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It’s late in the 4th quarter for this year’s Supreme Court season, and the Justices are starting to score with some long bombs. Our 3WHH bartenders celebrated with entire flights of whisky (our kind of diversity!) while pondering Thursday’s clean sweep of two 9 – 0 decisions that reinvigorate the “takings clause” of the 5th Amendment, and clip the wings of the EPA without once mentioning either the Chevron doctrine, or a certain other statute that is banned from this podcast.
But wait! There’s more! We also dispatch with prejudice the crazy idea of President Biden using the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling, preview a couple of brand new cases that may start to undo the DEI regime, and puzzle over a head-scratching case from a few weeks ago involving California’s extra-territorial imposition of regulations of pig-farming. As this poses an existential threat both to the availability of bacon supplies and McRibbs in California going forward, this is a matter of deep concern and outrage.
Speaking of pigs, John Yoo is about to come out with his own PIG book to go your bookshelf right next to Steve’s PIG book. That is, John and co-author Robert Delahunty are about to come out with The Politically-Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, which will make a nice pairing with both a good whisky and Steve’s Politically-Incorrect Guide to the Presidents, from Wilson to Obama. We discuss the common points of interest between the two books, though Steve alleges that John and his co-author got the Lochner case wrong, as everyone usually does.
There is no truth to the rumor that Lucretia is writing The Politically-Incorrect Guide to Political Incorrectness, though she’s the obvious choice for the title.
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First!
Did anyone else pick up on Lucretia’s subtle intimations that she did not want to talk about the Lochner case? I happen to think the court was correct in Lochner, but then that’s probably because I find it hard to disagree with a justice named Rufus Peckham.
I hesitate to pile on Steve after his battering by Lucretia, but he forgot to tell us who performed the closing music, Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick. I looked for it online and didn’t find it, but did find Heline, a classical flutist from Scandanavia who reacts to Tull songs. Very interesting:
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?&q=classical+music+version+of+thick+as+a+brick&view=detail&mid=BF88419AC139A9804115BF88419AC139A9804115&FORM=VDRVRV&ajaxhist=0
I wondered how many listeners who made it to the very end would pick up the exit music. It is the London Symphony Orchestra with David Palmer, Dave Pegg, Ian Anderson, Martin Barre & Peter Vitesse playing along, on an album entitled “A Classic Case: The Music of Jethro Tull.”
As for Lucretia and Lochner, well, I’m afraid there’s just no helping her on this one.
Thanks, Steve. I always listen to the end; your show is both educational and entertaining.
Another great episode. Another great disappointment in how the law works. Procedure (standing) presents hurdles to dealing with an obvious example of compelled speech. Big—giant—pockets are necessary to effect justice. Over-lengthy procedures make a mockery of a swift and speedy anything. To me the law resembles a broken-down bureaucracy much much more than the bulwark of democracy.
“Subtle intimations.” That’s a new one! It was so subtle I missed it! (Not.)
Initially I was distressed by the California pork ruling, but I have changed my mind. If California has its own pork regulations, that will provide an opening for smaller hog farms to market their non-California-compliant pork to other states. Striking down the dormant commerce clause will have the effect of decreasing the power of nationwide corporations, which will be good for the political and economic power of states and small companies.
And constitutionally I think it is the right decision, regardless of the policy implications.
Pork producers are not as consolidated as auto makers.
From the very start the FBI/DoJ and the media were in league with the Hillary campaign, which controlled the then-bankrupt DNC. The Sussman-to-Baker handoff is the clearest example.
The technical counter-bureaucracy term for meddlesome autocratic EPA bureaucrat is “dickless.”
I was trying not to get Steve in trouble with the Powerlineblog censor….
I really long for the alternative timeline, where Marx is an obscure failure…