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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, January 6th,
excuse me, January 10th, January 10th, 2023. It's about five after two in the afternoon on the East Coast of the United States. Hold on
to your gas stoves. What am I talking about? The Biden administration Consumer Product Safety
Commission has just completed studies showing that gas stoves are dangerous, that they cause
asthma in young people in many of the homes that have gas stoves. Where are we going from here? If Joe
Biden thinks that one of his administrative agencies can ban a product which has been in
household use in the United States of America for 125 years, he's got another thing coming.
This is another example of an administrative agency, the Consumer Products Safety Commission,
a bunch of pointy-headed bureaucrats, the head of it appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate,
but the bureaucrats that work there are there no matter who's in the White House and who's running
the place. They are the ones writing a rule that will ban gas stoves. So I was exaggerating a bit
when I said, hold on to your gas stoves. They can't stop you from using
a stove that you have. They can make it expensive for the gas company to deliver you gas. They can
make it difficult for you to get parts to repair it, and they can make it impossible for you to
buy a new stove, but if the stove that you have is working, if the gas is blowing, they can't make you get
rid of it. Why do we tolerate a government where unelected bureaucrats can write these rules? Let's
say gas stoves were terribly dangerous, not only for the house that has them, but for the house
next door. Shouldn't that be a judgment call by the local government? Because what's dangerous in the middle of Manhattan might not be dangerous in the middle of Montana.
Is this really an issue for the federal government?
And if it is an issue for any government, should it be done by bureaucrats or should it be done by our elected representatives. Why do we have elected representatives in the Congress,
only to have them give away a portion of their authority to unelected, unaccountable, unknown
bureaucrats who operate in the dark? That's the administrative state. My column this week,
which I just finished writing, which comes out at 1159 PM on Wednesday night so it's
fresh and ready for Monday morning is called a government
by experts and it is an attack on the concept of the
administrative state. You know, agreed with me, Justice Scalia.
Justice Scalia said many times when the Congress
lets administrators write rules, that's unconstitutional because the power that the
Constitution delegates to the Congress, it can't delegate away. It can't give it to the president.
It can't give it to the courts. It can't give it to these nameless, faceless, unanswerable, unaccountable, unknown bureaucrats.
And I think the administrative state, all these bureaucrats are in for a rude awakening
because I think the Supreme Court, finally, this Supreme Court, this term, before June of this year,
will accept the Scalia view that only Congress can write federal laws
and the bureaucrats can't. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.