Speaker 1: Well whiskey coming thame my pay money ally, Oh why
Speaker 1: don't You?
Speaker 2: From Powerline blog dot com and produced by Ricochet dot Com.
Speaker 2: This is the Three Whiskey Happy Hour with your bartenders
Speaker 2: Steve Hayward, John You and power Lines International Woman of
Speaker 2: Mystery Lucretia Gotta giving.
Speaker 3: Let that whiskey clone where you're feeling in loud down
Speaker 3: and loone.
Speaker 4: Welcome everybody to a special Christmas Day Christmas Week episode
Speaker 4: and the Three Whiskey. I'm gonna start again and welcome
Speaker 4: everybody to a special Christmas Week episode of the Three
Speaker 4: Whiskey Happy Hour, our last gathering before December twenty fifth,
Speaker 4: though we will be having one directly afterwards as we
Speaker 4: approach the new year. But we thought this was going
Speaker 4: to be a quiet, quiet time. We were going to
Speaker 4: sit back and enjoy our whiskey and talk about great
Speaker 4: philosophy and all the other things like Big Max and
Speaker 4: Nick Ribs mc ribbs work products that we usually talk
Speaker 4: about at the end of December. But actually the news
Speaker 4: presses on and there's a lot of actually deep political
Speaker 4: theory and constitutional questions to discuss raised by this week's events.
Speaker 4: I'm joined today by our relentless hosts Steve Heyward, Steve,
Speaker 4: where are you?
Speaker 3: I'm actually in Seattle today. Long stupid story that I'll
Speaker 3: skip over, but.
Speaker 4: Just like all his stories, Yeah, why do we stick
Speaker 4: up this one over? And the International Woman of Mystery
Speaker 4: mac Gresha Magresha, how are you? Where are you?
Speaker 5: I'm well, John, thank you, and I am home. Just
Speaker 5: got home yesterday, so I'm happy to be home. And
Speaker 5: I'll tell you what I know. There's like three percent
Speaker 5: of our listeners who care. But she's happy I'm home too.
Speaker 5: Your cat, yes, the cat. Yeah, she's very happy that
Speaker 5: I'm home because I've been gone too much lately.
Speaker 3: So anyway, you are a pathetic excuse for cat lady though,
Speaker 3: I just put that down there.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 4: But you guys are not childless, your fertile You know
Speaker 4: how did the fertile cat lady vote in four members?
Speaker 3: Oh? I think we do, actually, John, I posted a
Speaker 3: chart about this. In fact, you know, married cat ladies
Speaker 3: who have children voted for Trump. It's amazing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, no, this is the last time I'll bring
Speaker 5: up cat at all. But I do have to tell you, guys,
Speaker 5: if you ever got to meet my cat, I know,
Speaker 5: neither one of you really like cats, unless you are
Speaker 5: one of those actually despise cats sort of people that
Speaker 5: can't even be around them, which included my son, by
Speaker 5: the way, He would just like go wash his hands
Speaker 5: after he touched one and that sort of thing. He
Speaker 5: adores her. Everyone adores her because she acts like a dog,
Speaker 5: is what it comes down to. She has no cat
Speaker 5: qualities whatsoever.
Speaker 4: Anyway, Sorry, I loaf cats. I think they're just watching
Speaker 4: us and waiting around for us to kill ourselves off
Speaker 4: so they can take over.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that's obviously.
Speaker 5: She's probably doing that. I'm not going to deny that
Speaker 5: one for sure.
Speaker 4: The dogs are on our side. They want to maintain
Speaker 4: human supremacy. Okay, well, let's let's start off with the
Speaker 4: news about President Biden. There was a lengthy expos in
Speaker 4: the Wall Street Journal this week which gave a lot
Speaker 4: of detail to what I think Steve and Lucretia have
Speaker 4: long thought and suspected that President Biden might not really
Speaker 4: been president all these years, that he had become so
Speaker 4: withdrawn due to his faltering mental condition that it seemed
Speaker 4: like his White House not for in charge. There are
Speaker 4: reports that some cabinet members rarely talk to him, not
Speaker 4: to mention saw him that even the most important functions
Speaker 4: of the government, defense Treasury were now it didn't seem
Speaker 4: to be really run by President Biden, that the cabinet
Speaker 4: members would not ask for meetings and wouldn't even see
Speaker 4: them because they'd be turned down. Actually, I got to say,
Speaker 4: Lucretia has been on this from if I remember the
Speaker 4: very first week of Biden's presidency. Lucretia, what do you think?
Speaker 4: Thank you and take your time trotting around the course
Speaker 4: in your victory lap, in.
Speaker 5: My victory lap. Thank you for noticing that. Actually, if
Speaker 5: I'd have had more time between when you brought this
Speaker 5: up yesterday and today, I probably would have gone back
Speaker 5: through our podcasting compiled a short, you know, montage of
Speaker 5: me saying that over and over and over again, and
Speaker 5: talk and actually ask you guys on a couple of occasions,
Speaker 5: as I recall, who you thought was actually in charge,
Speaker 5: and we never had a clear answer for that, although
Speaker 5: you guys are get credit for not entirely disagreeing with
Speaker 5: me on that point. But what I think is maybe
Speaker 5: worthy of discussing here see my shocked face. Oh Biden
Speaker 5: wasn't really on top of things is that you finally
Speaker 5: see what came out in the Wall Street Journal, you know,
Speaker 5: three reporters, and then it was reported over and over again.
Speaker 5: You see the mainstream media sort of gleefully reporting this now,
Speaker 5: which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: I see a few really really left wing rags coming out,
Speaker 5: you know, Vox and a few others, Donna Brazil best
Speaker 5: president ever in the history of the universe, and people
Speaker 5: like that trying to counter it. But most of the
Speaker 5: mainstream media does seem to be wanting to try to
Speaker 5: restore some and you know, try to instore your store
Speaker 5: some respect for their integrity, I guess is a better
Speaker 5: way to put it. Carrying this story and you know,
Speaker 5: acting duly shocked of course that they were misled. Of
Speaker 5: course they knew it. If I knew it, they knew it.
Speaker 5: Let's just put it that way. I'm not brilliant about
Speaker 5: these things. So I think that's actually the story here,
Speaker 5: is how much the whole idea that they covered it
Speaker 5: up and now they're pretending like they're shocked about it,
Speaker 5: but coming clean on it. I think that's a story.
Speaker 5: And I do one last thing, Steve, I just want
Speaker 5: to say, I quoted you today on Twitter, John, and
Speaker 5: I said, my good friend, John, you thinks that this
Speaker 5: is the perfect opportunity for a for Congress to investigate
Speaker 5: under the legitimate legislative purpose of the twenty fifth Amendment.
Speaker 5: I'll let you talk about that, but I just want
Speaker 5: to tell you that I gave you credit for that one,
Speaker 5: although I followed it with I'm not sure when you
Speaker 5: have weak minded Republicans based on history running congressional investigations,
Speaker 5: you'll get anywhere. But still it's an interesting idea done Steve.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so yeah, hearings right. So one of for
Speaker 3: listeners who haven't seen the story, and it's probably a
Speaker 3: lot if you don't subscribe to the journal, one of
Speaker 3: the things the story makes clear is that the cover
Speaker 3: up of Biden's disability began during the twenty twenty campaign.
Speaker 3: This is not something that started in twenty twenty two
Speaker 3: or whatever. And the Wall Street Journal was one of
Speaker 3: the only major outlets to report on this. I think
Speaker 3: back in June they had their big feature story that
Speaker 3: reported a lot of these problems, and they got ferocious blowback,
Speaker 3: not just from the White House and from Capitol Hill Democrats,
Speaker 3: but from the rest of the media. That's when that
Speaker 3: Joe Scarborough guy said, I can tell you that this
Speaker 3: is the best Biden. He's intellectually sharp, he's on top
Speaker 3: of things. And it wasn't just the journal by the way, yesterday,
Speaker 3: it was also that Chris Silizigai who used to be
Speaker 3: on seeing it in the Washington Post, and he went
Speaker 3: on YouTube said I have to apologize to all my readers.
Speaker 3: I should have been asking questions about the president's condition.
Speaker 3: And you know, I want to ask him if I
Speaker 3: had the chance, why didn't you? Because you know, the
Speaker 3: media was heard. Right.
Speaker 5: What the story now is not that. The story is
Speaker 5: how ubseid he is with the right wing for not
Speaker 5: taking his apology seriously.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, of course it's always a republican's pounce, right.
Speaker 3: Of course, Yes, well he war like that. But so
Speaker 3: you know, this is a media scandal as well as
Speaker 3: a political scandal. One other details emerged from this, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, sorry Biden met Putin. One meeting with Putin
Speaker 3: in I think June of twenty twenty one in Geneva,
Speaker 3: And of course this is two months before we bug
Speaker 3: out of Afghanistan in such a shameful way. And you know,
Speaker 3: I think back to when John F. Kennedy met Krushchev
Speaker 3: in Vienna in nineteen sixty one and Krushchev said, this
Speaker 3: guy's a lightweight, I can take him. And that was
Speaker 3: one of the chain of events leading to the Cuban
Speaker 3: missile crisis. And Kennedy knew it. By the way he
Speaker 3: told is he told his staff after he came home
Speaker 3: from Vienna, says got Krushchev absolutely brutalized me. It was
Speaker 3: the phrase Kennedy himself used. Well, I am guessing my
Speaker 3: hunch is is that Putin took the measure of Biden
Speaker 3: and realized he was senile and out of touch and pushover.
Speaker 3: And then after the Afghanistan bug out, decided, you know,
Speaker 3: we can just Wautch and Ukraine and take the whole thing.
Speaker 3: We can quit nibbling at the edges like they've been
Speaker 3: doing for a decade now. One other thing, So there's
Speaker 3: this story going around social media in the last thirty
Speaker 3: six hours that Kamala Harris abruptly canceled her plans to
Speaker 3: go to California for the holidays. Biden came home from
Speaker 3: Delaware and they're saying that's for some event or maybe
Speaker 3: to sign a continuing resolution, which isn't necessary. Lots of
Speaker 3: speculation about what. Oh, and then Harris was seeing in
Speaker 3: a motor kate going to the White House the other night,
Speaker 3: I think Thursday night. So the question is Discussia. There's
Speaker 3: something going on, So you can only speculate. But when
Speaker 3: you read today's Wall Street Journal story saying that Biden
Speaker 3: is considered ring commuting the sentences of every federal inmate
Speaker 3: currently facing a deat sentence, which would include people like
Speaker 3: that Sarnaev kid who did the Boston marathon bombing, the
Speaker 3: guy who's the Bowers guy who shot eleven people, the
Speaker 3: Tree of Life synagogue in Pennsylvania, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And you know, the Democrats are already embarrassed by Biden's
Speaker 3: pardon of Hunter, and this is crazy speculation of my partner.
Speaker 3: And I'll say the last thing, which is maybe they're
Speaker 3: going to invote the twenty fifth Amendment because they're afraid
Speaker 3: that Biden is going to go crazy with pardons and
Speaker 3: really embarrassed Democrats. It seems unlikely, but you know, then
Speaker 3: you do that historic first presidency thing for a woman.
Speaker 3: But finally, yeah, I mean I had that idea too.
Speaker 3: There ought to be aggressive hearings and haul and all
Speaker 3: the cabinet members, all the White House staff, and say
Speaker 3: why did you conceal this? How did you do it?
Speaker 3: What are the implications of this? Do you know for
Speaker 3: reasons that you stated? John? And I think that would
Speaker 3: this is at least as biggest scandal's Watergate in my mind,
Speaker 3: concealing we didn't have a president who's been president for
Speaker 3: the last four years. It hasn't been Joe Biden.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think there's two angles that Lucretia's right. You
Speaker 4: have the media, which conscious possantly must have covered this up.
Speaker 3: I mean, anyone who saw him close up would have known.
Speaker 4: Let me say though, that the only truth teller here
Speaker 4: was the Korean guy, Robert Hurr, the special counsel. Remember
Speaker 4: how attacks he got when he said, this guy's a
Speaker 4: well meaning man, old man with memory problems. And then
Speaker 4: the political cover up, because I think that's what the
Speaker 4: Wall Street Journal opens up that we're not focusing on enough,
Speaker 4: but we will, as Lucretia Steve's call for congressional hearings
Speaker 4: is for a president in that condition to have continued
Speaker 4: in office meant a whole bunch of people conspired to
Speaker 4: keep the American people from knowing, and we're probably issuing
Speaker 4: orders in Biden's name that he didn't even know about.
Speaker 4: Now there was exercising the power of the presidency without permission. Basically,
Speaker 4: think the pricelessness of this is going to be great
Speaker 4: because if Congress is smart and does these hearings in
Speaker 4: the start of the new year, Trump finally gets his
Speaker 4: and yet another Trump getting his revenge because all those
Speaker 4: all the staff members and cabinet members going to claim
Speaker 4: executive privilege. Guess who gets to decide whether they have
Speaker 4: executive privilege the same argument. By to make the sitting
Speaker 4: president not the past president, Trump will be able to
Speaker 4: waive all of their executive privilege and they will be
Speaker 4: subpoenaed and forced to testify. And then it gets even better.
Speaker 4: If you suppose Janet Yellen, the Secretary of the Treasury
Speaker 4: or Lloyd Austin says executive privilege, I won't testify. Congress
Speaker 4: will subpoena them, and then guess who's in charge of
Speaker 4: whether to throw them in jail and enforce the subpoenas
Speaker 4: Pam Bondie going to be priceless. Everything that the Democrats
Speaker 4: did to the Trump people is going to boomerang back
Speaker 4: on them exactly. So sorry the christ you're about.
Speaker 5: To no, no, no, I was interrupting you. I just had
Speaker 5: a question about it, because you know, at the beginning
Speaker 5: of Biden's administration, Ron Klain was obviously very, very powerful,
Speaker 5: and the Wall Street Journal article talks about how he
Speaker 5: was the one making a lot of decisions. If you're
Speaker 5: if you're at the height of power there, why do
Speaker 5: you resign if you're Ron Klein?
Speaker 4: Oh well, I mean I hate to say this, but
Speaker 4: usually people in the White House, especially at the beginning,
Speaker 4: to take leave after two years because that's when you're
Speaker 4: the most valuable on the lobbying circuit.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I don't know that's a good answer, John, You.
Speaker 3: Know, it's uh.
Speaker 4: You know, every White House staffer has a best if
Speaker 4: used by date on them, and best if used by
Speaker 4: is usually the second year, end of the second year
Speaker 4: of the first term.
Speaker 5: Although to be fair, a lot of the Biden advisors,
Speaker 5: a lot of Jill Biden's closest people that want Andrew Brennall,
Speaker 5: you know, the sexual harasser guy. They've been with him
Speaker 5: for years and obviously they're loyalty. I thought Ron Klaan
Speaker 5: was a little bit more in that category, but you're
Speaker 5: probably right. But it's coming out that he probably was
Speaker 5: the person at least the first two years responsible for
Speaker 5: just about every initiative out of the Biden administration, at
Speaker 5: least the domestic exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the people know most him the current chief of
Speaker 4: staff zites. And also, I think Jake Sullivan has a
Speaker 4: lot of things to be worried about because you will
Speaker 4: look at a lot of Biden form policy having been
Speaker 4: a disaster, and that's what happens. Maybe when you know,
Speaker 4: a young junior staffer suddenly becomes National security advisor, there's
Speaker 4: a whole story about why that happened, and then starts
Speaker 4: making decisions with very little guidance from the president.
Speaker 5: I have a very descriptive name. I'm sorry. I'm just
Speaker 5: going to say I have a very descriptive name for
Speaker 5: Jake Sullivan that I probably should didn't say on a
Speaker 5: Holy show, So I'll just leave that alone. But it
Speaker 5: describes him perfectly and explains everything that you said the
Speaker 5: long story about Jake Sullivan. But anyway, go ahead, Steve.
Speaker 3: Oh, I got to hear about this well, but boy,
Speaker 3: oh no, god, oh.
Speaker 4: Dear, I didn't actually think you were going to say it.
Speaker 3: Okay, well before yeah, just two footnotes. I've been saying
Speaker 3: for years now that Jake from State Farm would give
Speaker 3: us better advice than Jake Sullivan.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 3: And on a second footnote on the media story, So, Lucretia,
Speaker 3: you say that the media is now suddenly backing and
Speaker 3: filling or actually I heard Charlie Cook say I think
Speaker 3: quite sagely or no, it was Rob Long and Ricochet said,
Speaker 3: you know, if you want to know what's happened, you
Speaker 3: always want to read the New York Times two weeks
Speaker 3: after an election that they've lost, because then they start
Speaker 3: approaching the truth.
Speaker 5: But yeah, like there's been immigration problems.
Speaker 3: Right exactly. And uh and and also they have their
Speaker 3: own litervery mild story about Biden's disabilities. But uh, you
Speaker 3: I know you were on the move yesterday, Lucretius, so
Speaker 3: you missed this. But won't be surprised that at the
Speaker 3: Daily Press conference there was not one question for creating
Speaker 3: Jean Pierre Paul Sart about the Wall Street Journal story
Speaker 3: in Biden's disability. Not one you would have thought somebody
Speaker 3: would have asked that, and for a White House response,
Speaker 3: but no, one.
Speaker 5: Did, even Peter Doucey, was he there?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I didn't watch it, but I read
Speaker 3: I read an account. I believe that no one asked
Speaker 3: about it. So there you go. There. Media is still
Speaker 3: covering up for him, in other words, because they're deeply
Speaker 3: implicated in it, and.
Speaker 5: Either that they just feel really super sorry for Kareem
Speaker 5: Abdul Jabbar whatever her name is, mophead.
Speaker 3: It would take three of her to get as tall
Speaker 3: as cream.
Speaker 5: I know, but they might. They might. Actually, I think
Speaker 5: I could almost. I confess to feeling sorry for her
Speaker 5: last time. So I think that maybe they what's she
Speaker 5: going to say? I don't know, the same thing that
Speaker 5: that that that Brnald gut No, the the other spokesperson,
Speaker 5: the other White House spokesperson, Andrew somebody or other. I
Speaker 5: forget baits. Maybe something's with a bee who just kept saying,
Speaker 5: oh no, every decision, every decision was either the will
Speaker 5: of Biden or an extrapolation of the bill of the
Speaker 5: will of Biden kind of thing, you know. In other words, oh,
Speaker 5: in spirit, he was behind it all. We knew what
Speaker 5: he really wanted, and we just carried it out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, that's all they thought.
Speaker 5: Or who knows.
Speaker 4: Let's move on to the ancillary issue, which also is
Speaker 4: actually raised by Biden's many mental troubles, which is the
Speaker 4: sweeping pardons he's issued. Not only did he pardon Hunter Biden,
Speaker 4: which we talked about before, but since we talked he
Speaker 4: has now issued what his administration claimed this is the
Speaker 4: most sweeping set of pardons in history, over one thousand,
Speaker 4: eighteen hundred, including people who have defrauded cities and states
Speaker 4: out of millions of dollars, including you know, various drug
Speaker 4: dealers and so on.
Speaker 5: Judges who let who took money to put probably innocent
Speaker 5: kids in for profit prisons.
Speaker 4: Yes, in Pennsylvania. And although so one, he's almost definitely
Speaker 4: wrong because the broadest set of pardons were issued to
Speaker 4: draft dodgers right after Vietnam by Jimmy Carter, or by
Speaker 4: Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, to all the Confederates. So it's
Speaker 4: not even close. But he's still trying to make his mark.
Speaker 4: And it's also I think raises the question we didn't
Speaker 4: also talk about too much, which is do presidents have
Speaker 4: this power to pardon people for things they haven't been
Speaker 4: prosecuted or convicted for, or things that we don't even
Speaker 4: know they did yet, Steve.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, look, I mean I think a lot of
Speaker 3: people make a distinction, John, between prospective amnesties as was
Speaker 3: done after the Civil War and after Vietnam, and pardons
Speaker 3: are commutations of people who've actually been committed through the
Speaker 3: you know, through due process and so there, if you
Speaker 3: just use that categorization, Biden has set a new record,
Speaker 3: even exceeding Franklin Roosevelt, who had, you know, twelve plus
Speaker 3: years to parton people. They have admitted by the way
Speaker 3: that they did not do these on a case by
Speaker 3: case basis, actually reviewing the facts that they just were
Speaker 3: out and found a lot of people. I have two
Speaker 3: speculations again, One is, you know, you wonder if Biden
Speaker 3: and his family are getting bribe for some of these
Speaker 3: and or the number of them is meant to part
Speaker 3: point two as cover for extending yet another round of
Speaker 3: pardons to oh, I don't know, Biden's family and Biden
Speaker 3: himself on his way out of office. You know, you know,
Speaker 3: all those Floria partons, what's another couple for my brother
Speaker 3: uh and and all the other people who did how
Speaker 3: many suspicious bank reports, suspicious transaction reports? Did banks send
Speaker 3: in on the I don't know it was it was
Speaker 3: a lot. I'm not sure it was one hundred, but
Speaker 3: it was a large was.
Speaker 5: Over one hundred. I saw those figure the other day.
Speaker 3: It's just unbelievable. And and you know, let us remember that.
Speaker 3: Oh it'll be interesting to see a fight. Last point. Sorry,
Speaker 3: I have enjoyed again, you know, Trump winning on all fronts,
Speaker 3: talk about well, we should prosecute Liz Cheney and the
Speaker 3: January sixth Commission and maybe those fifty one intelligence officers.
Speaker 3: And I think, but I think this is a reverse syop.
Speaker 3: Lucreati is big on sy ops from the left. I
Speaker 3: think maybe this is a Trump syop. The idea being
Speaker 3: that Biden will feel compelled to issue prospective pardons to
Speaker 3: Liz Cheney, the January sixth Committee, all kinds of other people,
Speaker 3: and then Trump's gets to say, well, they wouldn't have
Speaker 3: needed a part, and if they didn't do anything wrong,
Speaker 3: this is implicit recognition that they're guilty. And you know,
Speaker 3: another great day for Trump on Twitter.
Speaker 5: So a couple of comments and questions. So the way
Speaker 5: you described it at first is are you kind of
Speaker 5: gave us two categories of pardons? John and one was
Speaker 5: a pardon for a crime already committed, and then you
Speaker 5: called it a prospective crime. And you said that as
Speaker 5: a result of you know, prospective crime Confederates and draft dodgers.
Speaker 5: But I see a distinction there as well. And that
Speaker 5: distinction is everybody knows why the Confederates were being pardoned.
Speaker 5: Everybody knows why the draft dodgers were being pardoned, even
Speaker 5: if they had not gone through the legal process necessary
Speaker 5: to find them guilty of treason in the first case,
Speaker 5: whatever draft dodging. There is a difference between that and
Speaker 5: a prospective pardon that pardons for anything that might have happened, say,
Speaker 5: in the case of Hunter Biden, right, it's not just
Speaker 5: for the a pardon for the things he was actually
Speaker 5: convicted of or pled guilty to. It's a a pardon
Speaker 5: for anything that they might have found that was a
Speaker 5: crime that he did in that entire period. Okay, that
Speaker 5: was my first point. My second point, the White House
Speaker 5: admitted to the fact that of those fifteen hundred pardons
Speaker 5: that they didn't look into the specific of the you know,
Speaker 5: the crimes that they had committed or anything like that.
Speaker 5: They just who knows where they got the fifteen hundred.
Speaker 5: From my guess is donors you know, the crime Biden
Speaker 5: crime family continues, but they confess to that. And I
Speaker 5: bring that up to go back to Steve's point. If
Speaker 5: they don't if they pardon fifteen hundred Americans, actually a
Speaker 5: lot of Chinese you know, spies and things like that
Speaker 5: as well, corrupt spies. They if they do that and
Speaker 5: they don't look into the circumstances of you know what
Speaker 5: it was that convicted those people in the first place,
Speaker 5: it becomes much easier as a matter of record to say, well,
Speaker 5: we're also going to pardon the Biden crime family, right,
Speaker 5: I mean, that's I'm not even trying to be a
Speaker 5: conspiracy theorist. I'm just putting that out there as a
Speaker 5: possible explanation. Why would you admit, if you're the White House,
Speaker 5: that you pardon fifteen hundred people and didn't even look
Speaker 5: into the circumstances under which they were initially convicted. Because
Speaker 5: some of the story, as we pointed out to being
Speaker 5: are horrendous.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, if you go back to the flurry
Speaker 3: of partons Bill Clinton gave on this last day in
Speaker 3: office in two thousand and one, the people said his
Speaker 3: motivation for doing that was his hatred of prosecutors and
Speaker 3: the prosecution he went through with the hands of Ken Starr.
Speaker 3: And you know, in addition to high level criminals like
Speaker 3: Mark Rich who was guilty of what, you know, one
Speaker 3: hundred million dollars in tax evasion. Oh and his wife
Speaker 3: had pledged money to the Clinton Library. Gee, wasn't that funny?
Speaker 3: Wink in a nod. But he also pardoned some really
Speaker 3: bizarre criminals that you looked like they had to go
Speaker 3: look for these. Oh and there were allegations that, you know,
Speaker 3: a bribery in the background, you know, rumors around jail houses.
Speaker 3: This is a good time to get a pardon from
Speaker 3: Bill Clinton because he's in the mood. And I think
Speaker 3: one of thems I recall vaguely was somebody who'd been
Speaker 3: convicted on federal charges of rolling back odometers on used cars,
Speaker 3: which wouldn't yeah, I mean really, so, so what's Biden's
Speaker 3: motivation here? I think it's clearly personal and criminal on
Speaker 3: his part, and not the animus you know, Bill Clinton, you,
Speaker 3: I mean, it was wrong, but you still understood why
Speaker 3: he was angry because that he was Bill Clinton. But
Speaker 3: why is Biden doing this? I think it has to
Speaker 3: be for some very bad reasons.
Speaker 4: Well, as we saw with the as you mentioned, also
Speaker 4: with the Clinton pardons. We remember Mark Rich, who's right,
Speaker 4: a wealthy financier's wife gave money to the Clintons. But
Speaker 4: also remember he pardoned, if I remember, some members convicted
Speaker 4: members of the Puerto Rican terrorist group, right, because he
Speaker 4: was trying to sway the Puerto Rican vote for his
Speaker 4: wife's future New York Senate campaign.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: And so there was not just the outright bribery, but
Speaker 4: you know, influenced paddling, which is what the Biden family
Speaker 4: seems to excel at. So I bet once people have
Speaker 4: a chance to look through all fifteen hundred pardons, and
Speaker 4: as you say, more to come, we may see lots
Speaker 4: of other connections. Now, the other point is why do
Speaker 4: you harden the weird o dominator person? Why do you
Speaker 4: pardon the.
Speaker 3: Petty drug uetar.
Speaker 4: I think it's like when you shoot a missile at
Speaker 4: somebody and you don't want them to shoot your missile down,
Speaker 4: so you throw out lots of decoys and chaff too.
Speaker 3: Yes, right, you.
Speaker 5: Want to assassinate somebody, you blow up the McDonald's they're
Speaker 5: in and kill forty people.
Speaker 4: Let's not go overboard. Well, you know that's right. You
Speaker 4: So there's thousands of people who have applications for pardons
Speaker 4: with the Justice Department. There's actually a full time office
Speaker 4: called the Office of Pardon Attorney, who goes through all
Speaker 4: these and actually makes recommendations. And they don't recommend a
Speaker 4: lot of them. But you know, Biden Price said, get
Speaker 4: them all out, get them all out in the dusty shelves,
Speaker 4: with part in everybody, and then slip in the ones
Speaker 4: that I really care about too. They'll take them forever
Speaker 4: to figure out which ones are important and which ones are.
Speaker 5: So question about that. So the Office of Pardon Attorney
Speaker 5: is that a partisan office? In other words, does it
Speaker 5: change hands every single time? Or are they been meaning,
Speaker 5: you know, corrupt.
Speaker 4: Political hacks or its career and they.
Speaker 5: Which means they're corrupt political hacks.
Speaker 4: Well, they're actually very they're known to be quite stingy
Speaker 4: about recommending pardons. They really they don't recommend one hundred
Speaker 4: a year or anything, maybe single digits a year or
Speaker 4: maybe low double digits. But they're they actually I think
Speaker 4: they're they're much stingier than presidents, that's for sure.
Speaker 5: So I have a question for you, John, Will you
Speaker 5: now that you've you've seen the evidence, even from the
Speaker 5: Inspector General who tried to minimize it as much as possible,
Speaker 5: You've seen evidence that, in fact, the FBI was clearly
Speaker 5: operating on January sixth, will you be in favor of
Speaker 5: pardons for the January sixth protesters.
Speaker 4: You know, it's amazing how one can read the same
Speaker 4: document and have the opposite conclusions. Because I read that
Speaker 4: document as there were no FBI officials there, and there
Speaker 4: were what six informants twenty.
Speaker 5: Nine that they admitted to not one single person of
Speaker 5: whom has been prosecuted.
Speaker 4: Well, I wouldn't prosecute the informants.
Speaker 5: Well twenty nine? Which document did you read?
Speaker 4: John?
Speaker 5: You read it in the Washington Post, didn't you?
Speaker 4: Awe hundred?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I'm more I Well, I will pass
Speaker 1: over the subject for the moment, except to say that
Speaker 1: Trump himself has said that he will review the January
Speaker 1: sixth defendants on.
Speaker 3: A case by case basis. In the case to me
Speaker 3: that he's going to pardon people who are just trespassers
Speaker 3: and convicted on you know, selective grounds, and ones who
Speaker 3: actually committed some violent acts either property destruction or you know,
Speaker 3: assaulting a police officer. I think those numbers are much smaller,
Speaker 3: and I'm with the they.
Speaker 5: Should none of them get any more punishment of consequences
Speaker 5: of any kind than anybody who did a similar thing
Speaker 5: in the twenty twenty riots.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, well that's right, Yeah.
Speaker 5: That's my opinion. I would restore a lot of collectors.
Speaker 4: Those are state prosecutions, all of them.
Speaker 5: There was a lot of things that how much federal.
Speaker 5: They assaulted federal courthouses, they assaulted Washington, d C. All
Speaker 5: sorts of things happened there. Yeah, there were quite a
Speaker 5: few federal prosecutions there.
Speaker 3: Well you could have anyway, but okay, well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, there weren't federal prosecutions, but they were federal
Speaker 5: crimes committed on federal property against.
Speaker 4: Federal Anyone who committed violence against an officer and destroyed property,
Speaker 4: when to kidnap and officials should should should be sentenced
Speaker 4: to jail, regardless of how the people in twenty twenty
Speaker 4: were treated. Well, the failures there don't make up.
Speaker 3: I think giving a pass to people.
Speaker 4: Who genuinely wanted to stop the electoral count.
Speaker 3: Well, okay, I can grant the general principle there, I'll
Speaker 3: just wait on a market that I don't think we
Speaker 3: know the full story of the FBI on that day,
Speaker 3: and we'll see what Cashptel discovers and reveals as that
Speaker 3: goes on. I think.
Speaker 5: What Sorry, I was just gonna say, no, no, it's
Speaker 5: not on your list, John, But I did want to
Speaker 5: point out that the big, the big story that seems
Speaker 5: to be across the board in which I think our
Speaker 5: friend Rich Lowry addressed today and I forget where, uh
Speaker 5: maybe it was a real clear politics article, was the
Speaker 5: fact that, you know, people are screaming bloody murder about
Speaker 5: the fact that he's going to go after Trump's political enemies.
Speaker 5: Isn't that rich? And you know, because Cash Bettel himself
Speaker 5: was the subject of an FBI investigation for trying to
Speaker 5: get to the bottom of that crap Steele dossier business
Speaker 5: in the Russian Russia Russia Russia hoax. He was investigated,
Speaker 5: he was stonewalled by the FBI. So you know, I
Speaker 5: just I can't even sort of wrap my head around
Speaker 5: how duplicitous the press continues to be on some of
Speaker 5: these things. But anyway, sorry, that wasn't on your list.
Speaker 4: I just Steve pointed out that my prompt Biden to
Speaker 4: parton more people than he would have wanted to, like
Speaker 4: Liz Cheney or all the members of the January sixth committee,
Speaker 4: or I'm not actually still sure why Senator Shift, Senator
Speaker 4: b Schiff would want to part needs a pardon. But
Speaker 4: you know, if Biden parts them all out, then it's
Speaker 4: a great political victory for Trump because then he can
Speaker 4: say they all accepted it because they did something wrong.
Speaker 4: I would actually, if I were Liz Cheney, I would
Speaker 4: say I don't want to pardon right.
Speaker 3: Oh, that would be interesting, Yes, exactly, you can.
Speaker 5: I'm just not going to say that.
Speaker 4: I promise that'd be interesting if fact she took a
Speaker 4: part in that. Okay, let's let's I have the feeling
Speaker 4: before January twenty we're going to be talking about this
Speaker 4: subject again.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 4: So let's move on to the next issue, which is
Speaker 4: all over the news, which is and the particular trigger
Speaker 4: is not important, but its deeper meaning might be something
Speaker 4: very important, which was the failure of Republicans to pass
Speaker 4: a continuing resolution to keep the government open, but which
Speaker 4: got larded up with lots and lots of extra provisions.
Speaker 4: President Trump and Elon Musk demanded that Republicans voted down,
Speaker 4: even though it was the draft presented by Speaker Speaker
Speaker 4: Mike Speaker Mike Johnson. And after it was voted down,
Speaker 4: and by the way, it was about one thousand pages long. Yeah,
Speaker 4: the one that was eventually passed was about one hundred
Speaker 4: pages long. So after it was stripped down, just last night,
Speaker 4: the House and Senate passed it and the government won't
Speaker 4: be closing. It will be good, I believe, until March.
Speaker 4: And then at that point the House and Senate, both
Speaker 4: controlled by Republicans this time, can pass a broader, more
Speaker 4: comprehensive built But the interesting thing, by the way, I
Speaker 4: don't think usually the public cares that much about continued resolutions.
Speaker 3: They get done all the time.
Speaker 4: But the interesting thing is that you're seeing all kinds
Speaker 4: of accusations now that one who's still president. How is
Speaker 4: it that Donald Trump is deciding what they continued must
Speaker 4: rather than the sitting president Joe Biden. And Joe Biden's
Speaker 4: been nowhere to be found about the continued resolution. So
Speaker 4: that's one, and then two, as Luguci just said, there
Speaker 4: are people saying Elon Musk is too powerful are we
Speaker 4: becoming like a Russian oligarchy where the rich business people
Speaker 4: are really calling the shots behind the politicians. So, Steve,
Speaker 4: what do you think about the cr But also it's deeper.
Speaker 3: Political meaning Yeah, by the way, first of all, count
Speaker 3: me is shocked, shocked, and any billionaire not named Sorel
Speaker 3: or Bloomberg might want to be involved in politics, right,
Speaker 3: I mean selective indignation as usual. Look, Lucretia may jump
Speaker 3: on me for this, I don't know. I actually think
Speaker 3: the outcome of this was a minor victory for the Republicans.
Speaker 3: And here's why. The original bill of fifteen hundred pages
Speaker 3: was a travesty, not just with a spending but because
Speaker 3: Johnson preemptively conceded he would need Democratic votes to pass it,
Speaker 3: he allowed them to stick all kinds of policy writers
Speaker 3: in there. So some of these didn't involve money at all,
Speaker 3: but there was immunity for the January sixth Committee was
Speaker 3: written into the bill. There was also this one passage
Speaker 3: I saw where they redefined offenders for criminal statutes as
Speaker 3: justice involved individuals. This is this usement. I mean, you
Speaker 3: would think the election November hadn't happened. To read somebody's euphemisms,
Speaker 3: sneaking in lots of stuff like this. Why were those.
Speaker 5: Money out congressional salary raises? Did that end up in there?
Speaker 3: I don't know if it did or not. And they
Speaker 3: didn't have the debt seeing increase that Trump wanted. But
Speaker 3: the point is all those things, most of those things,
Speaker 3: as I understand it, were stripped out of the final bill.
Speaker 3: I also think what happened was is, you know, I
Speaker 3: just love this that the Democrats started yelling about Musk
Speaker 3: and Trump and the evil Republicans are going to block
Speaker 3: cancer research for kids, which is some new research program
Speaker 3: that somebody lobbied for. Okay, fine, as well as the
Speaker 3: one hundred billion dollars in disaster relief, which seems rather
Speaker 3: high to me. But now here's the let me finish this.
Speaker 3: Here's the point is, at some point in the last
Speaker 3: thirty six forty eight hours, somebody got smart and said, Okay,
Speaker 3: you know what, we can break us up into parts
Speaker 3: and bring every single part of this up for an
Speaker 3: up or down vote, and then you'd pass the disaster relief,
Speaker 3: you might pass the cancer research bill, you wouldn't pass
Speaker 3: a lot of other things. And I think that scared
Speaker 3: a lot of Democrats that they didn't want to do that.
Speaker 3: You know, this whole game has always benefited them, and
Speaker 3: I think Republicans got clever about this, and so I
Speaker 3: think without going through the whole thing, and I haven't
Speaker 3: had time to and I probably won't, I think exodus
Speaker 3: was not a terrible outcome. But we'll see what the sequel.
Speaker 3: It's only for two months. We've got to go through
Speaker 3: this all over again in February, apparently, or something has
Speaker 3: to happen in February. It has to be either.
Speaker 4: It has to be an initial Yeah, and this is
Speaker 4: when the Republican majorities have their greatest advantage.
Speaker 3: There has to be right.
Speaker 4: Was called reconciliation, which is why there's a budget actually
Speaker 4: voted on and spending is actually voted on. But the
Speaker 4: key thing is filibuster rule is waived, so knowing you
Speaker 4: a simple majority get that through, that's how the Democrats
Speaker 4: have historically gotten most of their major Now it has
Speaker 4: to do my memory of it, and having done this
Speaker 4: in the Senate was this requires that the legislation be
Speaker 4: related to the budget, So it has to do with
Speaker 4: spending or taxing. It can't just be banning something you
Speaker 4: don't like, yeah, so it does have to be financially
Speaker 4: but that's when Trump and the Republican drives will be
Speaker 4: at their highest. And note it has to happen every year,
Speaker 4: so Trump will get two bites at the apple beginning
Speaker 4: of the next year and beginning of twenty twenty six.
Speaker 3: And hopefully this has been a warning shot to Republicans
Speaker 3: in the Senate and everywhere that you know what, people
Speaker 3: are paying attention and want you to quit being a
Speaker 3: certain species of spinelessness that Lucretia likes to say, but
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 4: I mean, just one last thing, that's the politics of
Speaker 4: it is that this was always something that Democrats have
Speaker 4: always been better than repeats that because if you're a Democrat,
Speaker 4: you don't have control of all three branches, well, you
Speaker 4: hold the whole thing hostage. And so Schumer's very good
Speaker 4: at refusing to vote through this cr until he gets
Speaker 4: it right, but you know, spending and taxing riders that
Speaker 4: he wants, and then if it doesn't happen the government
Speaker 4: shuts down, then they blame it on the Republicans. Democrats
Speaker 4: never seem to get blamed for government shot.
Speaker 3: Apparently, the House passed the Research Program for childhood cancer,
Speaker 3: and Schumer never took it up in the Senate. So
Speaker 3: there you go, proof of your point.
Speaker 5: Yah shumor's the problem in a lot of things. But anyway,
Speaker 5: so a couple of things. I want to go back
Speaker 5: to the thing that you know. Steve just sort of
Speaker 5: dismissed it as if it wasn't important, the whole idea
Speaker 5: that they were going to raise congressional salaries by forty percent. Yeah, wow, Okay, Okay.
Speaker 5: There is something called the twenty seventh Amendment, part of
Speaker 5: the Original Bill of Rights that was finally passed in
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety two, which says that any law that changes
Speaker 5: the salary of members of Congress cannot take place until
Speaker 5: after the next congressional election. So if they had done that,
Speaker 5: it wouldn't have got it wouldn't have been an effect
Speaker 5: till the next Congress.
Speaker 3: Correct, correct, But well, I think there has to be
Speaker 3: election election.
Speaker 4: Sorry, this Congress is still the sitting it Okay, it
Speaker 4: says election.
Speaker 5: It doesn't say until the next Congress. It says the election.
Speaker 4: But this I think, because of the way the rules
Speaker 4: are read, that this actually still counts as the preceding congress.
Speaker 4: So the salary effect would have taken effect in January.
Speaker 5: No, it doesn't say that the sitting Congress. It says
Speaker 5: the election of the next Congress. So it couldn't take
Speaker 5: place until the next November. After the next November. In
Speaker 5: other words, what would be the point of doing that.
Speaker 5: The whole idea is you want people who voted for
Speaker 5: their own pay rais to stand for re election and
Speaker 5: have the public know about it. Anyway, Enough about that,
Speaker 5: because I don't know where that stands, But I want
Speaker 5: to bring up the other thing that Elon Musk is.
Speaker 5: So it was so brilliant about not just putting it
Speaker 5: on X and having you know, people pay attention. But
Speaker 5: the reason he was able to do that with the
Speaker 5: fifteen hundred page bill before most members of Congress could
Speaker 5: have even thought about skimming it, he had Grock his
Speaker 5: his you know, Elon's AI go through and it's the
Speaker 5: algorithms are trained to find wasteful government spending. So all
Speaker 5: over X you had the examples like the kind that
Speaker 5: Steve was talking about. And so what happened was on
Speaker 5: X Elon was able to amass an immediate and widespread
Speaker 5: public outrage against the spending in this bill and create
Speaker 5: an instantaneous movement unlike anything we've ever seen before, and
Speaker 5: I just wanted to point that out, and that's why
Speaker 5: the bill was killed in almost no time. Really is
Speaker 5: I mean, it's quite amazing.
Speaker 4: Well, what do you think about these arguments that are coming,
Speaker 4: of course, from President Trump's critics, who are saying that
Speaker 4: Elon Musk actually has too much power for a private citizen.
Speaker 5: We didn't complain about it when Zuckerberg and uh what
Speaker 5: was that that that bearded, filthy guy from that used
Speaker 5: to be on Twitter?
Speaker 3: What was his name, Jack Dorsey? Jack Dorsey?
Speaker 5: You know, those same people weren't complaining about how much
Speaker 5: control they had over the twenty twenty election and the censoring.
Speaker 5: I have no problem with the left countering well, and
Speaker 5: they tried countering what Elon Musk put on on acts.
Speaker 5: I mean they tried to say, oh, well, don't you
Speaker 5: understand people are going to be without uh disaster aid?
Speaker 5: And you know that that that despic I saw the
Speaker 5: funniest thing on x You guys probably don't even know
Speaker 5: who this is, but there was a Cajun singer who
Speaker 5: is very popular in the seventies named Doug Kershaw.
Speaker 4: Isn't oxymon Cajun singing.
Speaker 5: But go ahead, well, I mean that's honestly, yeah, that's
Speaker 5: what we're saying. But he looks like Rosa de Laurel.
Speaker 5: All right, Yes, it was a meme that said, uh,
Speaker 5: here's here's what happened to Doug Kershaw. Anyway, you know
Speaker 5: that they're just screaming about it everywhere. But it's so
Speaker 5: transparently stupid that they they're getting nowhere. I mean, Elon
Speaker 5: Musk didn't make anything happen. He didn't have any influence
Speaker 5: other than getting people, the citizens who for whom members
Speaker 5: of Congress work to pay attention to what's going on
Speaker 5: and say, no, we don't want this. That's not so
Speaker 5: much that's democracy.
Speaker 3: I think it's I think it's actually pretty simple, John.
Speaker 3: I think, first of all, they're talking about President Musk.
Speaker 3: They're trying to drive a wedge between Trump and Musk
Speaker 3: on the view that Trump's ego won't allow Musk to
Speaker 3: get all this tension and praise. And ordinarily you might
Speaker 3: think that work, except my hunch about it is Trump
Speaker 3: really likes Musk and respects him for his accomplishments, and
Speaker 3: it will be a much harder wedge to drive through
Speaker 3: than people think. But second and related, it's this is
Speaker 3: the primal scream of the left and losing an institution
Speaker 3: they thought they owned, which is Twitter, right, you see
Speaker 3: all them bailing out for Blue Sky and so forth.
Speaker 3: So just as the left has a temper tantrum when
Speaker 3: they lose control of the Supreme Court or any institution,
Speaker 3: they're mad about social media slipping away from their control
Speaker 3: and therefore losing control of the narrative. And so you know,
Speaker 3: it's the narrative above all else for the left these days.
Speaker 3: And I think that explains their primal scheme about Musk.
Speaker 3: And I think that Musk is it probably gets this.
Speaker 3: And this boy, is he going to have fun because
Speaker 3: once you realize you can push their buttons so easily,
Speaker 3: he'll push it more often.
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 5: I think that's absolutely true, and I think it's wonderful.
Speaker 5: And yeah, you know, the fact that Blue Sky has
Speaker 5: turned out to be just it's not a kindler, gentler place.
Speaker 5: It's it's it's being taken over very quickly by the
Speaker 5: most extreme of the extreme left, who will not tolerate,
Speaker 5: for instance, someone who's gay complaining about radical transgender surgery
Speaker 5: for three year olds. You know, they won't tolerate it.
Speaker 5: They'll they'll dox them, they'll put out their addresses. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's just a really really awful place. Have at it,
Speaker 5: my friends, go ahead and get in your echo chambers.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Blue Sky has banned some people who joined up,
Speaker 3: like Jesse Single, the Social Scientists, before they've even posted anything.
Speaker 3: Just you know, we know they're bad people, so they're
Speaker 3: going to ban them before the.
Speaker 4: You know, Luckily, I have no idea what any of
Speaker 4: you are talking about, because I or any of those things.
Speaker 4: I just stick to, you know, primitive sources like Facebook
Speaker 4: and LinkedIn. But that brings us to one more in
Speaker 4: Washington Post. Yeah, the Washington Post and the New York Times.
Speaker 4: And someone has to tell you what they're saying.
Speaker 3: Lucretian, Yeah, I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: One last big I think, pretty big piece of news,
Speaker 4: delicious piece of news that came out before we maybe
Speaker 4: turned to reader Mail Hadley. We're talking about you.
Speaker 2: Oh, is.
Speaker 4: Lucretia's favorite public figure. Big Fanny. She lost lost badly,
Speaker 4: was disqualified kicked off the Trump prosecution because of her
Speaker 4: decision to hire her boyfriend to be the special counsel,
Speaker 4: paying six hundred thousand dollars, even though he had no
Speaker 4: criminal felony trial experience, and so the Georgia Appeals Court
Speaker 4: actually reversed the trial judge who had sat in and
Speaker 4: ordered and said it on all of those oh dreadful
Speaker 4: hearings asking about the location of the boyfriend and Big
Speaker 4: Fanny at the same day and the same times, and
Speaker 4: the trial judge had said that she could stay on
Speaker 4: the case as long as the boyfriend with drew, so
Speaker 4: he withdrew, and the appeals court actually said, no, you
Speaker 4: all have a conflict of interest. You all have to
Speaker 4: get off the case. Lucretia vindicated again after waiting years
Speaker 4: for her vindication. Wins on yet another one.
Speaker 5: I have to tell you, John, I was very pleased
Speaker 5: by your article about the subject, the Fox News article,
Speaker 5: but I was disappointed that you didn't introduce it in
Speaker 5: the same way you did in our email, which was
Speaker 5: using my favorite Big Fanny Willis. I think that would
Speaker 5: have been I was a little disappointed on that one, John,
Speaker 5: but otherwise the article was excellent. I think Steve should
Speaker 5: should link to it in the show notes, just because
Speaker 5: it reminds me it was basically the same argument I
Speaker 5: made a little bit earlier about Cash Pttel, which is
Speaker 5: that you see these people who are you know, who
Speaker 5: were so willing to go after Trump now being very
Speaker 5: very worried about the same thing being done to them,
Speaker 5: and so on, and the second and third order consequences
Speaker 5: of big Fannies prosecution of Trump. We could because the
Speaker 5: at the state level, all the Biden pardons in the
Speaker 5: world won't make a difference, just like they wouldn't if
Speaker 5: you know this, this prosecution continues against Trump. But that
Speaker 5: doesn't mean, as you point out, that we wouldn't see
Speaker 5: state attorney generals across in red states, especially maybe even
Speaker 5: in red counties like in the god awful place you
Speaker 5: guys live. What a pretty place it is. So I
Speaker 5: just have to say that anyway, how sad and we
Speaker 5: won't see that. We could very well see prosecutions of
Speaker 5: even of Hunter Biden continuing by state attorneys and there's
Speaker 5: nothing that pardon will do for that. So it was
Speaker 5: an interesting article. I appreciated it.
Speaker 4: You saw that the Hunter Biden was prosecuted for tax
Speaker 4: evasion in Los Angeles. That means he has activity related
Speaker 4: to his conspiracy course through LA. Maybe the DA of
Speaker 4: Orange County might want to take a look or the
Speaker 4: da of Riverside or Sam Bernardino, which are more red counties.
Speaker 5: Would double jeopardy apply there about that?
Speaker 4: No, double jeopardy only applies to crimes prosecutions brought by
Speaker 4: the same government. So you can be prosecuted by California
Speaker 4: King the US government for the same acts. Actually, there's
Speaker 4: Justice Thomas has written a sense questioning whether that's constitutional,
Speaker 4: whether that's faithful with the original understanding. On the other
Speaker 4: the Streme Courts that has upheld it for at least
Speaker 4: one hundred and seventy five years.
Speaker 5: Although to be fair, John really quickly, I know this's
Speaker 5: totally off topic, but one hundred and seventy five years
Speaker 5: ago you could understand the Supreme Court, Even though I
Speaker 5: despise the Supreme Court most of the time, especial one
Speaker 5: hundred and seventy five years ago, you could understand them
Speaker 5: agreeing that different levels of government prosecuting the same person
Speaker 5: for essentially the same act, at least if not the
Speaker 5: same crime was appropriate. That was, of course, before federal
Speaker 5: law took up entire libraries of you know, laws that
Speaker 5: actually reached down to the conduct of individual citizens. And
Speaker 5: I think that maybe I haven't read what you're talking about.
Speaker 5: For Thomas, I should go read it that dissent, because
Speaker 5: I do think that there's a kind of there's a
Speaker 5: qualitative difference between say, you know, prosecuting the Rodney King
Speaker 5: officers for violations of his civil rights. You know, there's
Speaker 5: just it all seems I'm not arguing in the stations.
Speaker 4: No, No, it's a good question. In the Rodney King case,
Speaker 4: for example, or any similar case like that, you had
Speaker 4: a jury that acquitted them, and then it was the
Speaker 4: double jeopardy provision really can't stop the federal government from
Speaker 4: basically trying to overturn the jury verdict by bringing a
Speaker 4: new case based on the same facts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you realize, John, that to pursue that line
Speaker 3: of argument to a new jurisprudence will involved invoking the
Speaker 3: fundamental principles of natural law. I'm just putting that.
Speaker 4: Get out of here. There's a constitutional text here. It's
Speaker 4: called the double jeopardy clause.
Speaker 3: For christ everything's been said. I mean, you know, it's
Speaker 3: what took them so long? Is the only question in
Speaker 3: my mind? To hand fanny her fanny as I.
Speaker 4: Put it, Okay, good, let Leeds, we got some minutes
Speaker 4: to uh return to reader mail and fans fans, it's
Speaker 4: not just any reader. Steve received a lengthy miss of
Speaker 4: from Hadley Arkis, Emeritis professor from Amherst College, one of
Speaker 4: the most I think distinguished American natural law political theorists
Speaker 4: in the country, and he had some thoughts to add
Speaker 4: about this.
Speaker 5: First, say what they were?
Speaker 4: Fourteenth Yeah, the fourteenth Amendment in the conversation is no.
Speaker 4: I was going to ask Steve to introduce, uh, you know,
Speaker 4: maybe read some of Hadley's comments because he wants to,
Speaker 4: you know, Hadlee, Hadley can't let go, can't let an
Speaker 4: argument go, even when that he wasn't the.
Speaker 5: Part of except I want to point out before Steve starts,
Speaker 5: because I know he won't read this part where he says, basically,
Speaker 5: I agree with everything Linda said.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. He didn't say that, right, So let's just.
Speaker 5: Start by saying, you know, he says it much better
Speaker 5: than I ever could, of course, and that's probably what
Speaker 5: he really meant when he said I agree with what
Speaker 5: Linda said and then had to go through and explain
Speaker 5: it all because I don't do that very well. But anyway,
Speaker 5: let's get that on the table before you continue. Thank you, Steve. O.
Speaker 3: Well, this is actually kind of hard to summarize. Here's
Speaker 3: what happened is John, I responded to with provocation of
Speaker 3: John's from his article at the Cimitas new website. That's,
Speaker 3: by the way, spectacle looking website. I have to say,
Speaker 3: and you mentioned Hadden, We're both contributed, and we both
Speaker 3: contributed to it. More to come. I've already gotten a
Speaker 3: second John. The creature will be too. The creature will
Speaker 3: be contributing to good good. Okay, we mentioned Hammer v. Dagenhart,
Speaker 3: the case I haven't read in years. Let me explain.
Speaker 4: Let me actually explain. O, go ahead, and then you
Speaker 4: can understand what what we were arguing about last week,
Speaker 4: and then what Hadley Hadley's further commentary.
Speaker 3: Which I thought was really good. Yeah, adds. So this
Speaker 3: is the question of.
Speaker 4: Can Congress prohibit interstate traffic and certain kinds of goods
Speaker 4: or services not based on what the products are, but
Speaker 4: how they were made. So this was the case of
Speaker 4: child labor. So in the late nineteenth century of progressives
Speaker 4: at both the state and federal level, I wanted to
Speaker 4: prohibit child labor. I think we could all agree child
Speaker 4: labor is a terrible practice. It was not clear which
Speaker 4: level government could handle it. So the federal government tried
Speaker 4: to say, we will prohibit the interstate transportation of goods
Speaker 4: that were made with child labor. There's also actually interesting
Speaker 4: they try to do it through direct prohibition and through attacks.
Speaker 4: Actually they tried to impose an excise tax also on
Speaker 4: products being used of child labor. The Supreme Court rejected this,
Speaker 4: and it said the products themselves were perfectly innocent. I
Speaker 4: think at that time was mostly clothing. Yeah, we're perfectly innocent.
Speaker 4: So you can't punish those goods because you're trying to
Speaker 4: reach into manufacturing. The intention of Congress to impose these
Speaker 4: regulations made the regulations unconstitutional because at the same time,
Speaker 4: the court had held in the past and I just
Speaker 4: don't think this has really mattered dispute that Congress, under
Speaker 4: the interstate commerce clause can just choose to bar goods
Speaker 4: from traveling cross state lines, innocent or not. We just
Speaker 4: have the discussion to say, we just don't want this
Speaker 4: product to be sold in interstate commerce. So that's what
Speaker 4: we were essentially arguing out last week, right was how
Speaker 4: far can Congress go in using its commerce clause? To
Speaker 4: regulate the national market. And I that's what Lucutian I
Speaker 4: argue about. So that's Steve. This is where Hadley thought
Speaker 4: that our debate needed some further further intervention.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, he writes about this case at great LinkedIn
Speaker 3: is great book on George Sutherland. That's thirty years ago.
Speaker 3: Now he said, hey, haven't you read my book? And
Speaker 3: I said, oh wait, I read it thirty years ago
Speaker 3: and I've kind of forgotten my bad. But he points
Speaker 3: out that, look, the statute in question affect at North Carolina.
Speaker 3: It was one of the states that came up in
Speaker 3: the case before the court. Now, North Carolina had banned
Speaker 3: child labor by state statute for younger than twelve, but
Speaker 3: the federal law was fourteen. And what's the reason for
Speaker 3: making distinction between twelve and fourteen. There was no real
Speaker 3: moral argument prevented to the court or deliberated by the
Speaker 3: court about you know why. Instead they talked about unfair
Speaker 3: competition and lots of other stuff.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And Hadley points out that we still have laws on
Speaker 3: the books today that, for example, ban the interstate transport
Speaker 3: of what is it fetal tissue, you know, a production
Speaker 3: of abortion, and you know and that I guess is
Speaker 3: still good law. And of course what what that gets
Speaker 3: to is a moral themselves that was part of itselves. Right.
Speaker 4: Here's my So his point is that Congress. Maybe I'm
Speaker 4: overreading it, but I thought what he was saying to you,
Speaker 4: and I believe this is why he sent a southern
Speaker 4: of the book, is that there has to be some
Speaker 4: kind of moral component, yes to what Congress does with
Speaker 4: the Commerce Clause power. In fact, I think Hadley would
Speaker 4: say to all uses of federal power, but he was saying,
Speaker 4: there's no moral justification for this law, given that states
Speaker 4: were already prohibiting. Well, but my point is that's not
Speaker 4: part of the Commerce Clause. There's nothing of the Constitution
Speaker 4: that says the Commerce Clause has to actually be used
Speaker 4: for morally beneficial purposes.
Speaker 3: Well, but what is the ah this implicates the whole
Speaker 3: rational basis test that which I think we have to
Speaker 3: put off more discussion to a later date. But it's
Speaker 3: you know, who's deciding these things and how and what?
Speaker 3: You know, we ought to have some grounding for these
Speaker 3: kinds of decisions, not just that the powers there, But
Speaker 3: I could I just add one little factory, you know,
Speaker 3: our great friend, Richard Epstein, points out because he looked
Speaker 3: at the data that by the time this case was heard,
Speaker 3: child labor was declining fast everywhere. Why because of economic
Speaker 3: growth and progress, and so in a certain sense, federal
Speaker 3: or state statues were obsolete by the time these things
Speaker 3: reached the court.
Speaker 4: That's all true. The question, though, is why is that
Speaker 4: up to the court. That's up to people in Congress
Speaker 4: to think about and vote about. But why does it
Speaker 4: matter to review the Commerce clause, whether the ban is effectual,
Speaker 4: even whether it makes sense, whether has a moral or
Speaker 4: a moral purpose. So this is a hypothet I was gonna.
Speaker 4: I was asking Lucretia, do you think that Congress can't
Speaker 4: ban interstate traffic in a good or service that actually
Speaker 4: everyone thinks is a good idea?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 4: Can Congress not use its Congress Clause power for an
Speaker 4: immoral or you know, you know the bad purpose is
Speaker 4: Suppose suppose actually the adult now maybe it works. I
Speaker 4: suppose Congress got taken over by pro choice people and
Speaker 4: they said, we want to allow traffic in dead fetuses
Speaker 4: and you know, body parts, and we will allow the
Speaker 4: interstate traffic in it. We're gonna lift the ban.
Speaker 5: So that's a really good question, John. And here's part
Speaker 5: of the problem. And I always have this problem a
Speaker 5: little bit with Steve, especially you a little bit less
Speaker 5: and that is like the response to our friend Ryan Williams.
Speaker 5: I'll come back to that. On the one hand, would
Speaker 5: I think that initially the Supreme Court would have ever
Speaker 5: gotten involved in those kinds of questions, No, don't. I
Speaker 5: don't think so. And I don't think they would have
Speaker 5: necessarily been considered the moral implications of the law that
Speaker 5: was outlawing, you know what, the law was outlawing one
Speaker 5: way or the other. We are now at a place, though,
Speaker 5: where the Commerce Clause is a meaningless limitation on anything
Speaker 5: that Congress does other than you know, the individual mandate.
Speaker 5: But they got around that too, so we're okay with
Speaker 5: My point is it's really hard to look at you
Speaker 5: and say, yeah, you know, the Supreme Court shouldn't use
Speaker 5: its powers to reign in Congress. When it does X,
Speaker 5: Y and Z, it's not gonna it's I mean, I
Speaker 5: don't see any evidence it's raining it in on anything.
Speaker 5: And so in some ways it's kind of the hypothetical.
Speaker 5: I get what you're trying to get me at get
Speaker 5: at with me here, but it just it doesn't even
Speaker 5: make sense to me. I'd have to return to what
Speaker 5: I think is the original understanding of the Commerce Clause,
Speaker 5: which you and I don't disagree as much as you
Speaker 5: think we do, because I don't think I was as
Speaker 5: clear as I could have been on it last week.
Speaker 5: And that is I'm not saying Congress doesn't have very
Speaker 5: extensive interstate commerce powers, and that b that those powers
Speaker 5: are very difficult to define with any kind of you know, clarity.
Speaker 5: I guess it would be the word and you know,
Speaker 5: clear rationale. But I also think that the interstate Commerce
Speaker 5: Clause is a limitation on Congress's power. And how we
Speaker 5: return to that, I'm not quite sure. I don't think
Speaker 5: that Congress's power should have been an extended, you know,
Speaker 5: to like it was in Wicker versus Philbourn as we
Speaker 5: talked about like it, you know, all of those kinds
Speaker 5: of things. I'm not sure that we need Congress legislating
Speaker 5: on most of the kind of stuff that it does
Speaker 5: now under the Commerce Clause. I think when it's a
Speaker 5: genuine conflict between the states, when it's genuinely national in scope,
Speaker 5: I get your argument that you know, what commerce isn't anymore? Okay,
Speaker 5: But does that mean that we should look at the
Speaker 5: Commerce Clause as an unlimited grant of power to Congress
Speaker 5: just because something might cross state lines. That's what I
Speaker 5: was trying to get at last time, and I didn't
Speaker 5: do a very good job of it. And I don't
Speaker 5: know that you disagree with me on that, John, I
Speaker 5: don't know that the extent of the powers that Congress
Speaker 5: has exercised under the Commerce Clause have actually been all
Speaker 5: that salutary in terms of making sure that a national
Speaker 5: economy works. That would be my argument, but that would
Speaker 5: take a long time to spell out and defend, I think.
Speaker 5: But that's my opinion, and you probably that's where I
Speaker 5: think we disagree.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do disagree with that, because I do think
Speaker 4: that the use of federal power has been very important
Speaker 4: to the success of a national market, because otherwise you'd
Speaker 4: have states erecting protection States have long there's a lot
Speaker 4: of Supreme Court cases of all the clever things states
Speaker 4: have tried to do to engage in protectionists.
Speaker 3: Okay, so let me which is.
Speaker 4: Only natural for them because that's what their constituents would want, right,
Speaker 4: It's just like why nations impose engagement protectionism.
Speaker 5: Too, no hypothetical. Real Let me give you two real
Speaker 5: situations one the both of them come from your guys's
Speaker 5: god awful state. The first one was the whole pork business.
Speaker 5: Remember that. Yeah, I don't even remember the details of it,
Speaker 5: but you know, the California wasn't going to sell anything
Speaker 5: that was produced where pork was produced in conditions you know,
Speaker 5: pigs lived in conditions they didn't approve of. That was
Speaker 5: one and the other one, of course, pigs, yeah right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: And then the second one, These are two different examples
Speaker 5: with two different results, if I remember correctly. And the
Speaker 5: second one, of course, was the the fact that California
Speaker 5: is environmental laws of emissions laws are so much stricter that,
Speaker 5: you know, car companies started making cars to meet California
Speaker 5: emission standards when other states didn't want any part of it,
Speaker 5: you know, beyond federal law. Nothing Congress has ever done
Speaker 5: actually stepped into either one of those circumstances. What happened
Speaker 5: in the.
Speaker 3: Case, Actually that's not true, but that's certain.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, that certain act whose name I'm not allowed not
Speaker 3: allowed to mention, gave granted California specific power to set
Speaker 3: their own emission standards. I think that's a mistake and
Speaker 3: it's contestable, and that's how they get away with it.
Speaker 3: And the car companies say, look, we don't want to
Speaker 3: be making cars for different markets. So whatever California does
Speaker 3: will make for everybody.
Speaker 5: Even with gas prices. That works. But I guess that
Speaker 5: actually proves my point though, Steve. But because the first point,
Speaker 5: and again I'm remembering this, I'm not quite as committed
Speaker 5: to bacon as you are.
Speaker 3: But but I am from I am from lady.
Speaker 5: I know, lad, I'm from Iowa have pigs that I knew.
Speaker 5: I'll just leave it at that.
Speaker 4: Okay, that I met on farm, I've mean pigs that
Speaker 4: I would like to know.
Speaker 5: But anyway, my point is is that that kind of
Speaker 5: fell by the wayside. I mean that inflation causes but
Speaker 5: pig farmers in Iowas that go, screw yourself, excuse my language,
Speaker 5: to California. We won't sell to California if that's your problem.
Speaker 5: And and so I think there's an example.
Speaker 4: John Shuware, Yeah, no, Lucretia raises the dormant commerce clause,
Speaker 4: which is a great topic which I don't know we
Speaker 4: could get to, but I think that I would say
Speaker 4: federal power should allow the federal government to squash both
Speaker 4: of those regulations. Congress chose not to have Steve said
Speaker 4: in that that's that act which cannot be named. The
Speaker 4: Congress actually does prevent most states from doing what California does,
Speaker 4: but it gave California a waiver. Congress actually did use
Speaker 4: the Commerce clause parer example about.
Speaker 5: The pigs inappropriately.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I mean, but it's bad policy, but it's
Speaker 4: not unconstitutional. And then the other one about the pigs.
Speaker 4: I don't think anyone doubts that Congress could, under the
Speaker 4: Commerce Clause pass the law overruling California's special you know,
Speaker 4: dainty pig law or whatever.
Speaker 5: If California to apply in the state of California what
Speaker 5: can be sold in the state of California.
Speaker 4: And that's part of my broad reading of the Commerce
Speaker 4: Clause that the I do think the Commerce Clause prevents
Speaker 4: states from prohibiting the import of products from other states.
Speaker 3: But the court is declined to hear to challenge to
Speaker 3: this law, I.
Speaker 4: Think right, because there's no there's no federal law. And
Speaker 4: so this is the big change in the dorm of
Speaker 4: Commerce clause. Since Congress wasn't out there doing this job,
Speaker 4: the courts basically took the power on themselves to start
Speaker 4: striking down state laws like California's. But this new Trump
Speaker 4: conservative majority, they said, courts aren't going to be in
Speaker 4: this business.
Speaker 3: If people want to.
Speaker 4: Stop California from discriminating against imports, Congress should.
Speaker 5: Do it, not or the states themselves.
Speaker 4: Well, I don't know, you could have retaliatory You could
Speaker 4: have easily other states start to pass retaliatory trade sanctions
Speaker 4: against California wine.
Speaker 5: I mean they did that with things like Sorry, Arizona's
Speaker 5: constantly was constantly sort of being uh punished by other
Speaker 5: states because of you know, they didn't do this, or
Speaker 5: they didn't do that, they didn't pass Martin Luther King
Speaker 5: Day and you know things like that.
Speaker 4: And so this is why I think we need to
Speaker 4: have a broad Commresce clause because once states start passing,
Speaker 4: you know, discriminatory trade measures against each other, you're gonna
Speaker 4: have retaliatory trade wars between we do.
Speaker 2: And it.
Speaker 5: Is my argument.
Speaker 4: I think the pork products are much more expensive in
Speaker 4: California now.
Speaker 5: California fix it. Yeah, but it's not I I just bought.
Speaker 4: I know, I know, I just bought fight again fourteen again.
Speaker 4: I'm speechless that you're disregard for the value the virtues
Speaker 4: of having a unified national marketplace with standardized rules brings
Speaker 4: cheaper prices and better quality products for everybody.
Speaker 3: In the case. That's because she's not a grubby utilitarian John.
Speaker 3: That's why. So I think we should.
Speaker 4: We have one more piece of reader may which we
Speaker 4: are going to wait to discuss next week, but just
Speaker 4: as a preview, is very interesting question about can how
Speaker 4: far can the federal government go in regulating private conduct
Speaker 4: for civil rights violations. That's another reader question. Well, unfortunately
Speaker 4: we were going to do that this week, but we've
Speaker 4: run out of time, so we'll turn to it next week.
Speaker 4: So to finish up this week, Lucretia Babylon be headlines
Speaker 4: b SO a.
Speaker 5: Couple of things that we never really got to. Newsom
Speaker 5: says with another twenty five billion, he could double homelessness
Speaker 5: by twenty twenty. That was FBI assures nations that drones
Speaker 5: are just US governments spying on its own citizens. Taking
Speaker 5: a bacon, yeah. R F K Junior advises children to
Speaker 5: leave out eight strips of bacon and a bowl of
Speaker 5: beef tallow for Santa this year. By the way, I
Speaker 5: only cook with beef.
Speaker 3: Tallow McDonald's fries. When the.
Speaker 5: Funny thing is so it used to be cheaper than cheap.
Speaker 5: I have to buy it online and it's ridiculously expensive.
Speaker 5: I'd deep fried turkey in it, but I'd have to
Speaker 5: take out a loan just to buy the beef tallow.
Speaker 4: And you know, get the sty Comngress clause when you
Speaker 4: be able to do that.
Speaker 3: Okay, wait, wait, wait.
Speaker 5: I have a couple of don't give up on me.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry that was just too much editorial Congress Warren's
Speaker 5: failure to pass spending bill might delay destruction of the
Speaker 5: country or just two more. Congress proposes new law banning
Speaker 5: anyone from reading spending bill until it's passed.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Members of Congress explain they need pay raises to keep
Speaker 5: up with the inflation they caused.
Speaker 3: That's yeah true.
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, let's sign off with always drink your whiskey meat.
Speaker 4: Let's go Brandon and Steve Wee. I know we have
Speaker 4: a new kamalism.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm working on an AI bot that will run
Speaker 3: Camel's statements through a Yogi bear of filter, and I'm
Speaker 3: not very far along with that. But the one I'm
Speaker 3: working on right now is let us be unburdened by
Speaker 3: our context. That has been something like that. Gotting work
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 4: Oh no, there's a much better one. Wait, wait, there's
Speaker 4: a much better because it was actually the same speech
Speaker 4: you coded from last time.
Speaker 5: Right, he doesn't read your email? John?
Speaker 4: Here this it says, in moments like this, the true
Speaker 4: test of our character is how resilient and persistent we
Speaker 4: are to pursue the future that we all can see.
Speaker 3: Bye bye, everybody, We'll be better.
Speaker 5: Merry Christmas, everyone.
Speaker 3: Merry Christmas, everybody.
Speaker 5: How about That's who's John?
Speaker 6: Because it is my favorite holiday? But all this year
Speaker 6: has been a busy. But I don't think I have
Speaker 6: the energy to add am. I already man Ross's cousins
Speaker 6: the season. The perfect gift for me would be completions
Speaker 6: and connections left from last year, shopping the counter most
Speaker 6: interesting Patta's number, but never the time most of anyone
Speaker 6: has al on those lines, subtack those halls, term those trees,
Speaker 6: RaSE up comes on Christmas here. I just need to
Speaker 6: catch my brother Christmas by myself.
Speaker 4: This year.
Speaker 3: Ricochet join the conversation. H