Takes a lot of bandwidth for all this beauty. Steve, I know, Oh are you recording whiskey?
Come and take my pay the money ry, oh whiskey.
Why think alone when you can drink it all in with Ricochet's Three Whiskey Happy Hour. Join your bartenders, Steve Hayward, John, You and the international woman of Mystery, Lucretia.
Where they slapped it up and David, ain't you easy on the souldiers?
Tap got a giving? Well, the dog days of summer are upon us, but there's no letup for the swilling hounds of the three Whiskey Happy Hour. Hi, everybody, it's Steve here out in California. John is in Texas, and Lucretia is at her undisclosed location where he catches her international plots of mystery. Hi guys, how are you not so bad?
Not so well, Steve, because I have to tell you I have no Internet.
Yeah, I know, you're on your phone and Starling is down and the creation I both use Starlink most of the time, and I have a backup, and she's on her phone so we can't see her today.
And all I'm gonna say, it's harder to launch international plots when you have no starlink, it's very darlint.
Starlink is an international.
For months, John, and this is the first and only time I've ever even had the slightest issue with it. And it's down everywhere, as you pointed, out throughout the world. So hopefully comes back up soon. Elon, if you're out there, get busy.
Yeah, something's up with this. I think this will be a big story when we find out what's happening. So what we're doing listeners today is we're going to do our round robin format where we really do share hosting duties. Each one of us in turn will pick one story or issue of the week. But first before we start into that, formerly a few quick news updates and announcements.
The first one I'm pleased to say is that Hadley Arkis has started his own podcast along with Gerard Bradley at the James Wilson Institute about our natural law moment. And we're going to take complete credit for them doing this because we have been, you know, using and abusing Hadley here for weeks and we did we still want to have him on here, and we just had scheduling problems.
But I'm included the show notes a link to the new podcast where Hadley takes out his revenge on us for abusing him, and everyone should bookmark that and drop in who are interested in the subject. Second item, good news for you. John McDonald's announced earlier this week that they are going to test market dirty it is, which I'm not sure what that is, but it's its flavored cold brews. And you know, pictures they show look like pina coladas and Cosmount or something. I don't know, but
I figured that's probably welcome. An important news for you. We'll go great with mcgribb.
If you, I don't know if you've seen these things.
You know, if you go to these I frequent these Asian drink places where they mix coffee and sweet sometimes fruits and then weird jello shots and all in one giant drink. It's like Steven Linda's grad school days and drank.
No.
You know, I welcome this. I welcome this on McDonald's part. Thank you.
I'll have you and listeners know that I gave up dak reeves and any drinks with red coloring and umbrellas. And before Ronald Reagan was sworn in for his first term.
So anyway, and I'll have you all know I never drank them. I just drank Scotch and black coffee from the time I was fourteen years old.
Really, why does that not surprise me?
I know because my dad. You know, I'll be honest with you. I also Steve can attest to this. He
used to smoke many years ago. And I used to get up with my dad in the morning because in the summers I worked at his glass manufacturing plant, where it wasn't his he but he was a plan engineer, and we would get up really early in the morning, lovely view of the valley of this huge picture window, and we would have what my dad referred to as a whorse breakfast, which was two cups of coffee and three cigarettes.
Wait, why why don't why don't they eat better than that?
Come on, well, I actually still have that minus a cigarette.
So wow, Well I just see I imagine fourteen year old Lucretia drinking black coffee and scotch and smoking while she's cleaning a rifle.
So that's what I imagined.
It was California, so rifles were a little harder to come by then.
Well, you know, my mentor Stan Evans like to say that his favorite breakfast was coffee and cigarettes, one a leafy vegetable and the other a lugume, because breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Okay, next night. It's an update for something, Lucretia, you brought up last week and you made a passing car meant that the Progressives like AOC in particular. And your favorite person, miss a sturdy eyelashes herself, Jasmine Crockett. We're raising money hand
over fist. Well, the numbers are out today and the top money raiser in the House of Representatives is in fact AOC, with nearly fifteen million dollars raised this year alone. That is twice as much as the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, and it's more than twice as much as any other Democrat, including I think it's four times as much as hockeying Jeffries, who would be Speaker of the
House if Democrats won a majority. And if the person I think most astonished by that or worried about it, I should say, or most anxious about it, has to be Chuck Schumer, because AOC can pretty much take all of that money and put it into a Senate race if she wants to. There are a couple wrinkles between House committees and Senate committees, but they're easily overcome, I think. And so she's got a big war chest for whatever she wants to do, and I suspect she will do
it right anyway. And overall the Progressives are if you sort of total up all the people along the Progressive Caucus, it's like two thirds of all the money the Democrats have raised so far in a selection cycle. So not good news for people to want to move the Democratic Party back toward the center, whatever that would be.
Steve Can I ask you a question about that. Sure, Where did you read it.
Morning?
Well, yeah, that's where I read it too, And what was interesting to me was the usual pandering to the left that we have come to expect from the once vaunted Wall Street Journal that well, no, wait, My point is that they had to put in there that all of her money came from this new grassroots effort to
get small donors. So they make it sound like all of the poor people in the United States all sent her a dollar because they think she's going to be the person who saves them from their poverty and of course, the point of the matter is she's getting huge, huge contributions from stupid leftists with more money than brains, and that's what I really want.
We'll say about that, that's not I mean, that's not well, part of that's right. She actually can't. Her own committee is bound by the contribution limits. Now whether now a separate independent pack can take, you know, unlimited amounts from George Soros or something like that.
But we know that Act Blue was really good at all.
Yes, yeah, no, you're right there. I'm quite sure that Act Blue and others are bundling lots of small contributions for her and Rocanna and Jasmine Crockett and so forth. However, it's significant, I think politically that she is getting these individual donations and not from packs the party leaders. They always get the money from the corporate packs and the
labor unions. And the fact that that AOC is getting contributions from individuals, even if bundled by Act Blue, tells you where the center of gravity the Democratic Party is and where the energy is. And that should be very worrying to everybody. That's all anyway, Two more quick things also out today. Joe Biden has sold his Memoirs for ten million dollars, which a is less than Clinton, and the Obama's got by quite a bit, and no one's
going to read that book. Point two, we all want the film version of Hunter Biden's memoirs, except we already saw the film version a few days ago, if you caught any of that tube.
So which publishing company was stupid enough to spend ten million dollars in a campaign contribution to somebody who can't run for president?
Yeah, well it's the Hashet Book Group, which is now owns a whole lot of the big imprints. So I don't know if it's going to be Hashet itself or one of their I forget who they own, but they own a lot of the prominent names, and so you know it doesn't matter. I mean, it'll be one of them, and that book will be on the remainder table at Costco probably the afternoon it comes out. So there's all that.
And then finally before we take a break, before we get into our main topics today, John, we have a question for you from several listeners and readers, So be sure to turn your microphone back gone and don't fall asleep on us. There's this crazy story, crazy to us lay people out of what New Jersey where a bunch of federal judges are saying, no, we are not going to accept Alena Habba, you know, Trump's former personal lawyer as the acting US attorney for our district. And the
question people are saying is can judges do that? Is it this a separation of powers problem? Is there some statute that I have missed or that we've all missed that gives the judges some say and who can represent the government in their courtrooms? What's going on.
Here as usual? Steve?
You think because it's not in the Clean Air Act, something that is going on. Come on, come on, man, there's another statue.
There's lots of other statues.
So this one's called the Vacancy's Act, And actually she's just being treated normally as anybody else would be in the under Vacancy Is Act, and she's just not getting the benefit of a special provision that only applies to prosecutors.
So just explain it real quickly.
Anytime there's a vacancy in a position for which the President nominates and the Senate confirms, the president can put someone in their acting for I think one hundred and twenty days, and so she's just reached the end of
her period. Usually at the end of that period, then the career person who's in that office becomes the acting And you know what, this was changed so that President Clinton could not keep repeatedly making someone acting head of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Apartment, someone who the Senate kept rejecting over and over again. So there's this twist for prosecutors, for US attorneys. This is I've always thought this violates a separation of powers, but it's
been with us since the founding. The courts are allowed to appoint someone to be the US attorney in a district if there's a failure like this, And so all that's happened here is that district judges there have said, no, we're not going to use that special power.
Go point at somebody else.
But it is a sign that the judges there have don't have much respect for Billina Habba, because if they did respect her, they would have they could have made a permanent It's actually one of the few areas in the executive branch where the judges can actually appoint the permanent official. It's as if the president and the Senate had advised and consented. It's this weird wrinkle in the appointments process. It doesn't apply to any other official in the executive branch as far as I know.
And so there you have the rhino explanation at the very end, which says it's because they have something against her and not because they're all rabid anti Trumpers that they decide.
I mean, she's manifestly unqualified for the job. I mean, did you see what she did before she represented Trump? I mean, come on, I don't think she'd ever appeared in court ever.
I kind of giggled.
I mean, I'm laughing because I mean, it's appropriate that she would be put in New Jersey.
New Jersey deserves things like this.
Right. Well, I'll just mention in passing that my late father in law was US attorney and Reno, Nevada under President Eisenhower, I think at the age of thirty four.
Wow Eisenhower. Oh yeah, yes, by Eisenhower.
You know there are only ten people lived in Reno in the fifty access. That's really true.
He was in the middle of the ten people lived there, and eight of them were under investigation.
Just oh no, no, that was he was you know, authorizing and supervising wiretaps of some of the mob people in Reno and stuff. And no, he was involved a lot of the mob busting that went on in Nevada in the fifties. So anyway, so I don't know, if you know, I don't know what his courtroom experience had been at that point. But still thirty four is pretty I think he's like one of the youngest ever appointed to be US attorney at the time.
So we will point out that because New Jersey is filled with criminals and robbers, right being from Philadelphia, we watched them from across the river. Her it's actually been a great launching pad for US attorneys. You know who's amongst Alena Haveba's distinguished predecessors were Samuel.
Alito and Michael.
Like some of the greatest US attorneys you know that I've ever run into.
And then Alena Habas.
So I could see why the judges were not impressed. Well, Chris Christie was Chris yes, Chris yes, Chris Christy too.
Sorry, there's a lot of hacks out there, and don't forget that that are US attorneys. I know some of them, and I won't bring up their names here, but remember that you're forgetting part of the story, which was Hakeem Jeffries sending a letter to those judges telling them that she was, you know, pro Trump and this and that, and that they needed to uh that she was partisan and therefore they needed to vote against her. And that was a complet I mean, it turned it all into
a partisan game. And you know, for that reason, they should have said, no, we're not going to listen to Hakeem Jeffries and kept her. That's what I think. Well they didn't because they're all scum Democrats.
Some other time, because John was so young, then I might go back and revisit the Marston affair from the nineteen seventies. He was the US attorney for Philadelphia that Jimmy Carter wanted to get rid of.
You will be shocked, I know that very well because I dated his daughter.
Oh my god, this we will have to hear him, but not this week. And now we're going to go to a quick break and we'll come back and get started on what we had in mind all along. Don't go away, all right, Lucretia, I want to toss first to you today to find out what's on your mind. I think I know what's on your mind. And the good news listeners is Lucretia does not even need her tinfoil hat today for this story. Lucretia, I think.
I'm still gonna need it because there's still a lot of obfuscating going on. But so the revelations that have come out from the D and I Telsea Gabbard regarding what most of us knew really happened anyway, was, you know, the entire corruption of our intelligence services by Obama and Hillary Clinton. That they were also upset when Trump actually won.
They were all shocked and dismayed. And Obama, of course, the narcissistic little that he is, couldn't even bear the thought that he was not going to have another four years in office. Through Hillary, that they launched what has to be the most treasonous set of activities ever committed by a president. And I know a lot of the ones that you know reading being a sort of a presidential scholar, I know a lot of the things that went on. I can't ever anything worse. So what really happened?
There were allegations that the Russians and helped me, Steve, if I get this wrong, because I don't have the ability to pull up all of my sources here to get the steps in the right order. So if I
do this wrong, help. So the intelligence community put together an intelligence community of assessment that said that the Russians had been involved in it, had involved themselves in our election, and ultimately it was concluded that it didn't make a difference that Russian the Russians and others always involved themselves in other countries' elections for their own purposes. But then
some things came up about Hillary Clinton's emails. Remember Hillary Clinton never was never executed for the crime of treason for keeping her servers in a bathroom and allowing them to be hacked by the Russians, which we know they were. And Steve wanted me to mention that the Russians say it, Steve, because I forget exactly how it went out.
Well.
Well, some of the materially found is that the Russians believed or thought they actually had the solid evidence to say that Hillary Clinton has serious health problems. She's prone to rages of temper, she's on the tranquilizers a lot, and I mean and everyone now immediately remembers the September eleventh, twenty sixteen episode when she was had to be propped up and put in the you know, falling down and you know see later a few hours said, I was dehydrated,
right and anyway, I thought, well that's interesting. And there's also why didn't they release it?
Though, Steve there was a reason. I don't remember why.
I don't know why. I don't know why. Yeah, it was what a Senator House Committee report had all this, But I mean, I think the salient points are, First, Obama was up to his neck in this point number one. Point number two, they knew it was true, and they knew that the thesis of the Russian interference in the
election was untrue. But that makes the point three, which is they went forward with it anyway in a deliberate attempt hobble Trump once he took office, which you know, they it's hard to hobble Trump because he's unhobbleable' is that a word, but it's certain. Look, when you're under a Special Council investigation, as John knows, it really slows things down. It dominates too much attention to White House staff and so forth. So that seems to me as
bad as anything. Nixon is alleged to have done in Watergate and did do right and went all the way to the top. And yeah, so.
Yeah, and there's a lot more to it. You've got the who actually released some of those emails from the DNC and and was it you know, Julian Assan just said all along it was never ever ever Russia, And it was probably something that what was the name of the young man seth Rich seth Rich killed in a burglary that didn't take the burglar, the robber didn't take his wallet or anything else. And you know, there's just it's so ugly when anything is involved with the Obama
or the Clintons. But ultimately so they not only did they publish things that they were untrue, they published things that they knew the opposite were true. And then of course go ahead.
Well there's that seems to me there are three questions here, and let you start first and then we're going to get John in on this too. One is is you know, what are the criminal vulnerabilities of people in the whole chain of all this? And then second is President Obama, as they say in legal historicals, stopped from being prosecuted because of the immunity ruling that Trump won last year
to the Supreme Court. And finally, you mentioned treason. I want to talk a little bit about that, because I mean, is this what foreign country are they working on? Behalf of I think it was a party interest. So and then there's the of how treason is defined in the Constitution. It's the only criminal matter discussed directly with litery, peculiar and interesting conditions. So anyway, whatever order order you want, whoever you want to.
Take that, Okay. So the probably the most explosive part about Gabbard's revelations was in fact not only that Obama
was involved in him but probably directing it. And so the inclusion of things in that intelligence community assessment, the exclusion of things, you know, the role of the Peepee tape as it's often called, the role of Christopher Steele, the role of the Clinton campaign, and the role of crowd strike, all of these readers, we don't have time to listeners, we don't have time to go through all
of it. But I think what it ultimately comes down to is what do you do about probably most specifically Obama, Brennan and Komy. And this is where I have to reach to John and say, if you falsify intelligence and then leak that falsified intelligence with the purpose of either affecting an election or damaging a president, is there any crime there?
Yeah, there's a question between whether there's anything new and what Gabert released. And then you're you're hypothetical which is different to me than what Gabret actually shows, but s your hypothetical is well, so first there's a crime in just releasing a classified right classified document. Leaking that is a violation of the Espionage Act, and that's criminal. But it's even Oh no, people get prosecuted for the I mean.
Comy wasn't prosecuted in for instance, for doing it.
Yeah, this is John m.
Kin Homy was Comy was referred to the for prosecution by the Inspector General the Justice Department, but Johnham, John Durham, the Special Council chose not to bring charges. But they were I mean that might have been because they didn't think they could win in court, for example, But I mean, like you know, journals have been prosecuted for this espionage and actually Obama his administration prosecuted a bunch of people
for espionage for Act violations. Or you could say, remember Bradley, Bradley Manning, whatever his name is now Chelsea Manning was prosecuted and right, so people do get prosecuted under it. So yeah, if you this, you know, if you release, if you leaked a classified it's not even just the document. Right, the way the statute talks about it says you can't leak defense information. So if they were, if you know, these officials were leaking information from the documents on the phone,
for example, you could still be prosecuted for that. They couldn't say, oh, well, I never gave a document to anybody. That's not a defense So yeah, you could definitely prosecute people for the facts.
You can't prosecute Obama, can you.
So Obama is different because he might get immunity under the Trump decision. Right, So if you look at what what I think think Gabbert is claiming, she is claiming not that Obama manufactured some kind of intelligence or that Obama, you know, leaked any information. So her claim is that
before Obama had a meeting with his intelligence people. Everyone knows that, and so before that meeting, the intelligence community had concluded that Russia had not tried to break into any voting infrastructure, or had successfully changed any vote or any outcome of any vote, and then there's this meeting, and then the Gabbard claims Obama then pasked the intelligence community to do this assessment to see whether Russia had
tried to help Trump win. And so her argument is that Trump based I'm sorry that Obama basically did that with no real grounding in fact, that he must have done it for the purpose of handicaps happening the Trump administration when it started out.
I don't see how that's not covered by the immunity decision.
I mean, it's an official action, right that Obama can say, Look, I wanted to see whether Russia actually was involved. That seems that seems covered to me by the Trump decision. It's an official act of as president.
Yeah. Yeah. We may come back to this point in our next segment, John, when we talk about executive power more broadly, which is what you want to bring up for listeners, Lucretia, what do you want to contest her answer.
I'm thinking about the way the way that the Trump case looks at the question of what goes on between president and his advisors as close as advisors and you know, even the arguments way back from Nixon versus Us versus Nixon, whichever, it is that those almost always are considered official acts for the and that they are entitled to. I believe that falls under the presumption of immunity, not absolute immunity,
but the presumption of immunity. And you know, they made that distinction because of the effects that worrying about being criminally liable for those things that you discuss will have on the Article two powers that you know, the core
powers of the presidency. What they don't say, however, is that it's not a subject that a court could not pursue in the same way that if it's what do they call it, the conclusive and preclusive powers of the president acting clearly within his Article two stated powers or congressionally authorized powers, there is absolute immunity. I don't think it falls under absolute immunity based on reading Trump versus
the United States. Maybe I'm wrong, because you know, I'm not a lawyer, but what I take away from this is that what saves a president from being even called in front of a court to have to explain himself is the notion that doing so would hamper his exercise of his core powers. And if it's not that, if it's not that absolute immunity, then you've got to worry about what does the court call it? Context, content, context,
and facts. And in this case, I think the court would have to a court if they brought a criminal prosecution, they would have to at the very least determine whether or not this was an official act of the president that is part of his core powers, or whether it's what do they call the there's a word, I forget it, the kind of not quite in the middle of core powers, and those don't carry the same level of absolute immunity. Am i am I misunderstanding that?
No, So I think I.
Think give the constitutional law about right.
So the absolute immunity applies to.
The functions of the president that fall under his uh you could say soul Article two powers. Then there are you could say, powers that are I think the phrase in the depinion might be concurrent, you know, that are kind of shared with Congress or which Congress deleicated to the president.
And that's where then the courses.
You have a presumption of immunity, but that presumption can be overridden.
Now this is the thing.
So I think just two points one on the facts and one on the law. You know, on the facts. You know, I'm not sure that the group said.
So there's two criminal deferrals going on here.
And actually I think the one that you know, Gaberd is I think, really exaggerating what she's got here. She's definitely got something, but I think she's exaggerating the importance of it. I find her very unreliable in her judgment about this. But she's obscuring the more important referral, way,
way more important referral, which is by the CIA. So the week before gaber did this, John Radcliffe, who's the director of the CIA and a former prosecutor, he was a prosecutor in Texas, was an assistant was during Texas.
He has the CIA.
Has referred Brennan and Clapper for prosecution by the Justice Department.
That is way more serious.
I am not aware of any time that the CIA has ever referred a former director or a former d and I for prosecution.
That's incredible, actually if you think about it.
And because but Gabert has totally taken the spotlight and is in fact undermine I think the seriousness of the CIA referrals because she's pushing this idea that Obama committed treason or that Clapper and Brennan and Komi committed trees and based on actually, I think a fairly thin read
of evidence. What I would really want to know is, what is it that the CIA, which didn't release, you know, one hundred and twenty pages, right, the CIA just I think announced in a like a four page memo or a five page memo that there were serious problems with the way the Russia hoaks got introduced into our intelligence agencies and intelligence reports, and they were referring those guys
for prosecution. That's a really big deal, right, That's like, right, is like the oss E were going to refer you know, Donovan wild Bill Donovan for prosecution.
That's really incredible that they did that.
But people have missed that because you know, they're all focused on the shiny thing Gabbard's throwing around.
One more thing about the facts is oh, go ahead.
Before you go on. I did, before you go on with your next point. I want to hear it. But let me just let me let me be political here for a moment about that, and say, let's assume that maybe Trump and Trump's best attorneys and so forth, are overlooking this whole thing, and Tolsey Gabbard puts out pages and pages and pages of these sorts of things, and
that's what everybody's talking about. But in the meantime, an actual, factually based prosecution of really in many ways, however you look at it, whatever you say to Obama about Obama and this, Brennan and Clapper are just the most despicable creatures on the planet. And to get them and to get clean house by prosecuting them and perhaps even getting a conviction against them would be so so cathartic for you know, getting rid of the worst excesses of the
deep state. Maybe this is all planned this way. I'm just throwing that out.
There, John. I. I mean, I think what's going on?
You see the argument?
No, But what I think if I were going to try to interpret what was going on, I think, you know, Ratcliffe is a very serious guy, and he's apparently doing.
A really good job at the CIA.
You know, he's cleaning house, but he's doing it in a responsible way. You never read about him, right this is the best thing for a SI director. You don't read or hear about them very often right there. But they're hopefully they're up to no good with regard to our enemies. And you know, so to refer you know, the former director of the CIA for Criminal Prosecution and the heads of the CIA now is a former prosecutor.
That means, you know, like someone who knows what the just farmant does and what really qualifies her prosecution took a hard look at this and sent it over.
That's a really big deal.
I think Gabbard, who's the d and I who you know, a few weeks ago people thought Trump was going to fire her, saw this and decided she needed to insert herself in some way into this because she's on the outs with Trump, and so what does she do she? I think because of that, it encourages her to say things which I think are just over the top, you know, like that Obama committed treason. I don't think he committed, even on the facts that she alleges it. I don't
think he could. You could convict them of trees and or they committed treason.
I think he, you know, had this bias.
All remember back in December of twenty sixteen, people like, how did Trump win?
It seems impossible? Blah blah blah blah, so he said to.
His intelligence people, see if the Russians were involved, I don't think that's treason.
That's not exactly how it all happened. Well that's the problem, all right.
Let's do this as an exit. Question was first of all simple my question. I thought charge of treason had to involve actually doing something on behalf of a foreign government.
And you have to let the war against the United States or gave given aid and comfort to our enemies.
How could Obama under these facts be guilty of that?
And you have got two witnesses who both witnessed the same overt act of treason.
That was my second question. I mean, that's such a I mean, what were the maybe know the answer to this that you can do it briefly? What was the reasoning for being so specific about that's so interesting? Right?
This is so interesting.
Yeah, because the Crown in England was prosecuting a lot of people for treason, and so this is really interesting. This is the only crime that is defined in the Constitution, right and the reason why and this is from an opinion by Chief Justice Marshall.
This is great in the bur trial.
So the first interpretation of this clause, the first treason prosecution is brought against Aaron Burr for his effort to raise a rebellion in Louisiana. The burg Conspiracy gives rise to this major opinion by Chief Justice Marshall, and he says, one reason that the Founders wrote this provision into the Constitution was to take away from Congress and the President the ability to find treason because the British had abused it.
Think about what the British.
Would have done if the revolution had failed. They would have prosecuted and hung every single member of the Founding of the Founding leaders for treason, right, So they want and they wanted to make it hard to prove, and they wanted to make sure that the political politicians couldn't change it.
So they stuck it in the.
And so actually, remember Burr undeniably goes down to Louisiana and he tries to raise a rebellion and he's still equitted of treason because they couldn't find two witnesses who saw him do anything over it.
Hmm, interesting, I love it.
I love it.
Yeah, story, well, I am I'm not sure about the trees and angle. I am with Lucretian saying I'd love to see some really serious accountability for Brennan and Clapper and all those other things. Mean too.
I mean, you know, there you could you could argue that this is a good case for a special council, although there already was one with John Durham. But I think this is there's something here that should be gone to the bottom of it. I just don't think it's wise to say Obama committed trees.
Yeah, okay, could be all right, Let's go to break and then we will come back John with some thoughts from you on executive power and continue the same subject. So don't go away, everybody, We'll be right back. Okay, we're back, and John, I'm gonna throw the microphone you what's on your mind this week? What do you want to what do you want us to wrestle with you about?
I mean, we got to talk about the symposium that Steve and I did this week and Civitas, which I thought was really interesting. Oh come on, I mean you went on at great length. You only mentioned the Clean Air Act three times in your.
Piece, which is a real record for you. Come on, I mean this.
Is there was much longer than mine.
Yeah, but it didn't mention the Clean Air Act. Every time you mentioned it, you lose one hundred birds on your limit.
I mean, come on.
So here's the It was a fun It was a fun exercise that you know. Civitas asked us to do a uh do a symposium on was something like virtue and the American presidency I think was the initial topic, and so, uh, you know.
Steve wrote his usual.
You know, I thought, well, first there's Steve Hayward, and then there's Gary Schmid and Joe Bassett, also Straussians, and then you've all evn who I think, I don't know if he's strictly a Straussian, but he's Straussian adjacent, I would say. And so I thought, yeah, no, I mean I think he got all these political theorists, oh sorry, political philosophers, and so I expected, I expected all of you to say, uh, you know, the Republican virtue must
be in the person who's the president. And that's what the founders would have thought, which I think is actually true. The founders expected that the first president would be the most virtuous amongst them, among them, which was who was George Washington. So I thought I would have fun and I wrote a I tried to find a contrary example. So I thought of who was a very successful president, who's not a very virtuous person. The fact was, you might have had anti virtues of those days, and that
was Andrew Jackson. I think about Andrew Jackson before he became a president, had shot people in duels, had killed Indians in the variety of Indian wars, had saved the country, you know, the Battle of New Orleans in the War of eighteen twelve. But then took his army and decided to invade Florida against the orders of president, against the orders of the president at the time. And then when he was criticized, I think he wrote President Monroe something along the lines of do you want me.
To give it back?
So he just took Florida because he thought it ought to be part of the United States, disobeying the chain of command, and was, you know, if you read the accounts of him, temperamental, right, vertuperative, you know, combative, ill tempered, But I thought was a great president. One example of this, and the difference between I think the virtue of George Washington compared to the rough and tumble of Andrew Jackson was their responses to rebellion so in Washington's time, you
have the Whiskey Rebellion. Washington leads troops. He's the first and only president to ever lead troops in the field as commander in chief. He gets on a big white horse and leads the column of troops up.
To western Pennsylvania on.
The expectation that they would all disperse if they just saw him, and they did. And then he dropped the prosecutions of anyone involved and released everyone from prison who'd
been arrested. Andrew Jackson went faced with a nullification crisis from South Carolina, was about to raise an army of ten thousand volunteers, which he also was going to go into South Carolina with the troops, and he was heard to have said that he was going to personally hang the governor of South Carolina from the tallest tree he could find in Charleston. Very different attitude, George Washington, but right he put that. You know, the nullification crisis never
came down to it. The South Carolina gave way in the end. And I think I think Jackson transformed the presidency from this kind of you know, you know, classic Republican virtue to break the tribune of the people the you know, the the pub essitary president who claimed that he was the representative of the people and was going to fight the Supreme Court and fight Congress and sometimes
would fight dirty in order to protect the people. You know, if there's any president who I'm sure Trump models himself after, it would be Andrew Jackson. That was such a much better story than whatever Steve wrote about. I already forget what Steve Essay said. Steve, you you defender, Steve, what you tell them what you're Steve, you tell them plagiarized?
No, no, I quoted people, But I know that drive.
The title what like a poor cover banding teaming.
Yeah, oh no, that was the That was not my headline. That was the headline that Richard picked for the site. I forget what I I forget what my original headline was.
No.
I wrote for the more abstract treatment of the ambiguity of executive power as Harvey Mansfield understood it in Taming the Prince, which I still think is the best book on the long arch of political philosophy as it bears on the exercise of executive power. That book explains why and how you should understand the actions of Jackson. I
did talk about how statesmanship used to be. Statesmen and statesmanship were words you used to hear historians, journalists, and political scientists use until about fifty years ago, when suddenly academics turned on the phrase because it's an egalitarian, it's sexist, you know, states men really stupid things like that, And so now you never see the word used anymore, and it's thought to be you know, subjective, unscientific, all the rest.
So I pushed back on all that, and although I will say, if we had a more robust understanding of the latitude of executive power, we wouldn't need to clean Air Act. Which, by the way, if listeners you don't realize it does not appear in the article at all. John just sees it in between the lines because he's learning esoteric reading.
John, Right, you know we have to he's teaching me what to be afraid of.
Yeah, yeah, there you go. Right. Anyway, it's you know, I'm trying to revive the term and the category it connects to prudence, which I know you don't understand John either. You think that was just cost benefit analysis or something ridiculous. Yes, but no, that's completely wrong. But I will say this about one point about Jackson, and this was the point
of view all Evind's essay in the same package. And I guess Gary, Gary and Joe's article two is ultimately we judge the constitutional executive, that is, the American President, by how faithfully they understand and defend the Constitution. And so when you say, you know Jackson contested with the court, or how did you put it stronger than that? But the point is is that he didn't defy the courts.
But what he said was, well, the most famous one is a veto message for the National Bank, and he said, I don't care if the Supreme Court says the National Bank is constitutional. I don't think it is. And my constant titutional power is I get the veto legislation from Congress extending the National Bank, and I'm going to do that because guess what, Presidents get to interpret the Constitution too. With this became known as right, the theory of a
coordinate review, which Lincoln grabbed hold of. Right. I mean, Lincoln, a very different type of person than Jackson in a lot of ways, had a lot of regard for Jackson on exactly this point. Forget his colorful personal life, just as most of us overlook a certain aspect of Trump's carryings on over the decades, and noticed that he was a defender of the Constitution in ways that I think are quite important and useful and lasting.
There seeing my article is so much more interesting than yours, just a history lesson Mine was philosophy, Right.
Lucretia, you want to thump either one of us or you just want to be weekend? Okay, All right, well, then let's just go another quick break. I mean we'll have I'll have links to these articles in the show notes, and let's just take a quick break and then we'll come back, and I think we we'll see a theme actually with all three of these topics today when we
come back right after these messages. All right, now, it's my turn to bring up something that caught my eye this week, and it's a Law Review article and some of their time, john we got to talk to you about what's wrong with Law Review article style, and both Lucretian and I think it's nuts the way the footnotes go on forever and all the rest of that. But never mind, interesting law review article from a young guy that Lucretian I know, and I think Johnny might have
met named a Dion Kathawa. He's a graduate of University of Notre Dame Law School, where he studied with Amy Cony Barrett when she was on the faculty there. He's clerked at the Michigan Supreme Court and for some federal judges and has this article out called we the People are the last word on the meaning of our Constitution and he makes a pretty bold argument that I'm not sure I'm entirely down with. And the way I'll summarize
it as this. Essentially, what it says is Congress ought to have the power to override Supreme Court decisions they think is wrong, because Congress is the best vehicle in our political system to express the closest to the people. And his whole point is is that, I mean, the way I put it in class to students is the Constitution does not begin we the lawyers or we the judges. It's we the people. And Lucretia likes to draw our attention to that passage in was it Federals fifty one
or fifty five? It says ad a dependence on the people is the primary safeguard of Republican government. Is that how you go ahead?
No context on that quote is a little bit important. Then the context is it's the whole discussion of the checks and balances on the separation of powers that are actually themselves. When it comes to the powers that are given into the three branches of government in the Constitution, the anti federalists are quite upset about the fact that they're not clearly defined according to the branch's powers, according to the nature of the powers that they that branch
is supposed to represent. So why are legislative powers, for instance, given to the president. You don't have a real separation of powers. So that's what Madison is taking up, and he says, going through all of this, and you know, talking about how it is that each of these Czechs can actually help to prevent tyranny, tyranny and government. And the biggest concern, of course in Federalists forty seven through
fifty one is legislative supremacy or legislative tyranny. And so most of the checks and balances that the Constitution brings to bear are brought against the legislative branch. You know, things like a by camera legislature and the presidential veto, and you could go on. When Madison makes that ourment. He says, a dependence on the people is, no doubt the primary control on government. But experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. So a dependence on the people,
not a dependence on the people's representatives. That's where I think our good friend Dionne is wrong. All of his justifications and rationale leading up to it are absolutely okay. My argument, just so you know, Steve I said, I I, I, you know, articulate it as briefly as I can. My argument is, and John's going to go nuts over this, that the Supreme Court should in fact protect our rights. It is, according to Lisa, federalist papers up to Congress
to define our rights. But you know, Marshall's argument about the judiciary is, you know, that's our job basically is to say what the constitution means. But he also says, don't ever think that because we're deciding in favor of the constitutions because we're superior. It's because the Constitution is superior. Anyway, back to the point is, over.
The years, I have no dispute with anything.
I know.
This is what I think you're going to disagree with John. Just so you know, quick, and I'll be quick. I'm sorry.
I believe that over the years, the American people and even the two branches of Congress have become much too deferential to the Supreme Court to be the final arbiter, to the point where the people themselves have given up what Madison kind of said was their sacred responsibility, which was ultimately the Supreme Court is the same kind of failed human being, the non angel that Madison speaks of, and is easily as as capable of misinterpreting the Constitution
either of the other two branches are. And it's up to the people exercising their sovereign power to keep our government from becoming a tyranny. Now, we can't expect that to happen every single time government does something wrong. And it's nice to have, as Madison put those auxiliary precautions. But I think that this is the point, John, I
think you'll disagree with. Is the Supreme Court doing that all of these years, making decisions about whether or not our COVID policies were too we're taking away religious freedom rights or this. You know, Just as we could go on and on with examples, the American people have stopped believing it's their job, and they defer much too easily to the Supreme Court to determine what their rights are.
That's my disagree with that. We've definitely period judicial supremacy. And I'm a departmentalist and I think that's you know, the coordinate branch construction is what Steve called it. Well, let me give jackson view and the link of view I think is correct. But that's a view of the people too. They don't trust themselves interpret the Constitution and they'd rather have the Supreme Court do it, and they
don't challenge it enough. That's not the Court's fault, that's the American people's fault.
Okay, So let me develop this argument. Yeah, you jump the gun a little bit on. I want to get a little bit more of the architecture's argument fully out, and I may move some of this around because that was a well okay. His argument is built on the sovereignty of the people and the consent of the government, and he says that, you know, Congress is the closest to the people. He does, by the way, he does give a footnote giving a shout out to our natural
law discussion on the political question. Substack so that was nice. So we show up in this article.
Also also bizarre that anyone would cite anything on our substack in a Larview article.
Oh come on, you guys, Well I should have directed your attention to that, since I think you guys just skimmed this. There is one part I think, okay, well you okay, one part. One part of the article I think is odds He says, Hey, the Canadians do something like this, and I'm never a fan of Canadian constitutionalism. I'll just put that out there for skied. Okay, okay. But then you know he does in good sort of Tomistic fashion, because Dion's a devout Catholic. He does take
up objections the way Aquinas would. And one of them, the most important one, I think, is uh well twofold one is is that the reason we have these countermajoritarian features like judicial review is precisely to be a bulwark against transient majorities, you know, the passions of the of the mob. That's always been the downfall of pure democracies. Right. And his counter argument back is one that I thought is pretty bold. I'll just quote him here. He says
that the political branches are more subject to popular pressure. Is, however, a point in favor of my basic argument. Boy, well he's you know, good for him, he's not backing down on all this. But I don't know, I just make you don't.
Really like, why bother have a written constitution? If he's right, why not just have a British constitution?
Yeah? Right, that can be amended by the House of Commons.
Right, Yeah, And you just have to be clear what you're doing is legislation or constitution making. But right, the whole point of writing it down is to prevent majorities or the or even put aside trans majority. Sometimes you just don't want the people to be able to do something unless you're really really sure a super majority that people want to what's wrong with that?
Yeah, well, it's not so much we would have to stop that. It's not that I disagree, But that's not the whole story, John, It's not so much a supermajority, even a super majority, can act unconstitutionally in the sense that the only genuine constitutional appropriate Listen, I can explain the only legitimate activity of a majority or a supermajority is when they act in the public interest, and when they do so in a way that does not deprive
any size minority of their fundamental rights. That's what makes legitimate government, and majority rule is an imperfect way of the sovereign people governing themselves. The entire Constitution, as you put it, I'll put it a little differently. It's there to make sure that the majority doesn't run away with the rights of other citizens or the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.
Well, so you're saying there are some things that you cannot do through the constitutional amendment process. So, for example, suppose that in the constitutional amending process, the core the people were to eliminate, say, juri trial, they just said, we're not going to have dury trial rights. Very few countries have them anymore. We're going to just have We're just going to do it the way everybody else in
the world does it with a judge jury trial. Right, Are you saying that the people are unconstant would be violating the Constitution by changing the Constitution through two thirds what three quarters?
I don't I don't think.
I'm not saying that about jury trials. But what I will say is that the people would be violating fundamental natural law by repealing the Thirteenth amendment. We've had this discussion before.
What about So you would say there are certain things that are in the constitution which cannot be changed, I say.
The amendment process. Yeah, just said it would be unconstitutional.
I think of your favorite person, John's Thomas Jefferson in his What Is It Is farewell is inaugural address where he says the majority rule to be rightful, must be reasonable and that the minority have how executive I forget exactly how this the minority rights are respected. That's the definition of legitimate government. Now, of course, everything, every single law that's passed by some kind of majoritarian process is going to disadvantage a minority. It's always going to do that.
You know that. That's the nature of laws is that they discriminate, they create classes. What our constitution requires, and what I think legitimate government requires or natural law requires, is that those that those actions. Sorry, I just got a notification that the border patrols of my neighborhood looking for some until lock my door. Sorry, that's so sorry, Steve. That just completely threw me.
Time law enforcement has visited Lucretia.
Actually so so while Lucretia is finding out if ice is surrounding her house because it's a sanctuary, because she's been secretly I think, a sanctuary for migrants.
Right again, they're just taking up their old positions, as they say, the.
Military, right right. Well, look, let me bring up an example that I've got a surprise, dion or I would challenge deon and by the way, I have told him that we will try to have him on to make his case under butt us at some point down the road when we can schedule a time, which has been
hard lately. You remember this from more than thirty years ago, now, I think when the Supreme Court struck down statutes banning flag burning as a violation of the First Amendment, Congress immediately passed a new law in the way you would think Diana is suggesting, which is right. Congress is going to say, no, Court, we're sorry, we think you're wrong here, and that law was immediately challenged and the court said, no,
we're not impressed. That's against the First Amendment. Also right now, of course, as I have said before, nobody thought nobody had the wit to use the Clean Air Actian banned flag burning against pollution. But nonetheless, but I mean, you know, isn't that First of all, do you think that? I mean, I mean, there's two questions here, and nic could go on a long time. One is, isn't that an exercise of you know, what Dean is saying, is the Court saying no, we are Congress saying we think the Supreme
Court's wrong and we're going to override them. By the way, I think there was a lopsided vote on the flag burning I think it passed the House and Senate by big majorities.
Oh yeah, I actually have to confess I worked on it when I worked in Congress.
Oh did you okay? Okay? And then the second one is what what do we think of that? I mean, I think, without reopening the whole question of First Amendment jurisprudence, I think flag burning is expression and not speech, and is easily within the reach of the police power of government. But that's been a losing argument even with Justice Scalia.
Right, especially Justice Scilly, he gave the fifth he provided the fifth vote to say uphold flag burning right as protected by the First I know, I think what the better case, a more meaningful case, because this whole flag.
Burning thing is very symbolic.
Obviously, it's a religious freedom restoration actor where right the court, the Congress has tried to overrule, unsuccessfully, the court's decision that right religious minorities don't have a right to seek an exception from generally applicable laws like the drug laws, for example, in their religious practices. So I look, there's I think there's a number of problems with this argument.
And this is not a new argument, mind you. I mean, this is an argument that the progressives came up with that Teddy Roosevelt, yeah, trust Congress to yeah, yeah, they wanted Congress or referendum to over you know, I think they wanted sixty percent or fifty five percent, But some proposals were just a simple majority should be able to overrule Supreme Court decisions.
So this is not a new idea.
In fact, there's some very radical left wingers who like this idea, like Bruce Ackerman is someone who also you know, goes around making these arguments. But look, first, even if you thought this was true, why do you think Congress is a more authoritative right vehicle for the expression of the views of the people.
Why wouldn't it be the president? Right?
What I mean, why can't the president overrule Supreme Court opinions instead of Congress if he were, if this argument were correct. I mean, there's a lot of articles in political science about how how Congress is dysfunctional, how it often reverses Lucretia's worry. It's not that the majority imposes costs on the minority. Congress often allows a minority of rent seekers to oppress the majority. Right, So why would we ever trust Congress to be the more authoritative voice
of the people. And I think that's what departmentalism really is, is that each of the branches is competing always to try to be closer to the view of the people and to protect the Constitution. I don't really see why Congress is the chosen institution. It may actually make more errors than the other two branches.
The founders thought too, yes, founder side. And let me just say this, Steve. When I try to explain this to students in the most basic ways to discussing separation of powers and checks and balances, one of the examples that I like to use think about when a politician, when a member of Congress gets in front of the cameras and spouts off something and the almost inevitably invariably there will be a phrase the American people demand. The American people are not in favor the American people want.
You know, they don't speak for the damn American people. But Madison warns us that they're going to pretend like they do at every opportunity. And boy, was Madison ever write about that. That's a I'm with John on this. I like the fact that there's this continuous struggle, this continuous you know, attempt at equilibrium between the three branches. And I don't think that the Supreme Court is the final authority in the Cooper versus a In style, for sure,
But I also don't think that Congresses. And I think the Founding fathers were most worried about Congress in that respect because of its closeness to the people.
Right, well, this guy, you know, this this author, if he's opposed by both me and THEU Cretia just.
Right now, I'm.
Gonna call him Neon Dion, after the other famous person named Dion. Look good for him for putting out a provocative argument. We will try and have him on at some point to rough him up and talk. He's a great guy. Uh yeah, and and uh yeah, no, he's great. He's going places he's but and good for him for
putting out a bold argument like this. But with that, we'll take our last quick break and we'll close out the show with some new materials, so you won't want to go away, all right, Lucretia, you you managed to get enough bandwidth to summon up a few Babylon bees for us. Give us just.
A few, but there some of them are quite appropriate. Uh Man, really excited for government to release all the government documentation of all the government's crimes.
Yeah, that's pretty good.
Okay, this one's my favorite. I do exempt myself from this. Very hypocritical of me, but uber to begin offering writers choice a woman driver or good driver. Yeah, disheveled Colbert seen holding up cardboard sign. We'll yell about Trump for cash. Yeah, okay, last two, and this is a there's so many more. Obama argues he can't be charged with treason since he wasn't born in America. Yeah, I know, give me one more. Obama awarded Nobel Peace Prize for exemplary work planning Russian collusion hoax.
They finally found something adeed that he did, right, Yeah, yes, right, okay, okay, John.
Well, I'm still I'm still in my.
Reduced version of my sign off because, as you guys said, we need to think of another.
One to add for mine.
But yeah, mine is just always drink your whiskey, Meat and Steve.
I have got new material. I asked chat GBT to provide us some lyrics if Lewis Carroll was a listener of this podcast, And here are two stanzas of a brilliant long poem, and then go as follows the jabberwonks of policy. Flee when whiskey and wit poor easily. No safe space, sillies, no shallow cheer, just bracing thought and twelve year gear. So till your glass the logic bound kin let the conversation splash within where speech is free and nonsense howers. It's the three whiskey happy Hour.
I think that's pretty good.
I thought that was really much better than usual.
Bye bye, everybody, We'll see you all next week.
Ricochet joined the conversation.
M HM