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No one else is talking about it, but we will! The Mueller Report was released in full, outside of a few redacted bits. Did it change anyone’s mind? The intro/outro and Stephen’s song of the week is “Faithless” by Operators, and Jon’s song of the week is “Torment Operator” by She Sir. To listen to all the music featured on The Conservatarians, subscribe to our 2019 Spotify playlist!
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Heck yeah someone should be beating on the Dems with executive fiat. Otherwise they’ll never learn why executive fiat is bad. Though even the sledgehammer of Donald freakin’ Trump is having a hard time getting through their thick skulls. They still aren’t demanding that the President’s emergency declaration/powers be repealed, they just want one specific use ruled out of bounds. [Redacted] that, pull that power back away from the Presidency or suck it up.
It’s like the Dems’ plans to stack the Supreme Court. As soon as it was proposed Trump should have said “Hey, that’s a great idea, I think I’ll nominate these 15 people now!” Then have Cocaine Mitch line up 15 Supreme Court nominations on one hand, and an amendment to the Constitution limiting the Supreme Court to 9 Justices on the other hand. Ask them, “Do you want a 300 Justice conservative majority on the SC to dig out of or do you want to lock things in at the status quo that has held for 250 years?”
Stephen’s talk about the founders preventing a King of England here, around 29:00, reminded me of Tim Wilson’s routine.
Bill Clinton’s worse impulse: basically everything
George W. Bush’s worse impulse: the Iraq War, TARP, etc.
Obama’s worse impulse: Libya, Obamacare, DREAMERS, etc.
Trump’s worse impulse: Wanting to fire a careerist trash DOJ bureaucrat.
Lord protect us from Donald Trump and his desire to fire his own subordinates. That would be worse than additional wars.
This is generally my favorite podcast, but Stephen Miller is starting to sound like a net neutrality supporter: always a litany of things (nuke Denmark?) that might happen even if they haven’t happened and there is no indication that they will happen.
To rephrase my above comment a bit more succinctly, people who get into government to do “good” and “great” things are a greater danger to a free people than someone who is merely corrupt and venial.
I think I understand Stephen’s point, but to say the founders were geniuses because they stopped Trump from doing X is over the top.
I think they were geniuses at constructing a system that’s inherently flexible enough to bend, but not break, when presidents start to do things they otherwise shouldn’t – because they all understand the weaknesses of man, having lived in or participated in monarchies.
I think you had (as Stephen pointed out) two recent full-blown narcissists in Trump and Obama, both variations on a theme. Yet Obama campaigned on fundamentally transforming America. Trump campaigned on making America great again.
Both had views about what they wanted to see happen. Both had flawed ideas around how that should happen, and with little understanding that in either case, the larger the government becomes as a result of those goals they espouse, the worse off, and less free, all Americans are.
Which gets back to my tired premise, around only supporting candidates that call for reductions in the size, scope, and spending of gov’t. My recent count of those candidates totaled no more than 4, but admittedly, I didn’t look very hard.
Good episode. The desire to comment on this drove me to become a member, so well done!
It was mentioned that the Attorney General shouldn’t be part of the Executive Branch and some thoughts around what that would mean. Living in Tennessee, we have something quite similar to that here. The Attorney General of Tennessee is appointed by the Supreme Court of Tennessee to an 8 year term.
http://www.capitol.tn.gov/about/docs/tn-constitution.pdf
(Page 17 of the PDF, Article VI, Section 5)
The interesting thing about this is that such a change could be done legislatively, and would not require an amendment to the Constitution.
Article II, Section 2:
So, Congress could could designate the DoJ as a part of the Judicial Branch, and vest appointment authority with the Supreme Court.
This could be done a couple different ways. One would be to block move the DoJ to the Judicial Branch in toto. Alternatively, you could move the FBI, DEA, ATF (basically all the Law Enforcement except the Marshall’s Service) to DHS, leave the DoJ focused on prosecuting federal crimes. You could even devolve appointment of US Attorneys to the appropriate Circuit Courts of Appeals. Make US Attorney’s career prosecutors who are promoted to the role on the basis of merit instead of politics.
Despite some recent issues in Canada with the concept (Justin has been caught trying to play politics with some prosecutions and had to fire some cabinet members for saying “No” to him), they have moved prosecution to an independent Public Prosecution Service, but that’s fundamentally different in that most prosecutions in Canada, even for federal laws, are the responsibility of the provincial governments (unified court system, no separate federal/provincial court system)
So…the founders were so amazing that they stopped Trump from firing someone who by that time we knew was investigating based on a fake dossier that went through FISA courts based on FBI leaks to the media that were submitted as evidence. CRAZY TRUMP.
How did it do on stopping Obama’s unilateral action of the Dreamers…after the Legislature told him no. How did it do on stopping Obama from using the courts to investigate a rival campaign using the power of the FBI and executive branch.
Our system is robust but the crowing over stopping Trump is ridiculous when the system fails to stop nearly everyone else.
Also, I would like it more if Stephen would come with a libertarian or conservative policy reason we should not support Trump other than trivial things you don’t like about Trumps demeanor. I voted for Trump with a very heavy and worried heart, but the ongoing vitriol for Trump from libertarians and the “right” just demonstrates how we got to where we are because “our” “elites” have no idea what they are even working towards. Here is a hint, to my great astonishment Trump is actually moving us towards my policy goals, despite his idiot tweeting. So I realize I don’t care much about tweeting but I do care about policy and slowing down the onslaught of the socialist state.