Speaker 1: Well, whiskey, come and take my pain, the money.
Speaker 2: The way, Oh whiskey. Why think alone when you can
Speaker 2: drink it all in with Ricochet's Three Whiskey Happy Hour,
Speaker 2: Join your bartenders, Steve Hayward, John, You and the International
Speaker 2: Woman of Mystery Lucretia where the laps it up? And David,
Speaker 2: ain't you easy on?
Speaker 1: The show cats?
Speaker 2: Gotta give me and let that whiskey.
Speaker 3: Welcome everybody to this super super special edition of the
Speaker 3: Three Whiskey Happy Hour. Why because we're all together, although
Speaker 3: it's only on Zoom, but we're happy to be together.
Speaker 3: We really hate it when it's not all three of us.
Speaker 3: I'll be honest with you. Think you just don't work
Speaker 3: very well, you know Steve and I and we're not.
Speaker 3: We're kind of uninteresting without John. I'll just say that.
Speaker 3: So John, welcome back.
Speaker 2: True.
Speaker 3: See it is true. Yeah, because there's a nice balance
Speaker 3: of you guys being idiots and me having but different kinds. No,
Speaker 3: I'm kidding, but there is a nice balance between my
Speaker 3: fiery sorts of ideas and Steve's historical analogies. And then
Speaker 3: you come in and you're kind of this moderate guy
Speaker 3: who just sort of elitist. You know, it all works,
Speaker 3: It all works, and folks love it. They say that,
Speaker 3: I know you don't read comments, but now the comments
Speaker 3: mostly come to me as by the way, as private
Speaker 3: messages on x and just sorry for this, but for
Speaker 3: one of those private messages out there. I did open
Speaker 3: my brunello last night as I was instructed, and you're right,
Speaker 3: it's delicious. So I get all sorts of nice advice
Speaker 3: as a result of people listening to this podcast. John,
Speaker 3: you really should sort of be more open to the
Speaker 3: idea of listening to the listeners once in a while.
Speaker 3: But John, even when.
Speaker 1: They hate there, are you kidding like the pedestrians that
Speaker 1: I run over in my car?
Speaker 3: No, these are our listeners are highly intelligent, thank you
Speaker 3: very much. They are listen to influencers.
Speaker 2: Lucretia exaggerates a little bit. There are many commenters, John,
Speaker 2: who are on your side. Oh yes, really yes?
Speaker 1: How many would you say is a percentage of our listenership?
Speaker 2: H forty? I was gonna lower the.
Speaker 3: Wow at any given time, John, at any given.
Speaker 1: Time, I was hoping for a third.
Speaker 3: The thing that frustrates our listeners most about you is
Speaker 3: your purposeful ignorance about certain things that you refuse to
Speaker 3: learn about them, and you refuse to learn about them.
Speaker 3: Does that make.
Speaker 1: Sense conspiracy theories?
Speaker 3: No, I mean even just going outside of the the rate,
Speaker 3: the lamestream media, whatever you want to call it, to
Speaker 3: some more edgy kinds of media sources. You won't do that,
Speaker 3: which is why you don't know a lot of things
Speaker 3: that are happening because they aren't reported.
Speaker 1: Are you talking about like professional wrestling magazines.
Speaker 3: Like No, I'm talking about even just reading Breitbart or
Speaker 3: reading Daily Caller or reading I don't know, Newsmax. There's
Speaker 3: all sorts of places that you can get it from
Speaker 3: besides X, which everybody should be on X. But anyway,
Speaker 3: that's a different story. Okay, today we have some really
Speaker 3: interesting things to talk about, because the life is just
Speaker 3: interesting these days. We do want we're coming a little
Speaker 3: late to the party, but my co hosts want to
Speaker 3: talk a little bit about the hundred days. Why one
Speaker 3: hundred days is an exceptional mark in a presidency is
Speaker 3: a little bit lost on me. It reminds me of
Speaker 3: my short time in the public schools, where at one
Speaker 3: hundred days, that's where public schools get their budgets are
Speaker 3: based upon what the attendance is enrollment and attendances of
Speaker 3: public school children the first hundred days. So they always
Speaker 3: celebrate it by counting one hundred m and ms and
Speaker 3: one hundred beans and one hundred this and that. So
Speaker 3: let's count one hundred beans and let me hear John,
Speaker 3: what you have to think about the first hundred days
Speaker 3: of the Trump administration.
Speaker 1: So Steve recommended we read these accounts, which were much
Speaker 1: more pro Trump than probably a lot of the people
Speaker 1: in the media saying things like, well, Trump's been much
Speaker 1: more successful. Trump's been the kind of change that conservatives needed,
Speaker 1: basically because I think of his brashness and willingness to
Speaker 1: disrupt and change things up. So I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of good that Trump has done. The thing that
Speaker 1: worries me is whether it's going to be ephemeral. And
Speaker 1: by that I mean a lot of things he's done
Speaker 1: so far can be easily reversed, and what he really
Speaker 1: needs to do is to get Congress and the courts
Speaker 1: to codify what he's done so it becomes more permanent.
Speaker 1: So take, for example, doge a lot of publicity. I think,
Speaker 1: as all of us know, you're really not gonna be
Speaker 1: able to cut the enormous federal budget deficit unless you
Speaker 1: do something about social spending. Nevertheless, I think it's really
Speaker 1: good that you sent this agency, you know, these outsiders
Speaker 1: in defined as much cutting as can be done by
Speaker 1: the budget and the budget yeah, and fraud and waste,
Speaker 1: you know, and find fraud and abuse. But a lot
Speaker 1: of it's not going to succeed unless Congress ratifies the changes, right,
Speaker 1: Like you know, Doge can come in and say, we'd
Speaker 1: like to fire these people, we'd like to cut the money.
Speaker 1: But that's why we're seeing a lot of the litigation.
Speaker 1: If Congress went in and authorized it, or if Congress
Speaker 1: came in and just adopted all the changes does recommended,
Speaker 1: there'd be no court suits. It would be if the
Speaker 1: president Congress. So that's my point is Trump has did
Speaker 1: a good job with getting rid of DEI, right, with
Speaker 1: shaking up spending, with impowerments and so on. But they
Speaker 1: could be very fleeting unless Congress, that is rep. Right
Speaker 1: the House in the center of controller this. If he
Speaker 1: doesn't do that to really close the deal, it could
Speaker 1: all be fleeting successes. And that's what really worries me
Speaker 1: about the first hundred days is that you don't want
Speaker 1: them to be the first hundred days. You want them
Speaker 1: to be the first you know, a thousand days. But
Speaker 1: without Congress, it could just be a few hundred days.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Steve, are you there? I guess Steve doesn't want
Speaker 3: to play with us anymore.
Speaker 2: I'm totally here. I was just waiting my term patiently.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to interrupt.
Speaker 1: That's not like you.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm you know, I uh well, I'm working on
Speaker 2: my lafroy ten here tonight. I'm feeling mellow. Look. First
Speaker 2: of all, a I don't like tariffs. I think you're
Speaker 2: a bad idea. Be Trump is taking a huge risk
Speaker 2: and he might win. That is the history of prompt
Speaker 2: eastne that in business. And there's some evidence, and I
Speaker 2: won't board listeners with it now that he may win
Speaker 2: this battle. A lot of evidence out of China that
Speaker 2: they're feeling the heat, and more and more news reports
Speaker 2: that they're willing, they're ready to talk. They deny it,
Speaker 2: but who knows what you believe what you read in
Speaker 2: the media. But I think there's a chance Trump is
Speaker 2: gonna come out on top of this. It may be
Speaker 2: MESSI I don't like it, but nonetheless, let's reserve judgment.
Speaker 2: But second about the forget all the stupid polls. This
Speaker 2: is lucreatia. You had it right. This is a psi
Speaker 2: op by the media, and I do remember it's maybe
Speaker 2: kind of reversal in some ways but consistent in others.
Speaker 2: But back in the Reagan years, Reagan was always popular,
Speaker 2: except for when he had a recession and be Iran contra. Otherwise,
Speaker 2: his popularity ratings were always great, and the media would say, well,
Speaker 2: he's personally popular, but the American people don't like what
Speaker 2: he's doing. That turned out if you actually pulled issues,
Speaker 2: that was largely untrue. Also, there are a few places
Speaker 2: he did poorly on issues, but in most places he
Speaker 2: was His issue stands were just as popular as he was.
Speaker 2: I think the media is doing that now, except I
Speaker 2: do think there may be something to the view that
Speaker 2: there's still a lot of people think, you know, Trump's
Speaker 2: kind of rude, and I don't know, but we like
Speaker 2: a lot of what he's doing, like at the border
Speaker 2: and other things. And I think you discount these poles
Speaker 2: that show him underwater on tariffs and all the rest
Speaker 2: of that. I think some of that's genuine. But again
Speaker 2: i'll just plant here the axiom I've said many times
Speaker 2: that do not trust poles or do not credit polls
Speaker 2: that are about attitudes about issues, because those are you know,
Speaker 2: a mile wide an inch deep. And I'll stop there.
Speaker 2: But the third thing is, look, the media has clearly
Speaker 2: chosen sides, more so than they've ever done in their history.
Speaker 2: We know they're always biased in the hostile to Republicans,
Speaker 2: but they have decided they have to destroy Trump. And
Speaker 2: so here to one hundred days. Okay, one hundred days
Speaker 2: is arbitrary. On the other hand, it's an arbitrary measure
Speaker 2: the liberals invented, so let's use it against them. And
Speaker 2: so they're trying to say, oh, Trump's in big trouble,
Speaker 2: and you know the VS Republicans like David Brooks says,
Speaker 2: oh Trump's in big trouble. And that's why I was
Speaker 2: taken by the articles first by Martin Gurry in City Journal.
Speaker 2: I never heard of this guy until he wrote this
Speaker 2: A hold up for you guys. He wrote this, Oh
Speaker 2: I don't have my camera on. Sorry. He wrote this
Speaker 2: big fat book six seven years ago about populism that
Speaker 2: gets the whole matter quite right, I think. And he
Speaker 2: says this week. You know, I underestimated Trump. Turns out
Speaker 2: this guy's got more to him than I thought. I
Speaker 2: think this is very significant when people who otherwise would
Speaker 2: keep their distance from Trump say, oh, maybe there's something
Speaker 2: to this guy. And then today Thursday, as we're talking
Speaker 2: in the Wall Street Journal, my old colleague Karl zin Smeister,
Speaker 2: who he used to clash with at the American Enterprise Institute,
Speaker 2: has this article saying, boy, did conservatism ever need a
Speaker 2: Trump reset? Why that's important? And for listeners who'd never
Speaker 2: heard of Carl or don't know him, is he worked
Speaker 2: in the George W. Bush White House. He is as
Speaker 2: conventional and mainstream conservative as they come these days. That
Speaker 2: would be criticism. It would it wasn't, you know, twenty
Speaker 2: years ago? But yes, it was well for you, right, Okay,
Speaker 2: very good. I'm almost done to the crease. I promise
Speaker 2: you're read very very patient with me tonight. But for
Speaker 2: him to say that suggests to me why we're seeing
Speaker 2: a what what is often called the cascade preference. But
Speaker 2: the point is is that I think the story in
Speaker 2: one hundred days is exactly the opposite of what the
Speaker 2: media is saying. I think Trump is moving from triumph
Speaker 2: to triumph. Oh, there's lots of things to say. This is,
Speaker 2: you know, wrong, and this and that, and you know,
Speaker 2: I can pick on lots of things he's said. But
Speaker 2: of course I said that about Reagan too, who made
Speaker 2: lots of mistakes a lot along the way. So I
Speaker 2: think I give Trump an a plus at one hundred days.
Speaker 2: And I'm usually pretty tough on these things.
Speaker 3: So I want to just throw out that. What I
Speaker 3: told you guys, I was going to say is that
Speaker 3: the people who have really been defeated in the first
Speaker 3: hundred days are the are the Democrats. And Trump has
Speaker 3: put the nail in the coffin. But I don't want
Speaker 3: to leave it there, because what I want to say is,
Speaker 3: not only are the Democrats lame and useless, and across
Speaker 3: the board they have I mean, they have no bench,
Speaker 3: they have no leaders, they have no consistent ideas except
Speaker 3: for maybe falling back on, you know, the radical leftism
Speaker 3: that got them defeated, you know, and they're fighting over that.
Speaker 3: What it comes down to is the Democratic Party is useless,
Speaker 3: and who's taken the opposition roll away from the Democratic Party.
Speaker 3: It's the media. Yeah, it's the media, And so yeah,
Speaker 3: and absolutely, stevee just give me a second. Pete Hegseth
Speaker 3: goes on Twitter and puts up I got a score
Speaker 3: of one hundred. Do you know what that score was?
Speaker 3: It was media media? What's the media research or media?
Speaker 3: I always get a mixed up the good guys versus
Speaker 3: the bad guys. Whichever the good guys are. They came
Speaker 3: out and said that in the month of I believe
Speaker 3: it was the month of February March, one hundred percent
Speaker 3: of the media coverage of hag Seth was negative.
Speaker 2: That's our right, that's our friends, that's our friends at
Speaker 2: the Media Research Center, Brents Bosel and those guys. I
Speaker 2: don't know anybody's ever gotten one hundred percent. So that
Speaker 2: is a great achievement.
Speaker 3: It is a great achievement. I mean, Elon Musk only
Speaker 3: got ninety six percent, and who was it? Somebody else
Speaker 3: only got somebody else came in at eighty six percent.
Speaker 3: Oh Rfk came in and only eighty six percent. So
Speaker 3: Haig says, says, you guys got to do better. But
Speaker 3: that's a serious point. Go ahead, Steve, Well, there's just
Speaker 3: one sentence.
Speaker 2: I mean, it emerged this week that Hakeem Jeffries, the
Speaker 2: House leader, announced the caucus, and somebody leaked it that
Speaker 2: he said no more trips to El Salvador. Why more
Speaker 2: information comes out about that guy they shipped over and
Speaker 2: you forget due process in those arguments. But they realize
Speaker 2: this is actually bad politics because it tells people we're
Speaker 2: on the side of a gang member. We care more
Speaker 2: about gang members and El Salvador than Americans in America.
Speaker 2: And even dim with the Democrats can figure that out.
Speaker 2: Let score another one for Trump.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally agree with Lucretia that that, you know, what,
Speaker 1: how are you know, troubled Trump's the first time the
Speaker 1: days are no like however, however tru But I just
Speaker 1: want to say Democrats are far worse shape. But that's
Speaker 1: what But that goes to the tarrific economics issue to me,
Speaker 1: which is the major I think major defect of the
Speaker 1: first hundred days is that Trump's handing the Democrats the
Speaker 1: issue of the economy. You know, the Democrats don't have
Speaker 1: any issues other than just like what Trump's giving them.
Speaker 1: They have no ur great lookers, they have no agenda,
Speaker 1: they have no outstanding figures right they I was at
Speaker 1: some event involving political scientists this weekend. They said, you know,
Speaker 1: the odds are that the Democrats will take the House
Speaker 1: just because of normal historical patterns, there's sory such a slow,
Speaker 1: small majority in the out of power party usually wins
Speaker 1: the House and the midterm elections in a second term.
Speaker 1: So the thing that that's why I think you're right
Speaker 1: that the Democrats are in terrible shape. But if the
Speaker 1: economy turns sour because Trump spent too much energy and
Speaker 1: all these other issues in didn't address inflation and economy first,
Speaker 1: then it'll been his own fault.
Speaker 3: But you said yourself, Congress doing something. If Congress fails
Speaker 3: to reenact the Trump tax cuts, then the tariffs don't
Speaker 3: worry me. But if those tax cuts expire and huge
Speaker 3: tax increases across the board, as much as the stupid
Speaker 3: Democrats try to claim that they were tax cuts for
Speaker 3: the rich, people like us and people that make less
Speaker 3: money than a actually saw more money in their pockets
Speaker 3: because of those tax cuts. And if those tax cuts
Speaker 3: expire because the useless Republicans can't get off there you
Speaker 3: know what's and get it done, then there will be
Speaker 3: a recession and they will lose the House and probably
Speaker 3: the Senate.
Speaker 1: I was talking to a friend of mine who's, you know,
Speaker 1: very prominent Wall Street banker, and he, you know, he says, look,
Speaker 1: Trump can pull this out if two things happen. You
Speaker 1: have to pull the get the tax cuts through, and
Speaker 1: the tariff system has to and maybe it'll turn into
Speaker 1: this mostly focused on China, that if we can actually
Speaker 1: use the tariffs to enter into good trading deals with
Speaker 1: our allies like the Europeans and we all have a
Speaker 1: better free trade agreements with them, and all of us
Speaker 1: raise tariffs on China, then actually it it will be
Speaker 1: a great success. I'm not sure they're going to do it,
Speaker 1: but that's the route out, and you know Trump has
Speaker 1: a room to maneuver.
Speaker 3: Well, let's let's on that happy note, take a break
Speaker 3: for TAMU to come on and sponsor a program. And
Speaker 3: we all know that what we need is a whole
Speaker 3: lot more cheap Chinese goods at cheap cheap prices.
Speaker 2: Well, how do you know that the ad we just
Speaker 2: listened to, which is all customized to where listeners are,
Speaker 2: was from I've.
Speaker 3: Actually never heard a TMU ad. I've seen them all alright.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, no, Lucretia, I mean, I just wanted to
Speaker 2: budle and say, look, I mean, yeah, we're the big enchilada,
Speaker 2: as they say with our Spanish language ads. Is whether
Speaker 2: the House and the Senate are going to get together
Speaker 2: and pass a good tax cut bill over the summer.
Speaker 2: That's the big drama. However, I think what should be
Speaker 2: noted today and won't be in the press, is that
Speaker 2: the House voted on Thursday in a bipartisan majority, with
Speaker 2: thirty five or thirty six Democrats agreeing with Republicans to
Speaker 2: kill California's electric car mandate, which something like twenty understand
Speaker 2: it's a copied that's the mandate that said that by
Speaker 2: the year twenty thirty five you cannot sell a gasoline
Speaker 2: powered car in California, which is insane. And so now
Speaker 2: there's been some thought that the Senate Parliamentarian says, well,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure this requires or that satisfies the requirements
Speaker 2: of the Congression Review Act. And if John Thune does
Speaker 2: not squash the parliamentarian and past this, then he will
Speaker 2: be worse in your mind, Lucatia, I think than Mitch
Speaker 2: McConnell as a Senate majority leader. That's all out.
Speaker 1: Okay, Ouch, that's the worst. That's the worst you could be.
Speaker 2: I know. That's why I brought it up.
Speaker 3: Okay, I don't know. I'm not I don't. I don't
Speaker 3: worry about the whole tear of things. I think it's
Speaker 3: I think you guys are going to realize that everything
Speaker 3: I've predicted about this tear for is going to become true,
Speaker 3: and that at the end of it, America will be
Speaker 3: in a much better place. But I am prepared to
Speaker 3: be corrected if it turns out you guys are right.
Speaker 3: It just never happened that way. I'm all, I always
Speaker 3: end up being right. But anyway, I actually saw the
Speaker 3: funnies thing. I just have to go on this on
Speaker 3: X about trying to teach people about tariffs, and I'm
Speaker 3: not going to read the whole thing, even though it's hilarious,
Speaker 3: but it starts off by saying that suppose you buy
Speaker 3: an inflatable woman from China, and then it's the whole
Speaker 3: thing about how teriff's actually work, and and and you
Speaker 3: know the idea that a supplier would raise their their prices,
Speaker 3: you know, fifty percent, if they could raise their prices
Speaker 3: and get them to sell fifty percent higher, they would
Speaker 3: have already done it, you know, so that's the whole
Speaker 3: point of it. But it's a whole thing about buying
Speaker 3: your inflatable women from China. So there you go. Off
Speaker 3: to you all right, back to back to sirius. I'm sorry, Steve, Steve,
Speaker 3: I'm embarrassing him.
Speaker 4: You are my gosh, let's talk about Canada for a minute,
Speaker 4: and I want to start start the conversation unless you
Speaker 4: guys had to say about so des No, I want
Speaker 4: to start the conversation with what I think is my
Speaker 4: favorite post that I saw.
Speaker 3: Of all times. And I'm so Steve. I listened to
Speaker 3: your thing last week and your nice friend mister Bryce
Speaker 3: has a pie mouth.
Speaker 2: Well I know, yeah, but okay, so.
Speaker 3: Because I'm quoting, I'm going to be like your nice
Speaker 3: friend for a moment. So forgive me family show. We
Speaker 3: can shit on Canada all day, but don't forget just
Speaker 3: four years ago we in America elected a senile conman
Speaker 3: who had accomplished nothing during his fifty years in government.
Speaker 3: No nation is immune to the media stoked madness of
Speaker 3: the electorate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, fair enough.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's that's pretty much puts in a few words
Speaker 3: what you said in your political Questions posts the other
Speaker 3: day without the body part.
Speaker 2: Look, I mean, well, I think it was an unforced
Speaker 2: error on Trump's part because the idea of making Canada
Speaker 2: the fifty state is really a bad idea. And that's because,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a reason the Tories went to Canada
Speaker 2: in seventeen seventy six, and why they accepted the metric
Speaker 2: system in the seventies without any fuss, whereas we said, no,
Speaker 2: we don't want that.
Speaker 3: Crap, and they're seceeding.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, no, I well, I did say that in
Speaker 2: my posts. Let's take Alberta in It's well, they're there. Well,
Speaker 2: I said, let's entice them to become the fifty first state.
Speaker 2: They are the Texas of Canada, by the way, you know,
Speaker 2: again another reason to love Trump. He invited Jeffrey Goldberg
Speaker 2: of the famous single Chat and the Atlantic editors to
Speaker 2: come in and interview with I mean, Biden will let
Speaker 2: anybody in for a free, willing, free wheeling interview, but
Speaker 2: he had Jeffrey Goldberg in, and Jeffrey Goldberg pressed Trump,
Speaker 2: I think exactly right, saying, wait, Canada would be a
Speaker 2: liberal state. To be a democratic state, it would be
Speaker 2: two democratic senators and twenty five Democratic House members, and
Speaker 2: Trump said that's okay, I don't care. You know it
Speaker 2: was I don't know, I don't know why. I think
Speaker 2: i've heard the Actually I heard from shoot the Canadian
Speaker 2: guy who came with us on Ricochet, whos and they
Speaker 2: might forget who said this began as a joke. Whereas
Speaker 2: Justin Trudeau was at marl Lago in December before Trump
Speaker 2: was inaugurated and said something dumb and Trump just said,
Speaker 2: you ought to be the fifty first state of America.
Speaker 2: I call you, Governor Trudeau, and apparently Trudeau responded weekly
Speaker 2: and so Trump ran with it the way Trump does.
Speaker 2: Is the world's greatest comedian. You know, the world is
Speaker 2: the greatest improv comedy club for Trump, which is not
Speaker 2: a criticism, by the way, Maybe a little bit, but anyway,
Speaker 2: it was a dumb thing for to double down on
Speaker 2: and keep talking about. And I think that was an
Speaker 2: unforced era Trump.
Speaker 1: Trump's mistake is not about conquest. It's why do they
Speaker 1: get to be a state? Why don't we just take
Speaker 1: over Canada and leave it as a territory so they
Speaker 1: get no votes, no senators, They'll just be the Canadian
Speaker 1: the northern territories. Yeah, they'll be like, you know, like
Speaker 1: this Solomon Islands or something.
Speaker 2: Right, we have I had not thought of that idea.
Speaker 2: That's a great idea.
Speaker 1: Yes, we won't let there be slavery there either. Right,
Speaker 1: I'll just be a territory.
Speaker 2: I have to say. If I I'll just say this,
Speaker 2: If I am Alberta, my condition for joining the US
Speaker 2: is that I am not subject to EPA and Department
Speaker 2: of Interior regulation on developing the tar sands and oil
Speaker 2: and mineral resources in Alberta because our so I don't
Speaker 2: know if people know this. In Canada, the provinces have a
Speaker 2: lot more autonomy in their regulation of how they do
Speaker 2: natural resource development. And so that's why Alberta is so
Speaker 2: prosperous and can do things like the oil sands. If
Speaker 2: they had national regulation, centralized regulation like we do, they couldn't.
Speaker 2: So I think they don't. I mean I think they
Speaker 2: want you know, I don't know, but they want to
Speaker 2: make sure they don't fall under the oppression of a
Speaker 2: future Democratic president. That's all.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, let's move on to my next thing.
Speaker 3: Steve says it's not important, but Judge Dougan, now, first
Speaker 3: of all. Okay, a little lookism. We haven't had any
Speaker 3: lookism for a while. I think that that awful Wisconsin
Speaker 3: judge should be in peace just because she's fat and ugly,
Speaker 3: and judges shouldn't be fat and ugly. But that's beside
Speaker 3: the point.
Speaker 1: You have you looked at the Supreme Court lately?
Speaker 3: Actually? Have you looked at her?
Speaker 1: Though?
Speaker 3: I mean even even so to my or anyway.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say that the rule, like you
Speaker 1: know that being a good job, raising rising hind in
Speaker 1: the judiciary and appearance are inversely correlated for both men
Speaker 1: and women.
Speaker 3: Do you think so? I mean, I despise the dread
Speaker 3: coward Roberts, but he's not an unattractive guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, there you have at Twitter verse, there's something
Speaker 1: for you to tweet about. Krisha has the hots for
Speaker 1: Chief Justice. I did that theies Let them begin, start
Speaker 1: your engines, Let the conspiracy theories go for will.
Speaker 2: I will just say that I saw the dread coward
Speaker 2: Roberts once in person and Vice President Cheney's house during
Speaker 2: a Christmas party like two thousand and eight or something,
Speaker 2: and you know that's a handsome guy. Yeah, anyway, he's.
Speaker 3: Not bad looking. He's not my type because he's By
Speaker 3: the way.
Speaker 2: Did you see Lucretia and John the the histogram this
Speaker 2: week that Justice Jackson has spoken more than all the
Speaker 2: male judges combined, and.
Speaker 1: This week true from her very first term on. I
Speaker 1: bet I think think this year's unusual.
Speaker 2: Well, and apparently it might have been I'm not sure
Speaker 2: which orgal argument this week, but Justice so to my
Speaker 2: Ore interrupted and said, will you please let the lawyer finish?
Speaker 2: And I thought, oh, that's interesting. Even so to my
Speaker 2: Or is tired of Jackson's loquaciousness.
Speaker 1: I'll put it that she's operating under a false impression,
Speaker 1: because you know, she is like other justices are taking
Speaker 1: as their model Justice Scalia when he first showed up
Speaker 1: on the bench, and he was extremely talkative, and it
Speaker 1: did give him a certain influence. But that was because
Speaker 1: everyone else back then was like ninety years old and
Speaker 1: wasn't asking any questions. It's very different now now. I
Speaker 1: think she's really harming herself by going on and on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give it, but let her let her talk more.
Speaker 1: I hope she talks even more now than she has been.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the spin, I'm gonna give it. I find that
Speaker 3: there's there's levels. So there's people who are very very
Speaker 3: smart and don't talk a lot and talk only when
Speaker 3: it's absolutely necessary. I would actually put Clarence Thomas. He's
Speaker 3: not a talker, and he's not he doesn't ask a
Speaker 3: lot of questions. Very very smart, it's not because he's
Speaker 3: not capable of it. And then there's those people who
Speaker 3: maybe on this particular issue it's not my strong suit.
Speaker 3: I'm going to be quiet. There's those people who are
Speaker 3: just too dumb to know how dumb they are. And
Speaker 3: that's where Katine and she comes in. I mean, I
Speaker 3: have yet to see anything intelligent come out of her mouth,
Speaker 3: never mind that she talks a lot. She's just not right. John,
Speaker 3: I'm going to put you on the spot. You said
Speaker 3: it yourself. Look at what the how much the Democrats
Speaker 3: hurt their own cause by the affirmative action.
Speaker 1: In that case I'm trying to think about. I don't.
Speaker 1: I can't really. I mean, the thing is, she's trying hard.
Speaker 1: This is all of someone who's trying hard, but they're
Speaker 1: out of their depth. And that's just the questions. I
Speaker 1: can't think of a really outstanding opinion she's written. Now
Speaker 1: they would bostly be dessents, but that actually means that
Speaker 1: you have a chance to show your individual view and
Speaker 1: your brilliance more actually when you're descent, because it's a
Speaker 1: personal thing, not writing for a five judged majority, so
Speaker 1: you have more ability to show what you think. And
Speaker 1: I can't think I don't think her opinions have been
Speaker 1: very good.
Speaker 3: I think I can find, even so to myr opinions
Speaker 3: that I think are well argued. Not all of them,
Speaker 3: of course, but I think that there are are some
Speaker 3: that I've read that that I was actually okay, this
Speaker 3: is a pretty decent opinion.
Speaker 1: I've never do the listeners know how crazy this is. First,
Speaker 1: Lucretius says, Soda Mayor has had a good opinion, and
Speaker 1: she has the hots for John Roberts. I mean, what
Speaker 1: is going on here?
Speaker 2: And she said she agree with you about something, John,
Speaker 2: I mean, this is okay.
Speaker 3: No, but I do think I think, you know, I
Speaker 3: think so My or was the same mistake. But she
Speaker 3: hasn't turned out to be quite the disaster that Katangi has.
Speaker 3: Katani's a wasted vote on the court is what it
Speaker 3: comes down.
Speaker 1: She's even worse than that. She's actually driving people towards
Speaker 1: to sticking with the conservative That's why I'm like, put
Speaker 1: more Katangi Brown Jackson's on the court. This has been
Speaker 1: great for us. Actually, had a.
Speaker 3: Smart leftist on the court, we'd probably been in a
Speaker 3: different place on a lot of these critical issues.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, Yeah, that's the point. So Wisconsin judge, what's
Speaker 2: your name? Judges, you just briefly tell listeners who may
Speaker 2: not know what you're talking. I expect mostly she's.
Speaker 3: A Wisconsin state judge, right state, not a.
Speaker 1: Core state judge.
Speaker 2: Elect.
Speaker 1: Yes, most most judge, most state judges in the.
Speaker 3: Country are lested them in one way or another. So
Speaker 3: she she obviously is very much against the Trump's deportation plan.
Speaker 3: She had a defendant inner court who had been accused
Speaker 3: of battery and some other kinds of assault against two
Speaker 3: victims that were actually present in the court, and she
Speaker 3: was informed that Ice agents were there to take the
Speaker 3: defendant into custody. So long story short, she escorted him
Speaker 3: out the back so that he could sneak out of
Speaker 3: the courthouse. Uh, never telling the prosecutors or the victims
Speaker 3: who sat there for the rest of the morning in
Speaker 3: court expecting this guy to show up. So that they could, uh,
Speaker 3: the prosecutor could bring the case against him, the victims
Speaker 3: could give their point of view, and that what it
Speaker 3: actually happened is that Ice was too clever for this
Speaker 3: idiot judge and caught the guy anyway down the street.
Speaker 3: But she was subsequently arrested. She's being charged with you'd
Speaker 3: have to be more specific on what the actual crime is,
Speaker 3: but it's caused the.
Speaker 1: Simple obstruction of obstruction of justice.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's okay. But the interesting thing, in my opinion,
Speaker 3: is the reaction to it. And it was interesting at
Speaker 3: first because of course Democrats you had Amy Klobachar and
Speaker 3: other idiots out there saying, oh, this is, you know,
Speaker 3: an assault on the rule of law, and they're after
Speaker 3: judges and you know, just the stupidest things. And the
Speaker 3: next thing, you know, however, we find out that a
Speaker 3: bunch of it's not just Paul Clement, but a bunch
Speaker 3: of established republic establishment Republicans and some firm have decided
Speaker 3: to take up her defense because she's being charged by
Speaker 3: the Department of Justice. She has been removed temporarily by
Speaker 3: the Wisconsin State Supreme Court, which is, as we all know,
Speaker 3: because of recent elections dominated by Democrats, but even they
Speaker 3: found that her behavior was execreable and over the top.
Speaker 3: And we have Republicans out there defending her, and I
Speaker 3: find that objectionable.
Speaker 2: Steve, Wait, you're throwing us on me, okay.
Speaker 3: Because you said he didn't think it was a big deal.
Speaker 2: Well, well, I don't know. I don't know Paul Clement
Speaker 2: very well. I've met him two three times. I have,
Speaker 2: like most practitioners, and John backed me up on this,
Speaker 2: have long admired his skill at the Supreme Court. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, if you ask me, who do you want
Speaker 2: to argue U case, I'd say is Paul Clement is
Speaker 2: number one through five. I don't know why he's doing it.
Speaker 2: Maybe he really believes it, maybe he needs the business.
Speaker 2: I mean, let's remember listeners should know this. Who don't
Speaker 2: know who he is. Paul Clement essentially was forced out
Speaker 2: of his law firm, King and Spaulding. Why because he
Speaker 2: kept winning cases at the Supreme Court the partners didn't like,
Speaker 2: for example, on gun control, on what it helped me out?
Speaker 2: John an Abortion and some other.
Speaker 1: King and King and Spaulding. It was he litigated in
Speaker 1: defense of the Defensive Marriage Act.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, And then he went to.
Speaker 1: Another firm called King and Sir Kirkland and Ellis, which
Speaker 1: I think is now the largest firm, you know, the
Speaker 1: most financially profitable, richest firm in the world. And that's
Speaker 1: the firm that let him go because of his success
Speaker 1: on gun rights cases. Okay, and now he's actually defending
Speaker 1: some of these firms that are subject to President Trump's executive.
Speaker 2: Order right footnote by just go ahead, Well, it's it's.
Speaker 3: Into the good graces of the establishment.
Speaker 2: Well I I don't well maybe, but I wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 2: assume that I do. Recall that twenty five years ago,
Speaker 2: now maybe thirty years ago. So John Eastman was originally
Speaker 2: at Kirkland and Ellis in LA and they said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: you can do pro bona work and he said, fine,
Speaker 2: I want to do pro bona work on behalf of
Speaker 2: the boy Scouts against the lawsuits saying they must permit
Speaker 2: gay Scout masters. And they said, no, you can't do that.
Speaker 2: And that's when he left. And that's when ken Starr
Speaker 2: left around the same time, because he was working for
Speaker 2: ken Starr in LA at Kirkland Ellis. So this is
Speaker 2: not a new subject. And look, I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 2: like I said, Lucretia, I don't know Paul Clement, but
Speaker 2: I think very highly of his skill. And I'll just
Speaker 2: stop there.
Speaker 1: And so let me say first, I think this judge
Speaker 1: is violating the law yep, and hasn't read the supremacy
Speaker 1: clause lately the Constitution, which says a federal laws supreme,
Speaker 1: and that includes immigration law. And it's not just state judges,
Speaker 1: no one. You, neither you, Lucretia and me have the
Speaker 1: right to say I'm going to follow some federal laws
Speaker 1: but not other federal laws. So I said, does a
Speaker 1: state judge a right to hide Luigi Manzoni, the Manzioni,
Speaker 1: the you know, the assassin in her chambers because she
Speaker 1: doesn't think he should Does she have the right to
Speaker 1: hide right drug cartel leaders because she thinks marijuana should
Speaker 1: be should be legal? Or in fact, I would say
Speaker 1: state judges have a special obligation to obey on federal laws.
Speaker 1: If you read the supremacy clause, it's very interesting. There's
Speaker 1: actually after the familiar you know, constitution, laws and treaties
Speaker 1: are the law of the land. It then says, and
Speaker 1: state judges shall notwithstanding state law right there's a special
Speaker 1: obligation on state judges specifically to obey federal law. So
Speaker 1: that's one I don't now. You could see her defense
Speaker 1: is going to be right. A state doesn't have to
Speaker 1: actively cooperate with the federal government to help it with
Speaker 1: immigration law. You can be a sanctuary city, but you
Speaker 1: can't obstruct the federal government. And that's what she did,
Speaker 1: I think because she took the alien and took her
Speaker 1: to a place federal agent weren't allowed to go and
Speaker 1: snuck them out the back door, basically snuck the aliens
Speaker 1: out the back door while she sent the federal agents
Speaker 1: on a wild goose chase. That's obstruction of justice. If
Speaker 1: you did that to federal agents who wanted to come
Speaker 1: into your house for a warrant, that would be obstruction
Speaker 1: of justice. Now why Paul is doing it, I think
Speaker 1: is and I have known Paul long time, we clerk
Speaker 1: together right out of law school. I think I don't
Speaker 1: think Paul is doing it for publicity per se, But
Speaker 1: I think I think this makes clear he's more of
Speaker 1: a never Trumper than people have thought. I think he
Speaker 1: you know, he's representing law firms against the Trump law firm. Eos.
Speaker 1: He's representing this state judge. He is from Wisconsin, by
Speaker 1: the way, he's representing the state judge against the federal
Speaker 1: government's immigration authority.
Speaker 3: And every defendant deserves good representation, right.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I don't you know, he's not I
Speaker 1: don't think he's a mega guy at any rate. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think he's a bunch.
Speaker 3: But just to say that, John, let me just say
Speaker 3: for a moment, that's problematic in and of itself. That
Speaker 3: because you just made what I consider a rock solid
Speaker 3: case for why that judge obstructed justice and what.
Speaker 1: Why she should go to jail she should go to jail, And.
Speaker 3: I unless it's possible, this is the only thing that
Speaker 3: I find would justify or provide a rationale for Clement
Speaker 3: to do that, and that would be that maybe the
Speaker 3: facts of the case that we understand are not really
Speaker 3: the facts of the case. Maybe, But otherwise his never
Speaker 3: trump ism is somehow motivating him to become Party two
Speaker 3: something that is really seriously problematic, you know. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's what I would say. I want to bring up
Speaker 3: really quickly because we need to take a break. But
Speaker 3: the new Mexico judge, I read the article from ABC
Speaker 3: is sent to my inbox for some reason, and they
Speaker 3: talk about how that judge and his wife did all
Speaker 3: this for this particular trend Diagua gang members and the
Speaker 3: one who the way that the ABC's news story said
Speaker 3: it was, this particular illegal immigrant turned himself in after
Speaker 3: pointing a pistol at someone. And then that was sort
Speaker 3: of in this tiny little thing, and then the rest
Speaker 3: of it was the injustices that had been done to
Speaker 3: him and to the New Mexico judge and his wife
Speaker 3: in the course of the Justice Department going after this
Speaker 3: guy as if pointing having a gun and pointing it
Speaker 3: at someone isn't a problem a and especially a problem
Speaker 3: for someone in the country illegally as a Trendiagua member.
Speaker 3: And it was my point is this there is another
Speaker 3: syop going on here, Steve, And that's what I wonder
Speaker 3: if Paul Clement is part of that. We want to
Speaker 3: change the narrative away from what Trump is doing about
Speaker 3: the eleven million illegals or more that Biden led into
Speaker 3: the country that the American people are profoundly happy about,
Speaker 3: especially because he's gone with criminals first and so on.
Speaker 3: They've got to change that. And if you're a never trumper.
Speaker 3: Even if you're a good Republican establisher, never trumper. You've
Speaker 3: got to you've got to stop this one way or another,
Speaker 3: because otherwise Trump is going to be massively popular. That's
Speaker 3: what I think is going on there.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, you're gonna win either way. Look, maybe, yeah,
Speaker 2: let me offer this is an exit thought again, not,
Speaker 2: I mean maybe John is you know, you know Paul
Speaker 2: Clement way better than I do. I mean, I've barely
Speaker 2: met him once or twice. He's done me a couple
Speaker 2: of very minor favors. When I asked for law students
Speaker 2: who told me they'd like to medium, and I fixed
Speaker 2: up for them to medium, And it's okay, maybe he
Speaker 2: knows this person. I don't know if he does or not,
Speaker 2: but I'll just say this. You know a mutual friends
Speaker 2: whose name I won't mention, at a university in Texas,
Speaker 2: not the one where you're visiting. John said, who's a
Speaker 2: classmate of ours with John Eastman? Who said, how can
Speaker 2: you be friends with John Eastman? I mean, he's a
Speaker 2: horrible person. He's a criminal and insurrectionists and blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: And our friend said, John is my friend, and I'm
Speaker 2: gonna stick with him and good for him. And that's
Speaker 2: sort of my view about it too.
Speaker 1: And can I tell a story about John by the way,
Speaker 1: go ahead please? Here in Texas, just last Monday, John
Speaker 1: and I, John Eastman and I did a debate on
Speaker 1: birthright citizenship. And so John was so pleased but also
Speaker 1: secretly bombed that there was a protest sign outside and
Speaker 1: it was to protest me. They protested me. So I
Speaker 1: got up and I said, you know, I know Texas
Speaker 1: is a conservative state, but where have you guys been
Speaker 1: for the last twenty years? You're giving me a hard
Speaker 1: time about Bush administration service twenty years ago. This guy
Speaker 1: just tried to over throw the United States government? And
Speaker 1: you're protesting me John Eastman? Where's wrong with you people?
Speaker 1: Have you not been around for the last twenty five years?
Speaker 1: What is going on here?
Speaker 2: John? How much?
Speaker 1: And then I said, John Eastman loves debating because it's
Speaker 1: the only time he can go out and debate, and
Speaker 1: he's not the protested speaker.
Speaker 3: All right, let's take a break.
Speaker 2: See John, how much did you pay that guy? John
Speaker 2: to mess with? John? Say? That's what.
Speaker 3: And we're back to talk about Catholic charter schools or
Speaker 3: proposed Catholic charter school So, John, I did try to
Speaker 3: do my research, and I need you on this one.
Speaker 3: I need you to explain a to our listeners. What's
Speaker 3: happening with the oral arguments this week in Oklahoma where
Speaker 3: the state of Oklahoma is denying a public school charter
Speaker 3: school charter to an online Catholic charter school that is
Speaker 3: run out of the Diocese of Oklahoma City, something along
Speaker 3: those lines.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's about Those facts are right, and what
Speaker 1: it calls on is for the Court to keep extending
Speaker 1: this principle it's been building for more than twenty years
Speaker 1: now about if the government has a program where they
Speaker 1: give out benefits, where they give out grants, where they
Speaker 1: ask private groups to help participate in public programs, can
Speaker 1: the government exclude religious groups because the government thinks, oh,
Speaker 1: if we do that, we're violating the Establishment Clause, which
Speaker 1: says we can't set up or favor religion. And so
Speaker 1: steadily the Court has been saying no, the government cannot
Speaker 1: exclude religious groups from participating on an equal foot in
Speaker 1: a non religious groups. So some examples would be if
Speaker 1: the government's giving out money to schools or to groups
Speaker 1: to fix up something like the parking lots is the
Speaker 1: example in the case. Can you say everybody gets to
Speaker 1: have the parking lot money, but churches? The Court said no.
Speaker 1: Another example is Philadelphia said we'll ask groups to help
Speaker 1: us place adopted kids in families Philadelphia, City of Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: my city excluded Catholics, Catholic groups. Supreme Court said, no,
Speaker 1: you can't do that. So one way to look at
Speaker 1: this case is, can Oklahoma say we're going to have
Speaker 1: a very large charter school program where anybody can set
Speaker 1: up a ch charter school except religious people. When you
Speaker 1: look at it that way, it seems to me like
Speaker 1: the court, well, this should be easy for the court.
Speaker 1: This is just like those other programs. People on the
Speaker 1: other side of it would say yes, but there's a line.
Speaker 1: The line has always been, but public schools cannot have
Speaker 1: a religious religious element to them. And if you give
Speaker 1: money to charter schools, they are public schools. And they
Speaker 1: would say the difference between all those other examples I
Speaker 1: gave you, it's private people making the decisions the right.
Speaker 1: Catholic charity services in Philadelphia don't suddenly become public. You know,
Speaker 1: part of the government when they participate. Are charter schools
Speaker 1: really still private schools or are they really public schools?
Speaker 1: If they're public schools, they can't have right they can't
Speaker 1: be a Catholic school. But to me it seems no,
Speaker 1: they're the Catholic charter schools just saying we want to
Speaker 1: participate just like any other charter school. You can't exclude us.
Speaker 1: You're discriminating against religion. So that's the issue in oral argument,
Speaker 1: it sounds this is weird because Amy Coney Barrett recused herself.
Speaker 1: She's been on the board I think of you know,
Speaker 1: religious schools, so in her view, she had to recuse herself.
Speaker 1: So I don't think she has any particular tie with
Speaker 1: this Oklahoma with this Oklahoma school anyway. So there's only
Speaker 1: eight justices. I think almost certainly the four liberal justices,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, the three liberal justices will vote against this.
Speaker 1: See even the Crease has got me thinking this way already,
Speaker 1: So you know, yet the three liberal justices, I think
Speaker 1: they're like, this is like prior in public schools. We've
Speaker 1: always the Court has never gone back on saying you
Speaker 1: can't have prior in public schools, you can't have religion
Speaker 1: in public schools. I think Thomas, Gorsuch and Alito and
Speaker 1: Kavanaugh in oral arguments seem pretty committed to this is
Speaker 1: just like the precedents we've been building. Cavin in particular,
Speaker 1: was very strong oral argument about how this was banning religion.
Speaker 1: Roberts nobody can tell. He asked questions on both sides.
Speaker 1: If he goes along with the liberals. It's a four
Speaker 1: to four decision, which means the lower court decision stands
Speaker 1: and the lower court vision banned the Catholic charter school.
Speaker 3: Before Steve steps in, I have a couple of comments,
Speaker 3: so I'm gonna I'm gonna be Roberts here for a moment.
Speaker 3: The first one is that, on the one hand, from
Speaker 3: a purely policy point of view, the absolute worst thing
Speaker 3: that a Catholic char Catholic school could do would be
Speaker 3: to become a public school and thereby have to follow
Speaker 3: all of the rules and regulations that they have, you know,
Speaker 3: the massive amount of federal regulations that they would then
Speaker 3: be required, and probably Oklahoma state regulations as well. So
Speaker 3: you know, we're seeing evidence of that in the Harvard
Speaker 3: cases and so on. It's actually much much worse at
Speaker 3: the K twelve level than it is at the universities.
Speaker 3: Believe it or not.
Speaker 5: Yes that.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, what I will tell you is
Speaker 3: that in public charter schools and private parochial schools, federal
Speaker 3: money must go to those schools. District public public school
Speaker 3: districts must give some of their title IE money and
Speaker 3: their idea, their their special education money, their title to
Speaker 3: money which is highly qualified teachers, Title three which is
Speaker 3: of English Language learners, so on and so on. They
Speaker 3: must give a certain percentage of that money in certain
Speaker 3: ways to private parochial schools. They are obligated to do
Speaker 3: so under federal law. So already we know that money money,
Speaker 3: but it's federal money, must go to these private parochial schools.
Speaker 3: This is a question about whether or not I wanted
Speaker 3: to bring this up just to see what you thought
Speaker 3: about it. There are people who argue that the First Amendment,
Speaker 3: which says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
Speaker 3: of religion, what that always meant, at least in the
Speaker 3: view of the framers, was that Congress could not force
Speaker 3: a state into an establishment of religion or to recognize
Speaker 3: an establishment religion. And then in fact, the Congress shall
Speaker 3: make no law is not an individual right. It is
Speaker 3: in fact a protection for the states. I don't know
Speaker 3: what you think about that, but no, no, I.
Speaker 1: Think actually Justice Thomas has that view. I think he's said,
Speaker 1: when you incorporate the Bill of Rights, establish the establishing
Speaker 1: Clause can't be incorporated because there were established churches at
Speaker 1: the state level at the time of the passage of
Speaker 1: the Bill of Rights, and no one thought they were unconstitutional.
Speaker 1: So it's really a pro federalism protection, the establishing Clause,
Speaker 1: because it's protecting the state right to have established churches
Speaker 1: by denying the federal governments right to right create one
Speaker 1: and squash those state ones. So that doesn't that doesn't
Speaker 1: work as a incorporated Bill of Rights because, as you said,
Speaker 1: the crease it's not an individual right. It's a limitation
Speaker 1: on the power of the government. It's not like the
Speaker 1: free exercise Clause, which obviously can be incorporated. So I
Speaker 1: don't think that's a crazy view at all. I think
Speaker 1: actually that's probably the right reading of the clause. And
Speaker 1: there's I think I don't know about other justices, but
Speaker 1: I know for sure Justice Thomas thinks that he's got
Speaker 1: an opinion about it. I don't know if any other
Speaker 1: justices have joined him in it.
Speaker 2: Steve, Well, here's what I think. Maybe we should do
Speaker 2: an entire episode just on the separation of church and
Speaker 2: squat church in squait state question.
Speaker 1: And that's really good, Lafreud, you're cheeking there.
Speaker 3: Still, Well, there's really no such thing.
Speaker 2: Go ahead. Look, I think we should do a whole
Speaker 2: episode on this that not only goes through the incoherence
Speaker 2: of some key cases, but also maybe Cretia does a
Speaker 2: little bit about the underlying problem of the theological political problem,
Speaker 2: which is abstract and will be way over John's head
Speaker 2: and bore him to death. I'll just say briefly that
Speaker 2: two things. One is, you know, I do think the
Speaker 2: court has been incoherent and idiotic about this for decades.
Speaker 2: And my favorite example was the one Pat moynihand like
Speaker 2: to point two. In the seventies, there were two cases
Speaker 2: I forget their names, but one of them, well, yes,
Speaker 2: well let me go through it for the listeners. One
Speaker 2: was a court said no, no, a public school district
Speaker 2: cannot give old textbooks that they're not using anymore to
Speaker 2: a Catholic parochial school. That would cross the line of
Speaker 2: the separation of church and state and be government approval
Speaker 2: of religion. Okay, so you can't give them old textbooks
Speaker 2: you're otherwise going to throw out. But then in a
Speaker 2: subsequent case, a year or two later, they said you
Speaker 2: can share maps with parochial schools. And what that was about,
Speaker 2: by the way, entirely practical. It was the parochial schools
Speaker 2: are going to run their buses and the public schools
Speaker 2: are going to run their own buses. And it's not
Speaker 2: a bad thing from a common sense point of view
Speaker 2: to have the two bus systems knowing the bus routes
Speaker 2: and times. It just makes for less traffic congestion and logistics.
Speaker 2: So that makes perfect sense. Oh, that's okay. And that's
Speaker 2: when Pat moynihan asked Platt. Moynihan asked, what about an atlas?
Speaker 2: What would the Supreme Court say about an atlas? Could
Speaker 2: they give an atlas to a public to a parochial school?
Speaker 2: I mean, that just shows you how stupid and incoherent
Speaker 2: all the jurisprudence on this was. I will add Lucretia
Speaker 2: your point about Uh, Look, Catholic schools or any religious
Speaker 2: school ought to be worried about taking public money because
Speaker 2: you have public strings that's a point that some hardcore
Speaker 2: school choice people have been making for a long time,
Speaker 2: and I'll just say that very Excuse me. It varies
Speaker 2: from state to state. But why do the teachers' unions
Speaker 2: hate charter schools? Because they have been largely deregulated. That
Speaker 2: doesn't mean they're perfect, but they are sealed off in
Speaker 2: most legislation from a lot not all, but a lot
Speaker 2: of bureaucracy and a lot of the nonsense. Now can
Speaker 2: they resist that over time? Maybe not. It's a very
Speaker 2: valuable caution. But I think the view that we might
Speaker 2: not want to be too excited about a decision in
Speaker 2: favor of the Catholic schools is one that we should
Speaker 2: hold in suspension.
Speaker 3: I actually don't know exactly where I would come down
Speaker 3: on it. I'm glad I'm not being asked to argue
Speaker 3: it because I have seen what federal regulations due to
Speaker 3: K twelve schools and we know that that. I mean,
Speaker 3: the evidence, the correlative evidence between the interference of the
Speaker 3: Federal Department of Education and student learning and success is overwhelming,
Speaker 3: and I think it probably ventures into the causation part. Anyway,
Speaker 3: Thank you for that, John, because I think that was
Speaker 3: really helpful. Do you want to take a quick break
Speaker 3: and we'll come back and finish up all the rest
Speaker 3: of our issues for today. One last issue I'm going
Speaker 3: to go back to John Is. I do want you
Speaker 3: to because you mentioned it briefly a little bit earlier,
Speaker 3: when you were talking about universal injunctions, or you were
Speaker 3: talking about the court's reigning in Trump a little bit.
Speaker 3: We missed you last week. There have been quite a
Speaker 3: few more district court judges issuing injunctions about the Alien Act,
Speaker 3: the Alien Enemies Act, whatever it's called about, no more
Speaker 3: deporting people to El Salvador, on and on. Can you
Speaker 3: just give us a little bit better than I was
Speaker 3: able to do reading your article and summarizing it, where
Speaker 3: you come down on this question of universal injunctions and
Speaker 3: what the dread coward Roberts should do about it.
Speaker 1: So, see, these universal injunctions I think are actually unconstitutional
Speaker 1: because they take the federal courts out of their proper
Speaker 1: role of deciding cases or controversies into policymaking, into sort
Speaker 1: of running the government as a whole. So an Article
Speaker 1: three of the Constitution says the federal judicial power shall
Speaker 1: extend to all cases or controversies, and then it says
Speaker 1: that arise under federal law is basically the main jurisdiction.
Speaker 1: So think about what happens in a nationwide jurisdiction case
Speaker 1: you've got, like in the Venezuela case, six Venezuelans, lawyers
Speaker 1: for six Venezuelans sue the government in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And they say, right, we're being deported from the country
Speaker 1: without due process. You must give us relief. The judge there, Boseburg, says,
Speaker 1: not only does he stop everything for the sixth Venezuelans,
Speaker 1: he says, and the government cannot deport anyone from Venice
Speaker 1: Isuela nationwide. The reason I think that's unconstitutional is that
Speaker 1: he's extending his power over thousands and thousands of other
Speaker 1: people who have not appeared in his courtroom, who did
Speaker 1: not bring suit. And so I would say the federal
Speaker 1: judicial power doesn't allow you to do that, because otherwise then
Speaker 1: you can get any federal judge to basically take over
Speaker 1: any federal program any time you won, without regard to
Speaker 1: where the actual cases, which is just between the simple
Speaker 1: plaintiffs and the simple defendants who show up in court.
Speaker 1: And Justice Scalia had a great opinion warning about this
Speaker 1: where he said, if court start to go beyond that
Speaker 1: main limit on their power, they will become like a
Speaker 1: third you know, they will become like the third House
Speaker 1: of Congress or an a roving ombudsman in the executive branch,
Speaker 1: because they will really have the final word on what
Speaker 1: policies go forward for the country and which ones don't.
Speaker 1: And so I think this Roberts has a great opportunity
Speaker 1: to actually diffuse a lot of these cases against the
Speaker 1: Trump administration by saying, a lot of these judges are
Speaker 1: just acting unconstitutionally. They should only limit their decisions to
Speaker 1: the case before them, and they'll go up through the
Speaker 1: normal process of appeals, but the government's are handicapped while
Speaker 1: that happens.
Speaker 3: And how could he do that? John?
Speaker 2: Could?
Speaker 1: I mean, because he just he could just go out.
Speaker 3: Like he did with Trump when he got upset when
Speaker 3: Trump criticized that Hispanic judge and you know, got out
Speaker 3: there and got all upset in beside himself and said
Speaker 3: that judges only call balls and strikes and you know
Speaker 3: all that nonsense. Does he go out there and do
Speaker 3: that or does he actually make a ruling?
Speaker 1: No, it's through a case, through that case on May fifteenth, right,
Speaker 1: they put this is the other amazing right. They've scheduled
Speaker 1: a special session on May fifteenth, when you know usually
Speaker 1: they'd be done here in cases in April, they're already done. Basically,
Speaker 1: I think this might be the last week of normal argument.
Speaker 1: They have special a special They've scheduled a special session
Speaker 1: for May fifteenth to hear arguments about whether to stop
Speaker 1: nationwide in junctions. So they would just say in an
Speaker 1: in case, you could say, for it involves birthright citizenship,
Speaker 1: so they could say, okay, district judge, you have this
Speaker 1: person who wanted to passport, and you think that the
Speaker 1: government has to give it to everyone born in the country,
Speaker 1: So order the passport for that one person. What the
Speaker 1: judge can't do is say, and everyone else in the
Speaker 1: country gets a passport too, even people who never sued
Speaker 1: aren't here. And you know it ties into Lincoln because
Speaker 1: you remember, if nationwide injunctions were correct, Lincoln could never
Speaker 1: have taken the position he did on dred Scott. Remember
Speaker 1: Lincoln said, I disagree with dred Scott. I don't think
Speaker 1: the logic binds me. I will if I found dread
Speaker 1: Scott himself, I would obey the court's decision and hand
Speaker 1: dred Scott back to his owner. But I'm not going
Speaker 1: to do it affirmatively for everybody else. If people want
Speaker 1: dred Scott to be the law and make me obey it,
Speaker 1: they have to bring an individual lawsuit for every single slave.
Speaker 1: And that if right, if nationwide junctions are actually constitution possible,
Speaker 1: then Lincoln's wrong about dred Scott. I tend to vote
Speaker 1: with Lincoln, not all these you know, wayward district judges
Speaker 1: who think they're running the country.
Speaker 3: And there is a slight difference even in the example
Speaker 3: that you give, because that decision, this dread Scott decision,
Speaker 3: was actually a Supreme Court decision, and he was arguing
Speaker 3: that even the Supreme Court should not have that kind
Speaker 3: of power because we would have surrendered all of our
Speaker 3: power to that eminent tribual, or our democratic Republic to
Speaker 3: that eminent tribual. It does seem to me to be
Speaker 3: over the top idea that a district court judge could
Speaker 3: in fact issue a decision beyond their own district. But
Speaker 3: if they decide if the dread coward Roberts actually gets
Speaker 3: enough members of the court to agree to the position
Speaker 3: that you have so carefully laid out, Will that automatically
Speaker 3: just wipe out all of those universal injunctions that what
Speaker 3: have their bits seventy of them or something?
Speaker 1: Yes, they would. Yeah, if they decide that way, all
Speaker 1: those universal injunction cases would be lifted, All those would
Speaker 1: be lifted. They would all be instantly unconstitutional. That's why
Speaker 1: it's a really this case could be a really big
Speaker 1: win for Trump. But Roberts can sit there and say,
Speaker 1: but we didn't decide on birthright, we didn't decide on
Speaker 1: the Alien Enemies Act. Those will work themselves up in
Speaker 1: those cases, and that's the governments can still.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's what would be normal. That's the way
Speaker 1: it usually was until you know, really until the twenty's
Speaker 1: and twenty tens, where there were never niche Ine junctions
Speaker 1: before this, and that's the way it normally worked.
Speaker 3: Okay, Steve, do you have any comments about that?
Speaker 2: Nope?
Speaker 3: All right, then let's take a break. We'll come back
Speaker 3: and do some Babylon bees. I hope you have something
Speaker 3: less than lame this time, ja, Steve. All right, So, folks,
Speaker 3: I promised Steve, and I forgot because they got carried
Speaker 3: away listening to John about my favorite.
Speaker 1: Talk well, espially when Steve just wants to talk about
Speaker 1: dead people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Steve wants to talk So Steve wants to talk
Speaker 3: about you know, he's wearing a red shirt again, John,
Speaker 3: what do you expect he wants to talk about a communist? Oh? Okay,
Speaker 3: an ex communist. Let me say really quick, so Steve,
Speaker 3: so you can go off on your tangent forever that
Speaker 3: I remember when I was working on my dissertation, I
Speaker 3: lived in the mountains and I didn't have a television,
Speaker 3: and so my contact with the outside world was this
Speaker 3: was before the internet. Things that I got in the
Speaker 3: mail that I had to drive into town to go
Speaker 3: to my post office box. But I got Heterodoxy, the
Speaker 3: magazine back in those days. And there were two articles
Speaker 3: that I can't even remember if David Horowitz wrote them
Speaker 3: or they were just in his publication. The first one
Speaker 3: was a really excellent article tying the whole ortion debate
Speaker 3: to the slavery debate. We and there he is. We
Speaker 3: lost Steve for a moment.
Speaker 2: And the second one, I'm back, sorry, so I don't worry.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I just had lost the whole the slavery debate
Speaker 3: to the abortion debate and and the parallels were uncanny,
Speaker 3: and that was really formative for me at the time.
Speaker 3: And then the second one was was this long expose
Speaker 3: about AIDS and how this whole thing about AIDS being
Speaker 3: a virus was again a massive sigh op. I'm not
Speaker 3: going to go into all the details, but basically the
Speaker 3: argument was is that the the at the time, the
Speaker 3: homosexual lifestyle that was, you know, promulgating the the spread
Speaker 3: of AIDS was kind of just so I can't I
Speaker 3: can't do it. I did it. This is still a
Speaker 3: family show, but that it was that and not in
Speaker 3: fact any silly virus that was the AIDS. But that
Speaker 3: was why it was so important for them to pretend
Speaker 3: that it was a virus, so it was no longer
Speaker 3: tied to the behavior of homosexuals and bath houses and
Speaker 3: things like that. Anyway, both of those things. That was
Speaker 3: forty years ago, and I still remember those two articles
Speaker 3: because they made quite an impression on me. Now, would
Speaker 3: you like to tell us about David Horowitz in your
Speaker 3: Red Shirt?
Speaker 2: Well, right, I mean, David Horowitz had been ill for
Speaker 2: quite a long time. He was ill when I saw
Speaker 2: him last nine years ago in person. But look I
Speaker 2: think a lot of it we said about him. One
Speaker 2: is he had a central insight that a lot of
Speaker 2: conservatives still don't appreciate, even in the age of Trump.
Speaker 2: He liked to say, the issue is never the issue.
Speaker 2: The issue for the left is revolution. This gets back
Speaker 2: to the conversation we had the last couple of weeks
Speaker 2: about whether we should embrace Gromskyism or not. Right. He
Speaker 2: understood that the left is about power to impose their agenda.
Speaker 2: We are not going to beat the left with genteel
Speaker 2: arguments about Edmund Burg or Leo Strauss or anybody else.
Speaker 2: He was never hostile to any of those camps. He
Speaker 2: understood and agreed with all of them. But he said,
Speaker 2: you don't get that this is a street fight, and
Speaker 2: what's the on line. You don't bring a knife to
Speaker 2: a gunfight. And look, that's why, very early on he
Speaker 2: loved Trump. And the last time I saw him in person,
Speaker 2: which I think was June of twenty sixteen, so sort
Speaker 2: of in the middle of the original Trump story, and
Speaker 2: he said, I don't understand why anybody doesn't get why
Speaker 2: we should get one hundred percent behind Trump because he
Speaker 2: will contest the left whatever his imperfections may be. I'll
Speaker 2: just say that. I mean, I think it's a fun story.
Speaker 2: I first met him way back in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 2: and I already knew who he was because I'd read
Speaker 2: the Left East for Reagan article in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2: That was a big sensation. And I got a phone
Speaker 2: call one day at the Claremont Institute from a guy
Speaker 2: named Spud Malin. Listeners may not know that name, but
Speaker 2: they deserve to know about Spud Malin. Spud Malin founded Whammo.
Speaker 2: He created the Hulu hoop, Crazer Wow, and the Frisbee
Speaker 2: and the Waterway slip and slide Wammo. He was Wammo,
Speaker 2: and he was kind of whack. He was kind of wacko.
Speaker 2: He was a conservative, he gave He was a big
Speaker 2: supporter of the Claremont Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Really wow.
Speaker 2: He used to call me up a lot. I was
Speaker 2: still my twenties at a graduate Dude. He called me
Speaker 2: up and said, I have this crazy idea, and I'd say,
Speaker 2: Spud that to do something political. I said, that is
Speaker 2: a crazy idea. But how do you tell a guy
Speaker 2: who created the hula hoop that he has a crazy idea.
Speaker 2: I sort of learned some epistemological modesty listening to him.
Speaker 2: But he called me up one day and said, I
Speaker 2: think it was funny how you remember months It was
Speaker 2: like it was June of nineteen eighty eight. He said, Steve,
Speaker 2: I'm having David Horwitz over to my house Saturday morning.
Speaker 2: You want to come meet him, and we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about stuff. So yeah, great, I'd love to meet
Speaker 2: this guy. And I go down there and I'll skip
Speaker 2: a lot of details, but Lloyd Billingsley was there. That's
Speaker 2: the first time I met him, now a regular contributor
Speaker 2: to the Political Question substack. And then David calls me
Speaker 2: up a couple of weeks later. He says, Hey, I'm
Speaker 2: having a fourth to July party at my house. And
Speaker 2: he had a fabulous house in Los Felees there in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles, right below the Hollywood Sign where my grandfather,
Speaker 2: my father grew up, my grandfather lived, Okay, And you know,
Speaker 2: David was like that. He was a great networker, and
Speaker 2: the point was his central point was always and I
Speaker 2: reiterate this, so you know, our friends at the Commentary podcast,
Speaker 2: to make a brief digression, they talk about the left
Speaker 2: always has what they call the Omni cause, and you know,
Speaker 2: everything links together for the left. Whatever the cause is,
Speaker 2: they're going to get behind it, whether it's you know,
Speaker 2: Israel and Palestine, whatever. And I said, yeah, that's what
Speaker 2: David Horowitz has been saying for forty years now. The
Speaker 2: issue is not the issue. The issue is the left's
Speaker 2: drive for power, and the only way to defeat them
Speaker 2: is to thump them back equally. And that's what Trump
Speaker 2: is doing in a way that the genteel conservative Republicans
Speaker 2: have never figured out. By the way, I'll mention this,
Speaker 2: it was a late nineties when suddenly everybody turned on
Speaker 2: Nut Gingridge because he'd made some mistakes and all the
Speaker 2: rest of that, and David would hear none of it.
Speaker 2: He said, Nut Gingrich is the only guy taking the
Speaker 2: fight to the left, and I don't care what mistakes
Speaker 2: he's made. You guys need to figure it out and
Speaker 2: learn how to fight the way he does. So I'm
Speaker 2: gonna miss him. I could say more about how he
Speaker 2: was a serious Marxist. A lot of the obituaries have
Speaker 2: not really gotten into the fact that he was not
Speaker 2: some parlor hippie Marxist. He went to England and studied
Speaker 2: with Isaac Deutscher, a forgotten figure now, but a person
Speaker 2: on par with Gramsky. And you know, David really knew
Speaker 2: that stuff, and so when he turned on it, he
Speaker 2: had all the receipts. And that's all I happened.
Speaker 1: I can say. I thought Radical Son was a great book.
Speaker 1: I remember reading it, yes, yeah, very And he David
Speaker 1: invited me to some of his conferences, and I often
Speaker 1: would come and talk about the judiciary. David was I
Speaker 1: think a person who thought early on that the judiciary
Speaker 1: had been captured by you know, left wing progressive ideology.
Speaker 1: And then the other interesting thing is, you know there's
Speaker 1: this big tech loave firm called Andreson Horowitz, and that
Speaker 1: Horowitz is David's son. And yeah, and many people I've
Speaker 1: read accounts where they attribute some of the tech bros
Speaker 1: world coming behind Trump, winding up behind Trump this last
Speaker 1: last election because of that, the younger Horwitz, who of
Speaker 1: course was influenced by the elder Horwitz. So David, you know,
Speaker 1: had an impact not just on thought, but maybe in
Speaker 1: you know, political you know, in the trench warfare too
Speaker 1: in the last election.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So okay, okay, rad Or solemn Lucatia. Sorry, go
Speaker 2: ahead and do your babylon So I'm going to.
Speaker 3: Be I'm gonna be solemn with the Babylon bee because
Speaker 3: some of those are actually solemn. Democrats hold candlelight vigil
Speaker 3: in front of illegal immigrant mugshots on the White House lawn.
Speaker 3: You get it. No, look at John's looking confused, they
Speaker 3: put well. So it was another one of those Trump
Speaker 3: moments where he lined the White House lawn with posters,
Speaker 3: you know, pretty good sized posters of all the illegal
Speaker 3: immigrants that they were deporting in the crimes that they
Speaker 3: had committed, their pictures and the crimes they had committed.
Speaker 3: So that when Democrats went out to protest this or
Speaker 3: when the you know, the media went out to cover it,
Speaker 3: of course, all they're doing is showing the pictures of
Speaker 3: these murderous, sex, trafficking, et cetera thug. So it was
Speaker 3: it was another clever Trump moment, a little bit crasp,
Speaker 3: but nevertheless this one is one of my favorite. In
Speaker 3: the picture of courses of kat and g support rows
Speaker 3: for requiring Supreme Court justices to pass cognitive tests. Global
Speaker 3: birth rates hit historic lows, as Elon Musk busy with
Speaker 3: Doge have thirteen?
Speaker 2: Who knows? Right, Well, you did have a tweet. You
Speaker 2: did have a tweet saying don't have to do everything?
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, forgotten. This one's for you, Steve your promises
Speaker 3: to get the electricity back up asap so everyone can
Speaker 3: hear the Muslim calls to prayer. It's not either.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, Joe Biden arrested for harboring eleven million illegal aliens.
Speaker 3: Don't we wish just a couple more because I know
Speaker 3: we're really really over time. Harvard awards honorary degree to
Speaker 3: man who firebombed to Governor Shapiro's house. Yeah, well, this
Speaker 3: one's depressing. Women shocked to learn pill designed to murder
Speaker 3: babies might not be safe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know it's.
Speaker 3: Not funny, but I'll end with just a couple more.
Speaker 3: What's his name? Bad timing kilmar Orbrego Garcia honored with
Speaker 3: MS thirteen Employee of the Month award, just when they
Speaker 3: were saying he wasn't really a gang banger. And then finally,
Speaker 3: Venezuela thanks the US Supreme Court for keeping dangerous criminals
Speaker 3: out of their country. Okay, you could laugh, Johnson laughing.
Speaker 2: Well that's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, Okay, yeah, you're more true than funny.
Speaker 1: I always drink your whisky, Neat, always drink your whiskey.
Speaker 1: Meat and Steve.
Speaker 2: Okay, here's this makes couplet the three Whiskey Happy Hour,
Speaker 2: where shadows bloom, a dance on the edge of joy
Speaker 2: and gloom. Raise the glass once twice fate will cower
Speaker 2: under the spell of the three Whiskey Happy Hour. Bye bye,
Speaker 2: everybody can see you next week.
Speaker 5: Bye. So you worship Anson's proved by your device, and
Speaker 5: I had your arrange for you to time to decide.
Speaker 3: So smile for me like you.
Speaker 5: Smile for everyone else.
Speaker 3: NI gets easy with.
Speaker 5: Beliefs that you've never help got your range, I've got
Speaker 5: your ricochet.
Speaker 1: Join the conversation.