The Ricochet Podcast - Alien to the Court

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

Ricochet’s beloved former editor Mollie Hemingway is back with a new book, Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution. We’re so thrilled, in fact, that we couldn’t even keep Peter Robinson away. So Mollie leads our embarrassment of hosts through her exclusive scoop on the Supreme Court’s most enigmatic justice. Tune in for an in-depth report covering everything Alito—from the political dramas starting with his confirmation to the leak of his best-known Dobbs opinion, and analysis of the particulars of his legal philosophy, his mastery over oral proceedings, and ultimately his influence over the increasingly originalist branch of government.And with investigative journalism in mind, our quartet digs into reports about rampant Medicaid fraud in Ohio, and James tries to pin the panelists down on their stance on aliens, UFOs and G-man plots. The gang also guffaws at the Virginia Supreme Court's redistricting rebuff and manages to find quibblible claims against the common understanding of invasive species.

This is the first big batch of UFO disclosure ordered by President Trump. Some of the clips and videos on there have popped up different places before. Some of them have not. And we have been going through this all morning and overnight to try to put together some of the best video. So we can all look at this together. This is a world exclusive right here. It's the Rickettsie podcast with Peter Robinson. That's right.

I said Peter Robinson and Stephen Hayward and Charles C.W. I'm James Lillax, and today we're going to be talking to Molly Hemming away about our new book about Alito. So let's have ourselves a podcast. The Supreme Court of Virginia got it exactly right. The governor's gerrymandering scheme failed. The current fair congressional maps will stay in place for the 2026 elections. You don't change the Constitution in the middle of an election. Welcome, everybody.

It's the Rickisholet podcast number 788. I'm James Lillex in Edina, Minnesota, and I'm joined by. Charles CW Cook in Florida, Stephen Hayward, somewhere, I believe, in California. And if you can believe it, he's joined by Peter Robinson. We're the founders. Gentlemen, welcome, and especially Peter, welcome back. Thank you, James. It's delight to be back.

And I'm seated right next to Steve. As well, you are. Somewhere in California, as you put it. And behind you, even though the podcast, of course, is an audio medium, there's a poster what appears to be CCCP and Ronald Reagan in a football uniform defeating the demons of Marxism. Do I have that correct? Because you're at the Reagan Library and one would expect such a wonderful tabloes. Actually, we're at the Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara, which is separate from the library. We're in their glorious boardroom looking out, it's foggy this morning, but looking out

over the Pacific Ocean and departing to visit Reagan's wonderful mountaintop ranch directly after we finished this episode. Well, I imagine that the Reagan Library does not have the sort of appearance of Obama's library, which appears to be something that the Eloys would construct to keep the moorlocks in line. It is an absolutely dreadful. Nicely put. And the New York Times in discussing the art of the building this week had a piece, of course, called the audacity of art. And everything inside was as predictable as you can possibly imagine. There's nothing audacious about it. Adacious would be some good Soviet realism or some representational art. But that's another podcast. Here today, we are to discuss all the things that have bubbled up in the last

week. And we've got smart minds to take a look. So who wants to have a crack at what appears to be breaking news. Virginia's Supreme Court rules, the redistricting referendum unconstitutional for three procedural grounds. The challenger successfully argued, apparently, I'm reading here obviously, that lawmakers fail to pass the proposal across two legislative sessions separated by a general election. Details, details, details, details. All right, gentlemen, somebody take this. What does it mean? And should the rest of the country care? Charlie being in Florida has been awake for three hours longer than Steve and I. And I'm presume that Charlie being Charlie has also read the decision itself perhaps. So I want to hear

about it from Charlie myself. Well, it is hilarious, isn't it? It is. It is hilarious. It is hilarious. I do because Senator Louise Lucas, who pushed this whole thing, was full of it. She was swearing on Twitter. She was calling people who disagree with her. cucks. And now she's been arrested and her initiative went down. So it was procedural grounds. The

court made it very clear that some might ask why it hadn't done this prior to the referendum. And it said but the common rule of Virginia is not allowed to ask that question given that it insisted that it couldn't because precedent in Virginia holds that

they have to wait until there is a referendum. to strike down. They can't do it proactively, and they point out quite rightly, that if you take the position that it shouldn't get involved before a referendum and that after a referendum is violating the will of the people, then you essentially abolish the court. So Twitter is full this morning of people saying, it's crazy. They allowed the state to waste $70 million. But that's not really true. The state told the court correctly, given precedent, it wasn't allowed to get involved. What happened here was very simple, James said it.

The rules in Virginia are pretty clear. You can't do this sort of thing while an election is on. And Virginia has very long early voting periods. They're already in one. And so the three dissents say that's not the election. They say the election's only election day. Early voting isn't the election. And they're majority says that's nonsense. And there's this great little passage in there where the majority says, if you stopped somebody who was early voting at the polling place and said to him, what are you doing here? He would say, I'm voting in the election. And if you said to him, no, that's not the election. He would be mightily confused, which is true. So, yeah, they pushed it too far. They knew what they were doing was unconstitutional. And the last thing is,

Jason Mayaris, who is the former attorney general of Virginia, is taking a bit of a victory lap today, which is deserved because last year his office put out an opinion in which he said exactly what the court said in its majority opinion. And he had offered the Democrats in Virginia the chance to go through it with him and they declined and called him names. Well, he won. So is this appealable anywhere? It's a matter of state constitutional law and the Supreme Court of Virginia, which has just ruled, is the ultimate and final authority. There's no appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States or any other court of any kind. Is that correct?

I believe that's correct because I don't think there's a federal constitutional issue at stake. I think it's purely a matter of state law. And the Speaker of the House of Delegates in Virginia said today, they'll respect the court's opinion. Now, I don't know if that means they won't appeal because that's not up to him. That's up to our best friend, the Attorney General of Virginia, J. Jones, who's famous for wanting to kill other people's children. but I don't think it looks like they're going to appeal this.

But whom would they appeal it to? Well, they could appeal it to the court if there was some procedural problem, I suppose. Which court? They'd ask the federal court, I think? No, I think in theory you could appeal it in the Virginia Supreme Court if something changed, right, if there was a substantial shift in the facts. But what could there be? There are some parallel instances of these.

kind of state Supreme Court rulings about ballot initiatives. Oregon, some decades ago, well, 20, 30 years ago, they had a whole series of conservative ballot measures that passed, and the Oregon Supreme Court, state Supreme Court, which was very radical at the time, struck down almost all of them on usually very technical grounds of violating the so-called single subject rule. It was usually nonsense, and there was almost a recall campaign mounted against a couple of the Supreme Court justices there who became nationally famous for standing up to the conservatives. But that was always the end of it.

There was no appeal of any of those rulings to federal court that succeeded. So I don't see why Virginia would be any more optimistic that they could overturn us at the federal level. No, I don't think that's going to happen. Because of the timing is a problem. We have a new map in Florida. And there was some brouhaha electoral wise in Indiana. People say the administration could be looking at 10 additional seats by 2028.

Interesting. when everybody's been talking about it below, of course, because of gases at 449, then they lose. If gases at 389, they win. Interesting how this will all turn out. Another subject that I think you gentlemen would like to talk about because it fascinates me. It's keen germane to where I live, and it turns out that it's germane to everywhere. And that's Medicaid fraud where. Oh, in Ohio this time.

So the Daily Wire sent a guy to Ohio, and he did what all of these independents. journalists do that apparently state agencies and mainstream medias don't really seem to wonder why a windowless building on the edge of town has 158 hospice centers crammed into one post office box. And when they go there, every time you look at it, you find a billion dollars has been spent on people who have been vetted not a bit, who are often politically connected, who have no medical background. And it's just an empty office with a sign on that, with a piece of paper with something squalled on a Sharpie to indicate that there's a business there, we're losing huge amounts of money to this. And you wonder if there will be some sort of tectonic shift because of it.

Because if nothing else, this shows that the largesse of the state, far from starving people and saying, oh, my gosh, we're not spending enough money on the welfare of our citizens, that huge amounts of money are being pitchforked out every day to criminals who are wasting it, sending it back home living high on the hog and that essentially nobody knows how much of the extraordinary amount of money that we spend on these things is absolute criminality, is absolute fraud. So what do you guys think? Peter, you're in California. I believe that there's been some, they found, what, 297 centers for dying people crammed into a shoebox that was taped to the side of an office building somewhere. To me, the heartening part about all this is that investigative journalism is

being reinvented. We have had a collapse here in California of the LA Times, which used to be, of course, it was always left of center in its good days and became more left, and now it's just irrelevant. And Chris Rufo's organization, I don't know, if I, I can't remember what the Aegis, under what EGIS Chris, couldn't have been the Manhattan Institute where Chris is a fellow, but Chris Rufo's organization has discovered fraud here. They're actually onto a story. They've got names and dates and amounts of money. What's broken in Ohio, another organization. Peter Schweitzer has an operation in Tallahassee, which is doing real investigative journalism. It's moving out, it's no longer being performed by newspapers at all. Do you, Steve, am I right

about this? But investigative journalism is being reasserted, reinvented by good guys on our side. Isn't that roughly correct? Yeah, that's right. And don't leave out the California Post, which is the brand new New York Post West Coast Edition, and they're going to be after some of this. They're still gearing up, but Chris's operation is actually through City Journal, which is going to revive a California edition here at some point.

Which is the publication of the Manhattan Institute. So, okay. Right. Wonderful train sound. I know. We're by the train. The Amtrak train station. I can add to that, since we do have a train whistle. It may not seem related to the welfare fraud,

but we did just get news in California this week that are high-speed rail that was initially promised to cost only $33 billion is now projected to cost $230 billion before they finish it and they're never going to finish it so that's where we are right the point I don't want to finish they know the point is to shovel money to unions which is extraordinary when everybody says we can't do anything in this country anymore we can't build dams we're taking them apart we can't build rail the rest of it no we can it's just that we lack a political class that has the will to do it or the desire to do it and finish it um it's

It's obvious when you look at Elon Musk and Space X and Tesla and other companies that, of course, America still can do these things if unfettered from and not connected to the lugubrious massive government that sits upon us. Well, yes, you're right. It's great that a new class of journalists are doing it, but you always have to wonder, the response of the mainstream media is often to sniff and to discount it because who are these rank amateurs? They didn't go to journalism school, which means nothing, by the way. Never trust anybody who went to journalism school. I was in newspapers in college for a long time, longer than I should have. And it was always astonishing to me that we sat underneath an actual journalism school, and we were producing an actual daily newspaper of 60 papers and 60 pages a day with a 60,000 circulation.

And the people from the J school upstairs never came down to work there. They just got their degrees and they took their classes and then went out to do their work with those of us actually doing journalism. Well, so I think part of it is that there's a real uncomfortable feeling in the, mainstream media with who they're finding out is doing the crime. Well, you know, Peter and I, you know, we're here doing all good Reagan reminiscing for two days. And we were reflecting on how Reagan was assailed for attacking welfare queens. He never actually used that phrase, by the way. That was the media spin to attack him.

And so the media very seldom followed up on any of the stories he referenced. There was the Chicago Tribune actually did find the woman in Chicago who was registered with 50 accounts and all that. But the point was is that, you know, Reagan, that we used to say went over the heads of the media to the American people. We need to have that happen now. So by the way, I have a field theory on this that I can lay out real quickly, that all this is deliberate. I mean, the media and the Democratic Party, this is actually on purpose.

And I actually think it began here in California. It just came to me of this week. After the North Ridge earthquake in 1994, it was a very serious earthquake. My parents were living there then. And FEMA showed up, and there were huge complaints that FEMA's too slow getting checks to people who are desperate and their apartments have fallen down and their businesses have been destroyed and write the damn checks. And so word came down from the Clinton administration. Quit doing all this due diligence. Just write the checks and hand them out the people who show up

with like no excuses, no questions asked. And then I think this spread to Medicaid. Oh, COVID, same way. Shove the money out the door. And I actually think this is Ayrsat's redistributionism for the left. It's inefficient, but given that radical or punitive egalitarianism is now a core principle of the left, they don't recognize it as fraud. This is overdue reparations. You use any of the buzzwords you want. And I think that's why it's happened and why Tim Walts and others are against investigating any of this because they're for it. Reparations and the rest. You're right.

Two calleries of this. One, there was a recent scandal because it turns out that a lot of the money that people donated for the Pacific Palace. States fire. I didn't go there at all. And the relevant organizations are saying, we never said we were going to give the money with people's houses burned down. You know, is going to podcasters and art installations and other affected communities and the rest of it, which just shows what a big sloshing pile of money that it is that they do with as they wish. And when the NGO spout dries up because of Doge, well, then you just piggyback off of fire. But the second thing, Charles, I don't want to leave you out of the loop on this, unless I'm mistaken, Florida was successful in

actually building a train, a fast train quickly, were they not? Yes, although that company looks as if it might be in trouble. Why? Because it's running out of money. It's expanded quite quickly. That's usually how it happens. To explain where the train go, it's also fairly expensive. Yeah, the bright line. It doesn't come up to me in Jacksonville. It runs from Orlando and then across to the east coast and then down to Fort Lauderdale and Miami. It was supposed to be a bit bigger. It was supposed to go to Disney World as well. And there was talk of it coming up to Jacksonville, but that didn't happen.

Anyway, they are completely private. They took no government money. And if they go out of business, it's really none of my business. But I think they expanded a little bit too quickly. The one thing they do have going for them is they bought an awful lot of land. And people have described them as a real estate company pretending to be a railroad. So they may be all right. But I did notice in the last week there's a lot of stories about their future.

Anyway, they got it built just as whether people want to take trains, which is my big criticism because I'm a big train hater. I hate trains. I would use the Air Force to bomb all the trains, not for cargo, but just for passengers. We'd get the passengers out first. But trains are communist and should be replaced by airplanes. where possible. Well, we could just cheerfully blather on here or we could talk to our guest who we love to talk to whenever possible. That's Molly Hemingway. Editor-in-chief of the Federalist,

journalism fellow with Hillsdale College and a Fox News contributor. She's the author of four books as of April 21st and the latest is Alito, the Justice who reshaped the Supreme Court and restored the Constitution. Molly, welcome back. It is wonderful to be here with you all. And it has been some time. Well, first things first year. Explain the title of your book, the justice who reshaped the court. How did you do that? A few years ago, I co-authored a book with Kerry Severino on the Kavanaugh confirmation, and we interviewed a bunch of people, including Supreme Court justices.

And some of them wondered why nobody ever talks about Alito, because they consider him to be this giant on the court who shapes so much of the court's jurisprudence and has had a leading role in returning to Congress or returning to the executive branch, their proper constitutional authorities after decades of the court just trying to act as this super legislature. And it was from them that I got the idea that he needed to be profiled and people did need to know more about him and also why they think he's so important, which is his constitutional emphasis and his important role on the court, even if nobody really talks about him or knows about him as much as they should. Molly, Peter Robinson here, the reason I'm putting this forward to you,

you could correct me if I'm wrong, the reason we tend to overlook Justice Alito is that people are still, people who follow the court still have a very vivid memory of Justice Scalia, who was so much louder and more vivid as a personality. And Justice Alito is a quiet man, a modest man, very sweet-tempered. He would never call attention to himself. He's a kind of pure intellect, and he's easy to miss for that reason. Is that right? I think that's a major part of it. He is so unlike almost everyone who inhabits Washington, D.C., and you really get the sense that he doesn't like Washington, D.C. very much. He doesn't want to be the center of attention. He gets uncomfortable when people are talking about him. But there's another thing, too, which I think relates to his

jurisprudence. When you think about how enjoyable it is to read Ascalia, I mean, he's hilarious. He's so biting, vicious, but in a totally delightful way. And he also has these, you know, he has these big rules he likes, big concepts. Justice Thomas, who's another fan favorite, very big conceptual thinker. Alito is more focused on, okay, so we've made this ruling, how are the lower courts going to implement it? How is a U.S. attorney going to know what to do with this. And so he's very specific in a way that doesn't lend itself to those, you know, colorful aphorisms. Right. So, so Aeschaliyah, the late Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas to this day are justices for law schools. They're justices to be read. They're justices who are trying to

change the way of people look at the Constitution for decades to come. And Justice Alito is a judge's judge. Is that one way of putting it? I think that's a very good way. to put it. I also think, though, that because Scalia and Thomas were and are more philosophers, more big picture philosophers, and they're so pure in their thinking, and by the way, I love that. I love that about them. But they tend to be more liberty-focused, whereas I think Justice Alito is also just in his core and in his jurisprudence, very conservative. And there has been this bias toward more libertarian-minded justices. I myself understand that. But Alito is really the conservative on the court. So Molly, it's Steve Hayward sitting next to Peter out here in California.

I haven't had a chance to get into the book yet. And I'm wondering if you've got some real scoops here, but I'm wondering if you got into any of what I'll call gossip, although I have some sources for this proposition, which is, as we know, Alito was President Bush's second choice. He tried to install his White House counsel Harriet Myers' old friend, and there was a revolt against that. And so Alito was picked, and I've heard from multiple sources that Bush resented the fact that he was pressured into, as one person put it to me firsthand from Bush, appointing this hack from New Jersey. And he turns out to be one of our best justices, right? I don't know if you've heard anything about that story. If you try to delve into it, maybe that's old business that you

don't care about. But I've heard, comment on it if you want, but I've also heard Alito described as a Burkean, whereas both Thomas and Scalia were Tomas as well as maybe Lockin, but I like that description of Alito as a Berkian. Well, he also likes that description of himself as a Berkian. I think that is how he conceives of himself. But I have to say that does not match my reporting, what you just said about President Bush. I almost feel there would be no market for it, but I almost feel like you could write a whole book about that summer of nominations and what it meant for the conservative movement.

I would read it. That makes two, that's two, you've got two readers. I'll read it. But three. We're up to three. James? Oh, yeah, I'm in. Okay, well, sold. One of the things I learned about that process was that Harriet Myers herself had always

wanted Alito to be the number one pick. So they had a short list. They thought there was going to be a Chief Justice opening first because Rehnquist was so sick and it seemed like only natural that he would be retiring. They were kind of shocked when it was Sandra Day O'Connor who retires instead. And they decided just kind of keep with what they'd been thinking for the Chief Justice slot and they end up giving that to Roberts. But there were, you know, five people on the short list. And Alito was one of them. He was the number one pick for a bunch of people, including the Attorney General, but also Harriet Myers, who was the White House

Council. She thought that maybe Roberts didn't, well, he's said it himself in his confirmation hearings. He didn't have a judicial philosophy, and that concerned her. So people give her a very hard time, but I think it's interesting that she sort of understood that might be an issue with Roberts. She wanted a Lido. The pressure that I think Bush might not have loved was the identity politics pressure. And even his own wife is on a foreign trip to South Africa. And she's like, well, I sure hope, oh, sorry, what did she say? I think this is before Roberts's pick. She's like, I sure hope he picks a lady to replace Sandra Day O'Connor. And they ask President Bush about it. And he says, I look forward to receiving her counsel when she gets home

from her foreign trim. Like, why don't we keep this in the home, Laura? You know, and it was kind of funny. But once the, once the chief dies and they have, they decide to put Roberts up for that pick. They think they have to pick a woman. But many of the women were too conservative for some members of the Bush White House. And Harriet Myers did not in any way want to be the nominee. She just basically was told she had to be. And she does it for the team. She'd been a loyal Bush person. And it just makes you look at it a little differently when you think about what she went through and the mockery. And as soon as she steps down, Alito's the one. And I mean, it was kind of like everyone agreed.

I mean, I always heard from people whose views I really respect that Harriet Myers was a very solid person. She was just unknown. And, you know, after the previous Bush gave us David Souter, the word was, no more suitors. We don't want any unknown people. We only want known people. So poor Harriet Myers, I think maybe it was unfair to her. Peter? Molly, I have to ask a couple of questions about Dobbs, if I may.

It feels to me, I've got about three. Let me just lay this out and then you take it. It feels to me as though Justice Alito is going to be remembered for Dobbs, which overruled Roe versus Wade. That's his decision. So question is, and you're reporting on this, do you have any leads on who leaked it? That's sort of a mandatory question. I'm sure you've been asked already. And then the next question, though, is not mandatory, but it's mandatory to me.

In the couple of years, what, almost three years now since Dobbs came out, I've been watching. It was attacked vitriolically over and over in place after place after place. And yet, as far as I can tell, there has been no legal attack on Dobbs. That is to say, his historical analysis, his legal reasoning, all of that stands. By the way, I consider it a beautifully written within this legal—it's not flashy. It's not filled with memorable phrases of the kind that you get. with Scalia. But boy, is that a calm, thorough, legal document that has stood up now without any serious legal attack? Nobody's saying, no, he made an error in legal reasoning here.

All kinds of arguments. Abortion is a right. How could the results-based arguments, but no serious, no, as best I can tell, no legal attack on the decision in the three years since. So any reporting on who leaked it? And am I right that that that decision is really standing up? There's so much of interest about the Dobbs decision, including what you just said, Peter, reminds me that one of the things I learned in my reporting from people on the court was that when Alito issues his draft, the one that's eventually leaked. Yes. And it's nearly 100 pages. The chambers of the liberal justices were just shocked at how thorough and event. eviscerating it was. There was like no... There's nothing of Roe left after that. Yes.

And the thing is, in some ways, overturning Roe was kind of easy, right? Even at the time, liberal legal scholars said this is a joke of a decision. They might love abortion or love abortion. Ruth Bader Ginsburg thought it was a mistake. Yes. So on the one hand, it should have been easy, but it took such courage. There had been so many attempts previously. And then also to do it in a way that doesn't give the opposition, you know, for lack of a better term, an easy way to attack it. At the time that it's leaked and then when it's handed down, the media are hysterical about it. But it was actually very restrained. I mean, many pro-lifers would like something much more dramatic, a 14th Amendment protection of life for the unborn or something like that. It simply said,

we all know that it's not in the Constitution. It's not in the 14th Amendment. It's not hidden between the words and as such we have to return it to the people through their legislatures. It's like very modest. And you're right that there, I've actually not seen any substantive legal attacks on it. I did talk to a lot of people about the leak as well. And so I know who most, who many people think leaked it, but there are, but there's no one, you know, there's not, there might be one that's the, who most people say, but that doesn't mean there's just one person. But mostly what I got into was how absolutely. awful the investigation was.

They didn't begin it for weeks. They didn't ask decent questions. Like some of the high-level people at the court said, if you want to find out who leaked it, find out who's in communication with the reporters who published it. Don't just say, did you leak it? Which is what they did. They asked everybody if you leaked it,

and everybody said no. Well, instead say, do you know this reporter? Does your spouse know this reporter? Were you ever in a situation where someone would have had access to your draft that you had on your home computer. You know, you can ask questions that would, like a real investigator would. Molly, is he going to retire? This is the big question at the moment.

People have said he's unhappy. Is he unhappy on the court? People have said his wife doesn't like him having the job anymore because they went after her because she flew a flag outside the beach house or is he comfortable where he is. So people call him. him unhappy. And I think there's a, I think it's that he's certainly not a happy warrior, but that doesn't mean he's unhappy. He's just more motivated by duty than personal feelings. So he, in my view, I don't technically know for sure. I have not thought he was going to retire

even before his chambers got word out that he's not retiring. But I think he feels there's still work to be done that he needs to do. Would he be happy, would he and his wife be happy? Once he leaves, yes. But he doesn't do things for happiness. He does things out of duty, out of sense of duty. And he calls himself a practical originalist. And Scalia called himself an originalist. And Clarence Thomas calls himself a bloodthirsty originalist.

I've seen recently a lot of praise for Alito in his ability to keep together coalition, if you will. Is that what that means? I've never quite sure what practical original. this means. So the way, there are many different ways that you see him being more practical than some of his colleagues. Part of it is what we just talked about with thinking about how a decision will be implemented by lower court judges or other people involved in the administration of rule of law. But another thing is he's more willing to look at the facts of a particular case than some of his colleagues. They'll just say, they'll just kind of see something and they'll say, this is a First

Amendment issue, so we're just going to do a broad First Amendment type ruling, whereas he might look and say, I think it's a little more complicated than that. He might ultimately side with them in their big, broad brush approach, but he's comfortable looking at the facts of the case. He famously dissented in that Westboro Baptist case, and it was because of the facts of the case. They said, well, really what they're doing, this so-called church, they're protesting the government, so they're allowed to do it. And he went through the trial record and saw that they weren't. They were protesting this man, his faith, his family, his marital history, and that he thought Torts law could cover this in a way that it was less applicable as a First Amendment case. And then he also does, I think he's just

less autistic in the, I don't mean that's like in the originalism. He just, he's kind of thinking, the whole purpose of what we're doing is to help a people in their country. and their government. So we should think about how this is going to affect that dynamic. Molly, it's Steve again. One of your scoops in the book to which there is, I think, a sequel episode in the last two weeks is the fact that, how did you put it? Kagan was having a shouting match with, what, was it with Breyer about, you know, delaying the Dobbs decision in hopes, what, some Supreme Court justice would retire or die or something even worse than that in hopes of overturning it. And then everyone I think has seen, and you can see it now in the opinions, great frustration,

including from two of the liberal justices about Justice Jackson, who talks more from the other justices combined much of the time and whose dissents have drawn some rebukes even from Justice Kagan in one case. And then this last week, there was a sort of supplemental decision a ruling related to this recent case on the Voting Rights Act, where Justice Alito, I think, wrote a rebuttal saying this is nonsense. And I think he said this is even insulting. And then he has an asterisk where he says, I remind the justice that this case was conferenced six months ago. Now, for listeners, what that means is, is when you hear a Supreme Court case on a Monday or Tuesday, the justice is me typically at the end of the week on Friday to vote on who wins and who

loses. And that's after that the whole business about doing the opinion is done. And that can take, as we know, months for the two sides to work out their opinions and dissents. And that's become a game where everyone wants to get in the last word. But I think you're really on to something, and the friction is in the court, and especially the role of Justice Jackson and Justice Kagan and all this. And there's a leader having to put up with it all. Well, I think this is really explosive, too. The liberal justices are frustrated at their lack of power. The Supreme Court is an institution that the left used to completely control until quite recently. It's the first time you've seen an originalist majority, even if they have their differences at times.

They're all rooted deeply in the original meaning of the Constitution in that majority. And so they don't have power. They're frustrated. And I reported how they slow walked the dissent in Dobbs, even after their colleagues asked them, please hurry it up because our lives are being threatened. And that was not hyperbole. They were facing daily threats on their lives, including an actual assassin on the street of the Kavanaugh home trying to take out him and others. So after my book comes out, or actually right before my book comes out, there was reporting

that they were slow walking the Kallai decision. Kaleigh, I don't know how to pronounce that. Sorry. And it was just interesting that you're like, oh, is this part of a pattern? And then I think we've all but had that proven. with that footnote from Alito. Katanji Brown Jackson, I think, is less politically smart than her liberal colleagues who know, like they might have been slow walking it, but they knew not to put it in writing, basically,

or give Alito the opportunity to point out that they were slow walking. Anyone who read that footnote understood what was being said, yes. Not only was it conference in October, that was the second time they'd heard the case. Remember, they first heard it in March of last year. So everyone knew where they stood. Everyone knew what the arguments were. It really shouldn't have taken that long unless you were delaying for political reasons to help your political party of choice. Molly, Peter here once again.

As you worked on the book, how did you find yourself a couple of questions. How did you find yourself feeling about Justice Alito? You would never have written this unless you had a fundamental admiration for him and his work. did you find him as you interviewed other people, as you read the materials, you read his decisions, as you interviewed him, as you spoke to Mrs. Alito, did you find yourself enjoying him? Was he good company to keep for all these months as you worked on the project? And then I wonder, did you find yourself admiring more or less the court as an institution? Huh. I definitely was intrigued by him at the beginning, and I would have to say that I also came to admire, I tend toward more of that big picture thinking myself and his pragmatism. I saw the wisdom in that. He's also, you know, I think anyone who's met him or studies him knows he's a delightful person. He's very, very,

funny in private in a way that you don't see publicly so much. I mean, occasionally you pick it up in the speeches. Also, the admiration his colleagues have for him, it's hard not to be touched by that as well. I was not sure when I began the project how I would explain Martha Ann Alito because she is so fun. She's, I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, oh, exactly. And I always joke that my dad was a pastor and my mom. I always joked she was the world's worst pastor's wife. And I meant that with like unending praise. But that's what I would kind of say about Martha. And like, I don't know how she ended up being in this life where she's a Supreme Court

Justice's wife. She is very much her own person, very vivacious, just fun, a fun person. And it's interesting to see them being together. I think one of the things I admire about the court more than anything is that they have weathered some of these difficult times and they have come out with regard for each other still. And even seeing the way they handled the recent situation with Justice Sotomayor attacking Kavanaugh, I'm pretty confident that Kavanaugh was the least offended by what Sotomayor did. The other justices really didn't like that.

And Justice Sotomayor... Take just a moment to explain for listeners what happened. She was giving a speech. She was giving a speech and she attacked what everyone clearly saw was Kavanaugh based on the specifics of the speech as someone who had never met anyone who worked an hourly wage. It is so unfair. I mean, they're all elite by virtue of being on the Supreme Court. But Justice Kavanaugh, his mother was highly respected judge. Yes, he did have a nicer upbringing than an Alito or a Thomas.

But it's just an ad hominem that was completely unnecessary. And she did apologize for that, which I think is great, and speaks to how they do work at collegiality. These people disagree with each other strongly. Or even the anecdote that I tell in the book about Kagan screaming at Breyer, she was screaming at him because Breyer, as liberal as he is, he cared about his colleagues, and he didn't want their lives threatened. And he's trying to accommodate them because he understands they're in a very bad situation with the leak of the Dobbs decision.

So you come out with respect for how much they try, even if they fail their camaraderie at times. And this end like, oh, I'm sorry, Peter, you had to. No, and the project of the originalists, this new, I mean, who knows what the presidential politics will be like? Who knows who's going to capture this? Who knows whether it will last? But the notion that right now, there are six more or less originalist, more or less conservative justices. and only three liberals. Did you feel that the, how to put, well, you're a big thinker.

You said this yourself a moment ago. Did you feel that they're taking advantage of this, that the conservatives are taking advantage of the moment? I think that's actually one of the big divisions among the conservative justices or the originalist justices is the issue of timing. Justice Thomas and Justice Alito have been on the court for a long time when it was not under originalist control.

The three newer originalists, they're thinking, I could be here for many decades. We have time to get this all done. The older guys, I think they're thinking, well, we might not have time. And also, if there's a wrong that needs to be corrected, let's correct it now. Right now. And so I think that is a big division. But I also think it reminds me of how after the, after winning the Cold War, you saw the conservative movement kind of be confused about where it was and where it was going.

Hayward and I were still confused. Well, originalism has had so many successes on the Second Amendment, thanks to Justice Thomas. On First Amendment issues, the court is fantastic. The religious freedom issue is better now than it has been ever, probably. You have affirmative action. Roberts, who doesn't identify as an originalist, has done humans' work on overturning all of the bad, like racism, racist issues. You have Dobbs taking care of Roe, a 15. year project of the movement. Well, with all those successes, you're also starting to see people

kind of sour on originalism. And I think that the Justice Alito model is a really good one going forward. He's very principled. He's also focused on culture and community and what the purpose of rule of law is. And I think it's a way to blend these warring factions. You know, right now in the movement, you have people who are like, all that matters is the principles we hold. And I don't really Like, that's the thing that matters. Then you have other people who say, I'm so sick of principles. I just want to win. Well, in Alito, you see that, in fact, these things, having prudence and thought and strategy

and principles, that they work best together. They're not in conflict. We are both principled and pragmatic people, ideally, right? As Americans. So that was the main thing I myself learned from studying him and his. jurisprudence. And I hope that the conservative movement and really Americans in general also pick up that as well. That is fascinating. Molly, last question is Peter Robinson used to say, he probably still does. Besides all the marquee decisions, there's a chance here to do a FM DJ deep

cuts sort of thing where you go to the B side. You find the third song that is really better than the other. Do you have a favorite deep cut, Alito opinion, something under the radar? that demonstrated his wit and his incisiveness. And it's one of the things you just kind of like to bring up when the conversation turns Alito-wise. I will say that my, well, Randy Barnett always says that Alito's First Amendment jurisprudence where he's the lone dissenter is the one thing that sometimes makes him wonder if he's wrong about these issues.

So it's kind of fun to study those. But for me, the deep cut is oral argument. It's not a case. It's how Alito conducts himself in oral argument. Kagan's very good at this, Justice Kagan and Justice Alito. They understand that the that the best you can get out of oral argument is to sort of shape your colleagues, your fellow justices, thinking about what the issue should, what the issue you're going to decide the case should be on what issue that should be. And so they're very good at guiding the advocate that they

agree with to stronger ground and then totally devastating their opponent. And Alito has had some really fun ones with this. There was a Minnesota case that said you couldn't wear tea party gear at the election at a voting booth. And he led the solicitor, the advocate, down the path to admitting that you couldn't wear a shirt that said the First Amendment on it at the voting booth. Or he got the Colorado advocate who was trying to

violate Jack Phillips' rights to create cakes according to his conscience, he got him to admit that the entire basis of his case was wrong. He said, okay, so like if someone wants to have a cake that says November 9th, the best date in history, and it's about that person's anniversary, he would have to make that cake, right? He says, yes. What if he came in and says, I wanted to say November 9th, best date in history, but it's for Kristallnacht? Would he have to do that? And the solicitor says, no, that he definitely wouldn't have to do it.

Well, that was the entire case. It was the entire case. And he got the guy who was trying to argue the opposite to concede the whole thing. And it ends up being a big victory for Jack Phillips and a loss for Colorado. So oral argument is where you should pay attention to him. All this and more is contained within the covers of Alito, the justice who reshaped the Supreme Court and restored the Constitution. No small feat.

That's a book by Molly Hemmingway. She's been our guest. And Molly will see you on Fox and we'll see you on Twitter, of course. from time to time. And thanks for joining us in the show today. Write another book fast so we can have you back as quickly as possible. And give Mark our best. Give Mark our best. Oh, we'll do. Great talking, y'all. Bye-bye, guys. Bye-bye. Well, so many things left to talk about. The best tweet of the week, I think, was somebody that said that Ted Turner's funeral starts at 705. Do you know what that means, gentlemen?

Wasn't that the game time for the Atlanta Braves when he started Turner broadcasting? No. No, Ted Turner, when he started T&T and all the rest of them, started the shows at 705, which ensured that in TV Guide that they would break out, that they wouldn't be, you know, 7 o'clock with a whole bunch of other things. There would be a separate entry for. Who remembers TV Guide, right? Oh, my goodness. I worked there for a year, so I quite remember that.

I got to meet Turner once at his gigantic Buffalo Ranch in Montana outside Bozeman, and I have to say he's hilarious in person. Maybe, I guess, otherwise. I never paid too close attention to him, but hey, we're, Steve, Steve, what, just, what were you doing at a Buffalo ranch outside Bozeman, Montana? It was an environmental thing because, you know, he wanted to bring back the pre-Columbian conditions for the Buffalo, and it was very controversial because over 200,000 acres, he sold off all the cattle that were on this ranch, which crashed the prices of beef in Montana that year, that really annoyed all the other cattle ranchers. It's kind of, you know, you can see elements of it in the Yellowstone series. Did he succeed on his ranch and bringing back some original conditions? Oh, yeah.

No, I did a tour of the ranch and a Jeep with one of his wildlife biologists explaining how they're restoring the streams to their original condition and getting out non-native vegetation. And, I mean, it was a ridiculous project, but it couldn't possibly last because invasive species are really not invasive, in my own opinion. But the punchline was sitting around talking to him. He's a very gracious host. A small group of us.

you know, the free market environmental crowd around Perk, you know, friends of ours. And that is a small group of a lot. Someone said, you know, you've done all these things, you know, TNT, the America's Cup, the Goodwill Games or the Soviet Union, which was one of his dumb Cold War stunts. What do you consider your most innovative thing you've ever done in that long career of yours? And he pauses from him and he said, marrying Jane Fonda, that was real innovative. I don't think I'll say any more about that, though. At least he didn't say colorizing Casablanca.

Charles is somebody, Charles, if somebody lives in the south, would you like to explain Kudzu to the guy who just said that invasive species aren't? Kudzu? Isn't that the sort of Spanish moss type stuff? Yeah, I think you have it a lot in Florida, but it was brought over and it's an invasive species

and it's hard to get rid of, as is the Asian carbon invasive species that we have up here. What do you mean that invasive species aren't? Well, maybe I shouldn't have said that because that's a longer subject, but it's become another biological diversity is our strength. Is that what we're going on? No, well, look, it's a longer subject.

I probably shouldn't have said that because I baited you. But the point is this invasive species has become another extremist totem of environmentalism. So I'm just pushing back against their abuse of it. Oh, no, they're very disruptive to ecosystems. I totally concede that. Do you know, I saw a debate about a year ago as to what is the South? Obviously, people pile in and they have many different answers.

But the best answer I saw was where Kudzu grows. I think they're right. I think they're right. No, they're correct. You know what I just have to say this. We have a guy at National Review called Andrew Stutterford. He used to be British. Who's now American like me?

How do you used to be British? Well, because you became an American citizen like me. Andrew Stutterford became an American? Yeah. I did not know that. We really need to tighten up the requirements. But anyway, Andrew is the only person I have met until Steve Haywood, who just has this abundance of stories that start with things like,

Of course, it was 1967, and I was in an open-top car in Paris with Roger Gabor. You go, sorry, you were what? And Steve, I've noticed, Steve, you do this too. You do start. You're like, well, I was in a treehouse in Okinawa. When you started to tell that story, for some reason, I'm seeing you as Sam O'Neill in Jurassic Park. I'm about to see an enormous buffalo that Ted Turner had genetically engineered. Speaking of genetic engineering and strange things in science fiction,

I love to hear exactly how you three guys are going to take this. Peter, calm down. I'm sorry. Oh, it's been too long, James. All right. All right. Sorry. The government has begun what I believe is this modified hangout, slow rollout of saying,

yeah, there's aliens. And they're here and they're under the ocean and they're on the moon. But we can't just come out and destroy everybody's conception of the universe in our special place in it and possibly a threat in the metaphysical basis that people use to live their lives. So we're going to drip, drip, drip, we're going to just give you little stuff and then 30 days later.

We're going to give you something more. So today, official government site, official Pentagon photographs, official pentagrams of FBI encounters. It's remarkable, really. And, you know, when you combine it with what's been said and what's been shown and revealed for the last few years, it really does seem as if they're sort of massaging us all

to get used to this very important, realization. Walter Kern, who is something of an interesting crank, I love him, said that the probe will go in slowly. A great way to describe it. Now, Peter, we know from previous podcast, is utterly indifferent to space

whatsoever when it comes to mankind going out there. No, James, doggone it. And I keep trying. If the Cold War is over, we won. Taxpayers should not be taxed. If Elon Musk's wants to fill the the space with satellites, if he wants to go to Mars on his and his investors money,

I'm all for it. I just don't think we should. NASA is now... I agree with you, although it's literally the only thing besides the military that I'm happy for my tax dollars to be spent on. Basically every other thing I hate, and I watched Artemis 2, and I thought, yeah, okay, I don't mind paying for this. I do agree with you. 10 years ago, I got to go to Cape Canaveral, hang out there for a day, access all areas, watch a launch, and they were selling me on private space travel because they said, that's the future. Look at all these amazing companies, SpaceX, Explorogy and all of this. I'm totally with you.

That said, when I do see taxpayer-funded space exploration, it's one of the only times that I don't go, give me my money back. I'm just sort of happy. All right, well, the question, gentlemen, was about UFOs. What do you think the government is doing, and do you believe them? Well, I've already told my one story for this episode, so I won't tell the story about my father and I when I was a young teenager doing UFO pranks at outdoor UFO conventions in the California desert. See? See?

See? See? Doesn't answer the question, Stephen. Do you believe that the government is rolling this stuff out in order to prepare us for greater revelations to come? That? Are you going to answer the question? No. Over to you, Peter.

That presupposes far too much competence on the part of the federal government. They couldn't plan. No, I don't believe that there's some kind of coordinated plan on the federal government slowly to massage it because the federal government isn't that smart or that good at doing anything. Especially Trump. In other words, in other words, when we had the whole six weeks to slow the spread and then it's going to be another six and then it's going to be another six that we know. They didn't know what they were doing. They were making it up as they went along.

Well, I've always had the iron law of conspiracies, which is what, it's, there's an inverse relationship between the plausibility of a conspiracy and the number of people who would have to be involved to carry it off, whether it's JFK's assassination and so forth. I got to think something would have leaked out at some point over the years. And then there are a few people who say, look, I've been, but I never know whether to believe these witnesses that come forward at congressional hearings. Yeah, you never, you never go. I was at Studio, I was Studio 57, yeah, Area 51.

And, you know, I saw the gray on the table being dissected. Yeah, I don't know. I tend not to believe it. But on the other hand, when NASA says, by the way, here's a photograph we never released before from Apollo 17 that shows these three lights hovering over them as they're doing their business. That's not, you know, it wasn't leaked before because it was held deep, deep, deep in a halt for reasons. So, you know, yes, anybody who watches the IS,

IS International Space Station feed knows that sometimes it just cuts out and people look at what it was doing before it cuts out and they'll find something in the corner. Yes, it's the whole space is polluted. by grifters and people with bizarre ideas who want to believe that comet that just went around the sun. I mean, if you're hanging on the subreddits about people discussing what that was, you know that there are just absolute lunatics out there. But at the same time, just because there are lunatics who believe it does not believe there's

not a core of truth at the essence of it. Okay, all right. Come back down to Earth, L.A. Spencer Pratt, we're all looking and saying, why isn't this guy going to win? he makes these audacious commercials where he says things like, yes, in the future, we will arrest criminals. And they'll even be put in handcuffs. We will take the needles off the street,

and we will arrest the people who are selling the drugs and clean the parks of the homeless people. And everybody rears back in horror when actually what he's doing is saying, he's talking about the absolute base level, what ought to be a mayoral competence, what ought to be the responsibilities of government. But yet people in LSA, L.A. say, Yeah, kind of sucks, but I don't know, I'm going to go with the Marxist.

I don't get it. I don't get it. So we're going to, Steve and I are going to have to defer to Charlie and you to talk about California because for Steve and me, and we've discussed this over the last day and a half now, it's too painful. We love this state too much. Steve Hilton is now leading in the polls. Steve Hilton, the Republican, is now leading in the polls in the gubernatorial rate. Pratt seems to be breaking through and the mayoral race and Steve and I have had our hearts broken by this gorgeous beauty.

As we sit here, we can raise our heads and look out the window and we see the Santa Barbara pier and the cloud, the fog beginning to dissolve in the morning sun and the glistening of the Pacific. We're about to go up to Ronald Reagan's ranch in a moment or two, a few minutes. And if the fog lifts up there, we'll be able to turn in one direction and see this. and see the Channel Islands glistening in the Pacific and turn in the other direction and see the Santa Ines Valley, which is one of the most beautiful places on the planet.

Don't torture us, James. We cannot permit ourselves to get our hopes up again. Oh, I understand. I absolutely understand completely. It's how I feel about Minnesota. I mean, I live in a dinah now, which is a nice little wealthy suburb, they said. We've had two murders in three weeks.

Now, as they say, don't worry there weren't strange murders there people knew each other's like oh okay great great james i had that as I live in a diner now and I thought that was really appropriate given your podcast and your love yes it was

an anagram of sorts but e dinah but i am strongly considering decamping to a small little river town where I can live out sort of a twin peaks you know little small town main street experience because are you staying you're

Okay, so this fantasy, somewhere between fantasy and plan of yours, you want to stay in Minneapolis, or are you tempted to go back home to the Dakotas? No, I'm not. I mean, stay in Minnesota or go back home to the Minnesota, down to the Mississippi. There are some wonderful little towns down in the Mississippi where you can live a perfectly decent life, and that's where I think I'm going to spend the last act. So I get it. I absolutely get it completely.

We are run by lunatics theirs. When you turn around, when you look at them and you say, where's the seed corn for next, for the next planting season, they look at you, and they said, oh, we microwaved the last of that last night. There was a movie on it. We needed some popcorn. It just destroyed, it consumed the social capital of this place that wants me to work. And in the same sense that it's duplicated in every other place where people build a decent society. And then, you know, hard men, strong, men, weak men, bad man, that whole cycle. And we're at the worst part of it. And so is California. and I just don't want to think that years to come from now, they'll look back on it and say that they absolutely squandered the future of the golden state

for ridiculous, obscene, Marxist little, smelly orthodoxies and plans is, or well-called them. Charlie's trying to suppress. I hope he's trying to suppress the urge to gloat. The only man on this podcast who lives in a state that works. I'm not. I'm genuinely not. I've only been to Minnesota once and it was brief. So I don't know much about Minnesota.

But as you know, Peter, I adore California. I've spent lots of time in California. Ever since I was a little kid, and I think it's a great tragedy what's happening to California. So I'm not one of those conservatives that says, oh, California. I love California. I just think it's an absolute disgrace how it's been run.

So I'm not going to, I will, I'll invite you all to come join me in North Florida, but I'm certainly not going to close. We will join the only militia where middle initials are permitted. The Charles C.W. Cook Militia. Exactly. Yes, Charles, could you say something

so we can get you up full screen here? I know again, as I said, podcast is a medium. So Charles say something. Say something. Hello, I'm Charles Cook, and I'm in a militia in North Florida. I wanted to get a screen grab of this

because even though I said the podcast is an audio medium, some people will watch this, I assume. And we want to put this in the comments at Ricochet. What is Ricochet? Well, if you haven't figured out after 788 podcasts, it's a place founded in part by Peter Robinson,

again, who are pleased to have with us, and Rob Long, and for all these years, it's been your home for sane civil-center-right conversation. There's a code of conduct. You've got to behave. That's why the comment sections are as fun as they are. And a community has arisen over the years that's the sort of thing you've been looking for all your days on the internet.

You can go to the main page and read, you can listen to the podcast, but for a very few, very few, small, little email you can join the member side, which is where you'll find a community that discusses absolutely everything you want to. And if they're not discussing what you want to, start a conversation. If you want to come to your house, well, they'll come to your town and meetups.

So it's just, it's a great place and we love it. And Charles will soon be rolling out all sorts of innovations in Rickashay, I believe, 5.0. But now it's the pop culture speed round for Peter Robinson and Stephen Hayward. and it's going to be this. Charles has reconfigured his room. I have noticed there's a bench that used to be in the back that isn't there anymore. There's a desk in the corner,

but he has prominently displayed four album covers, which he believes he wants us to see because they indicate his taste. Stephen, nameless four album covers, right to left. Go. I can't see them closely enough. My screen's too small. I can see them right here.

I've got a little fine little screen. Charles, say something so we can see them again. Oh, you can't see it. We can cut this out if you want here. We can maybe we can, can you zoom in on them. I can tell them from here and you're a thumbnail for heaven's sakes. I don't know. I don't know if I can zoom in on them.

I do know what they are? Stephen, do you see them? Can you see? No, I can't make them out, James. I'm going to guess that Charlie being Charlie, one of them is a Beatles album. No, the one. The one of the right is Endless Summers by the Beach Boys. The next one is,

Oh, Beach Boys. Oh, American lineup. And then next one is Love of Rugal by Dyer Straits. The other one is, You Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd, which has the fireman who's, you know, bursting into fires as a stuntman

who died a little while ago. And then on its end, a little bit more difficult to see because it's tilted away from us is the butt of Bruce Springsteen in born in the USA. What your mission, Charles, should you decide to accept it,

is to put up four different album. I'm going to, this is so funny that you say this because I just completely redid my office and I know I have a camera here, so my screen is moving around, but I'll change that. But, but,

and I said to my wife, I'm going to change the album covers in the background every time. I said this is I would do this just to entertain people, and you have gone for it. So this is clearly a good idea. Now, James, quick question, James, for elaboration later. Are you keeping up with a new trend in microtonal punk out of Canada? Oh, you made up that.

You made that. I did not make that. Are you talking about the guys who wore the weird striped costumes? Yes, yes. On June de Quatrine. They're blowing up. the internet. They're awesome. They're absolutely awesome. They're not showing up in my.

I just, I hadn't, I forgot the fact that they were microtonnel. But, yeah, they're quite unique. I'm waiting for a reveal where it turns out to be Ringo and Clapton or something like that. Do what they always wanted to do, but the man was holding them back. The man is not holding me back from doing what I'm doing now, which is ending the show. Thanking Peter, thanking Stephen, thanking Charles, thanking you, the listener, advising you to join RookaShae.com, patronize all of the sponsors who are peppered

throughout the podcast and join us in the conversation. If you will, please. We'll see you all in the comments, guys, at Rurcache 4.0, whatever. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.