The Ricochet Podcast - Red Hens and Dogs

Episode Date: June 29, 2018

As you’ll hear, there were many possible titles for this episode, but we went with the simplest and most descriptive for we spewing a fair amount of time covering both. But we also have on the supreme Supreme Court expert Adam White from the Hoover Institution (listen to his new podcast with Richard Epstein here) to discuss all things SCOTUS and the great Salena Zito (read her new book The Great... Source

We have special news for you. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Are you going to send me or anybody that I know to a camp? We have people that are stupid. The Senate will vote to confirm Justice Kennedy's successor this fall. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lileks, and today we talk to Adam White about the Supremes and Selena Zito about civility.

Let's have ourselves a podcast. Bye-bye. It's the Ricochet Podcast number 406. We're brought to you by the fine people at Quip. Go to getquip.com slash ricochet right now, and you'll get your first brush refill pack free with a Quip electric toothbrush. And we're brought to you by Texture. Texture, well, that's the app that offers over 200 top magazines all in one place.

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To receive your first month of treatment free, go to keeps.com slash ricochet and we're brought to you by ricochet itself um which means of course that that rob and peter the founders are standing with their arms you know crossed against their chest tapping their toe with the disappointment of a fifth grade teacher who's just seeing you bring a frog to school again, and they'd like you to join. Yes. I would say this. You opened this podcast by saying it's podcast number 406, 406 of these.

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The National Public Radio thing is amusing because it's a show I listen to, which is pretty good. And they try to reach out across the aisle and get some folks, which are usually in D.C. But the summation of the program was, all right, last week we had Ask a Muslim, and it worked just great. So here's our new one. Next week, Ask a Drag Queen. And I thought, and after that, let's have Ask the Muslim about drag queens. Well, I think we already know the answer to that. But yeah. Actually, interestingly, in old Arabic poetry, the pronoun she and he, there's usually the pronoun she is not used. It's almost always he. So in old love poems in old Arabic, even pre-Islamic Arabic, it's usually it's a he.

How do you know about pre-Islamic Arabic. It's usually, it's a he. How do you know about pre-Islamic Arabic? Because there's a beautiful song, there's a beautiful old folk song, and it's called When He Starts to Sway, and it's about a dancer. And it's really a love song by somebody falling in love with a dancer. And it's ancient, it's a beautiful song. And I was looking up saying when he starts to sway and then i read up all about it and and uh and it turns out that actually the pronoun in in in ancient arabic is it's just there's just a poetic pronoun they use

and it's always he this is not the this is not the deep yale education this is wikipedia uh this is well it's not even wikipedia i think it's like what Wikipedia led me to. So yes. So what you're telling me is that pre-Islamic civilizations erased women in art and then the enlightened Islam came along and since Islam is proto-feminism, we know, came along and added the pronoun she. Fascinating. Okay. Well, it might be. You don't see the

point discussing it really right now guys because by the time i finish this sentence something else will have come and taken the glance and pointed everybody else elsewhere but there are some things overriding and overreaching we're having the the big civility debate. Is that just a bit too much? Is it really – are we really that uncivil or are we just sort of getting these heat waves off what people are feeling from social media? In this month of June, I spent a week in Madrid and I spent a week in Copenhagen. Long story in both cases. Madrid was to see my wife's – she has cousins. Okay, it doesn't matter. It was just, it took me two or three days both times just to adjust to the lack of any questions, comments, defamation

that involved the word Trump. Most of the world just doesn't care that much, which, of course, led me to the obvious observation that James and Rob and Blue Yeti and I spend too much time on Twitter. We just do. That even on his biggest night, Hannity only attracts an audience of four million, that Rachel Maddow is three million, and that we live in a country of three hundred and thirty million. I am just going to insist that most of the world is civil and we spend too much of our time in an uncivil bubble. And it's really easy just to pop out of it from time to time and calm ourselves down. That's my argument, boys. Attack me. No, I agree.

Uncivil to me. I would only say I would say this, that it used to be to be that the curb on your First Amendment rights to say anything, the curb on that was the face of – the look on the face of the person you're saying them to. And that, yes, you can say anything, but the look on that person's face is like, well, I don't really want to. That seems mean. Why am I being so nasty? And that used to be the curb. And then we created this incredibly wide-reaching anonymous social media that allows you to not see the face of the person you're screaming at. In fact, to make sure that that person can't see who you are.

You can do it anonymously. And that seemed to be a very, very sort of sad and deleterious tendency that now feels like it's making its way into the public sphere. I mean people are being turned away from restaurants and people are being screamed at on the street. And I heard this sad story from a dear, dear old friend of mine yesterday who had developed this great friendship with a wonderful writer last year. Both of them are kind of funny, and it was this great friendship in New York City to blossom between a legendary comedy writer and one of the funniest people in the world.

And I asked him, I had lunch with him yesterday. I said, hey, so how's this guy? And he goes, oh, he doesn't talk to me anymore. He wrote me an email and said, I can't be your friend anymore because you like Trump. And I just thought that was so sad and strange and weird. And this guy basically – this is my friend who likes Trump. He's come late in the game. He's basically a 9-11 conservative like a lot of people, but he's still stuck with it. And I said, would you ever imagine dropping a friend because of their politics ever? Like is that – that's not even in the realm of possibility. Certainly not for me.

I wouldn't have any friends in Hollywood for sure. And he said no, and it just – it seems to me like that's – my tendency is to scream they started it, they started it. But who knows? of arranging your life and your friends and the people that you love and the people that you'll do business with and talk to entirely on purely partisan grounds. So it isn't even that you're a conservative or you are you a pro-life. It's that you're a Republican. You wear the wrong team jersey. And that is sad. That depends on the amount of time that social media occupies in your life and how much importance you put on it i mean if you're right if you're not on it you don't know these things and you don't care i there are there are friends there are people in my industry there are people

i admire that i just i mute because what once used to be a wry series of little observations about life and amusements and their twitter feed it's now nothing but nazi nazi nazi and i feel bad for them but i just i'm so what's interesting though is this gresham's law of ideas that the more they nazi nazi nazi the more you have to be constantly inflamed from your hair to your sphincter about trump and if you aren't then you're not paying attention. So there's this race to be furious. And it's now the badge of a serious person. If you're not outraged all the time, 24-7, 365, then you're not a serious person. You're not a good person. And here's what they don't understand. They had this tremendous opportunity to look

across the aisle and say, here are a bunch of people disaffected in the early days of the Trump administration by the man's policy or by his persona or his style or whatever. How do we get these people? It never occurred to them in a million years to try to do that. They have gone so far to the other side. Of course, they'll say that about us but when george will says it is important now to vote for democrats and give them the house i look at george will and say have you seen what these people are saying that's right i'm sorry that's you believe in a in a lower taxes less intrusive government restrictions on abortion that don't keep them from murdering children the minute they come out of the womb if you believe in all you know not the paris accord if you don't believe in equality if you're not in a gala in other words womb, if you believe in all, you know, not the Paris Accord, if you don't believe in equality, if you're not in a gala, in other words, George,

if you believe in any sort of idea that we normally associate with conservatives, why the hell would I vote for the people who are the most antithetical to those ideas and opposed to everything I believe in? I don't get that. So, by the way, boys, go ahead, James. No, I mean, I just need to interject because I know that the Blue Yeti is thinking something right now. He's thinking you just gave this podcast a name early on in the show. And I want to say, no, don't do not name this podcast Hair to Sphincter Inflammation. Yes, thank you. The same same thing except i have the opposite choice i have the opposite view um no i think but i think you're absolutely right about that uh james but i think

it's it seems like on the one on the one side we do have president maxine waters right we do have a president who says crazy stuff and is very pugilistic and just he just says it on our side you know i've been trying out a theory in my head um for a while now which is that you know the what what gave the democrats and the left their astonishing successes in this country from 1964 to 1980 and even beyond was that they were a big loud unruly party they were a party that had no particular fixed compass except large government and government programs but that span that included a very conservative southern democrats like sam nunn and very centrist at that point pro-business democrats like the democratic

leadership council under bill clinton governor bill clinton arkansas had a lot of like conservatives and a lot of working class whites. And and somehow this unruly coalition managed to move the country left every year in year in, year out. They control the House and the Senate forever. And even when they lost the House and the Senate or they lost the White House, they kept the country moving leftward, mostly because they were sort of large and they were willing to have this big tent, which included the young Al Gore and the older Al Gore, right? I mean, Al Gore, when he was a younger senator from Tennessee, was a conservative, very conservative senator. And then later he became the Al Gore movement is sort of like both Al Gores fit into the Democratic Party for years. And the Republican Party did not have that. We were much more focused and had much more of a litmus test for all of our members. And now we seem to be getting a sort of an unruly kind of not quite so uniform, chaotic identification for ourselves. will and me feel uneasy about that in varying degrees but it's hard when you look at the news

of the day and you see what's happening and see what the news really is and it's hard when you're looking at um uh the supreme court not to think that there may be something positive out of this unruly uncivil and ugliness that we are seeing today. I don't know what it is. It makes me very disquieted. I'm not happy about it, but I'm willing to accept that maybe the way Democrats, the conservative Democrats or liberal Democrats in the old Democratic Party just kind of kept their mouth shut and just kind of watched what was going on,

that may be the role for the new Republican like me. I don't know. Peter, let me ask you this. I may that may be the role for the new Republican like me. I don't know. Peter, let me ask you this. Is it not incredibly illustrative that the left is freaking out about these three support the Supreme Court decisions, trying to maintain their narrative of authoritarianism when every one of these decisions disempowered to use their horrible words, the government in favor of the individual? Exactly. The five, four decisions that the court just handed down. Exactly. And furthermore, go ahead, go ahead. No, no, go on, go on.

Well, no, furthermore, this notion, there are all kinds of reasons to doubt that Roe versus Wade is going to be overturned anytime soon, no matter who is the next Supreme Court justice. But even if it were overturned tomorrow, what would that mean? It would mean that the 50 states would legislate on abortion just as they did before Roe versus Wade.

It doesn't mean an end to abortions. It just means you don't get to use the Supreme Court of the United States to impose your view on abortion on the entire country. Rob has correctly said over and over again on these podcasts that the pro-life side in the debate needs to address the country. It needs to move people in their hearts and minds. Guess what?

If Rowe is overturned, all that it means is that the pro-choice side is going to be in exactly the same position. Both sides will need to move people in their hearts and minds. They will need to make arguments. They will need to engage in politics. That's all. That's all. It doesn't mean we've become a fascist or still less a Nazi country. used to insist that whenever the Supreme Court says this must be the way, that is a restriction of democracy, not an expansion of democracy. By the way, I watched a few minutes the other evening of Donald Trump's rally speech in North Dakota. And he said at one point, we lost a great jurist today. He's reading off the teleprompter anthony kennedy and then he shakes his head and he and he ad-libs shakes his head with a smile of admiration and and says clearly off teleprompter to the crowd what a great man and i thought to myself he knows the president this we have a president of the united states who knows literally nothing about

constitutional law absolutely Absolutely nothing. Ronald Reagan was not a skilled jurist, obviously, but he would sit still for his briefing. He knew his way around the basic tenets of the Constitution. Donald Trump, zero. And yet it is Donald Trump who's given us Neil Gorsuch and has this list of, what, 24 remaining possible appointments to the Supreme Court. And every single one of them would be a dramatic—we live in this time, this weird paradox, Rob. You said there may be something positive that comes of this. There's a lot positive that comes of it. And while I'm ranting here, let me say one additional thing, and we'll see how the two of you respond to this. I am so tired

of having the Never Trumpers mimic the position of those of us who are sort of open minded, at least agnostic, if not pro Trump, by saying, oh, yeah, but Gorsuch, my you're damn right. But Gorsuch, after these five, four opinions that came down this past week. Well, right. Yes, but Gorsuch's that's worth it right there. But I would say that and I would counter that for all the Trumpers, the pro-Trumpers, understand that

it is Mitch McConnell who is delivering the goods here. It is Mitch McConnell the one who said, what has he ever done? Mitch McConnell who's got nothing but grief from a lot of the pro-Trump crowd, who is the one who gave us Gorsuch. And can you imagine if the Democrats were on the cusp of winning the House, which could happen in 2020, under this president, I mean there is an argument to be made to not rattle the cage and not poke the bear. This president insists on doing both those things.

Now, I'm not sure I'm following that. You're talking about the midterms? No, no, no. I'm just saying you could imagine in the midterms – I mean it is not the case in the midterms for 2018. But you could imagine that there's a midterm statistic where it could be the Senate that is in play and not the House. It could be – and the Senate is definitely in play in 2020. At which point an insulting and pugilistic and polarizing president ain't going to get his Supreme Court nominee, a conservative Supreme Court nominee through. You know, everybody made fun of, you know, I'm trying to remember who, maybe it was Souter,

or one of those sort of kind of milquetoasty, kind of vaguely conservative guys. That's the only person that Bush could get through. It wasn't as if he could get anybody else through. It was Bush. Okay, so all of that, I grant every word you say, particularly that the importance of Mitch McConnell. Still and all, none of it would be happening if Hillary Clinton were president instead of Donald Trump. Absolutely, which only goes to show you that it is a coalition sport, packing the Supreme Court with people that you believe have the right attitude. And it requires more than just a guy having a rally and saying, look what I'm going to

do. That can work, but only if he's got the backing of a strong and ruthless and frankly, probably deep down nasty Senate president. Otherwise, it doesn't work. And it may be the most consequential thing that Trump leaves is the Supreme Court because regulations can be reimposed, laws can be rewritten and all. As Obama knows, your legacy can evaporate quite quickly. What I find fascinating is Tamala Harris was saying on some NBC whatever drivel fest that the next appointment by Trump will help to destroy the

Constitution. And by destroy the Constitution, she means apparently read exactly what it says and follow that with a minimum of fantasy. Because what she wants for a Constitution is an ever elastic piece of silly putty that you press down on the Sunday comics, and when you pull it up, it's the exact opposite of the comic actually saying, but it kind of looks like it. An end to their ability to twist the constitution to this Procrustean bed that does whatever they says is coming and and strict people who adhere to the word to the to the letter of the law are going to expand the definitions and frontiers of individual liberty and fight the very authoritarianism that they say they're just mad the authoritarianism they detect is not on their side because in their hearts that's what they want it's not how it gets done it's the fact that these wonderful egalitarian things have to be done period and whatever means

necessary however well you know here's a james second note second note to blue yeti second note to blue yeti please also do not name this podcast drivel fest i know that's what he's thinking no drivel fest not for us well no no that was rachel maddow nor a dribble fest for example i mean sometimes you have the dribble that you you know what i mean oh my dog's barking my dog is barking because he knows it's time not only for me to take him for a walk but you know what i had a little bite to eat just a while ago and my mouth isn't feeling as fresh as it should and that's where quip comes in quip the truth is yeah wow that was a good conversation i just had to get to it because i i don't know well while everybody brushes up in their constitutional law, and Rob Long must be offline because I paused there for him to say,

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That's your first refill pack free at getquip.com slash ricochet. That's G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash ricochet. We thank them for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast Adam White. He's a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and director of the Center for the Study of the Administrative State at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, where incidentally he also teaches administrative law. He writes widely on the administrative state, the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and regulatory policy with special focus on energy policy and financial regulation. You can listen to his Reasonable Disagreements podcast with his arch enemy Richard Epstein right here on Ricochet. Follow him, of course, at Twitter at Adam J. White, D.C. Welcome. Oh, it's great to be here. And on that podcast, I have to say it's Reasonable

Disagreements. Richard's the reasonable one, and I just disagree with him. Well, I disagree with that characterization, sir. I think that's a perfectly unreasonable way to put it. Kennedy's legacy, looking back, it seems as though the left believed that they had lost the most reliable ally ever for all the good things in life. On balance, what was Kennedy's legacy and how will he be remembered? Well, first, on the point about what the left lost, there's a lot of talk about overturning Roe, overturning Obergefell. It's hard for me to imagine any of that happening. I think the reason why the progressive left is so worked up right now is what they have lost is the continuation of the expansion of those rights. The work to further and further expand them was already being limited, as we saw by Kennedy in that last case, Masterpiece Cake Shop. And now the court going forward will find a way to balance those rights against other rights and public interests.

And the left really lost their trump card in Justice Kennedy. Justice Kennedy's legacy is complicated. On the one hand, he was a very strong proponent of constitutional structure and of federalism. And that came through in some of his more conservative opinions. But he took a very expansive view of 14th Amendment liberty against the states and liberty against the federal government. And that was a very liberal and libertarian turn. I try to boil it down into three points. The way I always tried to understand Kennedy, it's not perfect, but it was close, was he had these three priorities. The top priority was liberty.

The second priority was constitutional structure and federalism in service of liberty. And the third is undeferential judicial power in service of all of that. Hey, Adam, Peter here. So you would not have been pleased with the editorial on National Review, Peter Robinson, you would not have been pleased with the editorial on national Peter Robinson. You would not have been pleased with the editorial National Review yesterday, which said, good riddance, it was headlined, good riddance, Justice Kennedy, that all those things you just named, you have, that's the pattern that emerges if you study his decisions, you could not go to him. And he could never have provided you with a coherent judicial philosophy as could Antonin Scalia have done or Clarence Thomas have done or Samuel Alito have done in

their sleep, right? You're being too nice to him. What do you say to that? Well, I'm an Iowan, so I try to be too nice to everybody. I think the best sign of why it was time for Kennedy to go is the reaction we're seeing today. The retirement of one judge turned the entire political world on its ear. That's a bad sign for the state of our democracy and the state of the functioning of our elected branches of government. Kennedy, through his unpredictability on the liberty side of things, really did aggrandize far too much power to the court. And I hope that his departure and his replacement will help continue a trend burgeoning on conservative circles, but on conservative side of the aisle, but also sometimes on the progressive side, about taking some power back from the courts as a matter and reclaiming it for the basic

functionings of our Republican democracy. Adam, you said a moment ago that you, whoever is the next justice, you doubt that Roe, 1973, which invented a right to abortion, or Obergefell, Obergefell was what, just last year, 2017, which invented a right to gay marriage. You doubt that either would be overturned. Why? Well, let me tell you first what I think will happen. I think states will have a little bit more room to experiment in reasonable regulations and balance those rights against other interests. But the path of actually overturning the core right in either of those cases is extremely difficult. And I'll try not to lawyer this up too much, but here's what it takes. It takes a state legislature and executive

passing a law that violates the core right we're talking about, say Roe and abortion. The next thing that has to happen is the people challenging the law have to decide that they're not going to go to state court because what they would want to do under a conservative U.S. Supreme Court is keep their case in the state's Supreme Court under the state constitution. That kind of decision can't be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. And so once you get a state law that violates the core right in Roe and no relief for the challengers in state courts under the state constitution, then they have to go to federal district court under the U.S. constitution, and then it has to get filtered through all the layers of federal judicial review.

And then the Supreme Court has to decide the case. And then they have to decide the whole issue of stare decisis, the weight of precedent. And then they have to decide the core matter of the substance of the right. And that is such a long and arduous path with so many decision points that I just don't see. Even before you start thinking about the justices' views on the merits, there's a lot that has to happen. All right. So, Counselor, let's stipulate that the first three-fifths or four-fifths of that process happen, that a state passes a law, somebody brings suit, and they take it all the way to the Supreme Court. Are you saying that no matter who is confirmed to replace Justice Kennedy, somebody else, let's say Justice Roberts, is going to vote to uphold Roe 5-4? Yeah, for Roberts— Go ahead. You see the question. Go ahead.

Yeah, I do. And for Roberts, I think the stare decisis question is going to be huge. For him, whatever his views on abortion, I don't know what they are, at least as a matter of law. You know, he's Catholic, so he might have moral views. Who knows whether he wants to overturn the precedent and return to the issue as an initial matter? That's an extremely difficult choice for any justice, but especially the chief justice. We saw this with Roberts' mentor and predecessor, Rehnquist. Through most of his career, he rallied against the Miranda rights case of the 1960s, said it was unconstitutional. But then he became chief justice, and he wrote the opinion retaining Miranda as a matter of precedent and in the interest of the stability of the law. I wrote a long piece for the Weekly Standard a couple of years ago trying to think through Roberts's institutional interests and his record. And for me, I think the stare decisis question will be very difficult for him. Okay. So in other words, Adam White to liberals, calm down.

Is that correct? Yeah. Adam White to everybody, calm down. Oh, Adam, you wound me. You wound me. Listen, one last question, then I can hear Rob chuckling the way he does when he wants to come in. So here's the last question. As a candidate, Donald Trump gave us a list of 25, was it 25 justices? I beg your pardon, 25 judges from whom he would choose his next justices. He said within an hour of Antony Kennedy's retirement, the president said, yep, I'm sticking with that list. Haven't decided which one it's going to be yet, but it's going to be somebody from that

list. Does Adam White approve of everybody remaining on that list? Oh, I can't remember every single name on the list. And so I don't know that I approve of everybody every single name on the list. And so I don't know that I approve of everybody. I definitely have some favorites. And then there's, you know, some I prefer he stay away from. Can I jump into that? My favorites tend to be ones like Mike Lee, Brett Kavanaugh, the D.C. Circuit judge, who's really the leading constitutional

judge of his generation on the lower courts. Amy Coney Barrett, the Trump appointee to the Seventh Circuit who withstood withering fire largely for her religious beliefs in her confirmation to the Seventh Circuit. The ones I would I hope. Adam, why did you what? Why did you lead with Mike Lee? Why did you lead with the senator from Utah, the junior senator from Utah? Why did you name him? You know, I didn't mean them in rank order. He just was the one that happened to occur to me first. He seemed to be yesterday the one that folks were talking about a lot once his name was bubbling up.

I did write a piece for the Weekly Standards website in 2011 when Lee had been in the Senate for about three weeks saying he ought to be on the Supreme Court and nothing he's said he's done since then has changed my mind, that's for sure. The ones I hope Trump, you know, I mean, the ones that I prefer less on the list are the ones that I think reflect some of Kennedy's downside, the more libertarian ones who are very smart, very thoughtful, but also very enthusiastic about judicial micromanagement of policy through the 14th Amendment and the Fifth Amendment. And so I'm hoping that President Trump nominates someone more in the Scalia-Gorsuch mold and less in the more Kennedy-Libertarian mold. Hey, it's Rob Long in New York. Thanks for joining us. So you said everything needs to calm down, but obviously the left is not going to calm down. This is a call to arms for them.

But should the right – I mean it felt like – mean, I don't know why we're celebrating this sort of unexpected event of an 82-year-old man retiring, but apparently that seems, that caught everybody by surprise. But the right seems to be thrilled. What are the downsides of another conservative on the Supreme Court? Wait, the downsides for the left? For the right, I mean. The right seems to be thrilled. You said everybody needs to calm down. Shouldn't the right be baking cakes

and setting off fireworks and celebrating? Oh, yeah, we absolutely should be celebrating. I just meant calm down your expectations that we're going to see an overturning of Roe or Obergefell in the near or even distant future. Certainly not in the near future. The distant future is going to take a lot of judicial appointments and a lot of fundamental political and moral change in the country as a whole. Well, what do you think we're going to see? I mean, what would you imagine conservatives

will be cheering about one year into the term of Justice X, whatever that is. Sure. Well, one is I think we'll sleep a lot more soundly when we see cases coming up like Masterpiece Cake Shop and we worry that a justice like Kennedy and the four liberals in the court would run roughshod over other constitutional rights and interests in the service of their preferred agenda. So that's one. Two is I think that whoever the conservative on the court will be, or even a libertarian, they will continue the conservative trend of rethinking some of the balances that were struck previously in the relationship between administrative power, the administrative state, and the rest of government. A lot of the judges have been rethinking this. Thomas Scalia before he died, Kennedy in some of his last opinions, Gorsuch

rose to prominence because he called for courts to be less deferential to agencies and for Congress to not delegate such broad powers to agencies. I'd expect that to continue. And as somebody who runs a place called the Center for the Study of the Administrative State, obviously I'm very interested in that aspect of things. On that point, by far and away, the most interesting candidate would be Brett Kavanaugh. This is the issue that really made him famous for, among other things, declaring the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's structure unconstitutional, a decision that was recently – an opinion that was recently endorsed by a federal trial judge in Manhattan. That that, I think, could be a real legacy for the next conservative appointee, especially Kavanaugh.

It's him. Hey, Adam, Peter here. Listen, here's the way I think about it. The way I think about it is as follows. He should nominate Amy Coney, if I'm pronouncing her name correctly, Amy Coney Barrett. And here's why. Politics. She just went through a hearing. All the worst that could be said about her or done to her has been said and has been done. One point one of three. Two, obviously, she's a woman.

Three, she's a Catholic. There are still a lot of Catholics, the Democrat on whose support the Democrats count. And we'll just see how much they want to rough up a Catholic nominee leading up to the midterms. Am I a bad person for taking political considerations like those into account? Well, Peter, you're always a very good person, of course. And, you know, right answer. There's a reason why you're the politico and I'm the law-talking guy. I don't pretend to understand the politics of this as much. I do know that Barrett has been through the fire recently and had to have impressed the White House and the Justice Department and folks in the Senate and her willingness to stay calm under fire and really present herself well.

I think it would be, you know, as a father of four daughters, I think it would be good to have a role model like Judge Barrett on the Supreme Court, somebody for them to look up to. And so I think she would be a great pick. And I do think, you know, as an amateur politico, that sure, the politics of a Barrett confirmation uh would be would be good for a lot of reasons hey can i just jump in here um uh kennedy is 82 i think he's 82 83 uh ruth bader ginsburg's 85 um what must she take a hint what must be happening right now? I don't know the woman.

I don't know if you do. But what must she be thinking about? What I'm asking is this question you can't answer. The polls are on the 538 and are looking at what's going to happen in the midterm. I mean, the midterms seem completely irrelevant to this particular presidential appointment. But what do you think she's doing? She's going to hold on two more years? What's her calculus? It's hard to say. She rejected calls loudly from the left to step down during President Obama's second term. She was just going to stay. And so she didn't step down during Obama.

She's obviously not going to step down under President Trump unless health dictates it. And so I think she's just continuing to do what she's always done. And, you know, she and her time on the court has seen Stevens and Souter and Sandra Day O'Connor all retire for whatever reasons and spend a long time, you know, many, many years now off the court. And, you know, who knows what they think of retirement? Maybe Sandra Day O'Connor is bored and tells Ginsburg that. I mean, who knows? But I suspect that, you know, O'Connor and Stevens especially would be having more fun these days on the court than off the court. And maybe Ginsburg decides that working on the Supreme Court isn't digging coal and she can, you know, play an important role in the service of policies she believes in. And she's a minor celebrity thanks to her status as the senior liberal on the court. I mean, why give that up?

Yeah, she's got a hit movie. If you could let me just fantasize, Adrian, for a minute. Just assume for a minute that she says, I just can't do it. And she is going to retire in the next two years. What happens then? I mean, we're looking at – and just assume that the Senate is still Republican, firmly Republican, and Trump is still the president. So all things are constant. How radically changed would the Supreme Court be if a conservative president or a Republican president with a Republican Senate gets to pick two seats, not just to replace Kennedy, but also replace Ginsburg? Yeah, it would change the court for a generation, of course.

And, you know, you said all things still, we have to remember there are other justices on the court who could retire, too, right? Who knows what Justice Thomas is going to do before President Trump's time is up? I mean, we just don't know. And I'm sure they, you know, they may talk to each other. They may not. Who knows? But we have to see how it all plays out. A Ginsburg retirement obviously would change the court generationally. But all this makes me think of one other name I want to throw into the mix, Meg Ryan. And no, not the actress, Judge Margaret Ryan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. She is a former Justice Thomas clerk. She is a Marine.

She's now a sitting judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. And she would be a wonderful wild card in all of this. I would love to see – I mean, I don't know much about her views. I'm'm not endorsing the fact that she's on the list, but it would be interesting to see a former Marine, Judge Meg Ryan, standing up and facing these questions from Dianne Feinstein and others on the on the committee. That would be a fascinating, fascinating episode. No, that's a humor. I love it. Adam White says, I don't know anything about politics. That's for you guys to figure out. But by the way, we can screw up this way. Adam, beautiful. I love that. I love that. Adam, James Lyle is here in Minnesota where let's talk a little energy policy. You deal with that in the regulatory state.

We just had a pipeline approved, which is astonishing to some people because they think that, A, no pipeline should ever be approved because of climate change, and, B, water is sacred and no liberal governor will ever allow these things to happen. Yet, we seem to have a different regime, a different world. While everybody's focusing on the Supreme Court, there are other things that are happening. Tell us exactly the state of energy policy and energy regulation right now under the Trump administration and what you see them accomplishing in the next couple of years. Well, I have to admit, I haven't followed as closely the last few months because I've been more focused on general regulatory policy in the courts. In general, the Trump administration got off to a very good start, beginning with a series of executive orders, then followed by

regulatory rulemakings in the EPA and in the other agencies, FERC, trying to become more proactive in allowing for the development of energy infrastructure. That's the good beginning of a process. It's hard to see how it plays out. Even a pipeline that's been approved is now going to be subjected to judicial review over and over again. So it's a good start.

I'd say declaring victory now would be like spiking the ball on the 10-yard line. And I don't mean the last 10-yard line. I mean, the first 10-yard line. There's a whole lot to go. You know, being from Iowa, I'm familiar with some of the pipeline projects coming through there. And we've seen the fights that they have, not just with progressive groups, but with landowners. And so, you know, there's a lot of work to be done, and the federal role in it is important, but only one specific part of it. Yeah. Well, full disclosure, I am a landowner with a pipe going through at the moment, so I should just let everybody know in case that colors what they think I'm saying. But let's talk about

the EPA in general. The idea is that we're going to see a constriction of their ability to essentially make law by passing regulations. And this has the left terrified because they want a robust, powerful EPA to be able to do pretty much whatever it wants in order for, of course, clean air and clean water. Going forth with the EPA, how do you see them fighting back, shall we say, against a diminution of their strength? Well, the EPA, they have less to do on new build of energy infrastructure. They do a lot more on existing energy infrastructure like power plants and so on. I'd say what the EPA is trying to do in general is rethink a lot of the really unprecedented regulatory programs like the Clean Power Plan. That's off to a good start in reform, but that is going to face withering scrutiny in the courts. And frankly, this is one of those areas where I think President Trump's sort of bombastic marketing campaign, so to speak, could be counterproductive.

I think he's going to attract a lot of fire from judges in these cases. And in addition to that, the other thing the EPA is doing, which is important, is trying to clean up its own house through reform of the way in which it uses science, trying to make it more transparent, the way in which it does cost-benefit analysis, trying to make that more transparent and rigorous. And even those sorts of good government reforms are being blasted by the left right now. It's really something to behold. Adam, thank you. It's really something to behold. Adam, thank you. I know you've got to go, and we'll talk to you the next time a Supreme Court justice retires,

which I think will be seven, eight months or so, just to keep everybody on the other side activated. Talk to you later. Maybe I'll be back next month. Talk to you guys. Thanks, Adam. You know, when I heard that Kennedy was retiring, the people I felt bad for were the people who were really interested in the plight of children on the border because that was the end of that. We were going to look away from that instantaneously. Nobody will – exactly. No, because we can only contain one outrage in our mind at a time, which is just fascinating to me.

I mean we move from one to the other, and even though none of the previous outrages are ever brought to a conclusion or a solution, people just assume that they ended bad for Trump and add it to their stock of things to hate and then move along. So what happens on the border now is going to be forgotten while we thrash through this nonsense because nobody can handle more than one outrageous flaming idea in their head it's not like your ipad for example or your phone where if you've got any books well i didn't i did i had no idea where you were going with it i was like i didn't know how to interrupt you because it was too it was too i i don't know what the word would be seem not quite seamless but too unexpected anyway um i said i don't know what the word would be. Not quite seamless, but too unexpected. Anyway, I said I didn't know how to interrupt you, and now I've just done it. Interesting. I'm just so good at this, I guess. That you did, and you did the very moment it became apparent to you.

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And so here's the question. If you follow the issues on Twitter and Facebook and the rest of it, you would think that there are mobs forming outside of every single restaurant in America, eager to find out whether or not the partisan divide has infected the booth where they like to sit and have their pancakes. How is this whole Sanders redhead thing playing out amongst the actual people who go about their daily lives in the way that we have for decades? Well, I can give you a very specific instance to that. On the same day that that happened, I drove from Savannah, Georgia to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

That's a long drive, let me just tell you. Wow. And I didn't take any interstates like I usually do. I went on the back roads. And so, first of all, it was very refreshing because, you know, I stopped in all different kinds of small, medium-sized towns and just, you know, talked to people, listened to people. I had barbecue.

I went to a watermelon festival and parade. And, you know, I didn't find the sort of same kind of vitriol that you find when you walk. And when I got home and logged onto Twitter, I was like, oh, my God, I swear I live in two different worlds. Because that's when everyone was talking about what happened to Sarah. And I can conclude without a doubt any small business owner I met along the way would have never done what the red hen decided to do. And I sometimes worry that things that happen in this country that don't cause that kind of attention, the people that don't behave that way, we forget to talk about them. Maybe because it's boring.

You know, I went into a restaurant and I had a Make America Great Again shirt. No, not me, but you know, you never see a story where a woman says, yeah, I went into a restaurant with my family and I had a Make America Great shirt in and they told me they wouldn't

serve me. Like, that doesn't happen. I mean, it's a job. Right. Go ahead, Jim. Sorry. Trump just came to Minnesota and had a rally, and people loved him. And they sent a reporter from Rolling Stone, I believe, who lives here, Anna Marie Cox, who used to be Wonkette, and she talked about the grim industrial brutalism of the Duluth skyline and the gray skies and the waters crashing into the emptiness that is Trump land. But there are people who are saying that this liberal state, well, I'm paraphrasing, but

yes, I mean, it was essentially the Rust Belt dystopia of Duluth. And this is an odd thing for a Minnesotan to say. But they like Trump up here because they feel, and this is what our reporters find, they feel as though the traditional Democratic coalition of big city liberals and environmentalists has abandoned them up there, that they don't care about them up there, and they're turning to Trump. Now, if that happens in Minnesota, then it's a cultural disconnect from what the elites of the cities believe. And so they now are casting off. Well, tell me if you see this in your experience, where the elites, so to speak, are casting off the people they naturally previously assumed as their allies because their allies are just regarding them with complete and utter contempt. Well, I mean, I think, yes, it's very true. And look, let's remember that President Trump only lost Minnesota by 45,000 votes. It was pretty close.

And this is why the Great Revolt is so important, because it breaks down the different kinds of types of surprising archetypes in his coalition and the ones that nobody saw in or understood. And it showed you a guidebook as to what's going to happen next. You know, Minnesota may be next in 2020. I mean, it even may be next in what happens with its congressional delegation. You know, the Democrats made a very important decision in 2010 that they were going to go with demographics as opposed to who their traditional loyal supporters had been. And you saw the impact of that decision by the Democrats between 2010 and 2016, losing 1,100 down-ballot seats in Congress and state legislative bodies to Republicans. That's a lot of seats. And then even look at the 2012 presidential election. President Obama made the decision to not include sort of New Deal Democrats as part of his coalition. support, people didn't come back and vote for him. And he decided that these working class and middle class and college-educated whites were not an ascending part of the Democratic

coalition. They were going to, you know, on them. They don't want to be more. They want them off. And they needed them. Hillary needed them to win in 2016. They need them to win and or home majority in the House and in particular in the U.S. Senate. Selina, I hate to be parochial here and stick with Minnesota, but it is illustrative, I think, because it's a microcosm of what's going on elsewhere. Our attorney, the Democratic Party, the D, well, the DFL, as we call them, their nominee for the attorney general is Keith Ellison, former DNC guy, who's been seen walking around with a shirt that says, in Spanish, I don't believe in borders. And it seems to me that that's quite the marker. There's a difference between saying to people, we need a sensible legal immigration policy, and somebody essentially going all the way out into this post-national world in which anyone is free to stream over the country borders as they please.

And again, that's not a winner with the people they need to attract. But they seem so besotted by their own fury, as though their opposition to Trump has justified going full socialist. And they actually do. They actually think this is a strategy for national victory or is it just feel good? Kirsten Gillian said it last night on CNN interview with Carla. She said, no, mine. That's it done. I don't want ice. I mean, it's a really dicey proposition. They believe that their base is energized over as far left as you can go.

But I don't think they understand that while that might play in a primary, whether it's running for AG or, you know, a state jury general or a program that's clearly running for the Democratic nomination in 2020, that does not play in the general election. And let's just think about this for a minute. Hillary made the decision in 2015 that she had to go left to Bernie Sanders on Second Amendment because that's one thing that Bernie Sanders was more moderate on, right? He's Trump Vermont. And instead of coming back to the middle on that as a general, she stuck it out there. And, you know, she said that the NRA is the enemy she's the most proud of having. And that didn't work. And I don't believe that that's going to work on the issue of the border.

People want to feel safe, you know, more than anything else. They want to stay safe. And yes, they do want illegal immigrants here. It's not an anti-immigrant. It's an anti-illegal immigrant problem. Not because all illegal immigrants are bad, but because

you can't sort of do a character check on someone and say, oh, this person wouldn't do anything wrong and this person wouldn't. You don't know that, right? So, I mean, that's the problem for the Democrats. And, you know, I would use Minnesota as an example. It has the potential to become the next Wisconsin. And what do I mean by that?

Take a look at how much Wisconsin has changed since 2009. It was a firm, blue-shade, top-down, not only voting for president, but also for governor, for U.S. senator, for Congress. It's dramatically changed in nine years. And I don't think, again, that's why the Great Revolt is so important, because it outlines what is exactly going on and what's happening next. Hey, Selina, it's Rob Long in New York. Thanks for joining us. So if we go back to a little bit, kind of see if we can blend a little bit of this instability we're seeing in places like the Red Hen and also the't even need ice, which is a very strange reaction and an extreme reaction to to the Trump policy doesn't doesn't nothing forces them to say not only do we not agree with what he's doing the border. We don't think we should have border enforcement. And that's a strange counter reaction that was not necessary necessary it's kind of an own goal as they say but i i feel like that's happening yeah but that but it's not happening

isn't that really essentially what happened to the the manager at the red hen uh the um we not only don't like your politics we will not even serve you dinner. We don't – and down the street from me in Manhattan, somebody did go into a local bar with a MAGA hat, and they were asked to leave. And that person didn't back down and forced the restaurant now has a policy of no baseball caps for anybody. So you can't go in there with a Hillary hat. You can't go in there with a – I don't know what, an Obama hat. You can't go in there with a hillary cat you can't go in there with a um i don't know what obama hat you can't go in there with a mega hat but doesn't it seem to me that we've all become very strangely prickly overreacting to sort of every sort of movement that uh it just seems like a very strange moment in american culture that i can't remember a time like that is it because we're all plugged in or is it because times are so good?

Yeah, we're all plugged in. That's why. I mean, honestly, we've had a hard time. And I try to remind people, don't take a breath and open up a history book and just read any old news stories from the 1850s up until the 1860s and any news story in the 1960s. Those two, you know, sort of decades alone will remind you that, oh, it's not as bad as we think. It was a lot worse, like a lot worse. I mean, I used to tell people to take a look at the at the campaign rhetoric between john adams and and thomas jefferson that was nasty i mean they make they make trump look like an amateur hour yeah but adams was right i mean you really we really need to um we need we really need to be more tuned to our history and what we've done before.

Politics has always been a blood sport. The problem is right now is that we're just one second away from everyone's opinion. I mean, who wants everyone's opinion? Exactly. You know, that's just unnatural. It is unnatural to get into two to two one everyone's opinion. And yet we face that every day. And that's that's the thing. That's something for yourself, for your family, community. You're not going to get anything enlightening on Twitter. At least Twitter has disabused us of the notion that the number of crazy people in the country is quite small.

Just remember, just remember, small percentage of people are on Twitter. And of that small percentage of people that are registered with Twitter accounts, 40% of them have never even used them. So we're looking not as much as that many people. Understood. There's just a lot of people that just want to, yep, yep, yep, yep. I agree, but I'm also looking at the blue checks, the actors, the people who have supposedly some stature. It used to be that if you had a Hollywood star who was uniquely stupid when it came to international affairs, their publicist insisted they kept it to themselves. Now, Bette Midler has a forum by which she can broadcast her incandescent incompetence to the whole world by announcing that she has no historical perspective whatsoever.

Thank you, Beth. I mean, that's what I mean. The unhinging of everybody by Trump is just illustrative. And that's where Twitter is sometimes useful. Not the random cranks, not the bots, but people who actually supposedly you think are smart. They really aren't. No, no, they're not. And if you're holding an actor, I mean, the outside of, you know,

the great ones that fought in World War II when I was a kid, into high esteem, then, you know, people that held volunteerism and community service as part of their, you know, their resume, you know, their resume. You know, I don't know. I haven't looked up to a Hollywood actor since, you know, makes me really old, but I like since Bob Hope, you know, and I would watch him, like, go to Vietnam and do all those US phone shows or Jimmy Stewart, you know,

people like that who start the country and continue that service in their private life. Absolutely. And I don't even know what their politics was. I have no idea. They didn't tell me. Well, that just means that they were doing us all a disservice. It was Howard Zinn who said you can't stay neutral on a moving train or something like that. We have

to know what everybody thinks so we can judge them harshly or not. Thanks for joining us today. Selena, we'll talk to you later. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for having me. You guys have a great Fourth of July. Thanks, Selena. Fourth. Ah, yes, Bob Hope in those old days. You know, by the time

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go to keeps.com slash ricochet. That's K-E-E-P-S dot com slash ricochet. That's a free month of treatment at keeps.com slash ricochet. Keeps, hair today, hair tomorrow. And here is Rob and Peter with us to say farewell. slash ricochet keeps air today, air tomorrow. And here is Rob and Peter with us to say farewell. But before we go, Peter understands there's new poodleage about in your place. Is that true?

Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. We lost our beloved poodle Crusoe, our beloved white standard poodle Crusoe last autumn. And I resisted for the longest time getting a new dog. And I just got I got why? Because this is well, all three of us are dog lovers. So the two of you will understand this, even if our listeners don't, because losing Crusoe really ripped me up. And I didn't want to go through it again, even to have it in my mind that if we got a puppy a decade from now or 12 years from now or 14 years from now, I'd have to go through it again. Not exactly rational.

Life happens, which means death happens. In any event, the kids just overruled me. My oldest daughter in particular behind my back started calling breeders finding out when litters were coming in and three and a half weeks ago boom Crusoe, a white standard male and now we have little Friday to

retain the Robinson Crusoe theme our girl Friday a little female black standard poodle and we fell in love with her. And two weeks after we got her, she had to have emergency surgery. So it's just amazing what you go through with dogs. I'm not saying anything that any dog lover doesn't understand.

I know. But she stopped eating, which is alarming for a puppy. Took her in. The vet said, leave her overnight. And the next morning we got a call. We do surgery now or we put the dog down. Those are your two choices. And it was going to be touch and go.

And would there be a secondary infection? I didn't know what had happened, but some sort of twisting in the intestines. Oh, that has to happen to puppies. That's a puppy thing. Yes. The stomach flips or something. Exactly. And so they had to take some chunk of this little tiny dog out.

And three days later, she's absolutely back to normal again. So we've been through the ringer over the rise and fall of empires, the decline of the West, the Supreme Court is at stake. Set it all aside. We've been through a family drama with a little 12-pound poodle puppy whom we all now just adore. It is – everybody says it. It's been said over and over and over again, and yet it's still true that having a puppy in the house just – it's like having a little joy machine around, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, not only creating joy but also creating other things to leave all over the house. But, yes, that's – my downstairs neighbors had a puppy.

Tell us your dog story, Rob. I believe you're back. You have custody again now? I had custody for a while, and I had to relinquish custody of my beloved Illy. She's now in my parents' place in Maryland, and they send me a picture of her every other day. And she's more loungy and more sort of spread all over the place

and uh in in enshrined in her throne then certainly she would be with me where i tend to you know be a little i mean i'm not tough on my dog but i've you know i do require a little bit of i don't know something like every now and then there's a there's a there's actually a a dog training kind of trope or or or uh not trope but like rule of thumb, which is that every now and then, for no reason, if you're walking somewhere and your dog is like sprawled out in a sleep somewhere, you just got to give him a little nudge and a little – maybe just a very light little kick or something on the floor to move. You got to tell him to move for no reason. And this is what the alpha dog does in the pack all the time. It's just every now and then says, no, you're not supposed to. I don't want you there.

I want you over here. And it's just a way of slightly reminding the dog that, yes, you may feel right now that you're in charge, but I'm always in charge. It sounds horrible, but dogs, that's what they need. They need rules. And they'll look at me. I got a dirty look from my dog. Oh, give me – really?

And then she kind of struggles and makes a big drama and then moves like four feet over and then lies down with a big thump. But it's never a bad idea to remind certain things, even certain organic things, even certain things that are humanoid and are related to you, who's the boss? There you go. And that's how you got Trump. I don't do that to my dog. I just come up with a demeaning nickname and repeat it frequently. They say actually, studies are saying that the whole alpha beta thing is a little bit over character. It's too much.

It's not exactly how it works that we're we're reading too much into that pack dynamic and it and we think it explains a lot of stuff that it really doesn't it's much more complex i don't know i know that my dog is he respects my authority but he uh he does a lot of things that are that really he just can't break him of it um and i've come to accept them as his means of communication. I just have one canine question, which is sort of goes nowhere, comes from nowhere. But I'm just curious. Two nights ago, my son noticed a coyote about 10 yards from our driveway.

We have coyotes that we didn't used to have 10 years ago here in Northern California. Of course, we're conscious of this because we don't want the coyote to take the puppy. And then I googled on this. Apparently, there are coyotes all over Minnesota, and now they're in Central Park as well. Doesn't this suggest that nature is actually having its way with us, whatever the environmentalists say? Well, yeah. We had a story here a couple of weeks ago about a raccoon that crawled up the side of a building, and people were just saying, how do raccoons get into the city? As though they expect that there's some wonderful barrier out there that only allows for dogs, cats, bunnies, squirrels, and the nice little fauna that they like. When actually beneath our feet and outside of the range of our vision, there is just this teeming world that we'll never get to see. No, no, no. feet and outside of the range of our vision there is just this teeming world that we'll never get to see what our dogs do because they have noses and their noses tell them the vast tapestry that's out there that the rest of us will never experience hey um when it comes to vast tapestries there's

uh you know the texture of the individual fabrics you can find that sort of intellectual diversity in Texture, the app, which gives you 200 magazines wherever you want them. And while you're sitting there reading, why don't you brush your teeth? Brush your teeth with Quip. And of course, when you're done with that, you might want to comb over that luscious glory you got on top because you went to Keeps. All of these places have fine deals for you with the promo code Ricochet. Just take a look at the, well, just take a look at the little podcast thing there on Ricochet.com itself, which they should join, Rob, right? Absolutely. I can only tell you we are trying to grow.

We're trying to make a difference. We feel like what we're doing here is people like it and more people are listening. We want to add some more titles. We want to add some more stuff to it. We want to add some more stories and some more shows we can only do that if you join um i know i mean i ran into somebody on the street who stopped and he recognized me from a from the podcast and he said i'm a huge fan i love the podcast i love uh the flagship i love glop and he mentioned a few others that he really loves and he said he looked looked at me, and he said in his face, and he goes,

and I'm not a member. So why don't you join? Why don't you join? Please do. He goes, I will do it. I will do it. And that happens to a lot of people. I understand it. You like it, and you're going to join, and you think about joining, and then you don't do it. I really need you to do it. We really need you to do that. So please go to Ricochet.com and join. We need an army

of people with Rob Longmas to be walking around the major metropolitan areas everywhere to guilt people into doing so. All right, folks, if you signed up, great. If you haven't, get to it. And if you get to it, that will allow you to comment, which is half the fun. Two-thirds of the fun, three-fourths, five-eighths. Figure that out in the comments yourself. We'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 3.0.

Next week, guys. Next week, I'll speak fourth. Happy fourth, right. I know you jump in a fire. I said you're sorry if I'm not a cop. I'm turning around by two. And if you jump out of the frying pan, I know you jump in a fire. See you come from country in a country truck. Tell me, say, you want to go home?

Yeah, go away from there. You may not want to sit around there. Sorry for my doggy. Turn around by two. Jump out of frying pan, I know. You jump in the fire, yeah. Bye. When I was with you, look how you're big and fat Now you look like a real wet rat Girl, go away from me Me no have to see you around here Sorry if I'm a dog

I got turned around by two And when you jump out that frying pan I say you jump in a fire again. Sorry if you're mad at the game, and turn around by two. And if you jump out that fire... Ricochet. Join the conversation.