're saying things like, you know,
Speaker 1: we should quit hiring people for identity politics reasons. They
Speaker 1: hired her to check a box. She couldn't be criticized
Speaker 1: because of who she was and the identity. Is this
Speaker 1: yet another nail the coffin of DEI I kind of
Speaker 1: see it as Democrats have gotten some of them have
Speaker 1: gotten the memo and saying we've got to quit doing
Speaker 1: this because it's bad for us. Or is that too optimistic?
Speaker 1: As I often.
Speaker 2: Am, John, I think it's going to have to that
Speaker 2: will be true when they start realizing that the Krusia's
Speaker 2: other favorite Brown Jackson also is or Sonya Soda Mayor
Speaker 2: are very very weak justices. When you read their opinions.
Speaker 1: Listen or well, jam we're coming to them in that moment,
Speaker 1: but they're just not.
Speaker 2: So there's this kind of force field. You could say
Speaker 2: that immunized, right DEI appointments, they would not to be
Speaker 2: criticized by the Democratic Party, And even our side has
Speaker 2: to say when we're criticizing them for being by the
Speaker 2: merits we want to make Claire, we're not criticizing them
Speaker 2: because of their skin color. And I think you're right, Steve,
Speaker 2: that that's starting to erode with cream whatever. I can't
Speaker 2: remember her name anymore. I just think, I mean, I
Speaker 2: just think of lucretiaisms. I'm like, because of mop whatever,
Speaker 2: and I just think of her hair. Now, you know,
Speaker 2: she's just you know, by the way, there's there's just
Speaker 2: an anecdote. So there was this time when John Bolton
Speaker 2: was going to run for office, was thinking about ready
Speaker 2: for president. So a cartoonist friend of mine just made
Speaker 2: up a poster of him and it was just a mustache.
Speaker 2: So now when I think of KPJ, I think I
Speaker 2: just think of a head. That's a mop. Because of Lucretia.
Speaker 2: I can't remember her name anymore.
Speaker 1: She looked like shobab from the citizens. If you, oh, yes, let.
Speaker 3: Me ask the same thing you guys are saying. Let
Speaker 3: me ask it on a deeper level. If Democrats are
Speaker 3: beginning to realize that these affirmative action appointments are a
Speaker 3: dumb idea because they're losing. Because they're losing, I mean,
Speaker 3: Katanji is, as you put it, not a strong justice,
Speaker 3: but she wrote in a majority opinion.
Speaker 5: We'll come back to that. I'm not getting ahead of you, Steve.
Speaker 5: I promise that you.
Speaker 3: Know undermined the left physician on that. We'll just say
Speaker 3: that and come back to it. But my point is
Speaker 3: it's something you said a long time ago, and it
Speaker 3: was the first time I thought about it, John, when
Speaker 3: we were in your office and you said that the
Speaker 3: left didn't do themselves any favors by putting a lifetime
Speaker 3: appointment like Katangi Brown Jackson, because she was in fact
Speaker 3: a black woman, and that was her only real qualification
Speaker 3: out of all the talented jurists, even leftist jurists across
Speaker 3: the country. No way anybody could say Katanji was the
Speaker 3: best choice, and the left has had to pay for that, seriously,
Speaker 3: had to pay for that as a lost and you
Speaker 3: said it I think a few weeks ago, not just
Speaker 3: a lost appointment, but worsen loss. She can't even convince
Speaker 3: her fellow justices of anything. Probably sends them in the
Speaker 3: other direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right, we'll come back to them in
Speaker 1: a moment. Because of the this week's cases, I too
Speaker 1: have one more fun headline for you, Lucretia that I
Speaker 1: didn't share in my pre show notes. This is from
Speaker 1: The Hill, supposedly a serious journal of you know, political
Speaker 1: news in Washington, d C. And the headline is, and
Speaker 1: I'm just springing this on you, cold, Jasmine Crockett can
Speaker 1: bring the Democratic Party back from the brink, Lucretia, go.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Jasmine Crockett makes Katangi look like Julius Caesar.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, I don't know how to I
Speaker 5: don't even know.
Speaker 6: She is so foul and the idea that any Democrat
Speaker 6: but it That's not the only headline I've seen a
Speaker 6: bunch of them this last week about her.
Speaker 3: I mean, they're so desperate for someone they can pin
Speaker 3: their their weak feeble hopes on the idea that someone
Speaker 3: like that who appeals to the lowest element of the
Speaker 3: Democratic Party. And I don't mean race baiting there. What
Speaker 3: I mean is she's obnoxious. I'm not going to say
Speaker 3: she's totally stupid. I don't think that's true. I think
Speaker 3: she's probably intelligent enough, but her character is just so low,
Speaker 3: so she's lacking in any kind of integrity. She wants
Speaker 3: to remake the way we do politics by just being
Speaker 3: foulmouthed and ugly and stupid all the time. If they
Speaker 3: want to go with that, let them. That's not going
Speaker 3: to appeal to a large number of people.
Speaker 1: Well, I thought at first I thought that I thought
Speaker 1: this must be satire. But then I also thought, if
Speaker 1: if there's a Machiavelli and genius behind it, it is
Speaker 1: that again, smarter Democrats are terrified that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez
Speaker 1: is going to be their nominee in three years for president,
Speaker 1: and so the best way to maybe blunt that is
Speaker 1: to elevate some other nutcakes to be the face of
Speaker 1: the party. I mean, that's I'm being mostly facetious with that,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. I thought that's the craziest idea
Speaker 1: I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: But it's also it's a typical of the left because
Speaker 2: they seem to be so rudderless and have no they
Speaker 2: have no ideological platform, and so what do they fall
Speaker 2: back on If they can't find h you know, someone
Speaker 2: who's thoughtful, and they can't find someone who's got a
Speaker 2: program or platform, they cangree and then they just revert
Speaker 2: back to race their gender. Yeah, okay, the unifying principle
Speaker 2: something new?
Speaker 3: So what the the last probably forever, but at least
Speaker 3: as long as all the three of us have been
Speaker 3: paying attention to politics. What if we see coming out
Speaker 3: of both parties mostly white males, but the occasional something else.
Speaker 3: But they're all these politicians, these slick politicians that say
Speaker 3: essentially the same thing, and there's a little difference at
Speaker 3: the margins.
Speaker 5: And the reason that Trump has been.
Speaker 3: So successful is he is a bit soul mouth compared
Speaker 3: to the or at least he doesn't use the language
Speaker 3: of the average Republican politician, and he's willing to be
Speaker 3: a little bit more.
Speaker 5: Authentic. Good, I mean, you believed I said that.
Speaker 3: But if you want to talk authentic for the Democratic Party,
Speaker 3: does it get any more authentic than that loud mouthed
Speaker 3: Ugh Jasmine Crockett with their stupid ass fake nails and
Speaker 3: forty five inch long eyelashes, and oh my god, think
Speaker 3: there's the authenticity.
Speaker 1: I think you're on something important there. I mean, I
Speaker 1: always made the point about Reagan is that you had
Speaker 1: to pay close attention. But he did speak with the
Speaker 1: usual political vocabulary of Washington, d C. Now, it wasn't
Speaker 1: as u so far out there as Trump has been,
Speaker 1: but Trump is obviously that mode. And I think we
Speaker 1: and you know, explains why Ross Porrow is such a
Speaker 1: sudden phenomenon. Not just the outsider part. That's part of it,
Speaker 1: but part of it is you're so far outside that
Speaker 1: you don't talk like the average politician. I can go
Speaker 1: on about that, but I won't. I think we want
Speaker 1: to move on to the law because there's too much
Speaker 1: more fun to be had here, because what an interesting week.
Speaker 1: I mean, uh, first of all, you know, uh more
Speaker 1: district court judges throwing down against Trump moves. I mean's
Speaker 1: I think let's plow through that to the better stuff.
Speaker 1: I do think it's a master stroke that here in
Speaker 1: the last couple of days, the Trump administration says, fine,
Speaker 1: we'll bing, We'll bring back Maryland Mann from l Salvador
Speaker 1: that the Democrats love, and we're gonna charge him with
Speaker 1: the various crimes, right, Maryland father whatever, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: charge him with various crimes like human traffick and others.
Speaker 1: And I think that's gonna be fun to watch. Uh uh,
Speaker 1: So they're gonna My prediction is they're gonna make Democrats
Speaker 1: are gonna make him their activist wing, will make him
Speaker 1: the new Who's that guy in Philadelphia John Mumia abdul
Speaker 1: Jamal or something, right, who became the you know right?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know that guy used to get invited
Speaker 1: to give commencement addresses from his jail cells to colleges. Right.
Speaker 1: That's how crazy the left is about a person who's
Speaker 1: obviously guilty of what killing a cop?
Speaker 2: I think it was right, Okay, there's no doubt about
Speaker 2: his conviction.
Speaker 1: Right. But I think the most startling news of the week,
Speaker 1: and I think it is startling, and it's been lost
Speaker 1: of all the Trump Musk drama is three big cases
Speaker 1: out of the Supreme Court, nine zero unanimous verdicts coming
Speaker 1: out on our side. I think you'd say written by
Speaker 1: the three liberal Democratic justices. I propose going in reverse
Speaker 1: order from what I proposed to you. I think we
Speaker 1: had to punch out the Mexico gun case and Wisconsin
Speaker 1: religious qualification and tax case quickly to get to the
Speaker 1: Aims case, which is I think the most interesting of them.
Speaker 1: But so what Mexico sued the US under the theory
Speaker 1: the anti gun people have been using for a long time,
Speaker 1: saying essentially its product liability is one aspect of it,
Speaker 1: isn't it, John, And the Supreme Court said no, sorry,
Speaker 1: go away, We're not going to hear this suit. And
Speaker 1: I didn't get a chance to read it, but that
Speaker 1: was my understanding of it. I follow similar cases in
Speaker 1: the climate sphere, which gets us, you know, in the
Speaker 1: same neighborhood as a certain statute we cannot mention here.
Speaker 1: I mean, there is a state case in Washington suing
Speaker 1: the oil companies for wrongful death for a woman who
Speaker 1: died of heatstroke in her car on hot day with
Speaker 1: her windows rolling. My success was pasted right and all
Speaker 1: the other ones.
Speaker 2: There's a case that was in the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 2: going in Louisiana by lawyers saying that the production of
Speaker 2: aviation fuel in World War two caused the erosion of
Speaker 2: coastal barriers that have made Louisiana more vulnerable hurricanes. New
Speaker 2: York State passed the law. I think that said, it's
Speaker 2: not even a toryla billy, just as we're imposing a
Speaker 2: fee on all the oil companies for all the harm
Speaker 2: they've did to mankind. So yeah, I've written about it,
Speaker 2: You've written about it. Yeah, So two things about that case.
Speaker 2: One is it doesn't bear directly on the global warming cases.
Speaker 2: I wish it did. But in this case, Congress passed
Speaker 2: a special statute, yeah, twenty somewhat immunizing, Yeah, immunizing you know,
Speaker 2: gun manufacturers. And it's said that you just can't sue
Speaker 2: gun manufacturers for normal products liability saying that they made
Speaker 2: their product negligently. You have to actually show that the
Speaker 2: gun manufacturers aided and embedded in the condition of some crime.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting, I mean, just as a matter of
Speaker 2: how ridiculous the courts up in New England have become,
Speaker 2: is that they allowed a foreign government, which should take
Speaker 2: its problems to you know, you know, use diplomacy. They
Speaker 2: allowed a foreign government to come into our courts and
Speaker 2: sue our own right manufacturers for things that are happening
Speaker 2: in their country. Right, Like if there's a rise in
Speaker 2: gun crime in Mexico, well, who's problem is it. It's
Speaker 2: the Mexican government's problem. They should crack down on it.
Speaker 2: But instead they do this maneuver where they sue the
Speaker 2: gun manufacturers in the United States. I guess ideas that
Speaker 2: the Mexican government, that's actually the Mexican government did it.
Speaker 2: So I guess we should go into Mexican court and
Speaker 2: sue every right oil and chemical manufacturer for fentanyl coming
Speaker 2: into the United States. Right, it's the same theory. Maybe
Speaker 2: that's not a bad idea. I'll give you guys a
Speaker 2: piece of the winnings if we actually get anywhere. But
Speaker 2: you know, that's one. But the second thing is that's
Speaker 2: why it's unanimous, because it's so ridiculous. But this is
Speaker 2: it's worth time in regard to some of these other
Speaker 2: issues involving Harvard and these district judges you're talking about, Steve.
Speaker 2: This is all happening in what's called the first circuit.
Speaker 2: These are the states, the federal courts, and the states
Speaker 2: up in Upper New England, Massachusetts and so on. This
Speaker 2: is also the same court that is enjoining Trump's decisions
Speaker 2: on visas involving Harvard. As Lucretia point out in the
Speaker 2: last podcast, this is the same court that said it
Speaker 2: was okay for Harvard to discriminate against Asian and whites
Speaker 2: and emissions and on and on. So if you're a liberal,
Speaker 2: and I guess that includes the Mexican government now, and
Speaker 2: you want to sue Trump, or you want to sue conservatives,
Speaker 2: you go to Boston. That's the most favorable grounds. That's
Speaker 2: the home court for liberals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's the old line. It used to be your
Speaker 1: your porn old book would be banned in Boston. It
Speaker 1: was so extreme. And now it's we'll sue Boston. Let's
Speaker 1: file away for the moment that the author of that
Speaker 1: opinion was Justice Kagan.
Speaker 2: And file it away.
Speaker 3: I actually want to ask John something about that. So
Speaker 3: Kagan wrote the opinion. It was not a bad opinion.
Speaker 3: Even Thomas agreed. He just wants to go, you know,
Speaker 3: as usual, a few steps further on the underlying legal
Speaker 3: doctrine and say legal doctrines are stupid.
Speaker 5: But we won't go there yet.
Speaker 3: I do want to say that this is the kind
Speaker 3: I want to ask Actually, John, this is the kind
Speaker 3: of case where if the court had decided in favor
Speaker 3: of the Mexican government, if they had said that, okay,
Speaker 3: aiding and abetting the cartels because you manufactured something they
Speaker 3: ended up using, without any findings of actual violations and
Speaker 3: so on, all of those things.
Speaker 5: What would have.
Speaker 3: Happened if the court would have decided this differently? It
Speaker 3: could have been I would think, absolutely catastrophic in its
Speaker 3: implications across the board, not just gun manufacturers, cars.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 3: That's It seems to me that even allowing this case
Speaker 3: to go forward in the first place was probably a
Speaker 3: huge mistake. But thank god, unanimously the court subved it
Speaker 3: back and said no, no, no, we're not going to
Speaker 3: do this.
Speaker 5: Am I wrong? John?
Speaker 3: And thinking that aiding a manufacturer creating a product without
Speaker 3: having to show any intention of maliciousness or without ever
Speaker 3: being found themselves liable for any violation, we can?
Speaker 1: I can? I put the question simply, John, wouldn't this
Speaker 1: open automn manufacturers the suits every time someone's killed in
Speaker 1: a car crash?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think about this way.
Speaker 2: Is there's a you know, a standard what we call negligence,
Speaker 2: which is that you know, someone made the product unreasonably,
Speaker 2: so it was unsafe because you made unreasonable decisions. So
Speaker 2: the gun manufacturers get the benefit of a much much
Speaker 2: way higher standard called aiding and a betting, which is
Speaker 2: really a criminal idea, criminal law idea. But if I
Speaker 2: think you're both, if Mexico succeeded in surviving that hurdle,
Speaker 2: not only I think would the firearm industry be done,
Speaker 2: because then everybody is going to sue in the United
Speaker 2: States who's shot, and they're just gonna say, well, if
Speaker 2: Mexico can sue because people got shot in Mexico, why
Speaker 2: can't die in the United States, So the firearm industry
Speaker 2: would be done. Interesting quite about whether that would be
Speaker 2: a violation of the Second Amendment if the government makes
Speaker 2: it so easy to sue and put out of business
Speaker 2: every gun manufacturer has it in some way, I violate
Speaker 2: our Second Amendment rights, but then.
Speaker 5: Be limited to gun manufacturers.
Speaker 2: No, No, And then my next point is, well, because
Speaker 2: this law only is about this really heightened standard, But
Speaker 2: I think it's right. There has been erosion over time
Speaker 2: about the idea that you raise, and actually this is
Speaker 2: I love this. This is a difference between natural law
Speaker 2: and law and economics positivism. Somehow you guys found your
Speaker 2: way to it without even knowing it. You guys just
Speaker 2: knew it.
Speaker 1: You knew it.
Speaker 2: So there used to be this idea that there, you know,
Speaker 2: you would that if you were going to hold someone
Speaker 2: responsible for an accident they caused, there had to be
Speaker 2: some kind of moral responsibility to it, or an attention
Speaker 2: or they did something wrong. And then you're in the
Speaker 2: around the mid twentieth century, there's this idea, no one's
Speaker 2: a you just have an accident and you just distribute
Speaker 2: the money to fix the costs of you know, where
Speaker 2: they fell. So you can hear it all the time,
Speaker 2: like no fault divorce, no fault auto insurance. Right, this
Speaker 2: this is a very progressive idea, right that there's just
Speaker 2: a certain number of accidents in the world, and you
Speaker 2: have them, and then we redistribute, right the money to
Speaker 2: make up for the harms without any regard to moral culpability.
Speaker 2: So you're right, that's a big change that's happened, and
Speaker 2: were well continue to go down that road, the positivest one,
Speaker 2: I'm afraid to say, Well, that's the general view of
Speaker 2: how we understand accidents now in law school and a
Speaker 2: lot of legislatures, state legislatures.
Speaker 1: Darn you, Lure, we're opening up this can darn you
Speaker 1: Lucretia for opening up this cannon words because we go
Speaker 1: on on this, but I don't want to because it
Speaker 1: would well, we'll take away from the future cases like
Speaker 1: case number two in Wisconsin. Where is it? Sotomayor wrote
Speaker 1: the opinion saying, no, wiscon you can't disqualify for tax
Speaker 1: exemption a Catholic a social work organization just because they're
Speaker 1: Catholic and you think it's a secular purpose, right, and
Speaker 1: so anyway, I didn't read the opinion, but I thought,
Speaker 1: again significant that it's a nine zero and sodo Mayor
Speaker 1: wrote the opinion reversing the democratic majority democratic only majority
Speaker 1: of the Wisconsin State Supreme Court. What should be added
Speaker 1: to that?
Speaker 2: This is really interesting implications in two directions. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure what you guys think of this actually, So the
Speaker 2: one I think makes a lot of sense to me
Speaker 2: is the core the government can't decide when it treats religion.
Speaker 2: I don't think it can look behind the front of
Speaker 2: the religion and say we think you should organize yourself
Speaker 2: this way versus that way, that's really what this case
Speaker 2: is about. Because you're the Catholic church, if you're if
Speaker 2: you give, if you have charities that serve non Catholics,
Speaker 2: right under this law in Wisconsin, you lost your tax
Speaker 2: exemption for those operations. And the court says, why is
Speaker 2: it the business of the government to decide what a
Speaker 2: religion should do or not do? That's interesting, but the
Speaker 2: deeper question, and here I'm not sure what you guys
Speaker 2: think of this. I was having a conversation with a
Speaker 2: friend of ours that we all know who studies religion closely,
Speaker 2: but I don't want to name him.
Speaker 1: Because well, someone who occasionally listens to this podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking, right, okay, so we know this podcast works
Speaker 2: on religion, but you know, we're just emailing. And he said,
Speaker 2: doesn't this ultimately mean that the government has to accept
Speaker 2: anyone who calls himself a religion a religion because you're
Speaker 2: not going to write someone says I'm a religious group,
Speaker 2: and then the government saying, we're not going to actually
Speaker 2: look at what you do and how you spend your
Speaker 2: money and what you decide is you know, a religious
Speaker 2: goal or not. We're just going to give you the
Speaker 2: tax exemption, which is a the tax senption is a
Speaker 2: proxy for we're going to leave you alone entirely. And
Speaker 2: so what I told him back was, well, I don't
Speaker 2: think that that's true. I mean, the IRS went after
Speaker 2: the Church of Scientology because they concluded that it wasn't
Speaker 2: really a religion. It was just basically a gigantic tax
Speaker 2: fraud scheme, right, and people forget the Supreme Court did
Speaker 2: not challenge that view in the end. In the end,
Speaker 2: I think it was Congress. No, no, it was Congress political
Speaker 2: pressure from Congress, and the IRS dropped it because they
Speaker 2: got so harassed about it. I think. So my view
Speaker 2: is I still think you can decide the courts should
Speaker 2: have to have a line about what's a real religion
Speaker 2: or not. But I don't know what you guys think.
Speaker 2: Maybe you think that's wrong. Maybe the court's just just
Speaker 2: the governments just accept anybody who thinks they're really founding
Speaker 2: a church that they get the benefits of these kinds
Speaker 2: of protections.
Speaker 3: I think the answer to your question, John, is framed
Speaker 3: in the way you presented the first point. And the
Speaker 3: thing that I found most crazy about the Wisconsin the
Speaker 3: Wisconsin side of a court side of those decisions. Was
Speaker 3: the idea that because the Catholic charity give their uh,
Speaker 3: give services, provide services to non Catholics, it makes it
Speaker 3: a secular activity was mind blowing to me. And that
Speaker 3: I mean, of course I'm Catholic. Of course I have
Speaker 3: very close ties with the Catholic charities in my parish,
Speaker 3: and you know that we support and the things.
Speaker 5: That they do.
Speaker 3: It's the definition of Christianity, and especially Catholic Christianity that you,
Speaker 3: as disciples go out and and you know, uh, the
Speaker 3: whole forgive me for putting the gospel for a moment,
Speaker 3: but you know, Jesus says you you fed me, you
Speaker 3: clothed me, you provided a house.
Speaker 5: For me, You did all of these things. When did
Speaker 5: we do that? Well, when you do them to the
Speaker 5: least of these, you do that for me.
Speaker 3: That's what Christians are called to do.
Speaker 5: And the idea, I mean.
Speaker 3: Tom Us gets at it a little bit without being
Speaker 3: as emotional about it as i'n being and his concurrence.
Speaker 3: But there's the answer. If you're you know, a tax dodge, No,
Speaker 3: I don't even want to go there. The whole point
Speaker 3: is is that the religious activities of Catholic charities are
Speaker 3: not secular activities. They are carrying out of the mission.
Speaker 1: Of the church.
Speaker 5: Okay, I'm done, Steve. I just had to get that point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's an important point because so John, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that question of what counts as a bona
Speaker 1: fide religion is a serious question.
Speaker 5: It is.
Speaker 1: The other hand, on the other hand, look, the Catholic
Speaker 1: Church didn't just show up yesterday, right, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: no uh, there's no question here. And so that's why
Speaker 1: I think the subtext of all these kind of cases
Speaker 1: is the political and social one, which is it has
Speaker 1: been a project of the secular left for decades now
Speaker 1: to marginalize all religion. And boy, they especially hate the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church above all, right, and so this is pushed
Speaker 1: back against that. You know, it is true that it
Speaker 1: not infrequently happens that you'll meet pastor Bob who's performing
Speaker 1: a wedding ceremony and he's managed to get quote unquote
Speaker 1: or universe some goofy thing, right, And yeah, I'll give example.
Speaker 2: I'll give you a real example that remember those there's
Speaker 2: a famous Supreme Court case about this religious group that
Speaker 2: would protest gay marriage, the Westborough funerals for Westboro, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and if you look at the facts, it's like a
Speaker 2: church of twelve people. Yeah right, yeah, But the court
Speaker 2: allowed that to be considered a real religion.
Speaker 3: And the funny thing about that case was John It
Speaker 3: the all of the people who, all of the entities
Speaker 3: who wrote amigas briefs in their favor, you know, on
Speaker 3: behalf of the Westboro Church were established institutional churches. They
Speaker 3: recognize that the moment you begin to question who is
Speaker 3: and who is not a real church, it goes down
Speaker 3: a slippery slope.
Speaker 2: But there's got to be a limit. Like you guys
Speaker 2: don't think this that Tom Cruise is a high bishop
Speaker 2: of some church of scientology, right, I mean, come on, no.
Speaker 5: No, it's a difficult problem. You know, I don't have
Speaker 5: the answer.
Speaker 1: But let's leave that problem for another day, perhaps when
Speaker 1: our listener and yes, well look, because I want to
Speaker 1: get on the I think the most significant case it
Speaker 1: was the Ames case involving the woman. White woman claimed
Speaker 1: she'd suffered reverse discrimination because she'd been passed over her
Speaker 1: promotion by lesser qualified almost sexuals, apparently by a gay
Speaker 1: supervisor or something like that. Now, a little context here
Speaker 1: back in the eighties when the Reagan administration was trying
Speaker 1: to contest what were still fairly recent doctrines in civil rights,
Speaker 1: disparate impact and things like that. There's a big fight
Speaker 1: over Mary Francis Berry, a big loud mouth of the
Speaker 1: so called civil rights community who liked Trump. Reagan tried
Speaker 1: to fire or displaced from the US Commission on Civil Rights,
Speaker 1: where Carter had placed her, and she said this, I
Speaker 1: think in nineteen eighty four. I'm going to quote her
Speaker 1: here one sentence. Civil rights laws were not passed to
Speaker 1: protect the rights of white men and do not apply
Speaker 1: to them, I mean, end quote. That was an orthodoxy
Speaker 1: of the civil rights community that, notwithstanding the plain text
Speaker 1: of the Civil Rights Act or the Fourteenth Amendment, civil
Speaker 1: rights laws were meant to be redistributive and remedial for
Speaker 1: protected classes as they were starting to be called in
Speaker 1: the law right. I mean, we had always protected classes
Speaker 1: that I think were in violation of both the Civil
Speaker 1: Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment. But it carried on anyway,
Speaker 1: and by the way, Congress changed the law so Mary
Speaker 1: Francis Berry could keep her job in the Civil Rights
Speaker 1: Commission and torment US for another decade. So anyway, it
Speaker 1: seems to me that in this decision written by Katanji
Speaker 1: Brown Jackson that said essentially, no, actually the text means
Speaker 1: what it says, a civil rights attached to individuals, and
Speaker 1: therefore ms Aimes has the right to proceed to have
Speaker 1: her case heard in court. That she's been discriminated against
Speaker 1: in violation of Title seven. And so, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that's hugely significant, not only that the court has
Speaker 1: spoken unanimously, but that Jackson is the one who wrote
Speaker 1: the opinion here. And I know we can say more,
Speaker 1: and I think, Lucreatia, you want to bring in again
Speaker 1: Justice Thomas's greater clarity on the matter. But I'm bold
Speaker 1: by this, but I think this is an absolutely huge
Speaker 1: defeat for the left. And I've got to think that
Speaker 1: law professors, leftist law professors, which as most of them
Speaker 1: are right now going out of their minds in their
Speaker 1: offices on law schools.
Speaker 2: John, I mean, I can't believe that the law was otherwise,
Speaker 2: that there were all these courts, circuit courts that were
Speaker 2: enforcing a hot what we call higher pleading standard that
Speaker 2: if you wanted to file what's called a reverse allegedly
Speaker 2: called a reverse discrimination claim. You have to have more
Speaker 2: proof than if you were filing a non reverse discrimination clip,
Speaker 2: just like if you are from a minority. And so
Speaker 2: there's a lot of problems with this. The first one
Speaker 2: is the statute doesn't say anything about this. It just
Speaker 2: says if you are discriminated against based on your rasearch
Speaker 2: during national art, you can bring a Title seven seat.
Speaker 2: It doesn't say anything about you being a part of
Speaker 2: a group. And I think that's the most important message,
Speaker 2: is that I think the left has always wanted us
Speaker 2: to be treated as members of groups, and what's important
Speaker 2: is how the group was treated, and Title seven doesn't
Speaker 2: do that. Title seven makes it an individual right. And
Speaker 2: I totally agree with you, Steve. I think it's a
Speaker 2: sign of how much these appointments to the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: of originalists and conservatives have changed the dialogue at the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court that you can't plausibly make that claim anymore
Speaker 2: with a straight face. And so what you have to
Speaker 2: do if you're liberal is speak in the language of
Speaker 2: and in the doctrine of conservatives, and that's going to
Speaker 2: mean sometimes you can't escape the conclusion that Title seven
Speaker 2: does not protect groups. The other thing that's interesting, and conservatives,
Speaker 2: I think, actually going to have different views about this
Speaker 2: now that the courts are becoming more friendly to these
Speaker 2: kinds of lawsuits. This is not such a case. But
Speaker 2: Title seven does allow you to sue based on what's
Speaker 2: called disparate impact, and we hate desperate impact, right, that's
Speaker 2: the idea of the population has, say twenty percent Asians,
Speaker 2: but there's only ten percent Asians in the who actually
Speaker 2: have the jobs. Therefore, I can get into court and
Speaker 2: claim illegal discrimination, and then the burden is up to
Speaker 2: the government to show that they're not being racist. And
Speaker 2: I think conservatives long used to think this properly, so
Speaker 2: I think was misreading of Title seven and potentially unconstitutional.
Speaker 2: But now that the institutional institutions are controlled by the
Speaker 2: left right and the left are very good at concealing,
Speaker 2: for example, that they're pursuing racial quotas when they do
Speaker 2: faculty hiring, for example, Disparate impact actually would be much
Speaker 2: more friendly weapon to conservatives now to try to stop
Speaker 2: institutions like Harvard from discriminating based on race but hiding
Speaker 2: it really well. So I feel like this case is,
Speaker 2: you know, is going to get us down the road
Speaker 2: to getting rid of disparate impac but disparate impact would
Speaker 2: actually be of enormous service to conservatives right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure that. Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 3: Well that's a really interesting concept. But I think let
Speaker 3: me address that first. I think, John, the greater motivating
Speaker 3: force in this is actually what's considered acceptable first by
Speaker 3: the legal community, the high level legal community, and then
Speaker 3: the broader public. The reason that disparate impact is problematic
Speaker 3: is because in fact, in fact does treat people as
Speaker 3: members of groups, the immutable characteristics of their their personhood
Speaker 3: that they don't control, and that really should make no
Speaker 3: difference whatsoever. So you're right, you know, these many years,
Speaker 3: we've come to accept the fact that Harvard can discriminate
Speaker 3: against Asians and whites because otherwise their entire student body
Speaker 3: would be made up of Asians because they do their homework.
Speaker 5: It's but it's a bigger thing.
Speaker 3: I think, John, that people are starting to question that
Speaker 3: pulls show that the average person doesn't support the idea
Speaker 3: of affirmative action based upon race, and so I think
Speaker 3: that a better way to do it is not to
Speaker 3: embrace because this is what I always said about affirmative action.
Speaker 3: Not to embrace a flawed principle of jurisprudence, the idea
Speaker 3: that we count the people based upon race to prove
Speaker 3: that there is or is not discrimination, but instead returns
Speaker 3: to the idea of a colorblind constitution, and a person
Speaker 3: should be judged on the basis of merit and their
Speaker 3: character and so on. I know that's more difficult. It's
Speaker 3: a lot easier to say there's not enough of this
Speaker 3: race or that race, or females versus males, whatever it
Speaker 3: might be.
Speaker 5: Anyway, that's my belief.
Speaker 3: It was the change in you know, it was the
Speaker 3: the propaganda that said, oh, well, we can't wait for
Speaker 3: that to happen. We have to, you know, for the
Speaker 3: next however many years, Justice Sandra Dale O'Connor, we have
Speaker 3: to make up for racial discrimination with a different kind
Speaker 3: of racial discrimination.
Speaker 5: And then we'll end it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: I don't think that they expected it to end this way,
Speaker 3: but I do think I agree with you, this is
Speaker 3: the end of it. The other thing that's important I
Speaker 3: think to on this case, on the Ames case, so
Speaker 3: it does deal with sexual identity, gender identity. I guess
Speaker 3: you're supposed to say, but I'm going to call it
Speaker 3: sexual identity in this case a woman was discriminated against
Speaker 3: by a boss. It doesn't actually say that in the case,
Speaker 3: but that's an important fact.
Speaker 5: The boss was gay.
Speaker 3: And refused, you know, this woman was straight, and so
Speaker 3: she kept getting either not getting a promotion, actually demoted.
Speaker 5: And the court said.
Speaker 3: What happened in Ohio is that the courts in Ohio
Speaker 3: said she has to prove background circumstances because she's a
Speaker 3: member of a majority. That is a higher standard than
Speaker 3: somebody would have to prove if say they were African
Speaker 3: American or what have you. And that you're right, it's
Speaker 3: not in Title seven. It's not you know, it's not.
Speaker 5: In the civil rights law anywhere.
Speaker 3: But the treatment of one race versus another differently that
Speaker 3: even even Katangi recognized that what I've said all along,
Speaker 3: why don't you, why don't you do favors based upon race,
Speaker 3: Why don't you favor this group versus that group, because
Speaker 3: sooner or later it can get turned around against you.
Speaker 3: And that was Lincoln's argument, right, that was Abraham Lincoln's
Speaker 3: argument against slavery. Any argument that you make for why
Speaker 3: this Persian should be a slave can be made against you.
Speaker 3: And maybe, just maybe Katangi is smart enough to figure
Speaker 3: that out. I doubt it, but hey, maybe your clerks were.
Speaker 1: No. No, I'm right with you on all of that.
Speaker 2: No, I mean there's I mean, remember conservatives a long
Speaker 2: time ago didn't favor Title seven, right, If I remember
Speaker 2: Barry Goldwater opposed Title seven.
Speaker 1: And that was the only that was the only reason
Speaker 1: the opposed the Civil Rights Act was just Title seven.
Speaker 1: They said he was fine with the rest of me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And because the Title seven is about the federal
Speaker 2: government expanding its regulations to tell private businesses how to operate.
Speaker 2: And this is the other ironic thing about all these
Speaker 2: race issues is that the left probably might regret that
Speaker 2: because now that they're in charge of things, they might
Speaker 2: like to discriminate basis on race to hit their racial quotas. Right,
Speaker 2: They're they're the ones we're going to actually be really
Speaker 2: hamstrong I think by Title seven going forward, especially because
Speaker 2: of decisions like this. And there's always been this argument
Speaker 2: from economists who say that racial discrimination is inefficient and
Speaker 2: that if you let the market alone and the state
Speaker 2: didn't try to intervene that, right, if you if a
Speaker 2: business wants to go ahead and discriminate against highly qualified
Speaker 2: women or blocks and they will move to other companies
Speaker 2: that don't discriminate, and those companies will have an advantage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Gary Becker's famous lifelong work, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Or my argument against why it is that the whole
Speaker 3: scam about women get paid seventy seven cents on the dollar.
Speaker 3: You know, if that were the case, as an employer,
Speaker 3: you would be an idiot not to hire anything but women.
Speaker 1: Right of course, Right, that's all sort of preposterous stuff.
Speaker 1: It's right. But now step back in on the politics
Speaker 1: of this, John Men, what I'm about to say if
Speaker 1: I don't have the right balance here. But it's the
Speaker 1: usual practice of the court as I gather that every
Speaker 1: month or whatever for period you're in, they parcel out
Speaker 1: who gets to write the majority opinions in the cases
Speaker 1: that are coming out that month, and this is spread
Speaker 1: it around to everybody. And when you see the three
Speaker 1: liberal Wibben writing these unanimous opinions, it tells me that
Speaker 1: they are not writing the opinions for some of the
Speaker 1: cases still to come, most especially this scrimtty case on
Speaker 1: the transgender medicine in Tennessee. What are other some of
Speaker 1: the other big cases where it's unlikely that the liberal
Speaker 1: side is going to win probably a split court. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so we can expect opinions from what you know,
Speaker 1: Thomas and Corsets and Roberts and uh, well you know
Speaker 1: the other Alito, right, yeah, And I don't know. I
Speaker 1: just I'm thinking, gosh, that's kind of interesting that they
Speaker 1: got these three unanimous, because otherwise they won't have any
Speaker 1: opinions to write if they're in the minority of the
Speaker 1: upcoming cases. Right? Is that completely crazy? Am I overstating?
Speaker 2: I was listening to you, Steve, because the lucretious guy
Speaker 2: a cat now, and I'm like, she brought the damn
Speaker 2: cat to Alaska.
Speaker 5: It's actually this morning of the Moose.
Speaker 3: The reason it's fuzzy at the beginning is she was
Speaker 3: mad I was paying attention to the moose and not her,
Speaker 3: so she bumped my arm and that's why it's all shaky.
Speaker 2: Throw the cat out door so it can commune with
Speaker 2: the moose. Yeah, so, Steve, this is interesting. And actually
Speaker 2: there are people who track this and post it online.
Speaker 2: So the practice is that you know, they have every
Speaker 2: month a certain number of oil arguments, and the Chief Justice,
Speaker 2: when he's in the majority, assigns the opinions and basically
Speaker 2: half the opinions every year, close to half the opinions
Speaker 2: every year are usually unanimous, So the Chief Justice tries
Speaker 2: to give an equal right workload to each justice. So
Speaker 2: you're right, Steve, if you see liberal justices writing unanimous
Speaker 2: opinions in June, that means they're not writing the majority
Speaker 2: opinions and the contentious cases. And I think actually someone
Speaker 2: looked up and saw that from the same months where
Speaker 2: you have those opinions, the cases you're talking about, the
Speaker 2: ones we really want to see, like the ban on
Speaker 2: gender transition surgery for miners out of tennessee the scur
Speaker 2: Metic case. He said, it looks like the only justice
Speaker 2: that doesn't have an opinion from the month that was
Speaker 2: argued is Chief Justice Roberts. So I don't know which
Speaker 2: way you think that's going to come out. I think
Speaker 2: appreciative thinks that's a big win for the transgender community,
Speaker 2: But I actually think Chief Justice Roberts would actually write
Speaker 2: an opinion saying that states are allowed on the grounds
Speaker 2: of public health to forbid such operations in trum right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, of all my nasty comments I make
Speaker 3: about the dred coward Roberts.
Speaker 5: He is a decent human being. He's screwed up about
Speaker 5: a lot of things. But I don't know.
Speaker 3: Any decent human being that could look at the situation
Speaker 3: with opening the doors of female everything too despicable transgender.
Speaker 5: The motives of those.
Speaker 3: People are so suspect. The damage that they do is
Speaker 3: so great. Even even John Roberts can't can't decide.
Speaker 5: I agree with you. I think he's gonna goa thing is.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's gonna be a unanimous decision. That's
Speaker 2: what's scary about it, right, Probably because it's it's been
Speaker 2: a while now and you're seeing unanimous opinions from that
Speaker 2: month come out. Almost all of them, I believe, are
Speaker 2: out now. Actually there's probably it's getting late because there's
Speaker 2: probably significant long descents about that, which is, you know,
Speaker 2: shocking to lucretia. I think for good reason. I think
Speaker 2: that's you know, that's the way they're gonna be. I'm
Speaker 2: sure they're gonna be, you know, dissent saying, oh, the
Speaker 2: enlightened medical opinion is that we should allow these kinds
Speaker 2: of surgeries and so on and so forth, And you're
Speaker 2: discriminating against the protected class, you know, Steve said, you know,
Speaker 2: the courts have been recognizing all these protected classes which
Speaker 2: are not protected classes. And if there was one that
Speaker 2: you would think would definitely not be a protected class
Speaker 2: based on the founding and the time of the writing
Speaker 2: the fourteenth Amendment, it would be right transgender.
Speaker 1: Right, we're gonna hear I'm sure we're gonna hear the
Speaker 1: wailing and gnashing if the case comes out as we expect.
Speaker 1: We're gonna hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth. That
Speaker 1: more people will die from this than died from the
Speaker 1: end of net neutrality.
Speaker 2: People say that I forgot that.
Speaker 1: People it was ridiculous.
Speaker 2: People said, the most hysterical said people would die from
Speaker 2: that because of no because you were allowed to charge
Speaker 2: for a surface.
Speaker 1: Something like that.
Speaker 2: And you know the first how many people did at
Speaker 2: and t kill by charging for long distance over one
Speaker 2: hundred years, millions and millions.
Speaker 1: But speaking of being shocked, I mean Lucretia today not
Speaker 1: only just said nice things about Chief Justice robertsononuted to go.
Speaker 1: She said nice things half an hour ago about Kareem
Speaker 1: John Pierre. I mean she might I think that, I know,
Speaker 1: I think this Alaskan air must be uh, you know,
Speaker 1: altering her mood.
Speaker 2: Or something, and unlike you, Steve, she didn't dress up
Speaker 2: as a teletubby or whatever that outfit was that you had,
Speaker 2: that had the michelin Man outfit where you can only
Speaker 2: see like your little coin could see your face surrounded,
Speaker 2: your whole thing body was surrounded by this plump rubber
Speaker 2: like the micheline Man. Why I asked you that question,
Speaker 2: Why did you have to wear that kind of clothing.
Speaker 2: It's it's June, you used to. It's still that cold
Speaker 2: up where you are that you have to see. You
Speaker 2: have to wear that mouth.
Speaker 1: It's still under forty degrees. It was snowing late in
Speaker 1: the afternoon yesterday when I did that, or two days ago,
Speaker 1: and you know wind can come up suddenly anyway.
Speaker 2: For some reason, I saw you wearing that, and I
Speaker 2: was like, I wish a student would sometimes dress like
Speaker 2: that to class. You know, you might remember, Steve, we
Speaker 2: had a class where this you know, two hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty pound hairy man would wear a woman's negligee. Remember
Speaker 2: this guy to our seminar on natural wall. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: I was like, how come no one ever wears like
Speaker 2: a polar explorer outfit the class? Why is it always
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty pounds, men are wearing women's women's underwear.
Speaker 2: What's going on? Why isn't there any balance to the world?
Speaker 1: Right, here's a lot Wait, hold on, before you kick
Speaker 1: me off.
Speaker 3: I did want to just bring up one thing from
Speaker 3: Thomas's concurrence, Steve.
Speaker 1: I knew you were going to do that.
Speaker 5: Go ahead, I'll make it quick, and I think we
Speaker 5: can take it up another day. But this is my
Speaker 5: this is my.
Speaker 3: Actual deepest opinion about Supreme Court, actually about judicial interpretation altogether.
Speaker 5: Where Justice Thomas in the Aims.
Speaker 3: Case, that's the the you know, sexual identity discrimination case,
Speaker 3: says in his concurrence, he writes separately to highlight the
Speaker 3: problems that arise when judges create a textual legal rules
Speaker 3: and frameworks. Judge made doctrines have a tendency to distort
Speaker 3: the underlying statutory text, impose unnecessary burdens on litigants, and
Speaker 3: cause confusion for the courts. And he then goes on
Speaker 3: to explain why these the things that the Court overturned
Speaker 3: in the case are exactly examples of these a textual
Speaker 3: legal rules and judge made doctrines. But I absolutely agree
Speaker 3: with that John and I just want to know, because
Speaker 3: you're the one who throws at me sometimes. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: the court has this doctrine and it has to follow
Speaker 3: this doctrine, isn't aren't those doctrines, those legal doctrines simultaneously
Speaker 3: too inclusive and too exclusive and cause them to fail
Speaker 3: to read the Constitution.
Speaker 5: The way they should. Just a question for you.
Speaker 2: So I think doctrine, whether it's good or not, depends
Speaker 2: on whether the initial decision is based on the right grounds.
Speaker 2: Because doctrine is just trying to take a decision and
Speaker 2: creating a set of principles that you can apply in
Speaker 2: the future without having to rethink the original case over
Speaker 2: and over again. So sometimes they are very fact specific.
Speaker 2: So the example would be the Fourth Amendment says no
Speaker 2: unreasonable searches. So it's very hard to come up with
Speaker 2: a set doctrine right out of rules to how do
Speaker 2: you you know? Because there's always different fact factual situations
Speaker 2: for searches, right. So there, I think doctrine is not
Speaker 2: of much help. But like the case we're talking about
Speaker 2: today religion, if the court says, because of the way
Speaker 2: we understand the free exercise and establishing clauses, we don't
Speaker 2: think courts should look behind the religion to see how
Speaker 2: they organize themselves and pick and choose about what should
Speaker 2: be protected and what shouldn't be protected. There's going to
Speaker 2: be a doctrine that comes out of that which will
Speaker 2: probably be better than what we have before, because the
Speaker 2: initial decision was a good decision. So I think the
Speaker 2: really doctrine really caused, you know, whether it's helpful or
Speaker 2: not really really depends on what its origins were. I
Speaker 2: don't think doctrine itself is bad. It's just it's just
Speaker 2: the way I don't and I don't know if this
Speaker 2: is the way, you know, because there's church doctrine, which
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's similar. But I think doctrine
Speaker 2: is like a time saving device. It just sort of
Speaker 2: gives you instead of rethinking everything. Here's like the three
Speaker 2: rules that we try to use for the test because
Speaker 2: we're trying to to follow the Supreme Court's decision on
Speaker 2: this or that. But we can get into it in
Speaker 2: much greater detail because there's a deep dispute or divide
Speaker 2: or argument amongst conservative legal scholars about, you know, how
Speaker 2: we should try to formulate doctrine and enforce it. There's
Speaker 2: Justice Thomas does not think that doctrine should buying judges, right,
Speaker 2: you know, he thinks that your only oath is really
Speaker 2: to interpret the Constitution and apply it, not what other
Speaker 2: judges thought the Constitution meant, which has a sort of
Speaker 2: appealed to it. But you don't want lower court judges
Speaker 2: doing that. But yeah, the Justice Justice Thomas does not
Speaker 2: believe in starry decisives, so he probably you know, he
Speaker 2: would not think highly of doctrine.
Speaker 1: So it makes it well need or do liberal justices either,
Speaker 1: if we're being honest, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, oh right, yeah, the Warren Court didn't believe in
Speaker 2: doctrine either.
Speaker 1: Right. Well, once again I've lost complete control of the
Speaker 1: timeline of this episode because for the fifth.
Speaker 2: Way we talk about political theory. No, we've run out
Speaker 2: of I finally did the I did this sign readings
Speaker 2: for Christ's sake.
Speaker 3: Well, next week, John, maybe we should have a special
Speaker 3: episode where we we will not discuss politics.
Speaker 1: Here's what I'm gonna do, Here's here's.
Speaker 2: What the whole thing is about politics. Well, think all
Speaker 2: these readings were about politics.
Speaker 1: Just to remind readers and remind you guys why we
Speaker 1: keep saying we're going to do this is several weeks ago. John,
Speaker 1: you insulted both Lucretian and I gravely when you said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I thought you guys were political theorists, and that's like
Speaker 1: you might as well just call us pedophiles. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the last thing we want to be as political theorists.
Speaker 2: I mean, from what I can tell, what you guys
Speaker 2: actually are whatever you want to have sex with old
Speaker 2: people because you're worshiping Plato and Aristotle. In the end,
Speaker 2: I don't know what the opposite of pedophile is.
Speaker 1: Well, what I think is we're going to start a
Speaker 1: regular series, a regular segment maybe regular called What's wrong
Speaker 1: with John Yu because this is one of those Let
Speaker 1: me just make two quick bullet points, and then what
Speaker 1: I want to do, By the way, I want to
Speaker 1: hear from a listener if they really do want to
Speaker 1: hear more about this, because this is what we.
Speaker 2: Want to post the readings online so that they.
Speaker 1: Can No, No, I didn't, ye, Well I could. I
Speaker 1: could do that. I could do a number of things.
Speaker 2: By the way, then our listenership will drop by eighty
Speaker 2: five percent.
Speaker 1: Well, this is what I'm wondering. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: some people like some of our old political philosophy shows
Speaker 1: and you know we've moved on to sort of low
Speaker 1: current events a lot. And uh, look, I mean two
Speaker 1: basic distinctions which need explanation that I won't give today.
Speaker 1: The first is is that the difference between political philosophy
Speaker 1: and political theory can be put down to political philosophers
Speaker 1: ask what is, and most political theorists are about what
Speaker 1: should be. They're more utopian. Uh, they're not connected to reality.
Speaker 1: Another way of putting it is, what's the old joke
Speaker 1: about economists who see something working in practice and wonder
Speaker 1: if it will work in theory. Well, that's part of
Speaker 1: the divide here. I think you can.
Speaker 2: Tell a little joke about that that economists tell. It
Speaker 2: gives you the lost sense of why economists have no
Speaker 2: sense of humor. To economists walking down the street and
Speaker 2: then one says, hey, there's one hundred dollars bills on
Speaker 2: the ground, and the other one says it can't be
Speaker 2: there because someone would have picked it up already by now.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, that's the or the or the the variations
Speaker 1: of that one. Like you know, the economist and the
Speaker 1: engineer is stuck in a will, and the engineer says,
Speaker 1: if I had some rope and a few sticks, I
Speaker 1: could make us a ladder and get us out. And
Speaker 1: the economist says, oh, no problem, let's assume we have
Speaker 1: a ladder. Right, that's the way all the economics. But look,
Speaker 1: the more basic point is is that all political knowledge
Speaker 1: is practical knowledge and not theoretical knowledge. Again, that you
Speaker 1: have to spend some time.
Speaker 2: What the hell that makes no sense?
Speaker 1: Yes it does, you're I see, by the way, I
Speaker 1: calculated my memo about this in a way to a
Speaker 1: supremely annoyed Lucretia, even though she secretly agrees with me
Speaker 1: about all this.
Speaker 2: But you don't, no, no, no, what But you derive
Speaker 2: theory based from the evidence and experience? What do you
Speaker 2: I mean? There's no divide. Yes, there is theory and data.
Speaker 1: We're oh there you go. Now you open up that
Speaker 1: whole scientific revolution.
Speaker 2: It's going to drive you crazy.
Speaker 1: Oh god, it just gets worse and worse. All right, Lucretia,
Speaker 1: let's go to some Babylon bees and get out of
Speaker 1: this mess. And listeners, let us know if you want
Speaker 1: to hear us do a SmackDown with John uh will
Speaker 1: be a you know, three way argument on political theory.
Speaker 1: Versus political philosophy, and I will come with receipts and examples.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, meanwhile, I know some people like this one. Hamas
Speaker 3: agrees to surrender if Europe takes Greta Thunberg back.
Speaker 2: Yes, right, because now can I ask questions? So she
Speaker 2: actually is on some boat trying to get into Gaza.
Speaker 2: What happened I saw when.
Speaker 1: That was still on the way. I think no, I
Speaker 1: think she's en route, you know. Oh, so she's like.
Speaker 2: A real global warmingist and like built like a like
Speaker 2: a Greek trirem that uses no electricity, and they're just
Speaker 2: rowing their way to Gaza from well wherever Norway or
Speaker 2: wherever she's from.
Speaker 1: Sweet it looks like about a sixty foot yacht, maybe
Speaker 1: seventy feet, but they say they're bringing relief supplies to gods.
Speaker 1: I think the Israeli should let her in because there's
Speaker 1: a blockade, right, but they should.
Speaker 2: Are you kidding? I think the Israeli should sub torpedo
Speaker 2: that sucker the minute it comes into Rings.
Speaker 1: All right, that's the other that would be good for
Speaker 1: the rest of us. But sorry, the Kritia welch, you guys, It's.
Speaker 3: Quite all right. Federal Judge Block's deportation of terrorist's family,
Speaker 3: or is Jews lit back on fire? Oh that's really bad.
Speaker 3: Republicans announced plan to keep doing opposite of what everyone
Speaker 3: voted for them to do. And is a picture of
Speaker 3: Mike Johnson of course us here's your here's yours? Steve
Speaker 3: us Harvey Milk to be renamed USS now homo.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, I don't know why you're saying Steve would
Speaker 2: like that. Did you see that picture of him and
Speaker 2: his outfit up north of.
Speaker 1: It was so bad?
Speaker 3: Man really regretting getting his new Trump musk back tattoo
Speaker 3: guys or judge determines Trump will get the nation on
Speaker 3: weekdays while Musk gets every other weekend and holidays.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I know, it's very bad. Just a couple more.
Speaker 1: Not a good look.
Speaker 3: Kill maar Garcia traffics seven kids into us on return
Speaker 3: flight from L Salvador. It okay, this will be my
Speaker 3: last one. Depressed Trump asks Milania if she'd put on
Speaker 3: a baseball cap and say space stuff to cheer him up.
Speaker 2: Okay, John, always drink your whiskey, meat and Steve, what
Speaker 2: is the latest A I pay in to the three
Speaker 2: whiskey happy hour.
Speaker 1: I have a genuine Norse epic here that comes in
Speaker 1: three standss tonight, which is a little longer than usual,
Speaker 1: but you'll see why. Because I asked it to do
Speaker 1: you know a Norse epic poem of Viking, you know,
Speaker 1: And it came up with three stanzas that apply to well,
Speaker 1: I think you'll see who it applies to. Here we go.
Speaker 1: First came the bold one, with drous laugh, whose tongue
Speaker 1: split the silence like Odin's own staff. He spoke of
Speaker 1: islay of smoke and Pete's sting, a connoisseur forged in
Speaker 1: the cask of a king. Then came the wise one,
Speaker 1: in cloak of soft tone, with tasting notes ancient as
Speaker 1: mill guard's old stone. She sipped and she pondered, then
Speaker 1: spake with deep grace. This dram bears the oak and
Speaker 1: wind from some place. The third was the trickster, sharp
Speaker 1: witted and sly, who dust at the gods as the
Speaker 1: crows passed him by. With metaphors wild and a glint
Speaker 1: in his eye. He toast of Valhalla, then laughed till
Speaker 1: he cried. And I didn't even give the a. I
Speaker 1: bought our names and anything about us, and it came
Speaker 1: up with those.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 5: Okay, before we.
Speaker 3: Let me you, let me just point out that Steve
Speaker 3: sent us a menu from some place he was over
Speaker 3: there in the Arctic Circle, and one of the items
Speaker 3: on the whiskey menu was whiskey help me sheep dung
Speaker 3: smoked whiskey.
Speaker 1: I didn't try it.
Speaker 2: Come on, yes, oh you didn't try it.
Speaker 5: You know what challenge? You didn't take it.
Speaker 1: I was going to and I didn't get the chance.
Speaker 1: I passed it by. So but next week, Gang, and
Speaker 1: you know, we'll see if we're gonna throw down ever
Speaker 1: on John's insults to us on being political theorists. Lord, okay,
Speaker 1: bye bye everybody, Bye, Ricochet, Join the conversation.