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