Speaker 1: Well, whiskey coming game, my pain, Honey don't.
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.
Speaker 1: Have you gotta giving? Let that whiskey bloon when you're
Speaker 1: been in loud, down and load.
Speaker 3: Welcome everybody to this very special edition of the Three
Speaker 3: Whiskey Happy Hour because we had to drag Steve in
Speaker 3: from his balcony on the first sunny day that he's
Speaker 3: seen at his lovely beach home in the last twelve
Speaker 3: years or something like that. How long has it been, Steve?
Speaker 4: A week?
Speaker 1: No, No, it's been like six or eight weeks. It's
Speaker 1: been foggy. Is the foggiest summer I can remember. And
Speaker 1: of course it's all because of either climate change or
Speaker 1: George W. Bush. I can't decide one of these.
Speaker 3: Ge W. Bush, I thought everything was Trump's fault.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, we're saying you just dated yourself.
Speaker 3: And then of course we have with us also John You,
Speaker 3: who is similarly lounging near the beach getting ready to
Speaker 3: instruct another another cohort of young people into his pragmatism ways?
Speaker 4: Is that correct, John, positivist ways? I think you mean,
Speaker 4: but yes, I am.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because right, I forget pragmatism is great, except it
Speaker 3: just doesn't work.
Speaker 4: Pragmatism is I'm not sure what pragmatism is. But I'm
Speaker 4: here at the Claremont Institute's program for law school graduates
Speaker 4: called the Marshall Program where I play the role of
Speaker 4: the loyal opposition, questioning how and I ask you guys
Speaker 4: to explain this today later in the podcas cast. How
Speaker 4: do judges and courts how are they supposed to use
Speaker 4: unwritten natural law when they make decisions? Explicate for me
Speaker 4: the differences between JAFFA and work scolia and.
Speaker 3: We all do that later. I will come back to that.
Speaker 3: That's a promise, John. In the meantime, can I just
Speaker 3: say that I'm rooting for terrorists these days? As Taylor
Speaker 3: Swift opens her five day thing in London, and I'm
Speaker 3: hoping that what happened in Vienna will happen in London
Speaker 3: and all of those pathetic Swifties who have absolutely no
Speaker 3: taste in music will be disappointed once again.
Speaker 4: Oh really, oh man, are you trying to get us
Speaker 4: boycotted by every like sixteen year old girl. I mean,
Speaker 4: that's our that's our that is our main demographic for
Speaker 4: this podcast.
Speaker 3: We have sixteen year old girls that we've may very
Speaker 3: well might have sixteen year old girls that listen to
Speaker 3: this podcast, but I promise you they are not swifties.
Speaker 3: I have never met a swiftie with two brains in
Speaker 3: their head. I'm just going to leave it at that.
Speaker 4: Meins, Can I say that I was actually curious about
Speaker 4: this swift y thing, and so a few months ago,
Speaker 4: while I was working, I turned my Apple music thing
Speaker 4: to play all the Taylor Swift songs in order of popularity,
Speaker 4: and I had a hard time telling where like one
Speaker 4: ended and a new one started. It seemed like a
Speaker 4: whole thing was like a music soundtrack.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and her voice is screech. Oh, well, we've probably
Speaker 3: offended enough people. I actually know old people who like
Speaker 3: her too, but I think it's just because they're trying
Speaker 3: to be, you know, friends with their kids or something
Speaker 3: dumb like that.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I can't decide if the old term swift
Speaker 1: boating can be used for this problem or not without
Speaker 1: getting in trouble.
Speaker 3: But I think my favorite meme of all time is
Speaker 3: when the girl looks at the auto mechanic and says,
Speaker 3: how did you fix that awful screeching noise? I replaced
Speaker 3: your CD of Taylor Swift with Genesis.
Speaker 1: I've never heard that. That's great.
Speaker 4: Now when I when Macretia, I actually do like, I
Speaker 4: actually want Taylor Swift to succeed abroad because I love
Speaker 4: the idea of Europeans spending their hard earned socialist money
Speaker 4: given to them by the government to subsidize an American
Speaker 4: export product.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm okay with that too. You know. The
Speaker 3: problem really is is that there's something about the whole
Speaker 3: Taylor Swift phenomenon that reminds me a little bit of
Speaker 3: the Kamala Harris phenomenon. Excuse me, the Kamalamaedingdong phenomenon. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely that in this age of constant communication, electronic communication,
Speaker 3: That's the way I'll put it with you know, social media,
Speaker 3: everybody on their phones, everything happening moment by moment. You know,
Speaker 3: remember the days that when the Jay Treaty was being
Speaker 3: negotiated and it took how many months for news of
Speaker 3: that to get back to the United States. Oh do
Speaker 3: I wish for those days again, but anyway, or even
Speaker 3: June teenth. You know, the reason that they celebrate that
Speaker 3: dumb holiday is because communications were so poor they even
Speaker 3: though the Emancipation Proclamation had been passed in January first,
Speaker 3: they didn't hear about it until June nineteenth. So anyway,
Speaker 3: But that being said, Taylor Swift is a phenomenon because
Speaker 3: she's a phenomenon, not because she's so incredibly talented at
Speaker 3: singing or dancing. They have a showman, I'll give you that,
Speaker 3: but no better than a whole lot of people out there.
Speaker 3: She's a phenomenon because she's a phenomenon. I actually get
Speaker 3: from my hotel memberships, you know, Hilton, this and that.
Speaker 3: I got one from the Marriott saying I should enter
Speaker 3: this contest by getting their credit card and I might
Speaker 3: get a free hotel to stay at the next Taylor
Speaker 3: Swift of contest in somewhere. I didn't pay attention. I
Speaker 3: deleted it and discuss But I mean, come on, I
Speaker 3: know your audience.
Speaker 1: But you're an audience of one. Is the problem, Lucasia,
Speaker 1: So you.
Speaker 3: Really think that's true? Do you think there are people
Speaker 3: out there who would get a credit card to justin
Speaker 3: for a chance to stay at a hotel and get
Speaker 3: Taylor Swift.
Speaker 1: Well you're missing oh yeah, a lot of them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well also you're missing a huge arbitrage opportunity. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you want a credit card, fine, if you got
Speaker 1: the room, you then sell to somebody for four times
Speaker 1: the value of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So anyway it would make me, it would make
Speaker 3: me complicit in the whole root in business. I couldn't.
Speaker 3: But my point, my point was a serious one, and
Speaker 3: that is that I do think because I know John
Speaker 3: wants John wants me to convince him. John still wants
Speaker 3: me to convince him that everything you're hearing about the
Speaker 3: polls in Kamala's favor and her popularity rising what six points?
Speaker 3: She used to be the most disfavor politician practically in
Speaker 3: the history of the universe, and she's gone up six
Speaker 3: points and now she's only at forty five or she's
Speaker 3: what did I see? She's at forty five percent approval rating,
Speaker 3: which is more than she has ever been and there's
Speaker 3: no explanation for it. She's still the same dom cackling
Speaker 3: word salad piece of you know what, progressive liberal moron
Speaker 3: that she always was. Although did you guys see today.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Steve's got to figure out when he's
Speaker 3: actually gonna pose this. But sorry, folks, this is Thursday
Speaker 3: because of schedules. Again, today she had a rally with
Speaker 3: hundreds of people. Hundreds of people showed up, stood in
Speaker 3: line in hot, hot weather to get in, hundreds of people,
Speaker 3: and then she introduced Joe Biden and lots of people
Speaker 3: walked out while he was talking.
Speaker 1: I heard a little bit of his talk and he
Speaker 1: was slurring, and you could bear the understanding he was
Speaker 1: so bad.
Speaker 4: But okay, he looked terrible too. He really looked and actually,
Speaker 4: I don't know if you watch, oh, if you watched it,
Speaker 4: when they both came out onto the stage, it was
Speaker 4: almost like Kamala ding Dong was holding him, like she
Speaker 4: was right next to him the whole time, like they
Speaker 4: were going as a unit. I think, so he you know,
Speaker 4: what would happen if he fell down? Whereas usually the candidates,
Speaker 4: you know, they come and they're kind of spaced out
Speaker 4: like runway models. I would think, so you can look
Speaker 4: at each one individually.
Speaker 3: Well, I think he go ahead.
Speaker 1: Well, I've thought for a while now that the biggest
Speaker 1: question looming out there is whether Biden is going to
Speaker 1: make it all the way to January twenty or even
Speaker 1: to election day as president. And one of the reasons
Speaker 1: for him not to resign, aside from his pride in
Speaker 1: narcissism and all all those things, is that then cammelon
Speaker 1: It becomes president and owns the Biden record, which right
Speaker 1: now she's trying to disassociate herself from, which is amazing
Speaker 1: to me. It's like she's trying to put distance. By
Speaker 1: the way, I mean, you guys understand this, this is
Speaker 1: almost an inn so to our intelligence. Uh, Kamela is
Speaker 1: trying to put distance between herself and Biden, who are
Speaker 1: also being told is the greatest president since George Washington,
Speaker 1: the most successful president of modern times. Why would you
Speaker 1: need to be putting distance between yourself and that person
Speaker 1: if you're seriously going to say something that self evidently stupid.
Speaker 4: There was no distance today. So that today was supposed
Speaker 4: to be some big speech right about economic policy, right,
Speaker 4: and what was it? It was, uh, seeking a ban
Speaker 4: on price gouging and for food costs, price controls like.
Speaker 3: Price gouging on food. Yeah, just absolutely ridiculous. Two things
Speaker 3: about that. First, Uh, back to John's comment, John, you
Speaker 3: have a lovely mother who is actually older than Biden.
Speaker 4: Right, Uh, yeah, I think she is sp how's my
Speaker 4: mom comeing to it?
Speaker 3: Because you might actually want to, you know, help her
Speaker 3: on the stage, right, Not because she's any she's spry.
Speaker 3: She's extremely intelligent on top of her game still, but yeah,
Speaker 3: eighty one years old is eighty one years old if
Speaker 3: you've had how many aneurysms as he had, and so
Speaker 3: why are they even bothering to do that? It goes
Speaker 3: back to Steve's point, which is they're trying to split
Speaker 3: the baby. My only answer to that is these are
Speaker 3: the same dumb people who go to Taylor Swift concerts.
Speaker 3: They could be convinced of anything. Anybody stupid enough, stupid
Speaker 3: enough to vote for a Democrat would be stupid enough
Speaker 3: to buy exactly that argument. I don't know how else
Speaker 3: to say it. So they have nothing, nothing, supposedly if
Speaker 3: you believe the polls. Nothing None of their gas lighting,
Speaker 3: none of their hypocrisy. You know, none of that has
Speaker 3: hurt Kamala one bit. She just keeps rising and rising,
Speaker 3: and she's going to go to the stars in popularity
Speaker 3: before we know it.
Speaker 1: Well, by the way, I mean all this, all this
Speaker 1: gas lighting explains why she's reversed her position on fracking
Speaker 1: for natural gas because she needs a lot of it
Speaker 1: to pull this off. I don't think she can do it.
Speaker 1: That was a joke. By the way, you guys are
Speaker 1: got it.
Speaker 3: It took me a second.
Speaker 1: God, Okay, we need a lot of gas.
Speaker 3: For the gas light.
Speaker 4: Yes, you're trying to say something like that.
Speaker 1: Yes, right, do.
Speaker 3: They use natural gas? Okay? Sorry about that. I do
Speaker 3: want to ask, so, so Steve had this lovely idea
Speaker 3: for us to leave aside, Kamala and the polls and
Speaker 3: Trump and all those other things were coming back to it.
Speaker 3: I don't care what Steve says. However, you did want
Speaker 3: to talk about a few other things, which is appropriate,
Speaker 3: But I do want to I want to ask about
Speaker 3: the federal Cortapellate ruling against UH in favor of the
Speaker 3: lawsuit claiming that the covid Era. Let me get this right,
Speaker 3: the covid Era moratorium on paying rent where they just
Speaker 3: issued an you don't have to pay your rent anymore?
Speaker 3: Was it takings? So I really don't fully understand all that.
Speaker 3: I'm leaving it up to you too. Constitutionally, savvy lawyers
Speaker 3: to tell me about it.
Speaker 4: John, Yes, I was wondering about this too, and it
Speaker 4: actually goes back to the New Deal. But remember during COVID,
Speaker 4: the government, the federal government and then also some states
Speaker 4: and city governments like San Francisco, banned evictions during the
Speaker 4: COVID lockdowns, So you could as lucutiae as you're saying,
Speaker 4: you could go months. In fact, my brother, I think,
Speaker 4: had a tenant who refused to leave for two years,
Speaker 4: just stop paying rent and there's nothing as San Francisco
Speaker 4: would not provide any legal remedy for some of the
Speaker 4: guy just lived in this house for free because of
Speaker 4: these lock of the moratorium. So this is interesting because
Speaker 4: would have thought, right under you know, the original understanding
Speaker 4: of individual rights, there's a contract clause and there's a
Speaker 4: property takings clause, would prohibit the government from just saying
Speaker 4: someone can live in your house for free for years.
Speaker 4: During the New Deal, though, states declared these mortgage holidays
Speaker 4: where people wouldn't have to pay their home mortgages during
Speaker 4: the Great Depression, and the Supreme Court right eventually upheld those.
Speaker 4: It's very controble. First o case, people we don't talk
Speaker 4: about anymore. It's called Blaisdel. Yeah, the Playstel case, and
Speaker 4: that's what seen is one of the cases that sounded
Speaker 4: the death knell for the idea that economic rights are
Speaker 4: on the same part as political rights. You know, if
Speaker 4: this court, you know, this court has been very friendly
Speaker 4: to property rights, this Supreme Court, if they wanted to
Speaker 4: give another injection to the reinvigoration of property rights, so
Speaker 4: this would be a great case for them to take.
Speaker 4: The basic doctrine is h if you're going to have
Speaker 4: a takings clause, the Supreme Court has said in the
Speaker 4: past that temporarily taking property requires just compensation just as
Speaker 4: much as a permanent taking of property. So the logic
Speaker 4: of the court below here, this is the Federal Circuit
Speaker 4: in DC. It's a special court about takings, and they
Speaker 4: basically said, if the government took your apartment, you could
Speaker 4: get just compensation. So why should you just get the
Speaker 4: same just compensation if the government says people can live
Speaker 4: for free in your apartment for two years?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3: In two years, is no kind of statutory limitation on it.
Speaker 3: It's really, I mean, there is no because now, of
Speaker 3: course what they do is they claim squatter's rights.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, right, that's a little bit.
Speaker 3: That's different, a little bit. No, I know it's a
Speaker 3: different but but there are many people who are actually
Speaker 3: claiming squatter's rights based upon the fact that they were
Speaker 3: not evicted when they didn't pay their their rents back
Speaker 3: in the day, back in COVID.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but not of them now, John, I haven't read
Speaker 1: the pleadings on this, and I haven't even gotten through
Speaker 1: Ilia Solman's article about it. Reason, but is this a
Speaker 1: takings case or is it also U the CDC first
Speaker 1: announced this, and really the CDC gets to announce a
Speaker 1: rent moratorium because they overreach or maybe both. I mean
Speaker 1: it could be both. They're not mutually exclusive.
Speaker 4: This is how bizarre and circular the Biden administration was.
Speaker 4: They said, well, in the end, it turned out that
Speaker 4: the moratorium was unconstitutional. Right, So, as you remember two
Speaker 4: years ago, the Supreme Court actually struck down this moratorium
Speaker 4: and said there's no authority for the federal government. Congress
Speaker 4: never gave the agencies any authority to declare nationwide basically
Speaker 4: an interruption in every landlord tenant contract in the country.
Speaker 4: So the Biden administration, this is how circular they go
Speaker 4: in and they say this is not a taking because
Speaker 4: we weren't authorized to take the property. Since that was
Speaker 4: not an authorized taking, we don't have to pay just compensation,
Speaker 4: which actually should make it worse for the government, not better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean talk about shameless. Well, I don't want
Speaker 1: to get to It's been years since I've read the
Speaker 1: Blaisdell case, but I remember that from what nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: three or thirty four, And as I recalled, John has
Speaker 1: said Minnesota can cancel essentially didn't say it could outright
Speaker 1: cancel mortgage contract. Yes, spend them, but of course once
Speaker 1: you did, and there's all this language about, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: emergencies don't change constitutional rights and limitations, but it sure
Speaker 1: blew a big hole in the contracts clause. And it's
Speaker 1: been often races ever since. Right, and so at the
Speaker 1: very least, it seems to me that landlords who are
Speaker 1: out of pocket from people who didn't pay rent ought
Speaker 1: to be able to recover if not from I mean,
Speaker 1: I got chased down tenant. You may have evicted in
Speaker 1: good luck with that.
Speaker 4: That is the problem in San Francisco. It's like, right,
Speaker 4: these guys didn't pay rent for two years and then
Speaker 4: they disappear. Yeah, they might leave the city. Like, how
Speaker 4: are you supposed to act?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: You're right, Steve, you could only the Supreme Court has
Speaker 4: said when the emergency's over, maybe you should get your
Speaker 4: money back. But yeah, yeah, how are you ever going
Speaker 4: to collect?
Speaker 1: Good luck with that?
Speaker 3: I will say that that all of all but one,
Speaker 3: all but one of the cases that Steve suggested that
Speaker 3: we discussed today have to do with the mid level
Speaker 3: federal appellate courts making good decisions. Another one had to
Speaker 3: do with the n error nl RB, the National Labor
Speaker 3: Relations Board. Anybody want to come in on that quickly
Speaker 3: because I have a point to all of this.
Speaker 4: Well, let's talk.
Speaker 1: About Well, it's a district court opinion, and I think
Speaker 1: John again, I'm just skimmed all this. Someone Actually it's
Speaker 1: it's Musk's space X people I think who are challenging
Speaker 1: the National Labor Relations Board. And what they're claiming is is, look,
Speaker 1: it's an executive agency, but the executive prohibited from removing
Speaker 1: the members of it. In other words, this is a
Speaker 1: direct and overdue challenge to Humphy's executor, isn't it, John? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right.
Speaker 4: I think this. I think the district judge went a
Speaker 4: little farther ahead than where the Supreme Court is because
Speaker 4: people remember we've talked about these cases on the podcast.
Speaker 4: The Roberts Court has been striking down federal agencies that
Speaker 4: don't allow the president to remove their heads without you know,
Speaker 4: for any reason, at will employment and the most the
Speaker 4: last famous one was striking down the protections for the
Speaker 4: head of the consumer Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That's what
Speaker 4: it's called. The problem was in that opinion, it's called
Speaker 4: Selo law. This is typical Chief Justice Roberts. He puts
Speaker 4: in there this language saying, but we're not going to
Speaker 4: re examine Humphrey's executor. We're not going to question or
Speaker 4: bring into doubt the agency, these these boards and someone
Speaker 4: that have been upheld in the past. I don't know
Speaker 4: why that would actually write, why would you do that,
Speaker 4: but that's what he said. He said, So he basically said,
Speaker 4: we're not going to overturn Humphreys executor. We're not going
Speaker 4: to re examine all those new Deal agencies, but we
Speaker 4: are going to look closely at new you know, new creations,
Speaker 4: new creatures. So I think the NLRB probably falls within
Speaker 4: that exception that Roberts mentioned in this law case unfortunately.
Speaker 3: So remind me though that the the one, the one
Speaker 3: of the big defeats during the Obama administration for Obama
Speaker 3: was an nl RB case having to do with his
Speaker 3: appointment of interim members of the board, right, but I
Speaker 3: don't remember.
Speaker 4: Yes, a recess appointment. That was a recess appointments case.
Speaker 4: That was whether when Congress was at a session, how
Speaker 4: many days would Congress not be meeting for Obama to
Speaker 4: come in and start up pointing people as what they
Speaker 4: called recess appointments, people who could serve basically without having
Speaker 4: to undergo advice and consent, even though they normally would
Speaker 4: have to. Just because Congress is out of session, they
Speaker 4: get to serve for the rest of the congressional term.
Speaker 4: And the Supreme Court, yeah, because of President Obama, I think,
Speaker 4: basically claimed if Congress was out of session for like
Speaker 4: a millisecond, he could do it, right, And the Court said, no, No,
Speaker 4: the recess has to be a certain number of days.
Speaker 4: And it was a significant defeat for the Obama administration
Speaker 4: because it had the effect of invalidating a whole bunch
Speaker 4: of NLRB decisions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I mean, let's remember that you know,
Speaker 1: John Bolton served as you an ambassador for about a
Speaker 1: year and a half as a recess appointment because a
Speaker 1: couple of Republican senators opposed his confirmation. But then the
Speaker 1: other thing, I mean why this is important is you
Speaker 1: may remember this mixes up a story from last week.
Speaker 1: The NLRB tried to intervene in strong Boeing into not
Speaker 1: opening one of their aircraft factories for this seven eighty
Speaker 1: seven in South Carolina, a non union right to work state,
Speaker 1: and they got slapped down I think in court or
Speaker 1: had to back down. I forget exactly what happened, but
Speaker 1: it was a clear overreach of their own authority, and
Speaker 1: when questioned on it, Obama said, oh, I have nothing
Speaker 1: to do with that. That was the National Labor Relations Sport,
Speaker 1: and they're an independent agency. I don't have any control
Speaker 1: over them. I mean, I can appoint some new members sometime,
Speaker 1: but they're beyond my reach. So this is the old
Speaker 1: two step that the administrative state has been using from
Speaker 1: the beginning, about oh, we have these expert administrators and gosh,
Speaker 1: I'm just powerless to do anything about it. And everyone
Speaker 1: nods their head and says, oh, I guess we.
Speaker 3: Have up with that, and forgive me for calling it recess.
Speaker 3: I mean interim instead of recess. If you know anything
Speaker 3: about the hell that is my life at my university
Speaker 3: right now, everything is an interim. So I'll just leave
Speaker 3: that one alone and move on to Unless you had
Speaker 3: more to say, John, get you picked up your mic.
Speaker 3: They do want to talk just briefly. You're right. There
Speaker 3: was a district court decision. This one is a Fifth court,
Speaker 3: Fifth Circuit Court decision that says that basically John's completely
Speaker 3: wrong about his nonsense when it has to do with
Speaker 3: invasions by illegal immigrants at the border. Right, am I
Speaker 3: reading that case correctly? United States versus Abbott State war powers?
Speaker 3: Do states have warpower? Steve?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean we'll find out soon. It's
Speaker 1: a practical matter. Sorry to.
Speaker 3: I.
Speaker 4: You know, this Fifth Circuit case was really not about
Speaker 4: the state war powers. There's some mention of it in
Speaker 4: the opinions. There's a whole bunch of opinions, but it's
Speaker 4: put so a lot of it is just about whether
Speaker 4: the federal government has chosen to take over the Rio
Speaker 4: Grande River using the environment of using Steve's favorite environmental laws, right,
Speaker 4: to yes, right exactly. So do you remember this is
Speaker 4: a case where Texas put up those floating barriers along
Speaker 4: the Rio grand and then yeah, the buoys, and then
Speaker 4: has also deployed state National Guard units to the border,
Speaker 4: and the Biden administration is suing saying that this violates
Speaker 4: federal control over immigration, and then Texas in part has
Speaker 4: claimed they're allowed to do this because this represents an invasion.
Speaker 4: And remember when we talked about on the podcast, for
Speaker 4: I did not think highly of the Texas argument. The
Speaker 4: Texas Texas points to Article one, section ten of the Constitution,
Speaker 4: which says that a state cannot engage in war without
Speaker 4: the consent of Congress, and then has two exceptions unless
Speaker 4: actually invaded or in imminent danger that will not admit
Speaker 4: of delay. So I don't first of all, even if
Speaker 4: it is, I just don't think it fits those two exceptions.
Speaker 4: What's going on in Texas. I don't think it's an
Speaker 4: imminent danger because you know, we've got plenty of time
Speaker 4: to respond to it. It's just that the United States
Speaker 4: government doesn't feel like doing anything about it. But I
Speaker 4: don't think this is an imminent It's not like a
Speaker 4: surprise attack. Now the other question, is this an actual invasion?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 4: You know, my view is that I don't think the
Speaker 4: movement of people who are not working on behalf of
Speaker 4: a country, you know, not part of the armed forces.
Speaker 4: It's just migration of a population. I don't think that's
Speaker 4: an invasion. Now there's this article by this fellow who
Speaker 4: out there named Natalsen, which makes the opposite claim. We
Speaker 4: could get into some interesting arguments about how you should
Speaker 4: do originalism properly. So he basically argues the word invasion
Speaker 4: used in sort of the popular vernacular of the time
Speaker 4: or a political rhetoric. What have referred to could have
Speaker 4: referred to aliens. I actually tend to read the words.
Speaker 3: The Constitution basic legal from the sky.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know what the eighteenth century thought about
Speaker 4: UFOs well, but no, no, But my only point is
Speaker 4: I don't I think that the legal phrases in the
Speaker 4: Constitution should bear their legal meaning of the time. So
Speaker 4: that so the reason this came up is because I,
Speaker 4: you know, when I first started baking the career, I
Speaker 4: wrote a lot about what does the phrase declare war mean?
Speaker 4: It has that this characteristic to it? Does declare war mean?
Speaker 4: Have this kind of popular meaning of starting a war
Speaker 4: or should we redeclare war to be what did the
Speaker 4: legal phrase declare war mean at the time of the
Speaker 4: eighteenth century, which to me did not mean start war.
Speaker 4: It meant like delivering your complaint about why you're pissed
Speaker 4: off at the other country. That was a declaration of war.
Speaker 4: So that's the same basic argument here. Does word invasion
Speaker 4: in the Constitution mean, like, you know, I like, when
Speaker 4: I say Lucretia invaded my personal space, Does that mean
Speaker 4: I can wage war on Lucretia? Or does an invasion
Speaker 4: mean the.
Speaker 3: Legal when I invade the space?
Speaker 1: Well? Now, well a whole lot of second. Hold on
Speaker 1: a second here, John, Let's you know, since the law
Speaker 1: schools are fond of hypotheticals, I think it's either Neil
Speaker 1: Ferguson or Douglas Murray or somebody like that who's pointed
Speaker 1: out that the number of male migrants from the Middle
Speaker 1: East in Europe now outnumber the combined armed forces of
Speaker 1: the European NATO countries.
Speaker 3: See, that was going to be exactly my argument.
Speaker 4: I look, I bet, I bet the Berkeley Police Department
Speaker 4: outnumbers the armed forces of European countries these days. Well,
Speaker 4: that's the effective the effective military forces of the Western
Speaker 4: Europe these days.
Speaker 1: But the way it plays out here is uh, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to let's see too much hyperbole, but
Speaker 1: you know, we have some evidence that you've had a
Speaker 1: large number of Chinese nationals across the border. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's in nintens of thousands, and we have
Speaker 1: other you know, we know that because we know we've
Speaker 1: arrested somewhere on the terraced watchlets and things like this,
Speaker 1: and I think it's pretty clear that the cartel is
Speaker 1: influencing all this. So the hypothetical is a lot of us,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of manpower has come into this country
Speaker 1: as part of this migrant wave. What if the guns
Speaker 1: are being smuggled in separately? In other words, as your
Speaker 1: argument is, it's not an invasion unless those people are
Speaker 1: crossing the border with a gun in their hand or
Speaker 1: some other weapon. You can see where I'm going with
Speaker 1: all this is that it's not at all clear to
Speaker 1: me that you can't. This doesn't satisfy the at least
Speaker 1: the vigilance for you know, military threat.
Speaker 4: But no, you don't have to. It's not a hypothetical, Steve,
Speaker 4: you could say, look, there are all these cartel members
Speaker 4: crossing the borders back and forth with guns. But my boys,
Speaker 4: I don't they don't work for Mexico, right, They're not.
Speaker 4: I think to be an invasion, it has to be
Speaker 4: the rep They have to be working for, represent in
Speaker 4: the armed forces, or another country, which is different than gangs,
Speaker 4: criminal groups and just people moving across. It's not the
Speaker 4: violence issue that's to me. That's about an invasion.
Speaker 3: Armed But if they are here to invade to establish
Speaker 3: Sharia law, I mean, that's probably a stretch. That's why
Speaker 3: it's a hypothetical. But it turns out that you know,
Speaker 3: that's happening all over the world now they're demanding it
Speaker 3: now in Germany because Germany was so stupid as to
Speaker 3: allow an unlimited immigration from and so what if it
Speaker 3: is in fact an invasion with the intention of overthrowing
Speaker 3: our republican form of government and substituting I don't know.
Speaker 3: It could be Chinese communism with Steve's example, mind, I
Speaker 3: think is a little stronger. But I don't know that
Speaker 3: they want to engage in acts of terrorism, invoke enough
Speaker 3: terror across the country that they can in fact take
Speaker 3: over our institutions of government or replace them. And we
Speaker 3: have Sharia law.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean right, I mean I mean a footnote.
Speaker 3: To this is we do why should we not be worried?
Speaker 1: Well, and we have four or five elected Labor Party
Speaker 1: members of the new Parliament who are Islamic migrants advocating
Speaker 1: for Sharia law in Britain. So they're already getting and
Speaker 1: they run some city councils in a few British cities.
Speaker 3: Now and at what point when you add together all
Speaker 3: of the evils then brought by first of all, Islam
Speaker 3: is the greatest force of evil in the world. I'm
Speaker 3: just going to say that. I'm going to say it
Speaker 3: every day for the rest of my life till people
Speaker 3: actually get the point across. Let's stop with this nonsense
Speaker 3: about religious toleration. But if if you add that evil
Speaker 3: to Chinese infiltration.
Speaker 4: Anyway, So now seventeen year old American girls are not
Speaker 4: going to listen to this podcast, and now no Muslims
Speaker 4: are going to listen to this podcast.
Speaker 3: I'm okay with that.
Speaker 4: How did you offend both groups at once?
Speaker 1: This is amazing.
Speaker 3: I'm okay with that until and I do actually, we
Speaker 3: know Muslims who are willing to denounce all of the
Speaker 3: aspects of Islam that are just truly evil. It wants
Speaker 3: to destroy everything that's good. I'm pure and just about
Speaker 3: Western civilization. That is its aim. It's stated everywhere.
Speaker 1: Well, that just brings them up, even with the faculty
Speaker 1: of Harvard University.
Speaker 3: But I'm okay, yeah, but they're But the fortunately, the
Speaker 3: difference is that the all of those people are are
Speaker 3: bushies that were that I'm not supposed to say on
Speaker 3: our family show the Harvard They're they're you know, they're
Speaker 3: They're really not dangerous from that point of view. Their propaganda,
Speaker 3: of course, is dangerous.
Speaker 1: But anyway, anyway, John, we just do a whole bowl
Speaker 1: of spaghetti at you with four or five different things.
Speaker 3: So, yes, John, I did have to bring that up.
Speaker 1: But let me can I follow there?
Speaker 4: I think so the point originally that Lucretia was making
Speaker 4: was suppose it's a group of people, a lot of people,
Speaker 4: and they want to deny the authority of the United States.
Speaker 4: They're coming here in order to change our country and
Speaker 4: to follow Sharia law or whatever. So again, this is
Speaker 4: not an issue of the government can't do anything about it.
Speaker 4: It's whether you want the state governments to be allowed
Speaker 4: to act.
Speaker 1: So the federal.
Speaker 4: Government I completely has the authority to block whoever it
Speaker 4: wants at the border, and it's allowed to block people.
Speaker 4: It has the right to block people for their views
Speaker 4: from coming into the government. And if it doesn't, then
Speaker 4: that's the choice of the federal government. I don't think so.
Speaker 4: This is an interesting question. Does a state have this
Speaker 4: kind of reserved sovereignty to use some kind of.
Speaker 1: Unstated war power.
Speaker 3: I don't think talking about Originals, it did, It's sure.
Speaker 4: I don't think they do in foreign affairs and national security. No,
Speaker 4: I don't think they do with foreign affairs and national security.
Speaker 4: I think they gave up when we entered the Union. Ah,
Speaker 4: you guys are you guys are the JAFFA guys who
Speaker 4: love Lincoln. This is Lincoln's theory. You guys are making
Speaker 4: the argument that the.
Speaker 3: Confederates did for immigration if they were invading their borders,
Speaker 3: if a state was at a border with a foreign country,
Speaker 3: they didn't give up their power over immigration.
Speaker 1: I mean the basic argument.
Speaker 4: Sorry, I think they gave their argument over I think
Speaker 4: states gave up their powers over foreign affairs and national security,
Speaker 4: which includes border control.
Speaker 1: Well, that would be true if the government were living,
Speaker 1: if the federal government national government was living up to
Speaker 1: its end of the bargain. The chain of logic here,
Speaker 1: and it gets back to the challenge you offered at
Speaker 1: the beginning. Is the purpose of government's or instituted to
Speaker 1: secure our rights. And when government fails to do that,
Speaker 1: it is the right of the people to alter or
Speaker 1: abolish that form of government. That's the language of the declaration. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: the government has abandoned its duty to secure our rights.
Speaker 3: So but my real point to bring this all together,
Speaker 3: with all of the you're gonna love how I did this, Steve,
Speaker 3: with all the suggestions that Steve made, we'll get to
Speaker 3: John's momentarily, is that we finally get to this this
Speaker 3: ruling about UCLA, the ruling that says that, and I
Speaker 3: hope I don't get it completely wrong, you know me,
Speaker 3: I rush through it. But an injunction against UCLA because
Speaker 3: they refuse to stop those prohamas subhuman Pos's protesters from
Speaker 3: stopping Jewish students from attaining their education on UCLA's campus
Speaker 3: something like that, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were blocking Jewish students from access to buildings
Speaker 1: and parts of campus.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so there's an injunction. UCLA has appealed that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, the well their argument was that wasn't us
Speaker 1: doing this? We have no agency here, It's it is
Speaker 1: public property. True. But what I like about the judge's
Speaker 1: ruling is he said, Okay, here's the deal. Uh, if
Speaker 1: you don't secure the rights of all your students and
Speaker 1: including your Jewish students or any other religious minority, uh,
Speaker 1: then you essentially you can't leave things available to anyone.
Speaker 1: In other words, it's simply saying is if you allow
Speaker 1: a mob to shut down the campus to Jews, you
Speaker 1: got to shut it down to everybody. And and and
Speaker 1: it's also I mean it was couched a little bit
Speaker 1: as a religious liberty opinion. I think, my again, I
Speaker 1: read quickly also, but I thought, uh, it was a
Speaker 1: pretty breathtakingly strong opinion. By the way, John appeals take
Speaker 1: a long time. So this injunction is not stayed pending appeal,
Speaker 1: is it? I don't think No, No, I don't think
Speaker 1: so unless the Jidge wanted it to. But I think
Speaker 1: it'll go into it goes into a.
Speaker 4: Right away, and then the UCLA could go to the
Speaker 4: Ninth Circuit and say you have to issue an emergency. Yeah,
Speaker 4: stay of the injunction.
Speaker 3: But I thought I read that this morning, John.
Speaker 1: I didn't.
Speaker 4: I was just looking at the opinion. So the end
Speaker 4: of the opinion doesn't have it, but that would be
Speaker 4: up to the Ninth Circuit, right. But the Yeah, the
Speaker 4: interesting thing is what I was so I what I didn't.
Speaker 4: What I was curious about was the application of the
Speaker 4: decision to all these other places. Like we're going to
Speaker 4: talk about Columbia next, right, So one is I'm not
Speaker 4: it's not clear to me that it should only apply
Speaker 4: to state schools, because I it would seem to me
Speaker 4: it should apply to anybody takes federal funding. You take
Speaker 4: federal funds, you're supposed to acknowledge, you know, and obey
Speaker 4: the constitution of federal law. And so why doesn't this
Speaker 4: apply to Colombia all these other schools that have allowed
Speaker 4: these protests to shut down campus and prevent not just
Speaker 4: Jewish students but all students from being able to walk
Speaker 4: around and go to class and go about their daily
Speaker 4: right daily affairs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And so you wanted to say something about
Speaker 3: Columbia for us, John.
Speaker 4: Well, you I remember that when we had when we listened,
Speaker 4: I talked about those hearings, the disastrous hearings before Congress,
Speaker 4: I called out, I predict that all the presidents who
Speaker 4: testified would be gone. So the president of Harvard resigned,
Speaker 4: the president of pen resigned, the president of Mit is
Speaker 4: still there. But I'll take the latest victim. The president
Speaker 4: of Columbia just resigned yesterday. But you know, the interesting
Speaker 4: thing is, I'm not so sure that is a victory
Speaker 4: for conservatives. I think it's actually liberals who wanted to
Speaker 4: oust the president of Columbia. You might recall that I
Speaker 4: think hundreds of Columbia faculty called on her to resign
Speaker 4: because they thought she was being too tough on the
Speaker 4: protesters that you remember she called in the NYPD. I mean,
Speaker 4: that doesn't do anything, because guess who's the DA in
Speaker 4: charge of prosecuting the people arrested by the NYPD. Alvin Bragg,
Speaker 4: the guy who's prosecuting Donald Trump. Apparently he dropped. He
Speaker 4: chose not to charge a single one of these protesters
Speaker 4: at Columbia, even the ones who weren't Columbia students.
Speaker 1: Yeah and so again, who vandalized the librarian, so on
Speaker 1: and so on? Right, Yeah, well, look, oh sorry, John,
Speaker 1: go ahead was that No?
Speaker 4: No, So you know, I you know, the interesting question is,
Speaker 4: you know, one who would a Columbia or any of
Speaker 4: these universities a point? Next, are they going to actually
Speaker 4: people be people who stand up for free speech or not?
Speaker 4: But then the second question, this is, I know, this
Speaker 4: is what Stee's really interested in, is is this actually
Speaker 4: going to make things worse this fall? Are we going
Speaker 4: to see a shutdown of a lot of campuses, especially
Speaker 4: if there's a war, a broader war in the Middle East.
Speaker 4: Suppose Israel and Hesbala and southern Lebanon go to war
Speaker 4: this fall, that would be much bigger I think excuse
Speaker 4: to shut down campuses than the gods of war has been.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, I mean I think three or four points
Speaker 1: that aren't necessarily directly connected. One is I think this
Speaker 1: this whole anti Semitic profo, most mobs are going to
Speaker 1: want to pick a few campuses to shut down, and
Speaker 1: they'll want to be in media capitals like Columbia, like UCLA.
Speaker 1: We'll see about Berkeley and some others. But second, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure it's correct say that, even if it's strictly
Speaker 1: speaking true that the left wanted what's her name Schaffique
Speaker 1: out as president. I still think it's a victory for
Speaker 1: the forces of good because it's going to have to
Speaker 1: sober up a lot of people, trustees, most liberal leaning faculty,
Speaker 1: who realized that the left is out of control and
Speaker 1: rampaging and they better do something about it. But also
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I recall her hearing. She testified
Speaker 1: after several weeks or maybe months after the after Claudine
Speaker 1: Gay and then the woman from Penn were such disasters,
Speaker 1: and she was in comparatively better on the whole free
Speaker 1: speech and having the deal with protest but comparatively well comparatively,
Speaker 1: But there was one moment where I thought you could
Speaker 1: actually almost charge her with perjury. One of the Republican
Speaker 1: members said, so, I keep reading about these groups to
Speaker 1: talk about folks spelled fol x, And he says, what's
Speaker 1: that about. Why do they spell it like that? And
Speaker 1: she said, I don't know, maybe they don't know how
Speaker 1: to spell. And people kind of laugh. Now the obvious
Speaker 1: follow up is she's not unaware of this trend. This
Speaker 1: is the sort of identity gender neutrality behind latinks.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't get that one either. To be
Speaker 3: honest with you, Steve how does how does spelling it
Speaker 3: with an X instead of a chaos make it gender neutral?
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know, But the point is she
Speaker 1: darn well knows what that's all about. And when she said, gosh,
Speaker 1: I don't know what this is about, that was a
Speaker 1: lie and I actually wish the next question, but what
Speaker 1: about latins? How many people in your faculty use latins?
Speaker 1: She said, Oh, I've never heard of that too. You
Speaker 1: would have known she was lying. She knows to say
Speaker 1: what latins? Yeah, no one knows how you're.
Speaker 3: Supposed to say, okay, because I think that sounds kind
Speaker 3: of a little bit derogatory. So I'm going to say
Speaker 3: that from now on instead of latin X when I
Speaker 3: make fun of people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no one knows what to say. I think LATINX
Speaker 1: is easier and mulls off the tongue better, But no one.
Speaker 1: There is no authoritative denunciation. And you know, we have
Speaker 1: all surveys showing that like ninety percent of Hispanics hate term.
Speaker 3: Right, it's okay, still just one quick comment that has
Speaker 3: nothing to do with anything. But I think that I
Speaker 3: am now getting a dozen a month. Probably that's accurate.
Speaker 3: And we're well past the time when you would normally
Speaker 3: be sought out by headhunters. A dozen a month offers
Speaker 3: to apply personalized ones from headhunters for presidencies. In my case,
Speaker 3: they're small. They didn't ask me to apply to the
Speaker 3: University of Florida. I'll just tell you that when Ben
Speaker 3: Sasse decided to leave, but small but larger for provost
Speaker 3: and vice president and that sort of thing. The whole
Speaker 3: of higher education senior leadership, for some crazy reason is
Speaker 3: imploding on itself. And I'm laughing about it.
Speaker 4: It's not.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's a lot of different reasons for it.
Speaker 3: The fact that most universities, except for ones like Harvard,
Speaker 3: and even they are to some extent, are in a
Speaker 3: little financial trouble because they got all this money during COVID,
Speaker 3: they spent like drunken sailors instead of being very you know,
Speaker 3: frugal and wise about their expenditures. And now they're all
Speaker 3: in big financial trouble, and that causes all sorts of things.
Speaker 3: Because god, you know, if we have to fire some
Speaker 3: one of the seventy thousand vice provosts we hired with
Speaker 3: COVID money, good will not be terrible. Anyway. That was
Speaker 3: just my my, my comment from academia as I'm living
Speaker 3: through the pain right now. I'll just leave it at that, John,
Speaker 3: Nice to see you back.
Speaker 1: John wanted off for lost. No, no, I've been back lost.
Speaker 3: So so I do want to talk one more time
Speaker 3: with a little bit deeper this idea of can we
Speaker 3: should we pay any attention to the fact that if
Speaker 3: the washing Post is saying, you know, not only does
Speaker 3: Kamma have one path to victory, she has another, and
Speaker 3: she's more popular and you know the left, this isn't
Speaker 3: just people excited about Kamalama ding Dong. This is a
Speaker 3: Kamalama ding Dong movement. I heard somebody say that this
Speaker 3: morning on my way to work the polls, I wanted
Speaker 3: to mention about poles and this was actually not a
Speaker 3: Kamalama ding Dong or Daddy Walt Pole. This was an
Speaker 3: Arizona poll asking. It asked me who I was going
Speaker 3: to vote for for president, so on on and who
Speaker 3: I did vote for. But then it was zeroing in
Speaker 3: on my congressional representative. Who is Juan Siscamante a freshman? Okay,
Speaker 3: he's not. He went won bi partisan Congressman of the Year.
Speaker 3: And the last time I saw Steve. I was so happy,
Speaker 3: so happy to tell him your your m Stanton Evan's
Speaker 3: joke about bipartisans life. Yeah, he did laugh. He's a
Speaker 3: nice enough guy. But anyway, so but but here's what
Speaker 3: they did. They asked me who I was going to
Speaker 3: vote for, you know, who I voted for last and
Speaker 3: all that, the usual kind of stuff. Then it said,
Speaker 3: we're going to read you a series of statements of
Speaker 3: critics by Juan Siscamanti. And then it was let's see,
Speaker 3: he's a Christian nationalist who wants to impose Project twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five on the entire help Trump. Does that make
Speaker 3: you more or less likely to vote for him? He
Speaker 3: wants to start training young children, very young children, in
Speaker 3: the use of weapons and violent warfare so that they
Speaker 3: can do it. Was just crazy stuff. And then it
Speaker 3: was does this make you more or less likely to
Speaker 3: vote for to vote for Juan Siscamanti. Juan Siscamanti wants
Speaker 3: to make it give women the death penalty if they
Speaker 3: choose an abortion. You know, just does this make you
Speaker 3: more likely more or less likely to vote for Wan Siscamanti? Okay,
Speaker 3: what do you suppose that poll is going to look
Speaker 3: like when the results come out, well, we.
Speaker 1: Know what your answers are. Yes, No, that's well, that's
Speaker 1: I mean, they're doing a couple of things there there.
Speaker 1: It's push polling. That's actually they may not be they
Speaker 1: might not even be a quote unquote real poll. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they'll have results, but it may be they're
Speaker 1: going to call ten or twenty thousand people in the
Speaker 1: district and they're going to run those messages and what
Speaker 1: you're supposed to think, if you're a casual voter, is oh,
Speaker 1: he thinks that I don't like him. It's advertising, right,
Speaker 1: and they generate some data. They may I'll bet they
Speaker 1: have little trips in the thing where a person who says, well,
Speaker 1: I'm a weak Biden voter, or you know, I split
Speaker 1: my ticket or something that you're be a person of
Speaker 1: special interest, and they see which messages are working for
Speaker 1: targeting and so forth, and now they have your number
Speaker 1: so they will text you the week for the election
Speaker 1: and so forth. So there's that's that's polling these days
Speaker 1: has gotten very clever that way. Sometimes they're real, sometimes
Speaker 1: they're fake, sometimes they're both or not by one of
Speaker 1: their campaigns, and it's real news. They'll they'll leak the
Speaker 1: results to a newspaper but leave out all those questions. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's you know, it's a dirty business.
Speaker 4: But despite the you know, the games you can play
Speaker 4: with poles and how they're done, they to me you're
Speaker 4: reading them, they do seem to reflect that it's undeniable.
Speaker 4: I think that that Harris has made up a lot
Speaker 4: of ground on Trump. I mean, you know, you can
Speaker 4: complain about you can complain about the reasons why, and
Speaker 4: the media is all on her side and all the
Speaker 4: institutions are on her side. But she has you know,
Speaker 4: she is doing better than Biden, and you know, the
Speaker 4: polls seem to show it's at least a tie. If
Speaker 4: she's not, you know, some Poles say she's slightly ahead
Speaker 4: and that Trump is not. Trump doesn't have the same polls,
Speaker 4: right show Trump, you know, ahead in all the seven
Speaker 4: of the battleground states, and now they show him ahead
Speaker 4: I think in just two of the battlegrounds dates. So
Speaker 4: we could argue about the well, you know, these issues,
Speaker 4: but it's hard to deny that there has been a
Speaker 4: swing in the momentum and that I also think that
Speaker 4: Trump was the thing, but.
Speaker 3: One of the things you said really quickly, because you
Speaker 3: have the expertise here, Steve, I don't want I actually
Speaker 3: don't want to get in the way of your expertise here.
Speaker 3: All I want to mention is I went back and
Speaker 3: looked at about ten articles, but from both the right
Speaker 3: and the left, sort of leading publications, and almost all
Speaker 3: of them were concentrated you said polls. Almost all of
Speaker 3: them were concentrated in the first place on the New
Speaker 3: York's New York Times, cn.
Speaker 1: Poles, New York Times College. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So okay, so one poll and then I saw I
Speaker 3: think it was Sean somebody who has a little bit
Speaker 3: more legitimacy, actually include the Emerson Pole. So you have
Speaker 3: two polls telling you this, and they are acting like
Speaker 3: it has changed the character of politics for all eternity.
Speaker 3: So do you see what I'm saying they're done. I'm
Speaker 3: not necessarily disagreeing with anything you just said. I think
Speaker 3: that they're taking maybe a little bit of a bump
Speaker 3: in the polls and trying to turn it into a
Speaker 3: story in and of itself that becomes self fulfilling. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Well, Rush Limball used to say the purpose of a lot
Speaker 1: of these polls is to discourage voters, especially Republican voters. Right,
Speaker 1: That's why they're on the front page news and so forth.
Speaker 1: I think the New York Times Santa poll has actually
Speaker 1: been a pretty good one in the last few cycles.
Speaker 1: Not perfect. But one more comment about the poll you got,
Speaker 1: and it connects to this problem, is that a push poll.
Speaker 1: That's what they call out there was a push poll.
Speaker 1: Is a lot of people like you. Well you just
Speaker 1: told us, did you know, I forget the guy's name.
Speaker 1: I've been told you're going to talk to ten people
Speaker 1: and tell them that message. See that. That's called of
Speaker 1: the network effects of this kind of campaigning. Now, one
Speaker 1: thing is I'll put it this.
Speaker 3: Okay, wait, wait, just in case you might be right
Speaker 3: about that, Steve, to all of our listeners out there,
Speaker 3: none of those things about one s ISCA money are true.
Speaker 3: Don't vote for the U of a uh environmental lawyer,
Speaker 3: vote for wants is CO money. Okay, Sorry to get
Speaker 3: that out there.
Speaker 1: I figured you probably told the poster, all those upholsters,
Speaker 1: all those things made you more likely support him. They
Speaker 1: did tell us that, of course.
Speaker 3: I did, and I said it was an independent. There's
Speaker 3: some things that it doesn't make sense for me to
Speaker 3: lie about yeah, because if I am a white woman
Speaker 3: that is has an advanced degree. I am. I do
Speaker 3: say I'm not married and I have a cat. That's
Speaker 3: true the married part. I am married, But uh, you know,
Speaker 3: it's hard for me to to to skew their polling
Speaker 3: because they'm already everything. They don't expect me to be.
Speaker 1: Sorry, go ahead, yeah, no, I sometimes a few times
Speaker 1: I've been pulled. I have occasionally lie to screw up
Speaker 1: their sample on survey on purpose.
Speaker 4: But there's your argument that Trump's actually really ahead by
Speaker 4: significant margins. Just no, that's my point about the polls.
Speaker 4: I'm not trying to say the wessure really accurate, but
Speaker 4: I do think they reflect that the races change and
Speaker 4: it is now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I do think that's true.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, so look and then then that's what I
Speaker 4: was ccuruous, like, do you think it's because part she's
Speaker 4: getting this big boost from the media and the Democrats
Speaker 4: are unifying. But Trump seems to be floundering to me,
Speaker 4: although he had a really good press conference today where
Speaker 4: he was showing household products me which I'm sure he's
Speaker 4: never touched in his life. Well, bony detergent and showing
Speaker 4: how much the prices have gone up. Do you think
Speaker 4: Trump really knows the price of bacon. I mean, come on,
Speaker 4: I never shopped in a grocery store in the last
Speaker 4: twenty five years.
Speaker 3: Here seven bucks a pound.
Speaker 1: Here's my field theory, and then I'll explain why it
Speaker 1: explains the polling problem. My field theory is it is
Speaker 1: metaphysically impossible for Harris to win this election unless it's
Speaker 1: short enough and the media cooperates to disguise all of
Speaker 1: our vulnerabilities. Remember this is some of the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: three years ago rejected so badly she didn't even last
Speaker 1: of the first primary. And now they all love her well.
Speaker 1: Part of its euphoria that they're out from under the
Speaker 1: certain doom of Biden and you know, fresh face, and
Speaker 1: so there's excitement and you know, a bubble. But on
Speaker 1: the polling business, Lucreasy, you started to mention his name
Speaker 1: is Sean Trendy, who really knows these things pretty well,
Speaker 1: and I think he was a straight shooting guy. And
Speaker 1: he says, look, I think there is among social scientists
Speaker 1: an awareness that there are swings in you might say,
Speaker 1: voter enthusiasm for talking to posters and answering candidly. And
Speaker 1: when Biden was, you know, cratering, the problem was getting
Speaker 1: enough Democrats to have a genuine, authentic sample that really
Speaker 1: captured opinion completely. Now he thinks it's happening the other
Speaker 1: way around. A lot of Republican or Trump sympathetic voters
Speaker 1: are not wanting to talk to posters, not telling them
Speaker 1: the truth. You remember, you know, the finding I think
Speaker 1: Rasmusten had back in twenty sixteen that the polls that
Speaker 1: came closest to calling those states in the Upper Midwest
Speaker 1: that Trump ended up winning were the ones who thought
Speaker 1: to ask who are you voting for? The people would say, Hillary,
Speaker 1: who's your neighbor voting for? And when the prints at all,
Speaker 1: my neighbor's going to vote for Trump. I'm sure of it.
Speaker 1: They said, Ah, a lot of these people are lying
Speaker 1: to us. They're actually Trump voters that are not telling
Speaker 1: us honestly. Right, there's still that problem. And so I mean,
Speaker 1: and then finally, and this is in the chapter Goot
Speaker 1: coming out in Michael Walsh's book Next Month that he's edited,
Speaker 1: called Against the Corporate Media. I went back to the
Speaker 1: work of Tim gross Close the economists that George Mason
Speaker 1: used to be at UCLA, and he assembled not only
Speaker 1: in his own work, but of several other social scientists
Speaker 1: showing that media bias probably gets the left and Democrats
Speaker 1: five points worth of public opinion and votes. That's the
Speaker 1: handicap against Republicans, and with the media now behaving more
Speaker 1: egregiously than ever, I'm not surprised that it's pulled even
Speaker 1: I still think Trump has well, let me finish on this,
Speaker 1: because I've just got a couple more things to say.
Speaker 1: It's that is the evidence for this. By the way,
Speaker 1: is Barack Obama in twenty twelve said I'm sure I'd
Speaker 1: be eight points further ahead if it were not for
Speaker 1: Fox News, just one news outlet that descended right. And
Speaker 1: Evan Thomas in two thousand and four said media bias
Speaker 1: in favor of Carry and Edwards is probably worth fifteen
Speaker 1: points to Democrats. You know, he was the editor of Newsweek,
Speaker 1: din or whatever he was. He later said, well, it's
Speaker 1: probably only five points. But the point is is that
Speaker 1: the unbelievable way the media has reacted to Harris's elevation,
Speaker 1: I think it counts for a lot of that bump
Speaker 1: You're seeing. But finally, there's no reason to think whether
Speaker 1: Trendy is right or not about shy Trump voters. There's
Speaker 1: no reason to think that the polls are not once
Speaker 1: again underestimating Trump's true support. So if he is, remember
Speaker 1: he was like eight points behind Biden in a lot
Speaker 1: of places where he was either one or was very
Speaker 1: very close. If the polls are even, John, means Trump's
Speaker 1: gonna win. So if there's no change between now November,
Speaker 1: Trump's gonna win. Unless another factor comes into play, that
Speaker 1: will leave for some other time. But that's why I
Speaker 1: think people shouldn't panic about this. Although I can. I
Speaker 1: can see you're winning. I mean, you know, metaphysics doesn't
Speaker 1: always rule. But I will stop there.
Speaker 3: John, what are your thoughts?
Speaker 4: I have no more thoughts. I wanted you guys to
Speaker 4: explain to me why the polls were so close or what.
Speaker 4: And it sounds to me like, do you agree that
Speaker 4: it's a fifty to fifty race.
Speaker 3: I don't really believe it's a fifty to fifty race.
Speaker 3: I really don't. But I also, whatever the race is now,
Speaker 3: it will not look like that very soon. The one
Speaker 3: thing I wanted to mention when when Steve's talked about
Speaker 3: the media. You are you quite rightly, John, say, stop
Speaker 3: winding about the media. It's just a fact of the matter,
Speaker 3: and there's you know, not a lot you can do
Speaker 3: about it. So you don't get to say it doesn't
Speaker 3: count because you don't like it. That's basically your point.
Speaker 3: You're right. What I will tell you is that we
Speaker 3: are not any longer beholden only to Dan Rather Walter Cronkite.
Speaker 3: You know, I forget the rest of them. It's been
Speaker 3: too long, you know, three network news organizations, and then
Speaker 3: all things considered, and what I wanted to bring up
Speaker 3: briefly wasn't even on my list because I'd already forgotten.
Speaker 3: Too much happening these days. Is Trump's interview with Elon Musk.
Speaker 3: If the Democrats aren't panic a little, panicking a little,
Speaker 3: why were they so quick to pretend that it was
Speaker 3: an unmitigated disaster when in fact it was quite successful.
Speaker 3: It was quite successful. It was two successful billionaires. And
Speaker 3: I don't think people. I don't think people except for
Speaker 3: the worst kind of you know, socialist rats out there.
Speaker 3: People don't really mind rich billionaires who made it on
Speaker 3: their own anymore. They really don't, you know, there's a
Speaker 3: certain amount of admiration for that. Okay, put that aside.
Speaker 3: Despite what that idiot Bill Crystal had to say about it,
Speaker 3: I'll just leave it alone. He came and said that
Speaker 3: it made him I brought out his inner socialist democrat,
Speaker 3: as if it's in or anyway whatever. But not so
Speaker 3: all in all that. I mean, they say, who knows,
Speaker 3: it got a billion impressions, It got seven hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty million listeners from around the world. That's more than
Speaker 3: the people we have here, as you know. But anyway,
Speaker 3: there are ways to reach there are ways to reach voters,
Speaker 3: engaged voters at least that are not you know, the
Speaker 3: View and CBS or NBC or MSNBC Nightly News. And
Speaker 3: I do think that that's a crack in the armor,
Speaker 3: kink in the armor, whatever you say, clink in the armor.
Speaker 3: I don't know what the thing is. But and that's
Speaker 3: becoming more and more obvious because what you said was true, Steve,
Speaker 3: the media has been So what was the word you used? Coquious? Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean that wasn't the word, but that's a good one.
Speaker 3: And so what do you guys think do you think
Speaker 3: that new media, but especially Twitter I mean Facebook, even
Speaker 3: though Zuckerberg has found a new admiration for Trump, it's
Speaker 3: still despicable. It's still censoring things. What are the others Instagram,
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera. Obviously TikTok is being manipulated by
Speaker 3: the Chinese and the Russians and all those other things.
Speaker 3: But Twitter's out there allowing people to say what they
Speaker 3: want to say for the most part, and so much
Speaker 3: so that poor Elon he's getting sued right and left,
Speaker 3: he's getting he's getting threatened by the EU. So what
Speaker 3: do you guys think about all that? And doesn't matter?
Speaker 1: I think it matters a lot. Yeah, the old many
Speaker 1: old media monopolies are They've been shattered for quite a
Speaker 1: while now. I think the power of Twitter. You really
Speaker 1: saw it in one particular case here in the last
Speaker 1: few weeks. I forget which organization it was. It had
Speaker 1: raided Kamala Harris, the most liberal senator before she ran
Speaker 1: for president, and they went and scrubbed that from their website. Well,
Speaker 1: it was all over Twitter that they had done that,
Speaker 1: and it was although the mainstream media won't report that,
Speaker 1: and the fact that you know, borders are right. Stuff
Speaker 1: was funny too. You know, the social media makes it
Speaker 1: possible to pierce that. And what that means is the
Speaker 1: Republican advantage, not advantage exactly, but you've seen in a
Speaker 1: lot of state races over the years, especially Senate and governor,
Speaker 1: that the Democrat will be ahead well in the late
Speaker 1: September and Republicans hold their fire hold their money and
Speaker 1: then they do a big paid ad blitz because you know,
Speaker 1: it's Trump's been pretty good and throughout the last ten
Speaker 1: years getting free media because he's such as right, and
Speaker 1: hopefully he will return to being effective at that. But
Speaker 1: for other Republicans, it's always been paid media to overcome
Speaker 1: the bias of the free media, and that's when you
Speaker 1: often see the late charges by Republican candidates. It hasn't
Speaker 1: played on the presidential races that much, but this is
Speaker 1: the bigger, different thing, but it's certainly been a factor
Speaker 1: in state races over the years, and I think that
Speaker 1: may be the pattern we'll see here. I think it
Speaker 1: was the pattern in nineteen eighty eight with Bush and
Speaker 1: du Caucus when Bush was so far down until they
Speaker 1: opened up on Ducaccas's weaknesses and concealments. By the way,
Speaker 1: one last thing Henry Olsen has a good piece out
Speaker 1: here in the last day or two where he looks
Speaker 1: at that woman in New Zealand, at just Cinda our door,
Speaker 1: whatever her name was, though it was so terrible about
Speaker 1: coming Aaron right, well, the story about her. I didn't
Speaker 1: know this, but Henry of course knows these things because
Speaker 1: he's such a nerd about it. She originally was a
Speaker 1: little bit like Kamela. She was not the first choice
Speaker 1: of the Labor Party. But then she ousted or something happen,
Speaker 1: and then the leader Labor Party had a step down
Speaker 1: and she took his place, huge surge of popularity. She
Speaker 1: ended up losing the election by seven percent uh to
Speaker 1: the you know, behind the somebody who came in ahead
Speaker 1: of her. She formed a government with some minority parties
Speaker 1: because it's one of those parliamentary stupid systems they have.
Speaker 1: But there's a case of where, you know, at first,
Speaker 1: all was excitement for the woman. New Zealand never had
Speaker 1: a woman prime minister or whatever they all call them there,
Speaker 1: and and you know, by the time they actually got
Speaker 1: around to casting ballots and those short elections they have
Speaker 1: like England, people said no, actually, we don't like her
Speaker 1: very much, and they were right not to like her.
Speaker 4: John U Christia, I cannot remember what your original question was,
Speaker 4: whether or not I was thinking I was thinking so
Speaker 4: much about New Zealand. I met me down. Sorry, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: I'm just I'm just joking. I we'll agree to you.
Speaker 4: It's just whether that transition to where, uh, you know,
Speaker 4: new media just provides a complete right replacement for sort
Speaker 4: of the media being you know, our content being bottlenecked
Speaker 4: through you know, just a few major media companies. Obviously
Speaker 4: that's going to be the future. I just don't know
Speaker 4: whether it will be soon enough. Right like this, I
Speaker 4: mean we all seem to be acknowledging that the media's
Speaker 4: support for Kamala Harris like not, you know, just not
Speaker 4: criticizing her for not doing interviews, for having no policies, uh.
Speaker 3: Campaign choice policies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this campaign of joy silliness. I don't want my
Speaker 4: politicians to be joyous actually or joyful frankly.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah they go go run for cheerleader cheerleader
Speaker 4: in chief then but you know, I but we're all
Speaker 4: acknowledging it seems to still make a big difference. I mean,
Speaker 4: it can produce a five point difference. That's huge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does make a big difference. There's no doubt
Speaker 3: about it. Is there's still many many people for whom
Speaker 3: the view or the you know, the watch the CBS
Speaker 3: nightly News and they consider it gospel. There are a
Speaker 3: lot of people out there. And then of course the
Speaker 3: rest of the expanded media landscape still takes many of
Speaker 3: its cues from that legacy media. There's no doubt about it.
Speaker 3: But what I would say is things like Waltz's We
Speaker 3: talked about this briefly last week, maybe on the Ricochet podcast,
Speaker 3: but Waltz's despicable abandoning of his troops, his lying about
Speaker 3: the fact that he served in combat, his lying about
Speaker 3: the fact that he retired as a command sergeant major,
Speaker 3: all of that which was known when he ran for governor,
Speaker 3: and the local media would not cover it. If not
Speaker 3: for Twitter. I believe this sincerely, it never would have
Speaker 3: become an issue at all, and it is. It is
Speaker 3: one of the biggest issues on Twitter, of course, but
Speaker 3: because it's the right kind of form for that, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of different things that never would have seen
Speaker 3: the light of day if it had been left up
Speaker 3: to legacy media, and that I think just this whole
Speaker 3: business I wanted to almost forgot to bring it up
Speaker 3: in this context, the whole business about Hunter Biden going
Speaker 3: to the State Department. Oh, and you explain it, because
Speaker 3: I'll get it wrong. It's a little on the complicated.
Speaker 4: This is actually a good example of things in media.
Speaker 4: Is not asking Harris and she doesn't feel like she
Speaker 4: has to answer, which is whether she would continue the
Speaker 4: way that Justice Department has treated Hunter Biden with kid
Speaker 4: gloves and allowed the fact that he's President Biden's son
Speaker 4: to be a get out of jail free card. And
Speaker 4: you know, although I have the greatest respect for the
Speaker 4: Department of Justice, I have been persuaded that they have
Speaker 4: been playing political games with the choice of prosecutution. So
Speaker 4: the way they went after Trump, I think mistakenly so,
Speaker 4: and then the way they haven't gone after Hunter Biden.
Speaker 4: So in this case, the news this week was that
Speaker 4: Hunter Biden, while Joe Biden was Vice president, was writing
Speaker 4: letters and we don't know what else phone calls or
Speaker 4: emails he was sending as well to officials in the
Speaker 4: American embassy in Italy. Because the Ukrainian company Barisma, which
Speaker 4: put Hunter Biden on its Board wanted to open some
Speaker 4: kind of plant in Italy and wanted so Hunter was
Speaker 4: trying to use his contacts at the State Department to
Speaker 4: get the US government to weigh in with the Italian
Speaker 4: government to let his buddy is Ukrainian buddies get some
Speaker 4: kind of business advantage. Gosh, that seemed like it was
Speaker 4: peddling and bribery to me. But you know, he may
Speaker 4: never be called to account for it because the Justice
Speaker 4: Department seems so sad on this for so long that
Speaker 4: they won't be able to prosecute him. It happened too
Speaker 4: long ago, which is outrageous, actually, I mean, that is
Speaker 4: the kind of mistake lawyer should get get fired for.
Speaker 4: It's like you let something, you just sit on something
Speaker 4: so long that the case becomes too old and you're
Speaker 4: forbidden by law from prosecuting somebody for it. That's a
Speaker 4: fundamental mistake.
Speaker 1: I mean, even if there's not a statute of limitations problem,
Speaker 1: which I'll bet there is, after this much time they're
Speaker 1: going by, there is yeah, well, okay, well there certainly
Speaker 1: ought to be. And again, you know, I say this,
Speaker 1: and Lucretia is quite right to say, when do these
Speaker 1: guys actually get it right, there ought to be some
Speaker 1: serious oversight hearings and drag the State Department people through
Speaker 1: the across the hot coals about this, because this is
Speaker 1: unbelievable corruption. Uh, and we're just na to mention.
Speaker 3: The impeachment the congressman involved in the impeachment.
Speaker 1: But we go, right, yeah, that's right, Yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 1: impeach Trump because of a phone call and unbelievable And
Speaker 1: I mean, we know the State Department's rotten as a
Speaker 1: general matter anyway, but so this would be a good
Speaker 1: way to keep them busy while sensible foreign policy things happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm a little worried about that, but we've almost
Speaker 3: run out of time to discuss what's happening in Ukraine,
Speaker 3: so we'll have to save that for next time. I
Speaker 3: do want to mention or give John the opportunity to
Speaker 3: bring up his question to us from the point of
Speaker 3: view of the Marshall program, where he's being told that
Speaker 3: Marshall scholars that are interested perhaps they're going to be
Speaker 3: judges someday, or their clerks and so on. They're lawyers. Now,
Speaker 3: young lawyers are in law school. I don't remember that
Speaker 3: they should be applying natural law to legal decisions. I
Speaker 3: promise you if anybody at Claremont said that they're dumb,
Speaker 3: that's never what Jaffa said. Okay, go ahead, Sorry, No, that's.
Speaker 4: Exactly what I What was hoping we talked about is
Speaker 4: to what extent should judges and courts use unwritten natural
Speaker 4: law or natural rights when they interpret the Constitution.
Speaker 3: First of all, where do you get the unwritten from unwritten.
Speaker 4: In the sense it's not in the constitutional text.
Speaker 3: It's in the Declaration of Independence, which both Jefferson Madison
Speaker 3: Washington all said is our foundational document.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, So whether you should apply the Declaration of
Speaker 4: Independence in constitutional cases? So here will be an example,
Speaker 4: would be an example. So we haven't talked about this.
Speaker 4: I'm sure we're going to talk about it tomorrow. So
Speaker 4: could you say that the Supreme Court could interpret the
Speaker 4: word life in the fourteenth Amendment right says and in
Speaker 4: the Fifth Amendment right the government's not allowed to take
Speaker 4: away life, liberty, or property to process. Could the Supreme
Speaker 4: Court say the natural law understanding of life includes fetal
Speaker 4: life from the moment of conception, because we think that's
Speaker 4: what natural rights mean now and actually pro strike down
Speaker 4: state laws that allow for generous abortion rights. So that
Speaker 4: would be the kind of that's the kind of question
Speaker 4: we're talking about where I would say, you know, the
Speaker 4: go ahead, you guys.
Speaker 3: I'm just going to say, this would be my simplest
Speaker 3: way of answering that maybe it's not the best way.
Speaker 3: But when Lincoln, for instance, was debating the question about slavery,
Speaker 3: his reference to slavery was not what happened when the
Speaker 3: Constitution was put together. It was the principles of the
Speaker 3: Declaration of Independence. Okay. The fact that slavery was included
Speaker 3: in the Constitution did not mean that somehow it was
Speaker 3: a part of the original understanding of the Constitution. And
Speaker 3: his reference point to the question of slavery was was
Speaker 3: a slave a human being? And if a human being,
Speaker 3: were they entitled to the protection of life guaranteed in
Speaker 3: the Constitution as a natural right? Okay? And he talked
Speaker 3: about what kinds of things do you consider if a
Speaker 3: black as a human being? And he made some great
Speaker 3: arguments about that. But at the same time, you will
Speaker 3: recall that he was never the person who claimed that
Speaker 3: we should immediately abolish slavery because it violated natural law,
Speaker 3: even though he claimed it over and over and over again.
Speaker 3: He said, we will follow the Constitution fully. We're not
Speaker 3: about going out to the states and abolishing slavery all
Speaker 3: of that. He also believed that understanding what it meant
Speaker 3: to be a human being, and that we should be
Speaker 3: moving more and more more towards the perfection of a regime,
Speaker 3: a constitution, a society, a government that would protect that
Speaker 3: life in the same way they protected every other life.
Speaker 3: That's what natural law tells us we have to do.
Speaker 3: It's not I'm going to plug this in and it's
Speaker 3: going to give me a magic answer.
Speaker 1: Yes, you.
Speaker 4: Can make a distinction there. There's to be what you're
Speaker 4: saying is there's a distinction between saying, Okay, we have
Speaker 4: this moral goal ending slavery that is given to us
Speaker 4: by your natural philosophy, and you're trying you want to
Speaker 4: move the positive law towards that direction, but you can't
Speaker 4: say that the Constitution prohibits slavery until the thirteenth Amendment.
Speaker 3: But why would you change the constitution?
Speaker 4: Oh, good question, because so this isn't the suppose this
Speaker 4: is my point, so to me, because slave is legal
Speaker 4: in the United States until the thirteenth Amendment, the Constitution well,
Speaker 4: but but this is my point. This is why I'm
Speaker 4: raising this question because your friends here at the Claremonts
Speaker 4: you're telling me no, that that actually slavery is moral
Speaker 4: and illegal. Even before the thirteenth Amendment, I was like,
Speaker 4: that's not I can't.
Speaker 1: Be right state strictly speaking, John, By the way, I
Speaker 1: think you're punking as John, And I'll tell you why.
Speaker 4: I think that I'm what I'm doing what you.
Speaker 1: Know better, but you don't want to minute. Yeah, so look,
Speaker 1: I could.
Speaker 4: Be doing that. Yes, that's true.
Speaker 1: Strictly speaking, it's not really true to say that slavery
Speaker 1: was legal in the United States. It was legal and
Speaker 1: individual states that were part of the Union. I mean
Speaker 1: that was part of the dissent andred Scott from us
Speaker 1: was the Constitution permitted slavery to exist? Okay, Well, Jaffa
Speaker 1: used to say, I'll paraprase them slightly. I think you'll
Speaker 1: set this lucretia. Jeff used to say, the beginning of
Speaker 1: wisdom on these matters is to be able to make
Speaker 1: a distinction between the principles of the Constitution and the
Speaker 1: compromises of the constitution that you needed to get a
Speaker 1: constitution at all, Right, that's the whole story of the convention,
Speaker 1: or the central story of the convention, right.
Speaker 3: And the overarching concept that defines that, Steve, by the way,
Speaker 3: is something called students.
Speaker 1: Correct, of course, but you know, I mean, look, John's
Speaker 1: never going to get a C from our class on
Speaker 1: prudence is just see, we're gonna flunck him every time.
Speaker 1: But what do you mean?
Speaker 4: This is the difference between constitutional principle and then constitutional compromise.
Speaker 4: What's important is what does the text of the Constitution
Speaker 4: say to me. You could say, oh, the text of
Speaker 4: the Constitution will let me contradicted or superseded by the
Speaker 4: principles of it that are well there, let me go
Speaker 4: Back's just you're inferring. So this is actually I mean,
Speaker 4: I'm not punking it out at this point. You're just
Speaker 4: inferring some principle of the Constitution. If it's not expressed
Speaker 4: in a written text, then it's not in there.
Speaker 1: Well no, wait a minute, John, let me go back
Speaker 1: to your original question and started this challenge, which was,
Speaker 1: could a judge use the word life in the fourteenth
Speaker 1: and Fifth Amendment Fourteenth Amendment and fifth Amendment to strike
Speaker 1: down a statute that had very expansive abortion rights.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like in California.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, Well all right, John, What if if you're
Speaker 1: pure positivists, which you sometimes say you are, what do
Speaker 1: you do about a state that past the statute has said, actually,
Speaker 1: we define life as beginning at age ten, that no
Speaker 1: being is a title to the protections of the law
Speaker 1: until they're ten years old. By the way, that's only
Speaker 1: a slight exaggeration of that Peter Singer guy at Princeton,
Speaker 1: which is a really can't really be the John You
Speaker 1: position that a judge says, well, that's what the legislature decided.
Speaker 1: I guess I have to defer to that. I think
Speaker 1: a person would be on very solid ground and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: wait a minute. There may be serious scientific arguments about
Speaker 1: when human life can be said to begin viability outside
Speaker 1: the woman and all the rest of that, but we're
Speaker 1: we're confident enough that we know that life doesn't mean
Speaker 1: ten years old for the purposes of that.
Speaker 4: I mean, unfortunately, I would say we do allow states
Speaker 4: to make decisions like that, in the sense that we
Speaker 4: allow life to end based on people right, some states
Speaker 4: saying oh, this life is no longer a human life
Speaker 4: because we think they're well, you know, we think they're terminal,
Speaker 4: and so will allow euthanasia not consider it murder. Well, morally,
Speaker 4: I don't like these laws, but organs allowed to do
Speaker 4: this under the Constitution now, and there aren't they effectively
Speaker 4: saying human life.
Speaker 3: I'm not convinced that they should be.
Speaker 4: Valuable if you're eighty and you have cancer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let me go on a little bit more on this.
Speaker 1: Let me just.
Speaker 3: Answer that really quick point. Steven. I'll let you go
Speaker 3: on because I do want you to finish. But when
Speaker 3: you say allowed under the Constitution, the fact that we've
Speaker 3: had idiot judges who have issued idiotic decisions that have
Speaker 3: said that's okay doesn't mean it's allowed under the Constitution.
Speaker 3: That's not Those two things are not the same thing.
Speaker 3: The fact that the Supreme Court has said something stupid,
Speaker 3: the fact that the Ninth Circuit Court has said something stupid,
Speaker 3: doesn't give you the right to say, well, the Constitution
Speaker 3: allows it. No, a judge allowed it, and the Constitution
Speaker 3: and a judge's decision about it are not the same thing. Sorry,
Speaker 3: go ahead, Steve.
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, then I would be willing to say that
Speaker 4: I don't think the Constitution and it's phrase life. Putting
Speaker 4: aside what judges think would authorize courts to invalidate euthanasia
Speaker 4: laws of the kind that Oregon has. Well, all right,
Speaker 4: that's left up to the states.
Speaker 1: Let's leave that issue aside, because I think we're just
Speaker 1: the beginning of some legal tangles about that. I think
Speaker 1: we haven't really confronted as directly as we have abortion.
Speaker 1: Look that you know, I sent you that draft article
Speaker 1: I've written. It's too short, but I got reflecting on
Speaker 1: the fact that judg we always say Justice Thomas is
Speaker 1: the natural law person on the court. But then I
Speaker 1: look at Justice Alito's opinion in Dobbs, and what did
Speaker 1: he do in order to overcome story decisis of Roe.
Speaker 1: He decided to invoke the classic common law works going
Speaker 1: all the way back to Bracton in the thirteenth century,
Speaker 1: but also Matthew Hale Blackstone, right, some of the classic
Speaker 1: common law treatise writers of the thirteenth century to the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, and what all of them said was, for
Speaker 1: the purposes of protection of the law, life begins at quickening,
Speaker 1: which is really derived from Aquitas and so forth. Now
Speaker 1: where I think here's the axis of the argument is
Speaker 1: I'm one of those persons who think that the common
Speaker 1: law is applied natural law. And remember that one of
Speaker 1: the reasons Justice Scalia did not like the common law
Speaker 1: or common law mode of judging, as he said, it's
Speaker 1: too much power to judges. It's anti democrats. And that's
Speaker 1: because he bought in fully to judge made law, whereas
Speaker 1: I think rightly understood the old common law tradition was
Speaker 1: judge discovered law. How do they discover the law? Well,
Speaker 1: they have to use a chain of reasoning, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it gets very tangled. And you know, somewhere here I've
Speaker 1: got a copy of Pluck and it's concise History of
Speaker 1: the common Law. That's twelve hundred pages long. I'd love
Speaker 1: to see what the complete history is that that's the
Speaker 1: concise history.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've never seen.
Speaker 1: That's an amazing thing. That's very small print. Right, But look,
Speaker 1: there's the point is that, uh, you know, the old
Speaker 1: common law reasoning that rests upon natural law is not
Speaker 1: obsolete and ought not to be that difficult for us
Speaker 1: to reapply at modern times. And then my point of
Speaker 1: the article I'm trying to develop is we're starting to
Speaker 1: see that coming back a little bit in ways that
Speaker 1: I wish Scalia were still around to reflect upon because
Speaker 1: he was unconc.
Speaker 4: Here's the other thing Scalia would say would be, uh, know,
Speaker 4: you're saying that it's a natural law that is the
Speaker 4: governing moral system that the Constitution helps express the great
Speaker 4: majority of people today, at least philosophers, are not natural
Speaker 4: law people. So he would say, like the philosophy you
Speaker 4: choose to adopt and express, the Constitution is not fixed
Speaker 4: unless you how can. In other words, he would say,
Speaker 4: you would only win if you could show natural law
Speaker 4: and natural rights has to be the actually true and
Speaker 4: correct system of morality. And Sklee would say, I'm not
Speaker 4: sure about that. But if you want to ask all
Speaker 4: these philosophers, they would say, no, right, the take the
Speaker 4: call of the But if you were to say there,
Speaker 4: you know the philosophers in the world say they're whatever
Speaker 4: one hundred percent, what percentage of them actually would say, oh,
Speaker 4: I believe natural law natural rights is actually the governing
Speaker 4: law system. It would be like less than five percent.
Speaker 3: When non sequitor John it doesn't matter if you understand
Speaker 3: what it is, the what the natural law principles embedded
Speaker 3: in the declaration. They are not complicated, they are simple
Speaker 3: and straightforward and un unassailable to basic human reason as
Speaker 3: anything has ever been. Steve's already looking for another glass
Speaker 3: of whiskey, and he's telling me, you've got to end
Speaker 3: this for this time. But you've got to stop somehow
Speaker 3: this depends upon someone's opinion about it. It doesn't okay,
Speaker 3: all right, I gotta go to I gotta go quickly
Speaker 3: to Babylon b before Steve just cuts me off and
Speaker 3: I don't get to do it. We will take this up,
Speaker 3: so lovely picture of David French in a dress and pearls,
Speaker 3: and it says David French says, to save masculinity, he
Speaker 3: will now transition to female. Yeah, enough of our people
Speaker 3: know who did Frenches and stupid stuff, he says. So
Speaker 3: meet Brinley, pretty blonde woman, the White House intern running
Speaker 3: the country today. Meet Brinley. It's this plucky White House
Speaker 3: interns to run the country. Her turn. Join us as
Speaker 3: we take a look at her busy, exciting day. After
Speaker 3: two weeks with Kamala, Tim Walt's announces he's signed back
Speaker 3: up with the National Guard and requested it to be deployed
Speaker 3: to a rat Actually think that's pretty funny.
Speaker 1: Or the other one. Did they have one that said
Speaker 1: Waltz drops off a ticket when he learns yes to
Speaker 1: visit battleground states Yes, that.
Speaker 3: One was good too. He clarifies that he's not stealing
Speaker 3: valor just redistributing it. The I will fix things if
Speaker 3: you vote me into office, says woman currently in office.
Speaker 3: That was not even funny. I'm sorry, just is uh
Speaker 3: Kamala to announce policy positions just as soon as Poles
Speaker 3: tells her, tell her what they are? Oh sorry, there's
Speaker 3: there's just too many, and all of mine are from
Speaker 3: like the last three days. This doesn't even take me
Speaker 3: back for a week, which it should. Uh Pamala Kamalama.
Speaker 3: Ding Dong's team releases new campaign slogan we decline your
Speaker 3: request for an interview. I like that one. And uh finally,
Speaker 3: my personal favorite tam Lama. Ding Dong takes commanding lead
Speaker 3: in poll of people who've recently been hit and head
Speaker 3: with a giant rubber mallet. Like, that's not exactly how
Speaker 3: I feel about things. They're just talking about my opinion
Speaker 3: that they're okay, sorry, you turn.
Speaker 1: Well, mercifully for you. John. We've come to an end
Speaker 1: because we went much longer.
Speaker 4: We'd be getting I want to Okay, let's do let's
Speaker 4: pick walking up more next time. All right, we're not done,
Speaker 4: but hey, did did you pick a sign off?
Speaker 1: No, I'm still order.
Speaker 4: I'm shocked.
Speaker 3: The old one. It's time to drink the whiskey that
Speaker 3: have been drinking. That's times every day. Cackle, pack gackle,
Speaker 3: come a.
Speaker 4: Lot of rama.
Speaker 2: That's what I call.
Speaker 5: Bye Ricochet.
Speaker 1: Join the conversation.