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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Biggest Farce Contest

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With John Yoo in the host chair this week, we get off to a rocky start because a certain friend of ours made a favorable reference to Edmund Burke in a draft article shared with us in advance of publication, and Lucretia immediately went to DefCon1. To be continued next week!

Anyway, after introducing our whiskies of the week, we get down to business with ranking the biggest farce of the week (after Joe Biden that is), which came down to two deserving finalists: the latest hysterical J-6 hearings (which Steve said Democrats are clinging to like drowning sailors to a leaking life raft), or the delicious popcorn feast of racism inside the completely corrupt Los Angeles City Council. It took less than 72 hours for the left and the media to come up with the party line, which is that Hispanic politicians dishing on blacks, Jews, and Armenians is one more example of . . . white supremacy. We kid you not. We have the receipts from NBC News and the New York Times. White supremacy seems even more powerful than The Force in Star Wars. May The Farce be with you, LA City Council!

Then after a quick update on the Georgia, Arizona, and Utah senate races (Egg McMuffin again??), we raise our glasses to several more promising new Supreme Court cases, which, on close inspection, turn out to have one thing in common despite their very different issues: many of them involve cleaning up messes left behind by old Anthony Kennedy opinions. In particular we look at the sequel to Sackett v. EPA, which bought out Lucretia at her eloquent best explaining why her presentation of this case in the classroom is always so effective with students.

And if you persist to the end, you'll see we think Kamala outdid herself this week, achieving new lows in banality. And even though we were all tired after a long week, we got our groove on anyway, so it seems appropriate to end with bumper music from The Flamin' Groovies.

Hosts:
'Lucretia'John YooSteve Hayward
Guests:
JYJohn Yoo"Lucretia"

Discussion (20)

  • Internet's Hank@HankRhody

    I hate to ask after the running gag, but perhaps some time y'all could rehash just why John Yoo is so opposed to the Clean Air Act? I mean, there are plenty of reasons to oppose it and I'm sure he opposes it for a supermajority of them, but for now I'm going to assume he's looking to buy cheap housing downwind from a McDonald's.

  • Internet's Hank@HankRhody

    Administrative judges are unconstitutional. Quoting from the 6th Amendment:

    In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed,

    "By an impartial jury". Now, not being a lawyer myself I can't tell you why bench trials are allowed at all, but let that pass. A judge who is employed by one party in the question can't be impartial.

    The counterargument here is, I think, the phrase "criminal prosecutions". If a regulation is not a law then prosecuting someone for breaking it can't be a criminal prosecution. The answer to that is regulations have the force of law. If my breaking a regulation empowers the EPA to judge against me and fine me dollars by the ten thousand then I'm entitled to the due process of law, which includes a trial by impartial jury. If I'm merely breaking a regulation, something that doesn't rise to the level of a criminal act, then the regulation can't have the force of law, and they can't compel me to pay the fine. I guess you could argue that the broken regulation qualifies as a misdemeanor and hence doesn't rise to the level of a jury trial. What other misdemeanors have a ten thousand dollar fine, let alone a ten thousand dollars a day until we start doubling it fine?

    It is my firm conviction that the constitution is too important to be left solely to the lawyers. If people react to administrative judges as if they ought to be unconstitutional, that's because they ought to be unconstitutional. Insofar as the Supreme Court has ruled otherwise in the past it's going to take some really fine legal reasoning to convince me they weren't plain wrong.

  • Steven Hayward@StevenHayward
    ReplyingtoInternet's Hank

    Internet's Hank (View Comment):

    I hate to ask after the running gag, but perhaps some time y’all could rehash just why John Yoo is so opposed to the Clean Air Act? I mean, there are plenty of reasons to oppose it and I’m sure he opposes it for a supermajority of them, but for now I’m going to assume he’s looking to buy cheap housing downwind from a McDonald’s.

    It is an inside gag. He's not opposed to the Clean Air Act (or clean air!); he's just opposed to my bringing it up in class, which I used to do just to bug him. So it's become a "runner" as they say in standup.

  • Leslie Watkins@LeslieWatkins
    It is totally true that the gay alphabet mafia is harassing this baker in Colorado. (I happen to be gay.) I do not think much of the so-called Christian baker, however. I know of nowhere in the New Testament where followers of Jesus are told to sit in judgment of sinners. (I also happen to have a master’s in theological studies from Duke [1992], awarded magna cum laude, and have exegeted in koine Greek as well as English.) Indeed, Jesus famously surrounded himself with sinners. Yes, they were instructed to repent—i.e., turn away from sin—but as Paul makes clear in Romans 2 (which immediately follows his condemnation of all sorts of sin, including the only reference to lesbian sexual acts in the Bible), judgment is not the role of the believer, but of God. In fact, it’s just as bad to judge as to sin because the judging person not only soils the good news of the gospel, but also becomes a usurper of God. (Jesus never mentions this issue at all, BTW, but he does spend a good deal of time condemning divorce.) This baker has every right to refuse any request, but, to my mind, he lacks grace just as his critics do, inasmuch as they all serenely confuse themselves with God. The honorable thing, given his love of judgment, would be for him to make cakes privately, only on commission, and to stop advertising his work to the public, thereby increasing his fortunes and opportunities to judge.
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