The Ricochet Podcast - Boston

Episode Date: April 18, 2013

This week on the podcast, we’re, of course, all about Boston. Also, our own Mollie Hemingway on the media and the Gosnell trial and National Review’s Andrew McCarthy on Boston, the investigation, and what comes next. Also, what happens if the perp is right wing, the Thatcher funeral, and high fives all around. Music from this week’s show: Dirty Water by The Standells You’re a wicked pissah, EJHill. Source

Every year, thousands of people go to their very first concert. Our boosted signal at large events means they can always call a taxi to get home. Mom? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was grand. Do you think you could pick me up? Every connection counts, which is why Ireland can count on our network. Vodafone. Together we can. Subject to coverage availability. Limitations and terms apply. See vodafone.ie forward slash terms. Every year, thousands of students go on their first holiday abroad.

Our 5G roaming in 80 countries means they're connected as soon as they land. Just a reminder to wear sunscreen, love, because you're as pale as a ghost. Oh, and can you send me all your friends' numbers because their mothers are on to me. And always keep your cash in your bum bag, yeah? Every connection counts, which is why Ireland can count on our network. Vodafone. Together we can. Subject to coverage availability. Limitations and terms apply. See vodafone.ie forward slash terms.

Activate program. While they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world. First, we begin bombing in five minutes. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long.

I'm James Lilacs, and it has been a trying week. Here to help us make sense of it all, Ricochet's own Molly Hemingway, and from the National Review, Andy McCarthy. Rain or shine, good or ill, we're here. Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Oy, nation grieves for Boston. Republicans are wondering why they don't have a party. Democrats think, hey, we get the president elected twice, we can't pass gun control. And Texas blew up.

It's one of those weeks where the entire country seems like a gray smear of ennui and despair. But here to bring sunshine into your life, Peter Robinson and Rob Long. Hi, guys. Cheer up the nation. We're looking to you. Wow. Paul Lawyer. Good morning, James. Let me jumpstart you both then by giving you a verbal high five because the day on which this podcast is being done, the 18th of April, is actually National High Five Day, one of those useless holidays, which in this case actually has a purpose,

as the founders intended it to be a charity event. And not to say that every time you slap somebody high five, you are obligated to contribute a nickel to a charity. But that's they've got that aspect going for them. And it is one of those things where maybe people ought to cast their eyes about and see who needs, you know, the extra odd dollar here, the extra pint of blood, etc. So what do you let's let me high five you both there. And let me ask you this. How do you view events thus far this week? And who would you like to high five the most today? Peter, go first. I, who would I like to high five the most today? Amanda Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher's, I think, 18, 17 year old granddaughter, a Texan,

who did a beautiful job. And if it's at all possible to speak of stealing a show when the show is a state funeral in London, stole the show at her grandmother's funeral yesterday. They said she Pippa Middleton-ed her grandmother's funeral, which I thought was a great way to put it. Beautiful. I didn't know Pippa Middleton was a verb, but I can see it. So I would most like to high five Amanda Thatcher for poise and composure and somehow demonstrating in reading the Bible affection for that great lady, her grandmother. I don't, the Brits are so bad at high-fiving in general. You might, good luck. I can see missed palms, embarrassed faces, all the rest of it rob well i i just

i'm still stuck on the image of peter robinson high-fiving anyone um i don't high-five i uh unless it's ironic i don't do the thing where you bump fists and then oh i hate that you know the bump and then explode i don't do any i don – I'll shake your hand, but that's about it. I won't do a funny little weird gesture, a triumph for solidarity at all. What about hugging? Are you a hugger, Rob? You know, I just – Hollywood is a very huggy place, isn't it?

It's a very huggy place, and I'll tell you that the – there are a lot of people here who hug, but there's one person in particular who's sort of known for hugging who is in fact a sort of rapacious and sort of evil little scheming monster. And we all kind of laugh at the fact that he comes up to you and hugs you and you have to sort of allow it to happen just because it's just – it would be too embarrassing to cause a scene. But of all the people – Is he just feeling your spine for the good place to put the shiv in? No, he doesn't. I mean these are – people who hug like that I think have zero idea just how loathed they are. That's kind of a thing. People who are truly hated and for good reason

never know it. What is the old Woody Allen line? He's a reverse paranoid. He goes around under the delusion that people like him. And so, yeah, so there's a lot of hugging and there's a lot of handshaking, which is fine. I just shot a pilot on Tuesday night. There's an enormous amount of hugging going on. Actors are very huggy. And so you just have to sort of, you know, you kind of roll with it. But I don't do the high-fiving. There was a time in the 70s where you didn't know how the handshake was going to end up.

When you were going in, hand extended, you didn't know whether you were going to get the usual old John Wayne American handshake or some soul brother, K-possossa variant where you had to go up and under, or somebody was actually going to shoot past your hand entirely and grapple your forearm. I mean, it was a confusing time for men, and I think that's why hugging came in actually for guys, is that there's no confusing variant on the hug. Well, for example, you know. Also, give me dap.

Give me some dap as one, which is the – Dap? Isn't that something you put in your hair? Dap? What? Peter, you have no street cred. No, dap. All the kids are doing it.

You kind of grab somebody by the thumb, that weird thumb handshake, and then as you pull away, you kind of grab with the tip of your fingers the tip of their fingers. It's hard to describe. Although in Peter's defense, DAP does sound like something that an Elvis impersonator would put on to make his coiffure look sufficiently Elvis-like. And wouldn't you know it, the guy who was arrested for the ricin distribution system was a professional Elvis impersonator, in addition to being a man who on his YouTube page, I believe, hawked seat covers for the incontinent.

So we've got an arrest in this. Were you guys thinking after Boston that this was a peculiar repeat of 2001 in which the anthrax followed the Al-Qaeda attack? Peter? I can't, I don Peter? I don't – may I yield my time? I'll take that as a no.

Rob? Yes, take it as a no. I just haven't thought about it. I'm sorry. Yeah, I guess what's so frustrating about it – I mean it's just to answer your first question. I suppose who I would like to high-five is probably any emergency room technician in Boston. I think high-fiving would be ridiculous as if it was like, hey, you won.

It would be more like buy him a drink I think at this point. No, I mean I think what we have now is this weird little high school musical play that when something bad happens, a bunch of little crazies come out and do something crazy that if they did it in any other context would not be such a panic and would not be such a national story. But because they – because it's sort of – the spotlight is on and the music is playing, they're going to jump out on stage. But there was no panic.

There was no anthrax panic like there was last night. No, but – no, of course not. Of course not. But there was – but that's – I'm talking about his motivation to the extent that anyone can know it. I mean he chose the timing from what I understand. So yeah, I mean the strange thing about all of this is that this goes back grimly to 9-11. In 9-11, there were two schools of thought. I mean there are more than that, but there are two sort of broadly themed – broadly drawn schools of thought. One was let's kill the bastards.

Let's eradicate this. If it's foreign terrorism, let's go in. Let's rip it out root and branch. And the other one was, yeah, well, you know, you take the number of civilian casualties on 9-11 and you spread it out over the 40 years we've been deeply engaged in the region and maybe we have to just accept,

what was the phrase, a certain amount of low-level terrorism for the rest of time. And I think what's been surprising, I think for me as a person looking at the world, is that we haven't really had to do that for 12 years. And now we might have to. Oh, now we might have to. Now we might have to? Why?

Peter, is that your take on it? Do you think that this is the start of the odd mall, restaurant, crowded public event, terrorism phase? We just can't – we can't permit that. I'm not sure what it would take. I do feel reasonably – excuse me. When you said – when you spoke about the Rison incident, what came to mind was not – I hadn't actually read about it in detail. I haven't thought it through.

But what immediately came to mind was one day, two or three weeks after 9-11, all the way out here on the other side of the country in Northern California, on the Stanford campus, I was walking to a certain building and suddenly an ambulance came roaring up and police came roaring up and people leapt out of the cars and stopped all of us and put police tape around a building and people in lab coats, not lab coats, but they looked like spacesuits. They were clearly people who were intending to deal with very dangerous substances, got out and went over to some powder on the ground. Well, I walked away and went on with my day. And it turned out later that afternoon that it was simply powder on a step. Someone had called it in because everyone was nervous. And it turned out to be, this is literally the case, ground up cracker. Ritz or saltine, they weren't able to determine, but it was a cracker. That level of nervousness and jitters is simply impossible to live with. And yet it follows naturally if there's another incident in St. Louis or San Francisco, if there's another incident on a so-called soft target like the one at the Boston Marathon. That's the level of jitters to – and it just makes it impossible to function.

We cannot put up with it. But we have, Peter. I mean I'm really taking the devil's advocate argument. I agree with you. But we have – this is not new, this kind of living. This was very prevalent in the late 19th and early 20th century. There were anarchist bombs going off all over the place. They were blowing up stuff left

and right. And then it went away. In this country? In this country, sure. But they went away because they pushed it away, right? People did something about it. They went after anarchists as a group.

In the Soviet Union, of course, the nihilist movement, one of the reasons that the communists were able to take over when they did was that people were – in Russia were desperate for someone to impose order, which is the point I'm coming to. In London, apparently – I don't – I'm not an expert on police work. But excuse me. Here's my first thought. Ray Kelly, the commissioner of the New York City police, gave an interview in The Wall Street Journal. What would it be? Three weeks ago, four weeks ago? It was the big Saturday interview.

And Ray Kelly was saying, in effect, listen, knock it off to the Democratic candidates who are, of course, the only candidates who matter in New York City to the Democratic primary candidates for mayor because they had been piling on trying to outdo each other in saying – talking about the need to rein in the New York City police and in particular to stop this – the random frisking. I guess it's not random. They have to have some reason. But to stop one of the first lines of defense in which the police were engaged in difficult neighborhoods, right? And my thought yesterday was, okay, Ray Kelly as of today has no problem. Nobody's going to try getting rough on the – no politician is going to try getting rough on the NYPD after what happened in Boston. That's step one, right? And that's – so I guess what I'm saying here is the public won't put up with it.

There will be a greater and greater willingness to engage in more and more, frankly, police efforts, more and more hidden cameras in our cities if this stuff continues. So my hope is that the professionals like Ray Kelly can move in and get the job done very fast. You want to preserve the openness of American society to the greatest extent possible. What I'm saying, I guess what it comes to is that events like this cause jitters that people don't want to live with. And the democratic system will lead very quickly, I believe, to more and more police controls. And it would be terrible if a free and open society became less free and began to close up out of fear i can add nothing to that except to hear here and also peter yes happy birthday oh thank you i guess you're kidding happy birthday peter i share your dislike of these uh monuments as uh as they are. I didn't use to dislike them, but it's balanced. Now, how do you, how does it,

is it really at this point, oh God, no, or is it, oh, okay, what's the actual scale of, you know, one to ten, ten being sort of absolute elation, one being misery, where are you on the I'm okay with it scale?

Two. Really? Yeah, you know, and I mean, this is just the stupidest reason possible. But every birthday, I say to myself, next year, I will be X pounds lighter, I will have written three books I will have done. And of course, on the next birthday, I wake up and the one nice thing about the birthday is my beloved wife remembered it and she sent the kids in this morning. I was snoozing away. I was tossing – anyway.

Happy birthday, dad. Happy birthday, dad. Happy birthday. All very dutiful. Not at all heartfelt, of course, but still pleasant. Then I sit up in bed and think, oh, groan. I've done nothing that I intended to do in the last year. That's the birthday blues that I have. Cheer me up, Rob. No, no, no. It's not. Sorry.

You're cheering up the nation. Don't worry about me reveal what we've been planning here. It's something, but I'm just going to have to say, Peter, for you, from all of us here at Ricochet, one free audiobook from audible.com. And if you would like to go and get that, all you've got to do is go to audible.com. You've got a 30-day free

trial. Every year, thousands of people go to their very first concert. Our boosted signal at large events means they can always call a taxi to get home. Mom? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was grand. Do you think you could pick me up? Every connection counts. Which is why Ireland can count on our network.

Vodafone. Together we can. Subject to coverage availability. Limitations and terms apply. See vodafone.ie forward slash terms. Every year, thousands of students go on their first holiday abroad. Our 5G roaming in 80 countries means they're connected as soon as they land. Just a reminder to wear sunscreen, love, because you're as pale as a ghost. Oh, and can you send me all your friends' numbers because their mothers are on to me. And always keep your cash in your bum bag, yeah. Every connection counts,

which is why Ireland can count on our network. Vodafone. Together we can. Subject to coverage availability. Limitations and terms apply. See vodafone.ie forward slash terms. When it comes to seeking fertility treatment, time can be of the essence.

At Beacon Care Fertility, we are proud to offer prompt access to affordable fertility care. With over 60,000 babies born across our fertility clinic network, we have both the science and the expertise to deliver. We offer convenient payment plans and are partnered with VHI and Leia. Beacon Care Fertility, where science meets life. Wow, entire month. For your birthday month, Peter, your birthday month, there's 100,000 titles to choose from. 100,000 in every genre. And they've got that whisper sync technology that will actually sync where you're reading to the devices that you have as you carry around. And it can't be understood and grasped until you see it at work, which you can't because it's invisible.

So go to audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet, audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet, and claim your free book, Peter. And heck, we're extending this offer to everybody who's listening as well in honor of Peter's birthday. Now here's somebody else. I don't hate to do a this-is-your-life type thing where we keep bringing people out from behind the curtain, but we will else. I don't hate to do a this is your life type thing where we keep bringing people out

from behind the curtain, but we will because it's time to get to our first guest and that's Ricochet's own... Rob, I'm sorry. I was on a roll there and you wanted to interrupt it

for a reason, Rob, and that was. Don't I need to make an audible recommendation? Obviously, no, because I didn't call for it. But if I would, I would say, Rob, what book do for it but if i would i would say rob what book do you want people to read um i would say in honor of peter's birthday by david allen getting things done it's a great fast googling there you might have done what's getting things

done about are you are you a subscriber to that rob i i i do as much of that system as i can got it it actually does help it's a pretty good i mean i'm as much as that system as I can. Got it. It actually does help. It's a pretty good, I mean, as much as facetious as I'm being, happy birthday, Peter, getting things done, David Allen, it's a great system for kind of keeping track of all the stuff going on, especially if you have multiple stuff happening at one time.

It really does work. It's not creepy or weird in any way. There's a whole philosophy around GTD. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's all these apps that you can use to fine-tune exactly how you're doing. I use them. Well, you actually have things that require... Rob has eight jobs.

Listen, if it's what Rob uses to get through life, if it's what Rob uses, I will give it a try because the man has at least eight jobs and somehow manages to stay afloat. Right. I rarely have to be anywhere, and I rarely have to do anything. So the number of GTD things that I actually have to do is small. Thursday is the big day where we've got this in the morning,

and I've got a column to write after that, and another interview, and another column to do, and a bleep page to do. The Thursday is jam-packed up and jelly-tight, which is why, of course, it's nice to talk to somebody else who also produces even more and makes the rest of us feel like slackers. And that would be Ricochet's own Molly Hemingway. Molly Ziegler Hemingway is a

consultant, I'm sorry, a columnist for Christianity Today and a contributor to GetReligion.org. Her writing on religion, economics, and baseball has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Federal Times, Radio and Records, and Modern Reformation. Originally from Colorado, she lives now in Washington

with her husband and two children. She enjoys combing the flea markets to improve her vinyl record collection. We've talked about this before. And believes that the designated hitter rule is the result of a communist plot. Welcome back to the podcast. Molly. Nice to be here. Hey, Molly. Hello.

So, um, a lot of stuff going on back there, back east I'd like to say. But can we have a quick update on where you think the state of the media is with the Gosnell story? I mean obviously pretty much all coverage and discussion of coverage of that has been completely smothered by events in Boston. But, I mean, how close were we or were we close to sort of making the point? Oh, well, I mean, I think that it depends on what the point is. But even if the media were to do a very good job covering the trial from this point forward, which I don't think they will. I think that what was shown in the media criticism of the Gosnell coverage is that there are some serious credibility problems with our mainstream

media. So even if they worked really hard to fix it, we would still be having that conversation. I think that what it showed people was is there is that it's not news value that dictates what becomes a media frenzy. Why was Sandra Fluke months of nonstop coverage and the worst serial killer in American history, perhaps, his trial doesn't get a mention? Is it because of news value? No. So what is it? And so I think that's an important conversation to be having.

And I think that even if the media had reacted better to this by really doing good coverage and doing sustained, thorough, prominent coverage, that would still have been a very valuable point to make. Here's why the Gosnell trial got a mention the other day in the New York Times, because Ross Douthat wrote about Mali's work to bring it to everybody's attention. That's why it ended up in the New York Times. Mali, the reply to you from Sarah Cliff, if I'm pronouncing her name correctly, is simply, to my mind, it's just incredible. Hi, Molly.

I cover policy for the Washington Post, not local crime, hence why I wrote about all the policy issues you mentioned. Explain to us why that is so boneheaded. Well, it was, I mean, I'm glad that she responded and gave her reasoning because it helps to know what you're dealing with and why certain issues get covered. The reason why I asked her was because she is the health policy reporter. I have followed her as a media critic. I follow her all the time. I read through her 80-plus stories on Sandra Fluke and the Komen Foundation when they made a private decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood. We got many stories out of that, even though it had nothing to do with the federal government.

When Todd Akin made his stupid comment, you know, dozens of stories on that. So I asked her precisely because she seemed like the reporter who can take these tangential issues and make quite a bit of coverage out of it. So when she said that she didn't view that story, which has off the top of my head about 100 health policy angles, that she didn't view that as a health policy story, but as a local crime story, that was just fascinating. I mean, it was really interesting to see how serious the blinders are in that newsroom. And it's not just her, as was evidenced by further, everyone had to kind of respond as to why they hadn't covered this obviously newsworthy trial. And what I found most shocking was that some of her editors said that they had never

even heard of it. Now, we know that they take their cues from media sites on the left, as evidenced by those stories I was just talking about. So how out of touch are they with reality? How out of touch are they with the pro-life movement if they couldn't, if they didn't even know? I mean, that's their admission is that they were ignorant. And these are the people who are the editors of some of the most powerful publications in America. I mean, that's just, someone probably should be fired over this. Well, do you buy that, Molly? I mean, they said they had blind, you said they had blinders on. Are they blinders? Well, I like to take people at their word. If they say they didn't know, I have no problem taking them at that.

But I think that's a horrible thing for a newsman to say. And the way the editor put it was, you know, I can't know about every story. This isn't every story. I mean, if you knew about Trayvon Martin, but you didn't know about Kermit Gosnell, if you wrote hundreds of stories about that murder, but then you didn't hear about this one that the pro-life media, the conservative press and that religious press have been writing about nonstop for years, that means you're really out of touch with a huge segment of the population. Or you're just ignoring all those cranks on the right wing who really are just always fulminating about one thing or the other. And what's the news value in that. I think it was finally given to them the proper angle, though, by Amanda Marcotte over at, I don't know if it was Feministing or Fire Dog.

I don't particularly read either or care. But her take was the real issue here is showing that we need to have more aesthetically pleasing and sterile environments for infanticide in the third term, is that the problem here is this place was filthy because this is what happens when you ban these procedures. You end up with unregulated places like Kermit's, which itself is preposterous, right? I mean, inspection was supposed to happen on this clinic, and they declined to do so because they thought if they did find something, it would restrict access and have a disparate impact, et cetera, et cetera. But I don't see anybody in the media picking up on the idea

that we really need a more effective, pretty, attractive condition for women to go in and have their baby's spinal cord snipped. So they're caught with the reality of what they've been supporting for all of these years, right? Molly, I mean, how do you expect the media to handle something like this? Well, having covered the way that they look at abortion politics for years, what I would have expected was just kind of some light coverage, maybe an emphasis on how really pro-lifers are to blame for what happened.

I don't know how they would work that out, but that's generally how these conversations go. It's very poorly covered, but kind of lightly covered. Or if there's a big annual march for life, it's not that they won't give it any coverage. They just do a little story and maybe a photo of the counter protesters. You know, I'm used to seeing bad coverage, but not like this complete blackout. Now, I do think that there's a lot of credence to the theory that people didn't want to talk about it just because of the very serious moral issues that are raised by having an abortionist do this. Officially speaking, if he had just snipped these babies' necks a few minutes earlier, we wouldn't be talking about it at all. If he had just managed

to kill a few less women, we wouldn't be talking about it at all. And so I think that it does raise very troubling questions. And also because he was really working quite a bit with the abortion industry in general. I mean, he got referrals from Planned Parenthood clinics. Someone came to certify his clinic with the National Abortion Federation, and they declined because it was actually a really filthy facility. But they didn't report him. Hey, Molly, there was an article in The Wall Street Journal yesterday, quite a long one to the journal's credit. What do you do with the following argument?

Hang on, I've got it. Yeah, here it is. Abortion rights backers condemned the alleged practices at Dr. Gosnell's clinic but said the case supports the need for women's access to safe abortions. The case supports the need for women's access to safe abortions. That's right. Quote, quote, Iles Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, quote, the best way to

make sure people like Gosnell cannot prey on desperate women is to ensure that abortion stays legal and financially accessible for all women as is their constitutional right, close quote. And she notes that many of Dr. Gosnell's patients were, quote, poor women who didn't have access to procedures at clinics with safer practices, close quote. What does Molly Hemingway do with that? Well, I think what's so fascinating about this is what happened at Gosnell's clinic is precisely what we were told would happen if abortion were not legal. Well, here it's not just legal, but in Pennsylvania, you can pretty much do anything and not get inspected. I mean, he was not inspected for 17 years. And that's not because of pro-lifers. That's because anytime you want to have any

standard or regulation on a clinic, the pro-choice lobby fights it tooth and nail, as you can see in every state across the nation, wherever this happens. So while it might be nice for them to say this, it would be interesting if the pro-choice lobby would put more time into backing it up with actual support for regulations on these clinics as opposed to what they currently do, which is usually try and regulate crisis pregnancy centers or groups that are aiming to help women without having them turn to abortion. Next question from Peter is this. You write for Christianity Today.

The blog is Pathios. Is that right? It's actually getreligion.org. And what we do, it's a media criticism site that's hosted. It's hosted at Pathios, which hosts innumerable blogs. I was trying to remember. I had a mental image of the word Pathios when I was reading your long piece the other day. Okay. So you write a number of, including Ricochet, thank goodness. So the question is, is this blackout in the mainstream media really keeping Americans from finding out about the Gosnell trial? Or is it the case that this

is one more opportunity for alternative media, for Christianity Today, for getreligion.org.com? I'm trying to give you a little plug. Getreligion.org. Okay. For getreligion.org to grow, to expand. Have you been finding your readership growing? Is it the case that people who are interested in this trial actually can't find out plenty about it? They just have to go to alternative media. Yeah. It's definitely not been good for media. But one of the things that we do at Get Religion is we want to support the American model of journalism, which is very unpopular these days. But we think that a vibrant, free press is very important for civil discourse. So we want to see these issues covered well. And that's where our

criticism comes from. A lot of media critics just rail against the media and say they're all awful and whatnot. We actually want to improve coverage and whatnot. But what I've written on this has been shared more. And I've been a media critic for years. And But what I've written on this has been shared more, and I've been a media critic for years, and probably everything I've written up until this point has not been discussed or shared as much as what happened in the last week with this Gosnell coverage. So I think it's been an important discussion to have. People certainly know more about it now than they did before. And I think it also is about much bigger than Gosnell. I think it's important for people to think critically about every single media firestorm

they witness. Is it a real thing or is it something just that the media want us to think is a real thing? Right. Right. Can I offer another perspective on that? Because I think that you're absolutely right. And I suspect that there is, this is where I believe it's a little disingenuous for some people to say we had blinders on. We didn't know about this. There's something about what happened in that clinic that reminds people and I think you put your – I think James actually said it, that really five or ten minutes earlier or a slightly different kind of procedure and it would be sort of constitutionally protected behavior. And I think that there's certainly – I believe whether it's conscious or subconscious,

a desire for people who are vehemently pro-choice to elide the details of what happens in these clinics, even the ones that are clean and safe and licensed, and to elide the details of what happens in these clinics, even the ones that are clean and safe and licensed, and to elide the details of the procedure specifically. Because the more people think about it, the worse it gets for the pro-choice movement. And there's one thing about Gosnell is it forces you to think about it. And it does seem to me that there's nothing – I don't think it's just that they weren't keeping up with the faith-based blogs. They weren't keeping up with the sort of anti-abortion movement and their news organizations. I think there's a genuine desire to simply not talk about this because the more you talk about it, the harder it is to defend. Do you get that at all?

I mean culturally I think that's what happens. It's actually already been acknowledged by several writers who say, When it comes to seeking fertility treatment, time can be of the essence. At Beacon Care Fertility, we are proud to offer prompt access to affordable fertility care. With over 60,000 babies born across our fertility clinic network, we have both the science and the expertise to deliver. We offer convenient payment plans and are partnered with VHI and LEIA. Beacon Care Fertility, where science meets life. I didn't write about this because I didn't want to deal with the tough questions. You know, they'd say I'm pro-choice and I didn't write about it

because it was a tough issue and it was bad for the cause. So people have already been admitting that and different people have been talking about the culture of newsrooms where it is just, you're just not allowed to question abortion on demand. This has been written about even in the mainstream media. In 1990, the Los Angeles Times wrote a big expose about how the media cover up the abortion debate so as to help the pro-choice cause. And it was actually published in the Los Angeles Times. And Carl Cannon just wrote yesterday about the same exact topic and he gave specific examples of how debate is shut down because it poses difficulties for one side of this debate. So it's something that's already being

acknowledged by certain people. So that's certainly partly true. I've just found all of the excuses or defenses to be fascinating, whether it's pro-choice bias, claims of ignorance. My favorite one was when they claimed that they had, in fact, covered the trial. And then they would point to either like 2011 or maybe brief AP mentions on the first day of the trial. But all of it is so interesting and tells us so much about the major problems we have with our national media. Well, the national media itself gave a fascinating explanation for why they didn't cover this. And the New York Times had one of the most revealing headlines they've ever done. Online furor draws press to abortion doctors' trial. didn't cover this, and the New York Times had one of the most revealing headlines they've ever done. Online Fuhrer draws

press to abortion doctor's trial. Not that the fact itself should get the press, but online Fuhrer, almost as though first of all, if there is an online Fuhrer, that's F-U-R-O-R, not in the... Molly is definitely not online Fuhrer.

Not in the German. Almost telegraphing to their readership, look, look, I know Molly is definitely not in Europe. I thought it was referencing me. Yeah, not in the German. The German readers. Almost telegraphing to their readership, look, look, I know you hate this story, but what are we going to do? This is why we're doing it, because there's been this online debate. That is a beautiful deep reading of that headline.

I am sure you're right about that, James. Yeah, and it's been made by many other people before me, so it's nothing unique. It's just one of those headlines that pops out and you realize, oh, but of course. Of course. Of course. But it's nice to see them sometimes just drop the – well, if they can't see how much that reveals their lack of objectivity, then it's astonishing. The problem is, of course, is that the New York Times sets the tone for everybody else.

But the New York Times puts on their page in the morning and puts on their website ends up clattering through every single major news outlet for the rest of the day. Exactly. And so it doesn't need to be a conspiracy to develop in a very problematic way. It just requires a few different things like that. The New York Times downplaying a few other national media outlets and then everybody else takes their cues

and then you've got a really big problem on your hands. Hey, Molly, have you had quietly even any recantations? Any, you know, we got this wrong. You're right about it. I myself missed it or I myself was a little willful in my ignorance of it. Has anybody said quietly, you're right, we're wrong? I have been absolutely gobsmacked by the response I've gotten privately. I did take some heat publicly from people, including some pretty egregious name calling.

But in private emails, in private phone calls from names that you would know at major national TV newspaper outlets, people would either call and tell me a situation that they just thought I would be interested in hearing about of a similar topic and how it was covered or not covered. People saying you really hit on something that's very important. These are people who might not be sympathetic to conservatism or the pro-life cause. They just care very deeply about credibility for their industry and they know it's in the tank and they know that this didn't help. And I, I, it actually gave me a little bit of hope and I almost never have that as a media critic, particularly in recent years. But just knowing that there are other people out there who recognize these very serious problems was good for me to learn about. Yeah, in a way that's almost more distressing to me personally. I know it cheered you, but now I'm feeling blue about that because what that means is all those people who wrote to you represent some large component of the working mainstream press that understands that the mainstream press has become effectively corrupt.

But has decided at some level to go along with it until Amali comes along and blows the whistle. I mean, that's just – it's like – I don't know. What is it like? It's like the Soviet Union in the old days, right? You knew there were a lot of people who objected but very, very few had the courage to speak up. I'd like to offer further hope, which is making me feel like I must be sick today or something. Thank you. I have had many people ask me why they thought this took off.

And it is funny because this is what I do every day and it never takes off. And here it finally did. But I think that if people want to make a difference, what is required is to come forth with a good faith effort, meaning you're not just attacking. You're not just critical. You really do want some common good that you share with the people that you're asking questions of. And then just be specific and don't question their motivations, just ask them, you did this, but you didn't do this, why? And just find out what they have to say. And if they get thinking

about why they didn't cover something, and you get to have a conversation with them about it, you can slowly work together to improve something. So even though my area is media criticism, I think this can work individually in political discussions or anything that is of interest to a given individual. Just speak kindly, be specific, know the topic, know of what you speak before you head into a discussion. And just keep calm and keep going. Be tenacious. But I'm just blown away by what I was able to accomplish just by asking a few questions.

Actually, yes. But let me give you the other side of it here from somebody who's in a newsroom. First of all, any newspaper that didn't take a story like this off the wires, and there's a lot of good stuff coming out of AP in Philadelphia during the trial, and put it on their website is just setting themselves up for trouble. I mean, I went back in our newspaper, looked in our archives, did an online search, and sure enough, we had four pieces about three or four days apart on the trial. So if somebody comes to us and says,

why aren't you putting this guy on the front page of the newspaper or inside, we can say, we don't have the room, frankly, and that's true. But you can point online and say, we've been carrying it here. So any newspaper that doesn't do that on just about every single story that comes down the pike from AP is committing an act of not malpractice, but just stupidity. I mean, that's the web has no restrictions on the size of your news hole. But secondly, when it comes to the newspaper, one of the things that they will tell you if you call them and say, why aren't you covering this and putting giving it more, more attention is that every, every story you can possibly think of has a tenacious advocate out there who believes that we should be putting it on the front page on the inside on the metro

section, and calls and says, Why aren't you doing this? And everybody gets told the same thing. It's just simply, we don't have the space in the paper. So while it's good, Molly, that you've done this, I mean, it's marvelous and it's wonderful to get the issue more attention. I'm just saying, newspapers get this on every issue from everybody, because everybody believes that we're either in the tank for the left or for the right. That's actually what I was trying to reference when I talked about knowing your issue. Because I've covered this so much, I knew precisely how the Komen Foundation was covered when they made a decision to stop giving a little bit of money. I knew that like the back of my hand. I remembered how it ran at the top of each newspaper, how it

was at the beginning of each newscast. I endured the Sandra Fluke year that we all endured, and I documented it. I looked at it. So when people, of course, everyone's going to say, oh, this story about my cat looking like Elvis deserves to be on the front page. But if you don't know the media landscape,

you're not going to be taken seriously. If you do know the media landscape, then you might have something worth taken seriously. If you do know the media landscape, then you might have something worth listening to. And I do want to see that cat, though, because working for newspapers, cats who resemble anybody from Gandhi to Hitler are online. That's just clickbait like you can't believe. Molly, thanks so much. Of course, we'll continue to follow you following the issue. And we advise everybody to go over to Ricochet.com and see what she's written lately, either the podcast with her husband or just some piece about the statist impulses

that he revealed in a weak moment. Great piece, Molly. I loved it. Yeah, and we can see the entire relationship fracture right there. Oh, at the end. In a series of... Has Mark chimed in? Has Mark chimed in?

He did. He chimed in the comments, and then he's on a train right now, so I'm hoping I can get more support before he gets off that train. Oh, good, good, good. All right, so everybody's got to go to this thing and support you. Oh, he's on a train. That'll bid again.

All right. Thanks a lot, Molly. We'll see you at the site. Take care, Molly. Tell Mark we said hello. Thanks, Molly. See you soon. Well, it's, yeah, the Kermit story is gruesome,

and the man himself is, there's something deeply wrong, which you can talk about later. I read an account of some abortion technique that he was pushing in the 60s or early 70s, which just gives you the mind of one of those Mengele types who sits up late at night thinking, how can I possibly mangle human flesh? There's something so wrong about the fellow. But it's been, you know, it's kind of weak where it's just been nothing but grim reality shoving us in our faces.

And sometimes you have to go to the people who are steeled and good at dealing with them and actually have put a few of the malefactors in the can where they belong. Which brings us to Andy McCarthy, former top federal prosecutor, senior fellow at National Review Institute, contributing editor at National Review, widely read commentator on national security matters,

and the author of the bestseller, The Grand Jihad, How Islam and the Left Sabotage America. You've been hanging around N.R., you know him, and you're used to his crystalline style and command of the issues. Andy, welcome back to the podcast. Hey, Andy, Peter Robinson here. Hey, Peter, how are you? I'm extremely well. What was the first thing that went through your mind when you saw the news about Boston? Well, you know, you're immediately taken back to prior incidents. I

guess that's the natural reaction to it. But, you know, I'm sort of right back to the chaos that happens after every one of these attacks, which I have to say, you know, I've seen it up close after the Trade Center was attacked. Right. I saw it after the bombing of the embassy in Nairobi, saw it after 9-11. It's something you never get used to seeing, but it's also something that never leaves you. And it seemed to me like,

here we go again. And did you, as a professional in these matters, you prosecuted the blind sheikh, the man responsible for the first and failed attempt on the world towers. Was your thinking about Boston along the lines of, well, I've been expecting this for more than 10 years or, oh, no, how did this happen? Was this a surprise to you or excuse me? I guess what I'm getting at is in some way, isn't it remarkable that there haven't been more of these? Yeah, you know, I, my reaction of course is surprised because if you, if you go on long enough without these things happening, um, even if you know, and I probably know, unfortunately better than most people, um, that, that we're vulnerable to this sort of thing. Uh, when you have a streak like we've had, um, where we really don't have this kind of attack successfully

happen in such a long time. You're always surprised when it happens. But then, you know, I guess maybe because some of us have to follow these things closely, we've had a lot of near misses going back over the last several years. Ray Kelly, I think, the morning of or the afternoon after the bombing in Boston, mentioned that they had thwarted 16 or 17 attempts just on New York City over the last few years. And you remember that thwarting attacks, which is the thing we want our agencies to do the most, is something they rarely can speak about, because to do that is to compromise their intelligence sources. And of course, that leads to the real problem we have, that sometimes people start to think when these things don't happen for a while, that maybe the problem isn't so severe rather than that maybe we haven't had an attack

because of the sensible precautions we've taken. What should be happening right now? Politicians should be keeping their mouths shut while the law enforcement professionals go about the work of investigating this. Do we all simply rest in patience for the time being? Is that the correct contenders in the primary race to succeed Michael Bloomberg as mayor of New York, every single one of them has been critical of the NYPD. And my first thought was, okay, as of now, I would be willing to bet those criticisms of the NYPD will stop, right? There has to be some political – the first thing we do is look back to the cops and say, you know, maybe you guys are doing a good job. Is this a moment when we

should be – we should – as the investigation goes forward, a politician here and there ought to say, you know what? This should remind us of the good work the men and women in blue have been doing in city after city across this country. Yeah, Peter, I think that you can't take the politics out of this. This doesn't mean that you politicize attacks because, you know, I think when these things happen, it's valuable for us to see that, you know, who's a Republican and who's a Democrat and who's a conservative and who's a liberal are things that matter to us political wonks in the United States. But to our enemies, we're Americans. And, you know, they they would go after President Obama just as much as they went after President Bush and actually tried to, you know, conspire to kill President Clinton at one point. They don't care about the niceties of our partisan politics, those who want to kill Americans.

And the government needs to defend us as Americans. So this national security, by and large, really should not be a partisan issue. But it's got many important political elements. And I think that's largely because, and maybe I'm getting a little partisan here, but one thing that we all agree, those of us who want limited government versus those of us who want more intrusive government, all agree that national security is an important mission of the federal government. In my mind, it's not only the most important mission. If you could only have one, that would be it. So it's important, I think, for policymakers to get a good eyeful of what's going on here and what it implicates. And then there are also things that are troubling that only Congress can shine a light on.

For example, Steve Emerson, who is probably the most knowledgeable analyst of jihadist terror in the United States, broke the news last night that the 20-year-old Saudi, who was originally focused on as a quote-unquote person of interest within hours of the bombing last week, is evidently about to be deported back to Saudi Arabia under very bizarre circumstances, with Steve's sources telling him it's on national security grounds, but nobody seeming to want to elaborate on what that all means. You know, if Congress doesn't get active and ask a lot of questions about something like that,

we have had instances in the past where, you know, Saudis who should have been questioned after terrorist attacks, including 9-11, were sort of mysteriously whisked out of the country and beyond the ability of investigators to ask competent questions. So I think that's the kind of thing that Congress has to get involved in. You can't just stand idly by and let that sort of stuff happen. I'm sorry, James, if you're a member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, you step in front of the cameras this morning and say what, Andy? Why is, well, number one, is it true that this person who was identified as a person of interest within hours of the bombing is suddenly being deported by the executive branch.

If he is being deported, does it have anything to do with the events of Monday? If it has to do with something else, why didn't it happen prompted it? And why did, you know, both Secretary of State Kerry and President Obama have suddenly hush-hush meetings with the Saudis hours after, well, I guess in the two days after the marathon attack, and then suddenly somebody who was a person of interest, such interest, I might add, that the authorities evidently went to a court and got a search warrant for his apartment. He went from then being a person of interest, who they thought was important enough to search, to somebody who was suddenly of no interest, and now somebody who's

apparently and reportedly going to be whisked out of the country. Well, that's just the sort of paranoid Islamophobia that discredits the right hand. He's probably being kicked out of the country for downloading Game of Thrones illegally. I mean, we just make these assumptions. All right. Lilacs here in Minnesota. I think maybe on behalf of all right-wing nuts and Catholics everywhere, I should probably confess to the bombing right here and now. Well, David Sirota would be very happy if you did, because he wants it to be a white male,

be better for the country. All right. Now, if this is going to be solved because they've looked at some videos and they've seen some frames and they've got some ideas, here's the question that comes up when you look at, oh, England. If you go to YouTube, you will find an endless number of videos of people drunkenly staggering around and making fools of themselves in the streets of England. And you think, gosh, why are there so many of those? And it's because every single public place has a camera pointed at it. Now, I don't like that idea.

I hate that idea. I'm not against cameras in public places, but the idea, 24-style, of being able to access any street at any time through some master network that the government has put in place in our streets. Isn't this the sort of situation where people look at this and say, well, look, they caught the guy through a camera. And if it can deter somebody because he knows he's being videotaped, then maybe that's the cure. That's the way we'll be safe the next time. Do you think this is actually going to lead people to look around and say, you know, now that George Bush is no longer in power, maybe it's time for we to have total informational awareness of our email, of our phone calls, and what goes on in our public streets? Do you think that's coming?

Yeah, well, it's certainly coming, and there will be those who say that. And, of course, you have to worry that there will be some people who will say that in good faith because they think it will just make us safer. There are other people who are interested in creating more of a big government security state. My attitude about this is the following. The framers, I think, ingeniously didn't create hard lines between our liberty and our security. They knew that those things are of utmost importance to us, but also that they're always in tension and that there are times when prudence demands that you ratchet up security, but the idea is not that that's a permanent one-way ratchet, that when the security situation eases, when your threat environment is not as severe, then things can go back more to peacetime norms.

So I can certainly see beefing up surveillance sensibly at a time when you are at war and you are facing an enemy that you think is at least at this point capable of projecting power on a large scale if you do it on an intelligence basis. But I also don't think that we're going to be facing this threat forever. So I would like to think that, you know, that reasonable minds could say, okay, you know, there are certain situations where we have big, obvious, inviting targets for terrorists, and we ought to ratchet up security when those events happen. But that shouldn't be a permanent fixture that we ought to go back to normal when circumstances allow. I agree completely. But you said something in there that made me sit up, because you said you don't think this will go on forever. The assumption is that that's what we're up against, just a never-ending struggle with people from a dozen nations which will be eternally hostile to

us and will never be able to be done with this threat. But yet you just said that you think that we will. Explain that. Well, a couple of things. First of all, just as we've been discussing for the last few minutes, we have come up with a security paradigm that largely works. I mean, we've had some near misses, to be sure. But for the most part, we haven't had anything like a repetition of 9-11. So already, I think our security is in many ways better than it

was 10 or 12 years ago. But the other thing is, you know, no war comes with an end date. It's always, it's difficult to imagine when you're in the middle of something that will, that it will actually come to an end. And I'm sure if, you know, we were having this conversation in 1941, if someone said, you know, this will come to an end soon, we wouldn't have been able to say, you know, exactly when it would come to an end, but, but you could imagine that it, that it would. And in fact it did. This is a little bit territory, which there can't be against a subnational, multi-continental terrorist organization. But there is a point in time

when I think that we will be able to largely defeat their ability to project power on the kind of scale that they've been able to project it on. The danger of terrorism will always be a problem, but it will never be. I think there will come a time when it won't be a wartime type campaign, that we can, if we have the determination to do it, largely defeat this enemy's ability to project power as if it were a nation state. And then we can go back. Maybe it will never be as normal as it was before, but I think we can go back to something that's less drastic than the need to have security cameras on every corner. And now everybody's waiting to jump into the questions. So we go to Rob. Hey, Andy.

It's Rob in LA. How are you? Hey, Rob. So we know that this is – I did not know before Boston that there was such a thing as a pressure cooker IED, and now I do. And there are plans for that all over the place. So it's hard to know from, it's hard to investigate from the sheer technology who might be behind this that we still don't know. And I'm restraining myself from asking you the question I really want to ask, which is, who did this? Because we don't know. And all the speculation kind of is, it seems to be a waste of breath. But it does seem like there's been a, we've had a – for the past 10 years at least,

kind of an open enrollment university course in how to make and transport an IED. So it seems to me unlikely that – it's hard to me to see how law enforcement can really crack down on more and more of these IEDs. You wouldn't have known. I mean I didn't know until the beginning of this week that a pressure cooker was a potentially lethal component to a bomb. How do we move forward knowing now that there's a million ways to build a bomb and that those plans are out there and that it does seem to me, at least now that it's fair to say, that it can be anyone. I mean do you know what I'm asking? I mean if you're law enforcement, what's the first thing you – who do you keep tabs on? Well, let's take it one thing at a time.

The business about the pressure cooker and this whole general idea of homemade bombs is not something that's new. In fact, we put in evidence in our trial in 1993 the fact that these guys had bomb manuals that instructed people how to make explosives with things that are available in your own kitchen. So this kind of information has been out there for a long time. It's only been more widely dispersed over time as technology for doing that gets better. So this has been a problem that we've had for a long time, and yet it hasn't been much of a problem in the United States. Now, it's quite correct to suggest that terrorists learn from the most important developments that go on in the world of terrorism, regardless of what their ideological stripe is. And what the most

important development in terrorism in the last decade or so has been the low level, improvised explosive device driven wars that Al Qaeda and its affiliates have been able to wage against Western forces, the United States in particular, in Afghanistan and Iraq. And these explosives are, you know, they present a different kind of challenge. They're not like the 1,400-pound urea nitrate chemical bomb that they exploded at the World Trade Center or some of the other bigger bombs that they've done, like at the embassies, for example. But they are they're challenging in that they're they're small, portable, easily camouflaged at the way at the place that you want to detonate them. And they can be remotely triggered by either cell phones or or you can have them go off with

timing devices. they're not difficult to make. They don't cause as much damage. But, you know, look, the purpose of terrorism, of course, is to terrorize. And there's nothing more terrifying, I don't think, than what happened on Monday, where, you know, two bombs, despite being fairly small in size, caused a lot of damage and a lot of pain and death. So, you know, clearly, yes, this is a big problem.

The only way I think that you combat it, and this goes back to the point I think Peter was making earlier when we were talking about Ray Kelly, is you have to have the kind of intelligence-based counterterrorism that we developed after the 9-11 attacks and that people like Ray Kelly in New York have been real pioneers on. And that is, you can't do what we did before 9-11 and sort of sit around and wait to be attacked. The only way that you can prevent attacks from happening rather than content yourself with trying to indict people after Americans have already been killed is to actually get out in the places where the threat may most be coming from with your ears to the ground, collect intelligence, and try to break up these cells before they can do the kind

of damage that we saw on Monday. And I think the biggest security threat that we have in the country right now is that that kind of counterterrorism has begun to be branded as racism, Islamophobia, et cetera, because the people who have an interest in undermining it, namely these Muslim Brotherhood front groups and other Islamist groups, now have the ear of the administration. Their idea for counterterrorism is that, and this is the administration working with them, is that we shouldn't be having the police go in there and do reasonable intelligence work. We should rely on our quote-unquote partners in the Islamic community to be our eyes and ears so that we'll get good information from

them about what the threat is. But those are organizations that deny the ideological basis for Islamic supremacism that results not only in jihadist violence, but also a broader threat to the United States in terms of this drive that they have to try to create or instill Sharia norms in our culture. And, you know, we can have a whole other conversation about that. But the point is that these are not reliable folks in terms of, you know, basically delegating our counterterrorism to them. The only way that we're going to remain safe is if the police and the federal law enforcement agents have the ability to go out and collect intelligence in the places where the threats to us are most likely to come from. And if we're going to stop doing that based on political correctness, then we better get used to more

events like Monday. Well, that is another conversation that we're going to have, especially with the administration sending 200 advisors to Jordan to prepare for any sort of Syrian involvement. And when we're in a full-blown war with them, we'll come back and talk to you, Andy, about why that was a bad idea and where we go next. Never any shortage. We only want to talk to you, Andy, when there's bad news. Put it that way. Well, then I expect to be on your speed dial.

Actually, no. If Iron Man 3 is awesome, we're going to call you and ask you what you thought, so make sure that you see it. Thank you, Andy. Absolutely. All right, we'll see you at National Review and around the world. Andy, thanks so much. Really appreciate it. My pleasure, guys. Good to talk to you.

Incidentally, the Iron Man 3 is going to be released in Japan in 4D, which is a format which is not yet really caught on in America, but I expect that it might. Rob, have you ever thought of retrofitting any of your fine work or preparing in the future by using the 4D format for your comedy? I have not thought about it for 3D. I don't think 3D is funny. But everything is in 3D.

I mean I just saw a trailer for The Great Gatsby or the Baz Luhrmann Gatsby movie. It's in 3D, right. It's in 3D, which is – Well, there's a lot of hands being pushed out in 20s style exaltation as they dance in shimmy. So I can imagine that you really need to... So you can see the shirts as they fly over the bed? Precisely.

You guys are more sensitive to this than I am. But the few movies that I've seen in 3D, for example, I think of Life of Pi and what was the James Cameron sci-fi one? Avatar. Thank you, Avatar. I don't remember the storylines life of pie i remember sort of a good feeling that was a lovely mood what i remember are the spectacular effects

yes isn't 3d a writer's enemy isn't it an enemy of the narrative line it's it's an effect no well it used to be when the when the when the uh producer say, now at this point I want a character to get out a yo-yo and fling it towards the camera. It's always funny when you see a 3D movie that's been flattened from the 50s, for example, and you can always tell the 3D moment when a spear is being stuck or a yo-yo appears or a hand goes for a kick. But to me it's an interesting iteration of the art form and it can be used well. Pixar for example

did Toy Story 3 in 3D and it was so subtle that you never had those oh wow moments as you did with say Despicable Me where you would say alright alright fine that big pointy thing in front of the cameras because it's 3D get it it can be done nicely

I don't see the point in the Gatsby movie, but then again, I'm not exactly leaning forward to Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby. Has there been a good Gatsby movie? No. Gatsby is actually a very hard book, very hard story to dramatize. It's pretty interior and you kind of, there's this sort of subtle change that takes place in the narrator in Nick Carraway, which is extremely hard to dramatize because he's the narrator. So it's just – it's trouble. It's a trouble thing. But I think they're going for a big spectacle, which might be interesting to look at.

I always feel like the glasses hurt to wear. It's all very irritating. Why can't I just sit and watch the movie? And now I'm so old that I kind of just – why can't I sit at home and watch the movie? Oh, right. This is happening more and more. But before we – right from Boston to 3D, I mean as you know, I lived in Boston for a long time and I know that place very well.

So it was strange to see those streets that I know pretty well kind of covered with chaos. And so I'm going to make a confession. When I heard about it, not the first thing I thought, but among my first thoughts was, were, God, I hope it's not someone that can hang on us you mean not a right-wing crazy yeah what you mean yeah um and i suspect that everyone who and i think that's a sign that i'm perhaps too partisan or that i went too quickly to that but i but i was gonna ask you guys if ask you guys if I'm alone in that? Yes, you are, I think. Yeah. Okay. Didn't occur to me until just this moment when I heard you say it.

Really? Yeah. Yes. I'm sorry to say. Peter, you should not lie on your birthday. There are special places. There are specific laws, I believe, in the Torah about that. Of course course everybody did. I mean, that's where your brain goes after you process the gru. You think, how is this going to be used?

That's inevitable. So play that out for me, Rob. What was in your head? That it would be a kind of Ted Kaczynski figure? Some sort of backwoods survivalist? Or who would it be that would be right wing that it was patriots day and that it was tax day i mean i did oh i went to

those things the way i see i see chris chris matthews brain went the same direction and i was sort of hoping it wasn't i know that he was hoping it was and maybe i was hoping it wasn't because i know he was hoping it was and i know what he got him i'm using him as an example i know what he and his ilk would do with it um and and i know that there's been a um there there is a disappointment in the left that the right despite all of uh the name calling and despite all of the sort of predictions has been extremely polite and fairly um civil in the face of this sort of march to european socialism we've had for the past five years what are you talking about jared jared lautner crazed right wing that man who left a propane tank bomb in times square, that was a protest against Obamacare.

The man who stabbed a cab driver in the nectar in the height of the controversy about the mosque, that was a crazed right-winger. Hold on, am I wrong? I'm absolutely wrong on every single one of those points. But at some juncture, gentlemen, they will be proved right. And when they are, and when somebody from the right does a crazy, stupid, Kaczynski-like thing, that it will not only erase how they were wrong about everything else, it will somehow come to justify all of their suspicions. Because finally, they'll be able to say, see, see, look at the violence that's absolutely inherent in any opposition to progress whatsoever. Because,

I mean, that's honestly what they've got to believe, is that there's an unbroken continuum between the people who say, hmm, we're abdicating too much of our liberty and our freedom here. There's an unbroken line between those people and the people who are backwards yahoos yammering on ham radio about gold and fiat currency. There's just no distinction. I see now that Rob was not crazy to think those thoughts. I was delinquent in not thinking them.

Well, no, I'm not sure. I mean we can't become – we can't be angry now about something that hasn't happened. But it did – I just noticed it in me that I had this feeling like, oh my god, please let it not be somebody who is 30, 40, 50, 60 percent on my side. And I've noticed of course as American culture and political culture spins out of control that the people on the – this is an old story. But the people on the fringes of both ends agree on everything. Here's my partisan thought, which I couldn't quite suppress, and you tell me whether this one was twisted. My partisan thought was, hmm, well, this will be interesting because this is one to which the solution is not a drone.

If or when they catch the one or two or three people responsible for this, they won't simply be able to wipe them out by hitting them with the drone from the sky. This is not Pakistan. They will need to question these people. And if there is any indication that they're connected to something wider than themselves, won't they want to question them pretty vigorously? Won't they want to even submit them to enhanced interrogation techniques? This could get pretty interesting for the Democrats and the administration and the left. That was my partisan thought. Well, I think that's a very interesting thought. I hadn't thought of that. I think that you could summarize the problem like you cannot solve this problem with a drone and I mean I'm not speculating on who did it. I'm not speculating. I have no information. I'm complete in almost blissful ignorance except for the blissful part. But at some point, if you were making a larger strategic or political argument, at some point, some of what those drones are doing is going to have to be – it will be responded to. That's the way of the world.

Whether it's correct or incorrect, they will. So Andy is correct. We just need to increase our vigilance. I still want to go back to what Andy said before about an ending. He said in 1941, if you'd looked at the war, you would have not known when it would end. That's true, but you would have known how it would look when it did. Hitler would be defeated. Japanese militarism would be defeated. And there would be new governments in place.

I don't see an analog to the situation that we're in right now. I don't either. analog to the situation that we're in right now. I don't either. What Raj said is correct. I mean, you have X number of drone strikes in Pakistan and a bunch of villagers killed, and it radicalizes two or three guys. I mean, isn't that what we were always told about Guantanamo? The radicalization potential therein was enormous, that people were going to be bombing us because of that. Well, if they're going to bomb us because of that, as the left said,

then who's to say that Boston wasn't, you know, blow back for Obama's policies. Why isn't that message being pounded on the table on MSNBC every night? If you read, as I've been doing lately, the revisionist Cold War histories, what led to the 1979 Iranian revolution and Ayatollah Khomeini was Eisenhower's overthrowing Mossadegh in Iran in a CIA-led coup in 1952. What do you mean revisionist history? That was the history that I was taught at the time. I remember people saying that. I mean, the revisionist history is going to be the one that you write that actually portrays the Soviet Union as being evil. Revisionism, Peter.

But the point is – the point is that – I mean the point – this is further to what you're saying, James. The point is that the left says we set in motion the CIA and once again in a rather – in what looks in retrospect like a Keystone Cops coup overthrew our Benz in Guatemala and put in – I can't remember who the replacement was. And this led directly to Fidel Castro and Che Guevara because they were so shaken and outraged by this American imperialism in Latin America. And these little Keystone Cops coups in Iran and Guatemala were as nothing by comparison with the rain of drones on Afghanistan and Pakistan during these last, what, six, seven, eight years. So the left simply cannot have it both ways, that if you stage a coup, you lead to an anti-American regime in Iran, but dropping dozens and dozens of drones on people won't have any effect at all.

They just cannot argue that. Of course they can have it both ways. And they will continue to have it both ways because they're aided and abetted by a general culture in a media and political otherwise, which is interested in letting them have it both ways. Because in the end, they'll get all the

good things for society. And so you kind of forget these little inconsistencies. I mean, you're right. Michael Moore ought to be blubbering about this on the television. Why is Michael Moore not drumming up the money to go to Pakistan and make a movie? Some funny movie where he stands there in his cap with his big microphone and interviews some people who had drones come overhead and blow up a wedding. What's the dereliction of – I don't know. I think to give Michael Moore his due, I think he's actually complaining about the drones. I mean, I think the true believers, I mean, the true believers on the left, I think

Michael Moore is one of them, are a lot more critical of this president than the partisan Democrats who run the media are. I mean, that's the strange thing about the media is that they're less, they're not, it's not so much that they're liberal as that they are partisan Democrats. They are in favor, they're Red Sox fans and they're against the Yankees, right? It's all a team to them and they want their team to win, which is why they cover up for people whose politics they might even not be all that crazy about. But they are in favor of a democratic majority because they know – just to return to my incredible soapbox and then we can wrap it up. They know that a democratic majority, a majority party can achieve all sorts of far left things. Right. That's what I mean. It doesn't matter because in the end, this is the party that's going to change. This is the side that's going to change America so much for the better through

its fundamental transformation until we have third term abortion clinics on every corner, which also sell any manner of legalized weed and polygamy is the law of the land, marriage-wise. I'm just looking 15 years down the road. But, you know, you can't even look 15 seconds down the road because we're out of time. That's it. I gotta remind you folks, is that if you haven't done so already, go to Hillsdale College

in person. I mean, right, just get on the bus now. And if you can't, though, you can go to ricochet.com slash Hillsdale and sign up for their free online courses on the Constitution now. And if you can't, though, you can go to Ricochet.com slash Hillsdale and sign up for their free online courses on the Constitution and Western Heritage. And, you know, Audible, too. Remember at the top of the hour we were talking about Audible?

Well, AudiblePodcast.com slash Ricochet. That's right. Write it down very fast. I'm not going to say it again. Okay, I will. AudiblePodcast.com slash Ricochet. Go there. Three zero days. Thirty days free membership and a free audiobook just for signing. Go there. Three, zero days. 30 days, free membership and a free audio book just for signing up. Thanks, everybody, for listening.

And we'll see you in the comments. We'll see you at Ricochet.com. Thanks, fellas. See you next week. I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you about my town. I'm going to tell you a big, fat story, baby. It's you about my town. I'm going to tell you a big fat story, baby. It's all about my town.

Yeah, down by the river. Down by the banks of the River Charles. Ah, that's what's happening, baby. That's where you'll find me. Along with lovers, muggers, and thieves. But they're cool people. Well, I love that dirty water. Boston, you're my home. You're the number one place. Ricochet.

Join the conversation. Oh, that's a shame. But I'm wishing and hoping that just once those doors were locked, I'd like to see Tom and my baby walk around. But I love that dirty water out in Boston, you know. Oh, yeah. Today, the New York Giants against the Los Angeles Rams. We're live at Anaheim Stadium in Anaheim, California. The level of intensity goes up. The atmosphere changes because this is the playoff.

From here on in, it's sudden death. The wild card game between the Giants and the Rams. Good afternoon. I'm Pat Summerall along with my regular colleague, John Madden. John Robinson, the Ram coach, was talking with us yesterday. We asked him how he was going to approach the game and he said, we will continue to do what we think we do best.