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The band is back together again this week as John Yoo ends his truancy, and we take up the fresh legal and constitutional disputes of the moment, starting with the Supreme Court's recent rulings about mail-in ballots and the Trump Administration's efforts to enlist the Postal Service on behalf of election integrity. From there we move on to the novel proposal to bring back prize courts and authorize old-fashioned "privateers" to capture Iranian shipping on the high seas and profit from their cargoes—something the United States hasn't done since around the time of Andrew Jackson (Trump's favorite president, perhaps not coincidentally). Then, on to the emerging controversy over Flock cameras, and whether we can trust the government not to abuse them or use them to spy on and harass us.
This week's cameo appearance is from our favorite classicist Alex Priou, who joins us to discuss his terrifically cheeky recent essay, "How to Be an Elitist." And our listener question this week is: "Why does the president get to select the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court? Shouldn't that be up to the members of the Court? The president doesn't get to appoint the Speaker of the House, after all, and the language on this matter in the Constitution is incomplete or ambiguous." Hmmm.
Discussion (12)
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Nice picture!
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The Flock camera debate in some ways gets me sounding like a "living Constitutionalist" because the modern use of machinery to simultaneously and continuously surveil large numbers of the population, even if individually they are on public roads, is so far beyond what the Founders and the late 18th Century citizenry could have imagined that the government would be capable of doing.
The government simultaneously and continuously surveilling large numbers of the population is qualitatively different from the government following specific identified individuals one-at-a-time.
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Pro tip for John Yoo - just because somebody didn't dump a complete and full accounting of all election fraud onto your desk, with a side of McRibs and fries for you to peruse at your leisure, doesn't mean it didn't and doesn't happen.
No points awarded for using phrases of the left like "systemic" and "widespread", because they used those words as qualifiers to wave away the obvious and broad-based examples of consistent fraudulent activities, including convictions.
electionfraud.heritage.org
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the picture needs to be updated with Lucrecia making John walk the plank
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Credit where credit is due: John Yoo created it. He demurred at our suggestion of redoing it with him walking the plank.
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