Well, whiskey, come and take my pain. The honeys all right, oh whiskey. Don't 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 this laps it up? And live it? Ain't you easy on? The should tap guy to give me and let that whiskey? Well? The left is having a total meltdown this week, and the three Whiskey Happy
Hour is here for it. And by here for it, I mean, of course John and Lucretia, the International Woman of Mystery. Uh, Lucretia, how are you and what are you drinking tonight?
I am well, thank you, and I I decided to set up in my little office a whiskey bar, and I'm drinking Glen Fidditch eighteen year old.
See I see it over your shoulder? Some of that right? And then John, you thought you were done being out numbered today when you left the Fox set at one o'clock Eastern time. But no, we may have you out numbered a bit here, but we'll see. Are you having an a libation to cool off after a long week.
Oh I wish I were by just ran here from something in New York, so I want to go is water?
Oh oh I didn't.
I didn't have time to stop and get anything. I'm so behind.
Well, and I would think this is a week to celebrate because we have ta free whiskey is back. Oh yeah, this is important. Do you actually check the stories to see if prices?
Immediately responded, No, I haven't, right, right, but you know, let we can let it share for that right.
Wait a minute, it's terra free Scotch whiskey specifically, yes, And I do have to sorry to spring this on you guys, but I read a story this morning. I've seen a couple of these now, which the basic premise of it. I think it was from the Wall Street Journal that we needed to bring back the three martini lunch because there are actually many people who whose creativity who's you know, if you if you're a some kind, if you're on Wall Street and you're taking all these risks.
It's just easier to take risks when you've had a few drinks that you shouldn't become, you know, an alcoholic and ruin your liver. But we should, we should return to the three whiskey lunch like the admin in mad Men.
Well there's that. I remember. The person who made the crusade against the three martini lunch, or made it famous, was Jimmy Carter. Right, you wanted to take away the tax deductibility of the three martini lunch, to which very Goldwater said, we didn't need a three martini lunch until Carter became president. I thought it was a good repust writing, you know, fun stuff back then. But I do think that we need to pat ourselves on the back here
today because we have to trifecta listeners. All three of us appear today on the Civitas Outlook Symposium on the Declaration of Independence and Justice Thomas's great speech, which was our subject last week. But still I think that ought to be said. Uh, and John, you're being accused of outing yourself because you talked about how the people attacking the Declaration were attacking natural law.
And no, that doesn't mean I agree with it, though I was describing guys don't read carefully enough.
I read carefully, John, I read.
I taught you to your conclusions.
I caught your repeated reference to moral systems, and which is your dismissive way of saying that that's just somebody's belief system, and why what does it have to do with today?
I caught it. See I'm still consistent, Heyward.
And not stress.
Nice try right. Let's see, So mine was about, yeah, well.
You should describe what each of our pieces.
I'll go first. Mine was the headline I gave it was silent Clarence meets silent Cow, right, I mean Calvin Cooler. He quoted Calvin coolidg's speech and I talked about the parallels between them, and actually silent cow was wrong about Coolidge. He wasn't. I think the left invented that to say you shouldn't pay attention to him, because when he did speak or right, he said really serious stuff and he
was the last president to write his own speech as well. Thomas, of course, has been attacked for years because he doesn't say a lot from the bench. Now he's saying more lately, so they kind of call him silent Clarence. They haven't really tried to label him that, but of course he's not silent in his opinions and they rather you not read those. But that's that was That's a very short thumbnail sketch, Lucretia, what did you say, I don't remember.
I talked about Abraham Lincoln. I talked about that I had a lot of the same themes as other people who ended up kind of focused on one over another. I talked about how there was a lot of parallels between what Lincoln was trying to do in the anti Bellum period and what Thomas is attempting to do now, which is alert people to the fundamental, as you would call it, john moral systems. That anyway, I'm not in the mood to get in a fight about that with
you today. I do have a I do have a slight sort of off topic thing, sort of off topic thing to bring up, and that is that they've been talking in different areas about the fact that he is silent cal you know that that he doesn't speak much, and that he's actually been somewhat Clarence Thomas has been somewhat vilified for doing that as well. But I read a history and it said that those I want to
see his name is William Johnson. So you know, Marshall comes on the court and he tries to get air everybody to be unanimous in all their decisions and a single opinion written, and not a bunch of opinions. And of course Thomas Jefferson is the moment he gets a chance, appoints somebody that he's going to hopes can undermine Marshall and this young guy, and all he does is talk. All he does is talk all the time. And who
does that remind you of? By the way, and it talks about how the rest of the justices thought he was an idiot and that he was completely disrespectful, because when you're young and stupid, you should keep your mouth shut. So I didn't put out of my paper. I just wanted to say that because of your ok Calvin Coolidge things.
Yeah, okay, so John, Yes, I made the point that I thought the Justice's speech was responding to not just a sixteen nineteen project, but the Post liberals that ah wriking the argument that the founding is neither you know, a white supremacist document or that it's morally morally has.
No content, which is what the Post liberals criticize it for, and that he now I'm not saying I agree with it, I'm just describing this is what he did, was in the speech make the claim that the founding itself had moral content to it. It's not just you know, what lawyers would call a process based document. So that there is some moral values expressed in the declaration, and that that and that at least he says, that's the common
ground we can have in the country is around those. Now, I still want to find out where this natural law and nat right come from. And he didn't address that and his speaks at all.
He didn't need to. John, That's why didn't you knows that you're hope listen.
Uh.
Well, by the way, I think one thing that was left out of some breaking news this week, I have for you, you know, the famous letter from Jefferson to Richard Henry Lee where he says, oh, my sources were u you know the basic elementary writers Aristotle, Cicero, Sydney, and Locke. Well, a first traft has been discovered. And he said Aristotle, Cicero, Sydney, Sweeney.
In Locke, Christ, geez, you got a one track mine. I'm not sure the mine that's got the one.
Track Okay, okay, it could be all right. I have had enough whiskey to say that Richard Samuelson is telling us that we ought to give up on the Sydney Sweeney business and just surrender to the fact that she's a juggernaut. So all right, everybody, let us take a quick ad break and never come back again the serious subjects, starting with voting rights and the democratic meltdown and all the rest of that. Don't go away. We'll be right back,
all right. I said at the open that the left is having a meltdown, and what they're melting down over is the Supreme Court decision here a couple of days ago in Louisiana versus Kela, I think, is it probably? And that was the Louisiana voting rights case. And so John, why don't you give us a quick summary to get us started? And then I have a bunch of questions, and I'm sure Lucretia does too.
A quick summary of a ninety page opinion. What are you talking about it now? But actually it's both simple and complicated. The simple thing is that this is just the continuation of two trends and the Supreme Court's cases. One is stop using race. The government should just stop using race. This is one of the last areas where the courts have allowed the government to use race, which
is in the drawing of congressional districts. Now, the chances of the government can do that are in a very very small set of cases to basically remedy past discrimination on the basis of race, that's the only time it's going to be allowed, I think. And then the second thing that's happened here that this case is really part of the culmination of is the court basically wants the lower federal course that get out of the business of
interfering and districting at all. So what's been going on here is that primarily in the South, but not just in the South, federal judges were going around and forcing states to add more districts, to draw them in a way that will produce more minority members of Congress. And the way they did that was to say, well, we're going to we want states to try to draw districts that have a lot of minorities in them to produce
those districts. So the bottom line holding of the case is no longer can federal judges go to states and say the Voting Rights Act or the fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution require you to maximize the number of minority congressmen and congresswomen in your states instead, the court says
that's unconstitutional. The laws don't require that. All they're there to do is to make sure that everyone can get to the ballot and vote without regard to their race, and that the only time, and then when states draw districts that don't involve they don't take race into account. The course, you generally stay out and not look at
them at all. And the only time courts you get involved is when the districts are being drawn to make up for past discrimination, like if a state had been using race illegally, then you might need to use race to make up for it to remedy it for a little while. That seems to me the only circumstance you're going to be allowed to do it anymore. So what that means is we're going to have the kind of free for all we're seeing all around the country right now.
Is it's going to continue and the courts are not going to get involved. That's the bottom line.
So I have a question before you ask your Steve directly bearing on this, and that is, if the courts will only get involved upon a finding of past discrimination the illegal use of race to draw districts, can that mean the illegal use of race to draw districts, as the court just decided was an illegal use of race
to draw districts. Can we say that there need to be race drawn districts where white people or Asian people have been you know, systematically pushed out of the you know, not have the opportunity to vote for someone who looks like them, Which is really what all this nonsense comes down to, right, is that you want to have draw districts for minorities so they can be assured of voting for someone who looks like them. Otherwise it makes no
sense at all. And so I'm just asking do you think when you say that, I wondered that even when I read the opinion in myself, do they mean that if you have another Southern state that's had these minority drawn districts for all these years, that somebody can come back and say we need white drawn districts because of this, I mean a little bit.
No, No, I think it's plausible. But if you were a state and you just want to get on the business with having a normal election, I wouldn't want to get drawn into decades more litigation over that. But yeah, suppose, for example, that Georgia had been forced by the federal courts to have say, five districts drawn on purpose to have larger black constituencies so that they might produce a
black congressman or women in each of those districts. Then I guess a white person could say, well, that judge was doing that unconstitutionally, and now the state should in fact go the other way by two or three districts for white people, because that would make up for all those years. Generally, the courts don't like to, I think, say we did something unconstitutionally, it was retroactive, and now we got to make up for it, and so that
would present this whole new constitutional issue. I would say, if you were a state like this, you should just go forward and draw the districts like you want without regard to race, and then, which is what they I think they generally want to do anyway, Otherwise they're going to get tied up in more years of litigation about their maps based on Lucretia's, you know, very very cynical, tricky theory about the voter rights.
Well, so from the syllabus, I only got a chance to read the syllabus, the whole ninety two pages will have to wait for another day. But in the syllabus it said the fifteenth Amendment bars only state action quoting here motivated by discriminatory purpose. I think that's quoting the previous cases. And in other words, the fifteenth Amendment prohibits
intentional racial discrimination. Now, I think some of the cases of some of the cases, some of the circumstances from seventy years ago were, say a place like Jackson, Mississippi, where the entire city council was elected on an at large base, which meant you got nine white city councilmen even though you had thirty five forty. So I think there the argument was, we think we know why they're doing that, because not every city did have at large
elections for all the seats, right, they'd have districts. That's the way most people do it. And so then so you can see that that makes some sense that you can tell, well, that's why they did it, right, So there is a men's ray of problem there, right, But it's does this decision actually bar any race based districts? I mean, what if by coincidence, you do you know contiguous or you know, compact districts and two of them
turned out to be highly concentrated minorities. This decision seems to be just ambiguous to leave a problem for so the court.
The Court could have gone even farther than did here and just struck down the Voting Rights Act because the Voting Rights Act tried to say, stop asking about the intention of the legislature, just look at the totality of
the circumstances along with other things. But initially the first version of the Voting Rights Act, which was passed in sixty five, the Supreme Court right it the way Steve was reading the fifteenth Amendment to say, only intentional efforts to use race or unconstitutional if there should be racial differences in the districts based on the effect, not the intention.
That's not covered by the Voting Right sick. Then the Congress passed a set of amendments, i think in eighty two that overruled that meeting, and then they eliminated the intent, but they didn't replace with anything really clear. And so the Court has struggled ever since then to figure out, well, what are you allowed to do? So the Descent claims, and I think there's some truth to what the Descent says, is that Justice Alito's opinion kind of resurrects an intention requirement.
But I think you have to do that because I don't think the fifteenth Amendment says you have a roving mandate to go fix any voting system that happens to have a desperate effect based on race. And as you said, Steve, often I would suspect the effect is not race. It's partisanship. That states are trying to draw districts to maximize Republicans or Democrats, and African Americans have a high correlation of
voting Democrat, so it could look the same. So Justice Alito is saying, actually says in the opinion that if you're going to bring these cases, you have to show that the state was not trying to do it for partisan reasons, that it really was just racial reasons. And just as Little basically says, the lower courts are getting these two things confused because of the high rate of voting for Republicans or Democrats by certain ethnic groups, and he says, you have to prove that that's not what's
going on. And in a case, that's a very high standard.
I think let's take the high road for a moment and say that even though over certain periods of time you can identify certain minority voting patterns with a certain party one or the other, especially Blacks with the Democratic Party, but that's changed in the past from Republicans to Democrats. And supposedly the one area where Trump is not losing according to CNN Harry Enton, right, I can't remember his name, that Trump is not losing. In fact, he's gaining support
in the black community. His support in the black community is already higher than it was in twenty twenty and moving up since the election. So the idea that you should even play that game of noticing race at all seems to be it seems to be racist. I'll just say it.
Well, the other thing that Alito nods to, but this is really Justice Thomas's view from thirty years ago, and you could say, in the way Thomas's view is starting to prevail. He said, what's so offensive about racial redistricting is that it assumes people of a race all think the same, vote the same, and they will only vote for people of their skin color. And he's like, that's so offensive and actually is under contrary to the fourteenth
and fifteen. It's totally fine to do it. For the you know, well, of course we put the Republicans together, we assume they'll vote for Republican there's nothing wrong that that doesn't involve skink color, and the courts don't review that, right republic Partisan jerrymandering is a political question. There's no judicial review over that. Now, most districting is now going to fall into the political question doctrine under this opinion and won't be reviewed.
Right. Well, you know, one of the problems here is the hardening of racial essentialism on the left. That's decades old. But you know, in the good old days by that, I mean you know New York City from you know, most of the Tammany Hall days, and well in the fifties, before the Civil Rights Revolution hardened all this, I know, the parties would put together their slates also Chicago, And what do you want on your slate for either party?
Want a Jew, an Irishman, a Puerto Rican, a Protestant, a black?
Uh?
And and what do you call that? You call that a balanced ticket? Why? It's everybody. You want to have everybody joining in the you know, to be part of the everybody's got a piece of the action. And that was just called ordinary politics. But now we have this ideology, as you alluded to that you're you're supposed to think ideologically. I mean, look, let's face it, and no, Creasey, you were.
You took the high road. I mustounded uh, look at the idea we must have black dextris is simply a proxy for Democratic voters, right, based on the propensity of it, And well, and.
It doesn't and it doesn't necessarily pertain in this case, but it often pertains. I was thinking about it when you were talking about at large elections versus uh, you know, a city council, seizure districts, what what have you the Depending on the percentages of minorities in the population in any given area and so on, it might be the case that having a single person who looks like you voted as a minority, voted into office means that that person no longer has to take account of other people.
But more important than that, let's just say you have I want to make it simple. You have five districts, you have at large elections, or you have five districts and roughly twenty two percent of that population is black. I'll just say it like that, and then you draw districts divided into five, and you draw a really strong majority black district, that black representative who's voted in, you know,
under the assumptions, is one amongst four. The other four members don't have to pay any attention to the specific needs of the black community, et cetera, et cetera. And so it's not always the case that having someone who looks like you be voted into office is necessarily the best way to see your your district represented, your your interests represented, whatever legislative thing we're talking about, is my point.
Yea.
And that argument was made in nineteen eighty two. That argument was actually made by my old professor Ed Ehler, who was on the Rights Commission at the time, and the Thurnberg. Anyway, I remember it vividly at the time, and of course they lost.
But yeah, well, and then you know the other part of this politically, it's ideologically is the country is not what it was seventy years ago. So I think the numbers are something like this. I remember reading American Black and White, the great book by the Fernstroms, that big doorstop, the book that talked about black progress. Really that book came out what I think in nineteen ninety eight, so
it's now pretty old. But one of things that pointed out was the numbers are something like this, But in nineteen sixty they are only like one hundred elected black officials in the old Confederate States. Today there are several thousand in all levels of government, right, local government, state, and so forth. And so, in other words, you might say the Voting Rights Act of Civil rights revolution has worked, and then you know, you go along with the racial
attitudes and all the rest of that. And so this really is an archaic law, but Democrats are paranoid to let it go. But of course they like to throw the race card around, so that's also useful to them. They think, I think it's maxed out, as they say, but.
I actually don't think they're capable of thinking any other way. I'm sorry, go ahead, John Well.
No, I think that the Steve's point is proven out by Shelby County, which is the case that's struck down a different section of the Voting Rights Act back in I think twenty twelve or twenty fourteen, and exactly the same response. This guy's falling blacks will be driven out of public office. They'll be terrible things done to black
voting patterns. Nothing happened as far as I know. I think the court said, you know, you look at black participation rates in registration and voting, and it's basically the same or even higher than whites in the Old South. Now, and if the Democrats went in the House this in the term election, we're going to have the first black Speaker of the House in American history.
This is not the collapse of.
Voting rights that the left predicted was going to happen after Shelby County.
Yeah, oh, don't even ruined my whole night.
Well, let me let me, let me, let me go to an ad break so you can collect yourself with a cretia.
I just can't stand that guy.
Okay, all right, Two more questions that I have on this voting rights matter. One is, isn't uh the next frontier of trying to sort out the corruptions of civil rights to attack the disparate impact doctrine and the famous Griggs president from the early seventies, right, I mean, for listeners who don't know the Griggs case, actually what did
it say? But it gave us the desparate impact principle, which was a there's a statistical disparity between say, the percentage of a minority employed in the local workforce and their percentage in the local population. It's thought to be
prime e facient evidence that discrimination may be taking place. Now, that standard as a trip wire only lasted about thirty seconds, and that became assumed to be proof that discrimination is taking place, and that became the cudgel for endless consent, decrease changing employment testing, and lots of things like that. I will house it that I housing well, I will add that I do recall a civil senior civil rights
enforcement official. This is back in the eighties and talking to this official who was saying, yeah, disparate impact as fine as a trip wire. But then you have to investigate to see, like the fifteenth Amendment says that, as we mentioned a moment ago, intentional discrimination, and this person said yeah, And investigatings, I found there were companies where they were clearly discriminating on a racial basis. And that
official was EEO seat chairman Blarence Thomas. But the problem is this has been corrupted, right badly corrupted as things have gone on. So I mean it seems to me that you know, Edward Gloom or our friends at the phil Hamburger and those Civil Liberties Alliance ought to be looking for a case to attack the Griggs case. Does that make sense, John, Or is Griggs just unassailable? What do you think?
No? No, I don't think it's unassailable. And you could argue that the court right, this is a Burger Court precedent when Brennan and Thomps, Brennan and Marshall were still kind of in control, and the statute doesn't say that you can you just bring impact. And in fact, right, I believe that when Title seven was pasted, Hubert Humphrey on the floor clawing up and down, this would never happen, and that you know Hooper, he was the floor manager
for the bill. It is surprising, she stev point, I had just had thought about it that that president is still there and has not been overturned. But I ask you, actually, wouldn't conservetives now benefit from disparate impact more? Yes? If
you right? If you think about like what's going with school admissions now after Harvard case, we all knows universities are still cheating and emissions and hiring to use to favor certain races over others, but they can't prove it because they're all doing pretextually now and trying to get her of all standards and use just a whole person examination.
So disparate impact might be actually the benefit conservatives to try to sniff out the ways that these institutions are still cheating about Harvard and so on.
Yeah, now, John, you are being you're you're being your usual mischievous miss uh mischievous self. But well, I'll see how this unfolds, because you know, Megan the Cardinal the Washington Post says, I keep hearing all these people, especially at universities, saying, oh, no, we won't hire any white people. You know. It's just a lot of people openly admitted this, And Meghan would say to herself and say to them,
why do you openly confess to breaking the law. Yeah, like what, it's amazing, and you know there should be Well, oh, I think they don't Actually I think or they don't care.
I've been in those conversations. I do think that they know it. But I get what you're saying. These people who who buy the Dei agendas a hook like hook line and sinker, I do not believe that there is an alternative to it. And so the idea that they should cheat in order to continue DEI to them is an active esoteric justice, shall we say? Uh? And you
know I've reported on this before. I've been in meetings where they say you have to go through your net I D, your log in, your second factor authentication, just to see what our policies are in regard to continuing to discriminate on the basis of race and on behalf of DEI. And so I think they believe it is the prime and that's what makes it even harder.
Yeah. All right, Well, here's my mischievous question back to John or also to you Lucretia, either one of you, this Devil's advocate question. Is there anything to be said about cynical Republican complicity and race based districts? And I'm here, I'm casting my mind back to the early nineteen nineties, when, of course, after the Jingles case said oh, we've got to have some of these race based districts, and Republicans after the nineteen ninety census said oh, we're all for this.
It was Ben Ginsberg, I think, when he was general counsel for the RNC and he said, no, we should do that because they anticipated, I think correctly, that the changing voting patterns of demographics and the rural vote was going to shift towards Republicans. And if you packed more high propensity Democratic voters, and the most hyperpensity of all were black voters into race based districts, that would be
good for Republicans, and that way well be true. I have never gone back to look at things like.
No, that's yeah, I know, there's like I think people wrote about it at the time at New Gingridge right right, the NAACP basically in the South had an unholy ALLIANCEACP wanted to have more black representatives and Gingrich was happy to have all the other districts in the suburbs.
Yeah, they got more Republican and and right, that's another variation the bootleggers and Baptist coalition, if you know that story. But here's the question, was this unacceptably unprincipled or is it just hoisting democrats by their own petard? I could see Lucretia you going either way on that question. I don't find by the way, I remember, sorry, I remember the time people like Terry Eastland and Bill Bennett were
saying this is a bad idea. We should not be for doing this, on on on on the sound.
Princi gentlemen as always, aren't they Well okay, I mean, what are we going to say that Florida shouldn't have a partisan gerrymandered their legislative districts in response to Virginia or I mean, here's the problem. John has said it very well himself that until we play their game better than they will, they're never going to stop. So no, of course, of course you had individual Republicans. This was
especially true in California for the longest time. Who who you know, in order to preserve their own safe Republican district, would you know, vote along with the redistricting plans of the Democrats. I mean that happened many, many times, at least when I was still there. I don't pay as much attention now to you people as I used to
when I when it affected me. But I I want to bring up one other quick point that's related about back to universities for a moment, you know anymore, it's not the issue so much of having minorities and persons of color and LGBTQ and all those other things. It's
there's too damn many old professors who won't retire. All the mandatory retirement laws are gone, and so this is causing in and of its self problems because as long as you have an old professor like me, and they talk about people in their sixties hanging barely hanging on, you know, being sane Alzheimer, et cetera, demented, And I am preventing some lgbd Q plus plus plus woman of color, they them from getting a job in political science. Yeah, yeah, well,
by the way I feel about that. Sorry. Yeah.
There is an op ed in the New York Times in the last few days by Sam Moyne of ye Law School. I think is a very sinister person. He's very smart, but he's very evil, I think. And it was there's too many old people in academi and elsewhere. They need these old baby boomers need to get out of the way. Some other time we can talk about him. But your point, lucretia, uh, and then we'll move on to a new subject after a break. And it's all right, I'm doing this a little out of order from what
I propose. But your point about yeah, being gentlemen by the way. I think that's too wrong. About Bill Bennet and Terry Eastland thirty years ago. I mean, they wrote some of the earliest books about what was wrong with the race racket. But okay, and I thought maybe we could win in those days by making those arguments, but I think experience has shown that the left is impervious to those And so yeah, during the Reagan years, I would get very frustrated when Reagan people would they say, oh,
you're you're you're hurting the environment. They say, oh, no, we're spending more for this, We're doing the rules for that. They're always in defensive crouch posture, accepting the premises of the liberals who attack them. And that's happened on civil riots, that's happened on welfare programs. Trump has brought an end to this. And so I told you I'd skip over Lee Zelden, the EPA director, and Rosa de Laurel the
other day, because it involves that statute. That's the language of Mordor to John who was that?
I thought that was Keith Richards with purple hair.
The Laurel, you know, she's right out of She's clearly wants to be part of the canteena scene in Star Wars. So here is if you know, most of our listeners may not be on Twitter, but here's Lee's Eldon, head of the EPA, who put out a tweet two days ago. I'll just read. It's a long one, but I'll just give the first two paragraphs theez Eldon. I told Senator Sheldon White club today that I won't be listening to or caring about any of his lessons on morality, knowing
that he joined an all white Rhode Island country club. Boom, that's me saying boom. Next paragraph. I'm also done with the likes of aoc Al Gore, John Kerry and the rest of the line ball that made stupid climate predictions. I put it stupid like Lucretia does under tens of billions of tax dollars, enriched their well connected allies, and are committed to strangulating out of existence entire sectors of our economy. It goes on from there in that same vein.
But darn it, this is the way we should have been fighting for a long time, and now we're finally doing it, and I think it's going to set the present move forward.
You know your it's kind of like why John wins every debate with everybody but us not because he knows his facts, he knows the law, he knows how to bring it.
And strangely doesn't work on this podcast, strangely because.
We know the facts and the law and the esotericism.
All right, let's have a very quick ad break here because we have to to make it work with our format, and we'll come back in just a moment, So don't go away, everybody, all right, time for our lightning round. And I looked up at the news this week and thought, gosh, it turns out that Anthony Fauci really did need that pardon from President Biden. Take it away, Lucretia.
Well, there's there's there's several aspects to the story, one of which is the fact that it's pretty clear that Fauci and his minions were responsible, along with the Chinese, for producing the virus and accidentally letting it go. They tried to hide that through emails, and one of Fauci's
somebody assistants has been indicted on it. But then there's the other side of it, which is the cover up within the scientific the federal establishment, scientific community of the fact that the vaccine itself can't even call it a vaccine, but they did was turning out to be incredibly dangerous that there were, you know, that the data were proving that people were not just getting all the other things
we know happened to them, but dying suddenly. And there's massive emails now that where they talk about how they're not going to put any of these things in emails anymore because otherwise they're going to be foyer requests. And it's just it's all so despicable when you look at the mandates and the crap that came out of the disinterred by mouth about you know, the winter and then the all you people that are going to make us die because you're not getting a vaccine that's going to
keep us from getting sick from you. You know, none of it even made sense, but they shut down every possible person who might have any credibility questioning that so much so that you know, my my university and I'll lightning round, you know, I'll be done. My university was led at the time by a man for whom I have great respect, world renowned cardiac surgeon. He knew what
was going on, was BS he absolutely knew. He tried to push back at the beginning and then completely folded, completely folded, as did the dean of the medical school. He said, at the beginning of fall twenty twenty, the thing we need to do is let all these students come in, have their parties, get as drunk as possible, do everything that students do, get over it, and then
we'll be fine. But instead, of course, you know, we went through the jont anyway, so that and I'm going to add one last quick thing, and that is the whole business that we have also known about about the Biden administration's persecution of traditional Christians.
That didn't right, go ahead, well, I mean yeah, I mean we knew during while Biden was in office. We knew that they were harassing Catholics and putting got documents saying, you know, the Catholic Church is a subversive, extremist organization and until the new pope started criticizing Trump and now they love them. But the point is now we're getting
some additional details and I haven't mastered them. But a question for John is if there's documentary evidence and maybe you could depose some of these people in Justice Department that they really did have an animus against certain Christian denominations and Christian organizations. Are they vulnerable to any kind of civil rights or civil liberties lawsuits, criminal or civil. Do you have an opinion? Are you following any of this at all?
John, And I mean I saw the report that was issued by the Justice Department this week which suggests that the Biden administration just sort of systematically, across multiple cabinet agencies, was almost deliberately trampling on the civil you know, the right to free exercise of religion, and particularly with against Christians. I don't think that they could be prosecuted for it. I mean, it is illegal to deprive people of their
constitutional rights. What they're going to say, I assume is that we don't believe that the Constitution requires what you think it requires. So we just had a different good faith view that the constitutional right to free exercise is much narrower than what you think it is. Or it might have been that the laws changed in the Supreme Courts broad in it. So I think you could kind of bring us you could bring to civil I don't think criminal work at all. You could bring civil, but
I think they would be hard to win. Also, generally federal officers have immunity from lawsuit for damages options except in very narrow circumstances, and so you know, like you would have to show that this was a clearly established right and that the government. So I think it's really hard to win cases like this. So it's called it's
called Biven's action, is what we call it. I remember that's the case where the government, the Supreme War did allow lawsuits for against FBI agents for violating your right against search and illegal search and seizure. But the court has really chipped away of Biden Biven sorry creature, which it was called Biden's but in the Bivns case over the years to make it really hard to bring these
kind of cases. So I think the main punishment is the political process, you know, oversight hearings and making clear who did it and why they did it, and it'll have an electoral effect, which I think it did have an electoral effect, you know, going for liberty for being right, you know, some kind of seditious group and or hate group. And I think that's the main remedy of I think fortunately, actually I think it's better for it to be a political result rather than.
Right, just one sentence. I would like to see a hearing where they're pressed on the question of I'd like to hear you explain why you thought it was a good faith effort to say you don't like people of faith. That would be a good boo opening, Cracia.
Sorry, I actually heard you're the only other person who gets as much FaceTime on legal issues as you on Fox. And that's Jonathan Turley today talking about this very thing.
And one of the things he said was that it's really much worse than you're you're hearing because they went so far as to do things to say that a Christian family who wanted to adopt or foster a child that their religious beliefs were per se all problematic because they didn't, for instance, embrace transgender rights and all of
these other things. And I wanted to actually ask John though, as I recall, the court has never been quite as strong as it should be on the idea that think about some of the Colorado cases and the cake Maker. I know he won every time, but he didn't win any astounding victories. That's how they managed to keep taking
him back to court. The idea that you would not have an absolute free exercise right based upon history and tradition, along with the you know, the First Amendment Free exercise clause to say I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. I believed X, Y, and Z and and in order to practice my faith, if I want to adopt a child, this is the way I'm
going to raise them. And and the state has no right to tell me that this other trendy thing that they're all in favor of, all of a sudden supersedes my First Amendment free exercise rights. Yeah, as clear as they should.
Am I wrong? I agree with the Biden administration to I think what their defense is going to be is, well, you know there's this case called Smith, right, that's oh, the government is allowed to pursue these generally applicable policies and they're not targeting religion, so they was I mean, I don't. I actually Smith is wrong, and I think eventually,
of course can overrule it. But Biden's the bite puple say, look, we can't be prosecuted, we can't be suitsivilly because we understood Smith to mean that this was okay, that you know,
we weren't singling out religion. We're just saying religious groups, you have to follow our transgender policies that we apply to everybody, right, Like, that's that's gonna be argument that I think the courts would be sympathetic, even though they just I think a lot of the judges would disagree with the way they went about it because they're gonna biden people say we didn't single out religion. We just wanted everybody to follow right transgender policy.
All right, all right, yes, right now, one last issue before we have to head to a close. I think I am probably guilty of thinking that wokery peaked a few years ago and is on the decline, or at least on the defensive. And certainly the Trump administration has been trying very hard to beat down on DEI and all the rest of it. But I'm not sure I'm right about that if I did say that, And the
data points just from this week are severalfold. First well, first of all, general proposition, A lot of what went by WOKERI and defund the police and all the rest of that has now transmographied into the anti semitism that's overtaken the Democratic Party in a big way. Lead that aside for the moment. But this week we've saw a New York Times editorial or an op ed article praising micro looting. Right, we're back to the you know, no,
that's what it was, called micro looting. And then there's this Hassan Piker guy who's apparently very popular on social media. I've paid no attention to him, but he had a moment on the New York Times podcast where he set some really way out there stuff, equivocating about whether the CEO of the United Health deserved to be murdered a few months ago. You have this cram plot and that we deserve nine to eleven, he said, lots about horrible stuff. You have this grand Platner guy in Maine who has
chased the governor out of the Senate race. The governor hand picked really by Chuck Schumer to be a credible candidate against Susan Collins, which is probably right, and this guy's way out there, we'll just stipulate that. And then finally there's the Trump they would be Trump assassin from
last weekend. And you know, some of these other assassins look like they were, you know, kind of wacko people, but this guy's manifesto sounds like the talking point of every show on MS now and what many Democratic politicians say, or even the New York Times columns, right, And I'm sitting here thinking, Ah, this, this suggests to me that
this is so deeply rooted. It's not going to go away, but just one term of Trump, it's going to come back with a vengeance, especially if you have some wacko when the presidential election in twenty twenty eight, which I think is the possibility. I don't know.
I think I do think that there's actually a deeper issue there. Steve kind of ties it all together, and that is that because there is so much Trump arrangement syndrome out there, that the left has been more successful at reaching so many more people with the complete complicit support of the media, that that it is going to give wokery a more of a stronghold than it I
think it would otherwise have. I think the twenty twenty four election was an indication that the average American is way smarter than the average liberal, There's no doubt about that, and certainly way smarter than the average progressive in Congress. Of God, those people are dumb.
But anyway, Wait, you thought liberals are just more immoral, not dumber.
Oh god, they've had to be stupid, you know, they'd have to be stupid to believe the things that they do and to believe everything that the media pushes out at them. I mean, just think about the Deloro Zelden back and forth. She's been in Congress for how long and she doesn't know what the major Supreme Court opinions about the administrative state and the powers of Congress and all those other things that you know, Lee Zelden could just pop off like that and she doesn't even know that.
She doesn't bother she's not even embarrassed to pretend she doesn't know them, you know, I mean, just anyway, So I do think, by the way, I the TDS is making what you're talking about a much more problematic kind of thing, Steve, that's my point.
Well, okay, well I did think Zelden, who he was fantastic, but I thought he had missed one opportunity because she was saying, oh, you're like, you're not protecting the environment, blah blah. He said, well, I don't have the legal authority. Two. I thought the next sent should have been, this is, by the way, the people who do have the authority
to give us that authority. Are you in Congress, We could do this if you will pass a statute that would have had would have been an embarrassing moment for but for another time probably. But what we want to do is go to our last quick ad break, and then we're going to go to our show clothes with a couple of new features. So don't go away, We'll be right back, all right, Lucretia, what levity does the bee have or us today to letigate our spirits?
All of these are pertaining, op ed. If we stop discriminating based on the color of people's skin, the racists will have won. Democrats na inciting violence and say anyone who thinks they do must be eliminated by any means necessary. Well, now the liberals progressives are applauding the diversity of would be Trump's assassins.
But jeez, back up, by the way the previous one. I mean, you must know the story of the time Professor Jaffa was in Voidier for a jury and one of the lawyers are saying, I see that you're a professor. How do you evaluate, say, the expert testimony of a psychiatrist and Jaffa's answer was anyone who would believe the testimony he've a psychiatrist, ought to have his head examined.
He was.
He was dismissed instantly.
Yeah, sorry, it's quite all right. Uh A nice commentary. This one is a little bit personal, but very very reflective of reality. Lucretia splits commute time between worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ and cursing out bad drivers. And I cannot tell you how true that is, even having like Christian music playing. And then also, you know, especially in my town with the old people. Okay, sorry it is Is it too late? This is my favorite? Is it
too late to ask? Who this guy? Jerry mander is Ky whispers to Clarence Thomas.
I saw that that was fun so great.
Pole Show's majority of Democrats believe Lincoln assassination stage. It's so funny, you know. Anyway, I have to failed Assassinationmocrats observed customary five minute pause on calling Trump hitler. Okay, the last two are a little bit. We didn't even talk about this. John didn't accuse us again wrongly of being Anglo files or something or you know, Monarka.
Sorry monarch.
Yeah, Trump presents King Charles with gift of toothbrush.
I don't get that.
Oh have you never seen Austin powers?
Well I did, but a long time ago.
I mean that was just the easy answer, Steve. That's nothing, I get it.
Yeah right, yeah, this totally.
Non political one. But for those of us who travel in and out of Austin, not you anymore because you have your own car there, John, but architect carefully designs airport so rental car center is conveniently located seventy five miles away.
That's yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah.
Right, Well, always drink your whiskey meat, buy more books than Steve. You have a land grant, I mean land acknowledgment grant.
Yeah, I challenged AI to give us a land acknowledgement. I wasn't happy with most of the results, but there's one that's halfway good. You'll like it, John, as kind of a law and econ version of it. So I think we can adopt this for a while. We would like to acknowledge that this land was once inhabited by people who, regrettably for them, did not file the proper paperwork, secure enforceable property rights, or develop a sufficiently aggressive zoning strategy.
Through a series of entirely peaceful, mutually beneficial, and definitely not historically contentious transactions, stewardship of this land has been transferred to its current, far more efficient custodians. We recognize the original inhabitants deep connection to this land, a connection we now honor through thoughtfully named subdivisions, artisanal coffee shops and interpret plaques place just far enough from luxury parking structures to avoid inconvenience. There's more to it, but I
kind of like I love that one's free. I think it's not bad. But to sign off for good, you have been listening to the three Whisky Happy Hour dedicated to single malts, singular metaphysics, advanced Sydney swinging studies, and other nonsense. I will just say, we really would like it if you would give us a five star review on Apple, iTunes and other places. But you know that by now, so I want to say that every other week or every third week.
But that's it for this week, by everybody.
Ricochet joined the conversation, sh