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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, February 8,
2023. It's about five or six minutes after 11 o'clock in the morning here on the east coast
of the United States. You know, I go to bed early and
I get up early. So I did not watch the State of the Union last night. I watched major clips of it
this morning. I didn't watch the entire State of the Union in its entirety. From the Reagan years
onward, since Ronald Reagan was such a showman, it's become a bit of a pep rally. Even going back
to JFK, it was a bit of a pep rally. The Constitution requires the president produce
a State of the Union annually. For 100 years, it was produced in writing, a practice started or amplified by Jefferson. Washington and Adams regularly sent
reports to Congress. Jefferson sent one entitled The State of the Union, but he never actually
delivered it. Today, it's a pep rally. Republicans cheer Republican presidents. Last night, in an effort to tweak the Republicans,
Joe Biden made some comments, President Biden made some comments about Social Security.
And when you say Social Security, you really mean its cousins or its nieces and nephews,
I should call it, Medicare and Medicaid,
and basically said that the Republicans wanted to sunset it.
I wish the Republicans did want to sunset it.
Sunset it means if you put money in, you'll get money out.
But you don't have to put money in anymore.
You can do what you want with your own money,
which is the free market, small government,
constitutional way to do this, since there's no authority whatsoever in the Constitution
for the government forcibly to take money away from you and then pretend to be giving it back.
FDR used to say, we will hold your money for you in your bank account, and you will have it when in your old age, you'll
be able to look forward to it as a supplement to your own savings. Of course, today, we know the
government doesn't hold the money in your bank account. The government spends the money and
takes out what it needs to pay for Social Security. And of course,
it pays out a lot more, excuse me, it takes in a lot more than it pays out. It's a Ponzi scheme.
Some years it takes out a lot more than it pays in. If you or I concocted this kind of a scheme,
we'd end up like Bernie Madoff, spending 120 years in jail and eventually
dying there. So when Joe Biden, referring to a Republican proposal, which never saw the light
of day, came from Senator Rick Scott of Florida, that all federal laws should be sunset after five years. A great idea. Jefferson wanted the Constitution to sunset
after 19 years, so it would have to be re-ratified. And of course, if all laws were sunset after five
years, then Congress would have to reenact them. That's a great idea. Instead of saddling us with 5,200 federal criminal laws that no human being
on the planet is fully familiar with, Congress would have to rewrite, re-debate, re-vote on,
re-enact all the laws. You'd see far fewer laws and a lot more freedom. All right, back to old Joe
on Social Security. See if you can guess who's
cheering and booing at this one. Some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset.
I'm not saying it's a majority.
Let me give you, anybody who doubts it,
contact my office. I'll give you a copy. I'll give you a copy of the proposal.
All right. So it's the Republicans that were booing, denying that they wanted to sunset,
denying that they offered that as a proposal, which they did, denying that that proposal is
consistent with small government and maximum
individual liberty. It is. You make your own choice. You want this government program when
you're 65, you start paying into it when you're 25. You would rather invest your own money in
your own way. It's your choice to do so. Government should have nothing to do with taking
care of individual people. I'm not talking about the states. I'm not talking about local government.
I'm talking about the federal government. It's not authorized under the Constitution.
These people couldn't care less about the Constitution. But it was the Republicans that
were booing when Joe Biden suggested a proposal that they themselves had offered.
And about two minutes later, when he said, don't worry, nobody's going to touch Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.
Boom. He gets a standing ovation. Republicans rejecting what principles they once had and embracing the principles of big government. Give money away
and you'll still get reelected. All you rich Republicans, if you're so anxious to give money
away, give your own money away. Let the rest of us decide to do what we want with ours.
All right, one more line from old Joe last night. Watch him explain yet again how he doesn't understand the first thing about guns.
Here he is on assault weapons.
Banned assault weapons now.
Banned them now.
Once and for all.
I led the fight to do that in 1994.
In 10 years, that ban was law and mass shootings went down.
After we let it expire in the Republican administration, mass shootings tripled.
Let's finish the job and ban these assault weapons.
Well, here's how misleading it is. There have been more mass shootings, but they have nothing to do these assault weapons. Well, here's how misleading it is. There have been more mass
shootings, but they have nothing to do with assault weapons. In fact, killings with assault
weapons, according to the Wall Street Journal, are significantly down now that assault weapons
are legal. Look, I apologize. I'm falling for Joe Biden's language. To him, an assault weapon is a rifle
that you can hold with both hands. So the left hand has a piece you can hold on it,
and it has a ring on the front of it on which you can put, you ready for this? You've probably
never seen one, a bayonet. Who in their right mind will put a bayonet on a rifle?
And why would the government define an assault weapon as a rifle with a handle on the front
and a bayonet clip at the tip of it? That's just ridiculous government speak,
but we're trying to find a category of weapons that we can ban. My British friend and former colleague, still a good friend,
at Fox News, Stuart Varney, who of course was raised in Great Britain where nobody owns any
weapons, once said, well on earth, why in the name of the mother of God, as you Catholics would say,
would you even want one of these assault weapons? I said, Stuart, put a banana in your mouth. Set me at 20 yards away from you, and I will slice the banana perfectly with what you consider an assault weapon.
What on earth are you talking about?
I'm talking about a weapon that is one of the best defense weapons known to man because it is so supremely and superbly accurate.
If you know how to use it, it's your friend. There's no reason
to be afraid of it. But beyond that, the Supreme Court has ruled that you have an individual,
personal, natural right to own the same weapons that the bad guys do and that the government has.
I remember Hillary Clinton screaming and yelling,
just like Joe Biden when she was running for president in 2012, about assault weapons.
And of course, she was talking about these very accurate rifles with the handle in the left hand
and the bayonet clip, if you want to be stupid enough to put a bayonet on it at the tip. Surrounded by U.S. Marshals and security from the
State Department, because she was the Secretary of State at the time, two of whom had assault
weapons, collapsible ones that you can fit under your coat jacket, two of whom had assault weapons
there to protect her, the very weapons that she's complaining about.
So under the Supreme Court's ruling, you can own the same weapons that the bad guys do and that the government has.
Why? Because the police come after the bad guys are gone. And you should have the right to defend yourself using the same or superior firepower when someone attacks your life, your liberty, your property, or the lives and property of your loved ones.
Secondly, Justice Scalia addresses this in the Heller opinion.
You should have the same level of sophisticated weaponry that the government has. Because if the government is taken over by tyrants,
you might just have to use that weaponry to preserve your liberty. Thirdly, Justice Thomas's
opinion last June, the Bruin case, the right to carry arms, you have the right to carry, to bear, as Madison wrote in the Second Amendment,
the same arms that have historically been born, owned, and carried throughout the United States.
What's that? The same guns that the bad guys have, the same guns that the government has.
Period. End of story. All efforts by local and state governments and nonsense like you heard from the president last night are profoundly unconstitutional. That's not me, even though I agree with it. That's the Supreme Court of the United States in three opinions. Heller versus the District of Columbia, McDonald versus Illinois, and Bruin versus the state of New York.
When will they learn?
When will they learn?
He also called for a federal law authorizing abortions.
Read the Supreme Court's opinion, Joe.
Only the states can regulate abortion.
You want abortions, come to New Jersey.
You don't want abortions, live in Texas.
That's nothing to do with the federal government.
It's health, safety, and criminal.
Those areas are reserved to the states.
More as we get it.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.