0:01

Hello and

0:04

welcome to the Slate Political GAP Fest.

0:17

May 2nd, 2024, the Should

0:19

Student Protesters Be Arrested edition.

0:22

And David Plots from CityCast. Crow update. There's

0:24

now a cat stalking in the yard next

0:27

door and the birds are extremely agitated. I

0:29

haven't seen an outdoor cat in my neighborhood.

0:31

The birds do not like it. Crows

0:33

are not picking up the things I'm leaving for

0:35

them. That happens to me all the time. Yeah.

0:39

You guys don't pick up the things I leave for you either. John

0:43

Dickerson from CBS

0:45

Daily Report. Hello, John Dickerson.

0:48

Thank you for using its new name, David. I feel

0:50

affirmed. From

0:52

the New York Times Magazine and Yale University Law

0:54

School and the Yale University Law School Daily Report.

0:57

Emily Vazol. Hello, Emily. Hi,

0:59

David. Hi, John. Imagine if

1:01

you had to do a daily 90-minute show

1:03

about Yale University Law School, Emily. Oh my

1:05

God. On the other hand, you would have

1:08

lots of ready people available to bang on

1:10

for 90 minutes about things, wouldn't you? That's

1:12

true. You'd have sources all around you. That is

1:14

absolutely true. Yeah. This

1:20

week on the GAP Fest, police arrest 1,000

1:23

anti-Israel protesters at campuses across

1:25

the U.S., Columbia, Fordham, Dartmouth,

1:27

NYU. Counter protesters

1:30

attack an encampment at UCLA. Campus

1:33

after campus after campus is paralyzed by

1:36

student activism. Who was right? Who

1:38

was wrong? Is this invigorating student activism?

1:41

Is it anti-Semitic vandalism? Is it a

1:43

performative tantrum? What is it? Then

1:47

who could possibly be against judges

1:49

considering history and tradition in their

1:51

rulings? Emily Bazlon. That's

1:53

who. We'll talk about Emily's

1:55

fascinating new piece about history and tradition and

1:58

judicial rulings. South

2:00

Dakota Governor Kristi Noem admits to murdering

2:02

her own puppy and a goat in

2:04

her new memoir. Will it help her

2:06

get on Trump's ticket? Plus we'll have

2:08

Cocktail Chatter. Some

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people just know the best rate for you

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is a rate based on you with Allstate.

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And look at you, hands perfectly placed on

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the wheel. Not like the driver to the

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going after that drum solo. Save

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the drive-wise on the Allstate app and only

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pay a rate based on you. Not

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and savings vary, and in some states your rate could

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increase with high-risk driving. Allstate Fire and Casualty Insurance

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Company in Affiliates Northbrook, Illinois. What

2:41

an extraordinary week it has been on

2:43

university campuses with

2:45

the showdowns over

2:48

the pro-Palestinian anti-Israel protests. In

2:51

Columbia, the Ground Zero, the cops on

2:54

the protesters for the second time, this

2:56

time to expel and arrest students and

2:58

others who took over a university building.

3:01

There were also arrests at many, many other universities.

3:03

The last figure I saw was more than a

3:05

thousand. There are encampments,

3:08

battles over encampments on dozens of

3:10

campuses. I would

3:12

say we're at the never wrestle with a

3:14

pig phase of these protests, where it's clear

3:16

that no matter who wins, the university is

3:18

going to lose. Student protesters

3:21

have put university leaders in impossible

3:23

positions, and university leaders have

3:25

responded by doing really

3:28

improbable and probably mistaken things.

3:31

So, John, you live just

3:33

down the street from Columbia practically. Columbia

3:35

called the cops to expel protesters from a

3:38

campus building. Should you ever call the cops

3:40

on student protesters? Is this an occasion when

3:42

you should? Those are two great questions. I

3:44

would just tweak the open just a little

3:46

bit. Sorry, I'm getting out of my

3:48

lane here. But it's

3:51

my day job. There are some universities

3:53

where things were resolved,

3:56

Yale, Johns Hopkins, Brown,

3:58

and I think at least- in

4:00

the case of Brown, which I know a little bit more, I'm not

4:03

sure that the college administrators

4:05

came off badly. I

4:07

mean, I think they found a resolution. They

4:10

basically agreed to have a vote in October

4:12

on divestment. Anyway, that's obviously not the majority

4:14

of cases, but it's just one little part

4:16

of the story. Should they have called the

4:18

cops first time? No, probably. Like, maybe definitely

4:20

not call them the first time. Occupy building,

4:23

not leave when given plenty of fair warning.

4:25

Yeah. I mean, it's hard. You

4:27

sort of want to wind the tape back, right?

4:29

I mean, let's take

4:31

Columbia as an example. If you go back

4:34

to this moment, if you

4:36

hold a long time ago, me, it was just like a week and

4:38

a half ago where the

4:40

president of Columbia, Manu Shafik, was testifying

4:42

in front of Congress. She kind of

4:45

threw free speech values and

4:48

individual professors under the bus in front of

4:50

Congress. Like, she knew that the president of

4:52

Harvard and the president of Pann

4:54

had lost their jobs by not

4:57

sounding like they cared enough about

4:59

anti-Semitic speech on their campuses, and

5:02

she wasn't going to make that mistake. So

5:04

then she came back to campus

5:06

to a lot of like real

5:08

distress about that testimony and an

5:10

encampment, which the students had cleverly

5:12

set up in the early

5:15

dawn right before she testified. And

5:17

I've been told by people at Columbia, or I've

5:20

been doing some reporting, that she then felt like

5:22

she had to act tough because she had basically

5:24

just told Congress she was going to do that

5:26

and kind of set herself up. And

5:28

then things like unwind from there. And

5:31

I think you have the sense on

5:33

other campuses that, you know, Columbia lit

5:35

a spark, which is now traveling around

5:37

the country. I was

5:39

talking to a wise former administrator who

5:41

was saying to me that when

5:43

students are upset about something, and

5:46

they really are upset about the war on

5:48

Gaza, you have to figure

5:51

out as a university how not to

5:53

become the vector for their rage. And

5:56

that is absolutely not what happened at

5:58

Columbia. It was the total opposite

6:00

and I think Shafik kind of created

6:02

reasons for that that were real. But

6:05

then we also have to ask, you

6:07

know, whether the response from the students

6:09

was wise. And to even

6:13

use that word is kind of funny because I think

6:15

we have this idea that like, we're always supposed to

6:17

side with the youth or be sympathetic in some way.

6:19

But on the other hand, like often students are unwise

6:22

as well. But what was Shafik supposed

6:24

to have done? She was

6:26

in an absolutely impossible position. And

6:29

I feel like she made a set of choices

6:31

that were probably not good. She shouldn't have called

6:33

the cops, but she would have lost her job.

6:37

And because she was, she was going to

6:39

be a ritual animal sacrifice under

6:42

all circumstances, except her cracking

6:44

down on the students with cops. As little

6:47

power as Congress has in

6:49

so many areas that desire that

6:51

require collective action from Congress. It's

6:54

amazing that in this area, in this area,

6:57

following the chain of reasoning, I think you

6:59

were touching on David, with which I agree,

7:01

Congress has an enormous power. It caused this

7:03

behavior. I mean, I don't think it causes

7:05

behavior. I think isn't the isn't

7:07

the whole deal about having morals and a

7:09

code and a set of standards that when

7:11

those standards come in conflict with people you

7:14

think are acting in bad faith. And I

7:16

think it's probably safe to assume here that

7:18

Columbia administrators thought that the members of Congress

7:20

who were pillaring them were acting in bad

7:22

faith, that your job is to

7:24

sacrifice yourself for the things you believe in when you're

7:26

in one of these jobs where you're trying to

7:29

promote the belief in things you believe in.

7:31

And that giving into the performative aspect of

7:33

this, while it might have been politically beneficial

7:35

in the short term, one of the reasons

7:37

you have these standards and morals is not

7:39

just because they're good on their own basis,

7:42

but also because in the long term, they end up kicking

7:44

you in the ass when you break them. Well

7:46

said, let's remember that federal

7:49

funding is a significant fraction of

7:51

the budget of these big private

7:53

universities, right? They are the

7:56

whole directly beholden to Congress. So

7:58

they can't. their noses.

8:00

But I think to

8:03

take your more principled stand, John, I

8:05

mean, one thing that has been missing

8:07

in this testimony generally is like a

8:10

full-throated defense of free speech on campus.

8:12

I was like, yes, we are going

8:14

to let people yell things that

8:17

other people find completely unacceptable, and

8:19

that's part of our learning community.

8:21

Now, there's a limit on this,

8:24

which is another, which is a

8:26

federal statute called Title VI, which

8:28

says that you can't have discriminatory

8:31

or harassing speech that rises to

8:33

the level of a hostile environment

8:36

because it's severe or pervasive. And Shafik, interestingly,

8:38

in the last week, has said that the

8:40

protests have created that kind of hostile environment

8:42

in Colombia, which is a sort of admission

8:45

of being on the brink of liability. But

8:47

I think she also said it in order

8:49

to lay the groundwork for calling the cops

8:51

again when

8:54

the building was occupied. Anyway, there's this

8:56

tension there. But Emily, nobody can make

8:58

that principled defense of free speech because there

9:00

are very few university campuses where that's actually

9:02

been the habit in recent years. I mean,

9:04

I assume this is why University of

9:06

Chicago is in a safe, is

9:08

the school that is like skating through this because University

9:11

of Chicago has sort of allowed that. Yeah,

9:13

there was a really interesting letter

9:15

from their president. He said, look,

9:18

like you're saying, so Chicago has

9:21

both a principle of institutional

9:23

neutrality for the school itself

9:25

called the Calvin principles and

9:27

these principles from 2014

9:30

that are like very pro free speech,

9:32

very not in the mode of like,

9:34

we're going to have safe spaces on

9:36

campus for students. And we think that

9:38

if students are wounded or offended by

9:40

speech, including hate speech, we're going to

9:42

do something about it. Chicago does

9:44

not do something about it if they

9:47

don't have to, which they really

9:49

don't most of the

9:51

time. And so this letter was about

9:53

like, Hey, we let pro Palestinian demonstrators

9:55

set up a huge exhibit on the

9:58

lawn honoring saying like our

10:00

martyrs, we let it stay up, we

10:02

were given lots, students lots of opportunities

10:04

for expression. Now we have an encampment.

10:06

We are not happy about that encampment

10:08

because it breaks our time, place, and

10:10

manner rules. And we're going to explain

10:12

to you that the reason we have

10:15

those rules is if we let you

10:17

occupy a part of the lawn permanently,

10:19

that means other people can't have that

10:21

same right of speech. There's like an

10:23

exclusionary aspect to these encampments, right? Now

10:25

you can say that this is like

10:27

exaggerated because there are plenty of other

10:29

places on campuses to go, but it's

10:32

not nothing that argument. And then the president

10:34

said, look, in the name of

10:36

respecting and honoring self-expression from students, maybe

10:38

we'll let the encampment stay up for

10:40

some amount of time. We're not going

10:42

to like rush in immediately, but we're

10:44

monitoring this. And also we're just asking

10:46

you to respect our rules.

10:49

Like we have these rules for a reason.

10:51

We will make lots of spaces and lots

10:53

of time and manners for you to protest,

10:55

but we're asking you to limit this particular

10:58

kind of protest, which is against our rules.

11:00

And in the end, does create

11:03

some disruption and can create some

11:05

safety problems for schools. I don't

11:07

want to overstate that stuff, right?

11:09

But it's not like it's zero.

11:12

One interesting thing I'm looking for, obviously

11:15

you got now involved the mayor in

11:18

New York, Eric Adams, who said there's a movement to

11:20

radicalize young people. And I'm not going to allow that

11:22

to happen. That seemed to be a referring

11:25

to, well, it seemed to be referring to

11:29

what he said were outside agitators and what

11:32

our correspondent, Michael George, who was up there

11:35

covering this for us pointed out, which I think was really smart

11:37

is 109, I think is the total number

11:39

of those arrested at Hamilton

11:42

Hall at Columbia. At some point, there's

11:44

going to be a number. How many of

11:46

those were students? And it'll bring the lie

11:48

or the truth of this question of outside

11:50

agitators, which is maybe a small point, but

11:52

I think is not unimportant because part of

11:55

this is, I think

11:57

part of the justification for the military or the

11:59

police. is these weren't students,

12:01

these were agitators. And there's obviously been

12:03

some reporting of people who are known

12:07

members of the community, not students

12:09

who were agitating. So that'll

12:11

just be an interesting way to

12:14

actually test this not

12:16

unimportant fact. Emily, you point us to

12:18

this interesting John Chait piece in New

12:20

York Magazine where he talks

12:23

about why this has been such

12:25

catnip for the right and for three reasons

12:27

that Chait points out. One is that it's

12:29

an issue, the issue of Israel and Gaza

12:31

genuinely divides the left. So the more focus

12:33

there is on it, the more division

12:36

there is with the left, number one. Number two, it

12:38

promotes this image of chaos

12:41

that is at

12:44

the heart of Trump's narrative and the

12:46

sort of magga narrative about America that

12:48

it's chaotic, that like the left is

12:51

making our cities, our universities

12:53

into squatter

12:55

encampments occupied

12:58

by Palestinian radicals. And

13:01

third, that it's

13:03

fuel for people who believe in sort

13:05

of an extreme, that it derives people

13:07

to extremes and that's also helpful. So

13:11

why were you struck by that? I mean, besides the

13:13

fact that I just summarized it. Yeah.

13:17

I was struck by it because I

13:19

think that there's this inevitability about the

13:22

way in which these protesters are going

13:24

to play in the hands of

13:26

Republicans and of former president Trump

13:28

running for president. It makes the

13:30

university seem totally out of control.

13:33

For many Americans, it's very alienating. I

13:35

think a lot of students are super

13:37

upset about the war. The

13:39

war is terrible. So many

13:42

people are dying. It is also

13:44

true that students for justice in Palestine,

13:46

the group that is leading a lot

13:48

of these protests has a much more

13:50

radical agenda. They are not, they are

13:53

rejecting any kind of two-state solution. It

13:55

is not just about a ceasefire. It

13:57

is about eliminating Israel. That is their

13:59

platform. very clear about it. They are the

14:01

people who rejected the Oslo peace process in the

14:03

1990s and that is

14:06

what they want. And so the

14:08

students following them can be very

14:10

heterogeneous in their beliefs, but that

14:12

part of the protest

14:14

in leadership is there. And so

14:18

that is something that like does not

14:20

have majority American support and that's why

14:22

it's a useful wedge issue for Republicans.

14:24

And there's also a kind of irony

14:26

here about targets, right? The

14:29

universities are the institution in American life

14:31

that have done the most to nurture

14:33

the left and develop it, right? I

14:35

mean, these ideas about anti-colonialism, which are

14:37

so prevalent in these protests, they are

14:39

coming out of the universities and yet

14:41

the universities are already, are also the

14:43

targets. And I get why, right? Like

14:45

the universities are big

14:48

organizations and they have investments

14:50

hidden or sometimes disclosed in

14:52

all kinds of different things.

14:54

And divestment is meaningful.

14:56

Like it did in some way probably

14:58

affect the fall of apartheid in South

15:00

Africa. At the same time,

15:03

there are a lot of other targets, military

15:05

bases, congressional offices, you could come up with

15:07

a lot of other things where you would

15:09

have a more direct line to actually changing

15:11

policy on Gaza and on Israel and Palestine.

15:14

And so, you know, look, like

15:16

if you use the universities, that is

15:18

going to be very useful for the

15:20

right, which already has lots of grudges

15:22

against universities and fields excluded for them

15:24

and is used to like, right, making

15:26

fun of them as this kind of

15:28

elite out of touch part of American

15:30

life. I wonder on that

15:33

divestment question, whether that analogy still

15:35

holds, I'm not, I'm doubting, I'm just

15:38

questioning because Israel is a different place

15:40

and investment is, we're in

15:42

a different investment environment, whether the corporations

15:44

would, let's say the schools leave those

15:47

companies still get, I mean, it's a symbolic victory,

15:49

but would it actually affect the behavior of those

15:52

companies in the market the way it is right

15:54

now? I wonder. Yes, very good

15:56

question. And I just myself did not mean to

15:58

be making Israel equipped. to South Africa

16:00

talking about the effect. I just want to be

16:03

clear about that. Yes, yes, yes. And I wasn't

16:05

suggesting you were doing that either. I was, yeah,

16:07

no, I wasn't. I was just wondering what the

16:09

difference, you know, Israel's, as

16:12

companies would make these, think this

16:14

thing through. The Congress is now

16:17

investigating, there are now a series of investigations

16:19

in this, which is along the line, I

16:21

gather of what Chet is arguing, which I

16:23

didn't read, but the driving chaos

16:25

to sell order, is

16:28

a long standing political tactic,

16:30

particularly it's got a kind

16:32

of a double benefit because, you

16:36

know, it both riles up your own

16:38

base. And then it

16:40

also has a kind of a general, to

16:42

the extent there are any undecided voters left

16:45

in the seven states that are gonna determine the election, it

16:48

has a kind of middle of the road appeal to

16:52

voters that Trump otherwise is, is

16:57

not, doesn't do so well with because he is the

16:59

agent of chaos with no, a

17:02

lot of times without any solution or

17:04

order, but it's just total chaos. Yeah.

17:07

I'm now gonna channel my friend Beverly Gage,

17:09

who is saying to me that this is

17:11

how Ronald Reagan built his career. It was

17:13

opposing the student protestors. This is how he

17:15

became governor of California, like, and proved himself

17:18

and, you know, it was useful to Nixon

17:20

too. So, yeah. I mean, it's extraordinarily

17:22

useful to Nixon in both 68 and 72. I

17:25

mean, Nixon was, like, if you think of

17:27

it from a policy perspective in 72, Nixon

17:29

is not that popular. Like, it's not that,

17:31

Nixon is associated with the war, and yet

17:34

it's the chaos of the anti-war protestors in

17:36

a lot of ways that benefits

17:38

him. Speaking of chaos, we should all obviously remember

17:40

that we're going to, that Democrats are going to

17:43

Chicago this summer

17:45

and mischief makers and the news

17:49

networks that are dying to re-show their 1968

17:51

footage is

17:53

gonna, like, create its own weather. Just

17:55

to close this segment out, the

17:57

House passed the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act.

18:00

with majority Democratic and Republican support, and Senate

18:03

still has to pass it, Biden will have

18:05

to sign it, but it does classify

18:08

a bunch of speech about

18:10

Israel as anti-Semitic,

18:13

sort of making, claiming

18:15

the existence of the state of Israel as

18:17

racist would be anti-Semitic, applying double

18:19

standards to Israel that are not expected

18:21

or demanded of any other democratic nation,

18:23

and drawing comparisons of

18:26

contemporary Israeli policy to that of Nazis

18:28

would be classified as

18:30

officially part

18:33

of the definition of anti-Semitism. What

18:35

happens is that the education department can

18:37

then, if universities do not

18:39

crack down on that speech on their campuses,

18:41

if student holds up a sign that calls

18:44

for from the river to the sea, then the

18:47

education department says, well you're not cracking down on the

18:49

speech, you're a foster in this, we're going to take

18:51

your research grants, we're going to investigate the hell out

18:53

of you for this. Wow, that is so

18:55

interesting. You know, I was at Columbia on

18:58

Monday, and this was

19:00

hours before the takeover of Hamilton Hall, and

19:02

it was like this very kind of festive

19:04

atmosphere. I actually felt like I was at

19:06

a happening with like dozens or

19:09

even hundreds of students marching around

19:11

the quad, chanting, and a whole

19:13

bunch of faculty kind of locking

19:15

arms, and protecting the encampment, and

19:18

the students were chanting some things that this

19:20

act of Congress would rule out. They were

19:23

chanting that Israel is a racist state, they

19:25

were chanting at one point, we

19:28

don't want no Zionists here, and

19:31

you know, listening to it I guess I would ask like,

19:34

if you can think this speech is

19:37

unacceptable, you can wish they wouldn't say

19:39

it, but the idea of an authority

19:41

figure ordering them to stop talking, is

19:44

that something that universities can

19:46

really do? And is that really the

19:48

right way to address students?

19:51

Once it becomes socially acceptable to

19:53

chant things really loudly with hundreds

19:55

of students, like what

19:57

is the best way to try to address that

19:59

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22:24

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22:26

starring Elizabeth Moss. FX's

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The Veil is an international spy thriller

22:31

that follows two women as they play

22:33

a deadly game of truths and lies

22:35

on the road from Istanbul to Paris

22:37

and London. One woman

22:39

has a secret and the other has a mission

22:42

to reveal it before thousands of lives are lost.

22:45

FX's The Veil, now streaming only

22:48

on Hulu. It

22:50

is always a red-letter day on the plot's calendar

22:52

when Emily Bazlond has a new article, no different

22:54

this week with... I'm

22:56

not being ironic! That's so nice

22:58

of you! I always... Emily's... I

23:01

read everything Emily writes, basically. You are the best.

23:04

How history and tradition rulings are changing American

23:06

law. Some Americans believe in

23:08

history and tradition, not Emily Bazlond.

23:13

Emily, what are history and tradition rulings? What

23:15

is wrong with them? The tension here is

23:17

about whether a court should consider

23:20

history and tradition as like a

23:22

relevant factor or whether they should

23:24

view it as binding on them.

23:28

The Supreme Court in 2022,

23:30

in three cases, said

23:32

history and tradition is going to

23:34

be how we decide whether things

23:37

are constitutional in really important areas

23:39

of American law. This

23:41

was, first of all, Dobbs, the ruling that

23:43

struck down the right to abortion and Roe

23:45

versus Wade. The second case is a religion

23:48

case in which they found that this

23:50

high school football coach who was gathering

23:52

people to pray with him at midfield

23:54

after games, that was fine. He was

23:56

not allowed to be fired by his

23:58

school. And the

24:00

third case is about the Second Amendment

24:02

and striking down a New York gun

24:04

statute as being inconsistent with American history

24:06

and tradition. So this

24:11

sounds a little or might be reminiscent

24:13

of originalism, right? The sort of philosophy

24:17

that Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas believe in,

24:19

which is like you go back to the

24:21

original meaning of the Constitution, the words in

24:23

the text and what they meant in 1789

24:25

or 1868. If

24:29

you're talking about the 14th Amendment and

24:31

you just stick with what they meant

24:33

then and you don't allow those words

24:35

to develop meaning over time, even if

24:37

they're words like liberty and due

24:40

process and equal protection that are

24:42

like kind of deliberately majestic in

24:45

the words of some former justice

24:47

whose name I'm embarrassingly forgetting. Okay,

24:50

so originalism looks at least

24:52

originalism was never consistent or

24:54

perfect and it was also

24:56

a way of kind of

24:59

binding the law to the past and

25:02

not allowing the Constitution to evolve. However,

25:04

at least on paper, it was like

25:06

tethered to a particular moment. It had

25:08

some kind of limit, right?

25:10

And that was supposed to be good because it

25:12

meant that just the judges had to stick with

25:14

that moment and they couldn't impose their own values.

25:16

They just had to go back to what the

25:18

framers meant in 1789. History

25:21

and tradition is like totally all over the place.

25:23

Like you get to pick which history and tradition,

25:26

when does it begin, when does it end? And

25:28

when you look at Justice Alito's approach to

25:30

this in Dobbs, you

25:32

see that it's just a big excuse for cherry

25:34

picking. I mean, I am sorry, like it just

25:36

is. But because of that,

25:38

I think there's just this suspicion

25:42

about what the Supreme Court is doing

25:44

here on the part of conservative as

25:46

well as liberal scholars. And it really

25:48

comes down to this idea. And this

25:50

comes from Jeff Balkan at

25:53

Yale. Is history a resource for

25:55

judges or is it a command? And if

25:57

it's a command and then you can pick

25:59

whatever history. you want, what's

26:01

really happening here? It's judicial Calvin

26:03

ball. You know what Calvin ball is, right? You

26:05

change the rules of the game while you're in

26:07

the middle of the game. Either that, or if

26:10

you've ever seen the movie stripes where John Candy

26:12

describes to the new guy. Um, now if we

26:14

were in Germany, you see, I'd make your bed.

26:19

What are you doing? I'm a dog. I'm a

26:21

dog. He's a head of the box. What

26:23

are you doing? Okay. Pop box. You gotta make the

26:25

guy in the bottom box. You gotta make his bed all

26:27

the time. So turn the regulations.

26:29

We were in Germany. I want to drink

26:32

yours. Where did we see you going to make more? Well,

26:36

Calvin ball is perfect because originalism was

26:39

having some problems like for overturning abortion,

26:41

for example, because in fact, up

26:43

until, um, quickening, which is when

26:45

women feel fetal movement, abortion was

26:48

legal and permitted widely in

26:50

colonial America. And so the originalist interpretation

26:52

would have been very tricky. So, Oh,

26:54

low and behold. Now we have a

26:56

new test. I Calvin ball Emily.

26:59

Can you actually in, in getting to the

27:01

sort of cherry picking problems,

27:04

just talk about Amy Cummy Barrett's quite wonderful

27:06

metaphor about this. Yeah. She

27:08

talks about looking over the

27:10

crowd and hunting for your

27:12

friends. And this actually is

27:14

a phrase that, um, judges have used in

27:17

the past for other kinds of interpretive methods.

27:19

Um, like when you are looking at legislative

27:21

history, you can have the same problem, like

27:23

you pick the one member of Congress who

27:25

said what you wanted and then you decide

27:27

like that's what Congress meant. And

27:30

justice Barrett was talking, um, in 2023, she

27:32

was giving a talk at, um, the

27:37

law school at Catholic university. And

27:40

she sort of said, well, judges need to

27:42

be really careful. It was a kind of

27:44

warning, but she didn't really explain like exactly

27:46

how they were, what they were supposed to do.

27:49

And she was, you know, one of the votes

27:51

for jobs in which like, there was a lot

27:53

of looking out over the crowd and hunting for

27:55

your friends. First of all, we should just

27:57

note interpreting history. is

28:00

super, super hard. Like, even if you're

28:02

doing it in good faith, as

28:05

I've tried to, and there's, you know, the presidency

28:07

has all these special traps in it, because there

28:09

is this thing you can fall into, which is

28:11

if a past president did it, it's

28:13

part of the tradition of the office, and therefore

28:15

it's a good thing, but with no kind of

28:18

second beat thinking, wait a minute, like, but

28:20

if it was James Buchanan who did it, you

28:22

wouldn't think that this is so great, even though

28:24

it's part of the tradition of the office. So

28:27

you can fall in all these traps. And that's

28:29

why I'm no historian. And that's why real historians

28:31

are, you know, beset with all of this careful

28:35

making sure that they're not bringing the president

28:37

into the past, that they understand things in

28:39

their context, which is, like,

28:42

doesn't seem to be at play in some of these

28:44

issues, which is a problem. But the other thing, Emily,

28:46

is can you, the whole notion of

28:48

originalism, maybe, tell me if

28:50

I'm wrong, is that you don't want

28:52

to have the whims of passion and

28:54

self interest and the mob in the

28:57

moment overcome the rules that were considered

28:59

carefully and sensibly from the beginning. Or

29:01

at least you want to put some scratchiness

29:03

in the system. So you you mitigate

29:06

against all of our natural impulses, which

29:08

the founders studied so intently, which is

29:10

basically our ambition will overwhelm all of

29:12

our reason. So let's put some stuff

29:14

in place. This this

29:16

historical interpretation that you've written about the

29:18

history and tradition is like

29:20

the exact opposite. It's like

29:23

a really inexpensive street drug for anybody

29:25

who wants to basically, you know,

29:29

shine up whatever their basic like

29:31

human impulse is. Yeah,

29:33

I think that's a good way of thinking about

29:35

it. I mean, there's a law professor named Sharif

29:37

Gargus, who I talked to for this piece, who

29:40

has this really interesting article called conservative traditionalism. And

29:42

he basically just points out that, like, once

29:44

you have what he calls, like, the

29:47

the dead grip of the middle past,

29:49

you're going to have a lot of

29:51

conservative outcomes, like, that's just how

29:53

it's gonna go. It's

29:55

not a coincidence. Well, so I mean, the things

29:57

that are so frustrating about history and tradition, as

29:59

you describe it Emily, so there's

30:01

A, cherry picking, so you find

30:04

what you want. B, history

30:06

intrinsically in the United States, like any

30:08

time you look before

30:10

arguably like 1965,

30:14

but certainly if you look before 1900,

30:16

it is a history that's written without

30:18

huge groups of people having

30:20

a voice in what that history should be or

30:22

what the tradition should be because if

30:25

you are black, if you're a woman, if you're part of

30:27

an Indian tribe, if you're a

30:29

certain kind of immigrant, you don't have a voice in shaping what

30:31

the history and law is. So the

30:33

idea that we shouldn't return to that

30:35

period is insulting

30:38

and seems totally

30:40

perverse. And finally,

30:42

it's clearly like history

30:44

in this context refers

30:47

to some particular set of time which it

30:49

doesn't happen to be, history is not 1970

30:52

for these folks, it's never 1970. It

30:55

might be 1890, it might be 1850, that's when history is. History

31:03

is basically between 1820 and 1906, that's history

31:05

and everything else is not history

31:09

at all. Yeah, totally.

31:12

I mean, there's a

31:16

case this term, it's called United States versus Rahimi

31:18

and we'll probably get the decision at the end

31:20

of June and it's a gun rights

31:22

case and it's I think- Amazing

31:24

case. Yeah, it's this crazy case

31:26

where the facts are so bad for the

31:28

gun rights side that I think it's going

31:30

to show that the Supreme Court does not

31:32

really mean, does not really intend

31:35

to be literal about applying the history and

31:37

tradition test. So this guy is Zachary Rahimi,

31:40

his girlfriend accuses

31:42

him of like yanking

31:45

her out of a car and pulling her by

31:47

the hair and other bad stuff and so the

31:49

judge grants her a protective order. And

31:51

part of the deal with the protective order is

31:53

Zachary Rahimi is not allowed to have any guns.

31:55

But then he goes on a couple shooting sprees,

31:57

like over the course of a week he's just

32:00

like shooting off his gun. And the cops come

32:02

to his house and they're like, oh, wait

32:04

a second, you have guns and they're in

32:06

violation of protective order. So

32:08

then he gets convicted. This

32:11

is under a 1994 law where it's then the reason for

32:15

taking away the guns of someone under protective

32:17

order is to try to protect victims of

32:19

domestic violence, most of whom are women, from

32:22

getting killed. And there are studies showing that

32:24

if there are guns around with

32:26

someone who's a domestic violence offender, there is

32:29

a much greater risk of

32:31

homicide. So this all

32:33

seems perfectly sensible and modern. But then

32:36

the Fifth Circuit, which is a very

32:38

conservative appeals court, overturns Zaki Rahimi's conviction,

32:41

essentially says like, yes, you get to

32:43

have your guns. And the reason is

32:45

that this law is

32:48

what the Fifth Circuit calls an historical

32:50

outlier. Because, oh, guess

32:52

what? Back in the colonial days, we

32:54

didn't take guns away from domestic violent

32:57

offenders. Another thing about the colonial days

32:59

is that women couldn't vote and had

33:01

almost no recourse if they were victims

33:03

of abuse. They also couldn't own property

33:05

if they were married. And so there's

33:07

just this way in which the very

33:10

standard itself yanks us back this time

33:12

that we don't want to live in

33:14

anymore. That is completely at odds with

33:17

keeping people safe now. And I just don't

33:19

think the Supreme Court really has a stomach

33:21

for giving Zaki Rahimi his guns

33:23

back. So I expect them to

33:26

somehow change the history and

33:28

tradition test to prevent that outcome.

33:30

But that will also be showing

33:32

that this test, is

33:34

this really a test at all? Except

33:37

to be fair, you can't really engage in a

33:39

shooting spree without a gun. It's

33:41

true, it's a problem. But

33:45

of course, and I guess this is where

33:47

liberal justices end up, which is that history,

33:49

or a lot of justices end up, history and tradition,

33:52

that's a box that we want to investigate. The

33:55

original intent, that's a box. What

33:57

modern standards are about this issue?

34:00

Do. What? The. Legislation actually says

34:02

that we're considering like all it

34:04

did it say. It's.

34:07

It's a Milan. It's a very complicated

34:09

nuanced do that were considering it's not

34:11

sort of one hunk of meat and

34:13

way that the that's how you. And

34:16

return outcome. To. End It makes

34:18

sense. fight like if we had never ever

34:20

done something in American history before, then you

34:23

might want to think about why are we

34:25

doing it now. Like if someone passes a

34:27

law that something and it's just like completely

34:30

unheard of, maybe that will be a reason

34:32

for it's to think that it's a bad

34:34

idea. or maybe they would say will. We

34:36

never had this eventuality before and that's why

34:39

the history is so different. Great likes, of

34:41

course. history should be relevant and considerate and

34:43

a factor, and Madison sacked the way. The

34:45

judges have always talked about history. Cases

34:47

not like they were around ignoring it

34:50

before. It's this notion that it's somehow.

34:52

is it one supposed to be dictating

34:54

the outcome and utterly malleable? That is

34:56

a problem I think with. The current,

34:59

the conservative majority of current attempt to

35:01

his as I'm very tempted. I printed

35:03

out my favorite quote which is the

35:05

use it as grant quote about originalism

35:07

and which also bears on history and

35:09

tradition. Or should I read this again

35:11

For the fourth time ago I first

35:13

met decided I will not but look

35:15

up, look up the phrase. The framers

35:17

were wise in their generation and wanted

35:19

to the do the very best possible

35:21

to secure their own liberty and independence.

35:24

That's the phrase. Look that up and then

35:26

read that paragraph of follows, which is the

35:28

greatest paragraph ever written about America in my

35:30

view. After short break will be right

35:32

back. Stage on several.

35:35

Here there's no shortage of political take since

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Me, Michael has cut through the noise to

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platform or our YouTube channel now.

36:04

On Deaf Sex and Money, we

36:06

feature interviews with you, our community

36:09

of listeners, getting honest about uncomfortable

36:11

things. Kristi

36:35

Noem, governor of South Dakota would

36:37

be Trump running mate dipped herself

36:39

into hot water this week. When

36:41

The Guardian got hold of

36:43

her new memoir, No Going Back

36:45

the Truth on What's Wrong with Povdoo and

36:47

How We Move America Forward, and

36:50

found that it contains a shocking,

36:54

horrifying story anecdote

36:56

about how she murdered

36:58

her own German wire-haired pointer

37:01

puppy and a billy goat that

37:03

she thought were bad animals. The

37:05

puppy was untrainable and

37:08

wild and the billy goat was too aggressive.

37:11

We can get into the details of the story,

37:13

which are just insane. But

37:16

she's positioning herself as someone who does what needs

37:18

to be done in this dog

37:20

kill dog world. But she did

37:22

horrify the dog world with this. And I just

37:24

want to note, I was

37:27

horrified by the story for

37:29

many reasons, but notably, because when I asked

37:31

my dog, expert friend of mine,

37:33

what kind of dog I David Platz would be, if I

37:36

were a dog, she thought about it for a while.

37:38

She said, you, David Platz would be a German wire-haired

37:40

pointer, which is

37:42

a very active, curious, bearded dog that

37:44

likes physical activity too much points at

37:47

things. And so the

37:49

fact that Kristi Noem murdered a

37:51

puppy that is that I

37:53

always feel sympathy for German wire-haired pointers. Anyway,

37:56

John, Discuss. I Don't

37:58

have a question. I can ask you a question. I

38:00

didn't like. Start on know Well the

38:02

first thing the came to me out

38:05

would be an interesting intellectual exercise which

38:07

is provide three to five possible excuses

38:09

that would be made by his supporters

38:11

if Donald Trump had admitted to doing

38:14

this. In other words, there is a

38:16

line we have seem to have found

38:18

for behavior. And

38:20

there's always to me an interesting question between

38:23

the paper Donald Trump himself can get away

38:25

with and the behavior that those who are

38:27

his acolytes I'm can and cannot get away

38:29

with. And where the lines are drawn, who

38:31

draws them and so forth. I'm if this

38:34

were something down Trump had admitted to, there

38:36

would be you know, the normal. Retinue

38:39

of of a of.

38:43

Republicans who would defend it as being you

38:45

know consistent with a lot of great wonderful

38:47

characteristics just known. Got caught on the

38:49

wrong end of that. but it seems to

38:51

me that the performative aspect of putting

38:53

In in the Block and I make tough

38:56

choices is a part of though. that market

38:58

that Donald Trump created the which I talked

39:00

about before which is the same kind of

39:03

political market said Matt. It's participates in Art

39:05

Taylor Green Arms. It's the performative toughness I'm

39:07

It's not unlike the market created by the

39:09

you're Fired on the Apprentice which is not

39:12

the real world but a fake world in

39:14

which so it's all of the of like

39:16

per Per. Perfectly consistent in that we should

39:19

talk about. The. Vice President

39:21

sweepstakes later after we get off the

39:23

dog issue. But I would say what?

39:25

after you go look up David Plots

39:28

is wonderful Ulysses As Grant quote go

39:30

listen to. Nixon's. Checkers

39:32

speech in which Checkers of the name

39:34

of the dog i'm a how he

39:37

deployed Checkers in the speech. Incredibly

39:39

talented. Secondly, the whole speech itself which

39:41

is a defensive why he should stay

39:43

on Eisenhower's ticket. It's. A really

39:46

good speech and boy. Have.

39:48

things changed but also all

39:50

the norms that richard nixon

39:52

right not considered by many

39:54

people to be a paragon

39:56

of norm maintenance all the

39:58

norm sees bowing to in

40:00

that speech, which are now, you

40:03

know, his

40:05

party is in a post-norm period.

40:08

The only thing that made sense to me about

40:10

the story was the idea that because there were

40:12

witnesses to the dog killing that this story was

40:14

going to come out anyway and she was trying

40:17

to get ahead of it. The rest of it

40:19

just seems completely just dumb

40:21

to me. I just can't imagine that she

40:24

really thought like, oh, this is going to

40:26

be a political asset. I just, it's like

40:28

so bizarre. Just

40:30

to quickly brief on the details.

40:33

So she had this 14 month

40:35

old puppy, wanted to be a hunting

40:37

dog, took it out on

40:39

a hunt with other dogs. Apparently, like all hunters say,

40:41

this is not how you train a dog to be

40:43

a hunting dog. You never take a

40:46

dog, a hunting dog out with a group

40:48

of other well-trained dogs for the first time. It

40:51

requires a ton of training. The dog goes

40:53

out on this first hunt. It

40:55

is wild. It's having the time of its life, which

40:57

is sounds like kind of great. Like the dog is

40:59

having the time of its life. It

41:02

doesn't respond to its shock collar because it's having

41:04

the time of its life. And then it attacks

41:06

some chickens. Not great. No one saw it to

41:09

attack chickens at a farm. And

41:11

she decides from this, the dog

41:13

is untrainable. It cannot be. It

41:15

is an incongruable dog. It can

41:17

never be and shoots it on the spot.

41:20

Like it takes it to a gravel

41:22

pit. Actually, leads it to a gravel pit and shoots it.

41:24

And the idea that you would make

41:27

that conclusion after that series of events

41:29

is so shocking

41:31

and shows such a callousness about

41:34

life is

41:38

really stunning. But I agree with

41:40

you. I mean, probably if someone else had someone

41:42

else witnessed it and has a different version of it

41:45

and she's just trying to get ahead

41:47

of it with a slightly more pleasant spin. And

41:50

yet, on the other hand, given the whole

41:52

hang Mike Pence thing, the idea of the

41:54

punishment not fitting the crime is rather consistent

41:56

with the job of the vice presidency as

41:58

conceived in a Trump administration. That's grim,

42:00

as you intended it, I think. But

42:02

I guess the part of it that

42:05

also seems mystifying to me is she's

42:07

just revealed herself to be someone who

42:09

should not own a dog. That's

42:11

all we can conclude from this. You're so

42:14

careless, you don't understand anything about how

42:16

to raise and train and care for

42:19

these animals. You just shouldn't be around

42:21

them. It just makes her seem so

42:23

incompetent. Also impulsive. And then

42:26

she also is like, oh, while I'm killing my animals,

42:28

I think I'll kill the goat. So

42:30

she kills this male goat who's been around for

42:32

a while. The goat has obviously

42:34

exhibited some sort of behavior she hasn't liked for

42:36

a while. But she's like, today seems like the

42:38

animal killing day. I'm going to kill the goat.

42:40

And she doesn't even kill the goat correctly. She

42:43

doesn't manage to shoot the goat in such a way

42:45

that the goat dies. So she leaves the goat, no

42:47

doubt, in agony in this gravel pit and

42:50

then goes back, gets another shell, comes back

42:52

and succeeds in killing the goat. Why

42:56

would you want that sort of impulsivity and this sort

42:58

of cruelty? That

43:00

doesn't mean it doesn't read as I'm a

43:03

thoughtful, considerate person who should have

43:05

my finger on it. But here's the question.

43:07

What are we evaluating here? And what are

43:09

the set of characteristics that make her disqualified

43:12

from the job? And why are

43:14

they only the kinds of characteristics that would make

43:16

a vice president disqualified when,

43:18

I mean, Fountain of Hope

43:20

hasn't killed any dogs, but

43:22

he has exhibited... That we know of. He

43:25

has exhibited cruel behavior in public

43:27

in a number of different ways.

43:30

So we don't have to go re-litigate the

43:32

entire Republican primary process. But it does seem

43:34

to me that this happens in a context.

43:37

Is it just that basically she has no defenders

43:39

and wasn't a particularly strong candidate for the vice

43:41

presidency anyway, so nobody's going to rally to her

43:43

defense, so it's all one-sided? Is

43:47

that the case, John? Is it

43:49

that you have no chance to be his running mate?

43:52

I don't... I mean, I suppose

43:54

she has a chance. The

43:56

state she comes from doesn't particularly help. She

43:58

is... I don't know what

44:01

her bridging characteristics are. I mean,

44:03

obviously, she's a woman and that's a constituency

44:05

Donald Trump needs help with, but I don't

44:07

know that she is the kind of woman

44:09

and particularly now, I think that has a

44:11

really worse version of Sarah Palin. I

44:15

think she doesn't necessarily have the bridge to the

44:17

suburban Republic, although I don't know if she were

44:19

a different I mean, if she weren't, and that

44:21

this seems to put her in the kind of

44:24

Sarah Palin camp you'll remember, and

44:26

therefore might not have the outreach

44:29

to the suburban women that Donald Trump wants. And then

44:31

of course, you have to go back to the principle

44:33

about vice presidents, which is that they don't really matter

44:38

that much in the end anyway. So, but

44:41

I don't I don't have a

44:43

beat at all on what the

44:45

Donald Trump vice presidential sweepstakes are

44:47

like. I mean, Rubio and JD

44:50

Vance get mentioned a fair amount,

44:52

which is which also suggests another

44:54

deficiency of Kristi Noem, which is

44:56

that she hasn't publicly, thoroughly and

44:58

savagely attacked Trump in really

45:01

are I mean, both JD Vance and

45:03

Marco Rubio have minted some of the

45:05

most incisive critiques of Donald

45:08

Trump. Rubio's in

45:10

particular there in 2016, he went

45:12

on a long jag about his

45:15

foreign policy expertise in understanding

45:19

South American countries, and

45:21

the role of dictators and how

45:23

they fool the populace into supporting

45:25

them. It's, it's so

45:28

powerful, you would think it's an AI creation

45:30

of the present. And JD Vance,

45:33

who said that, you know, once called

45:35

Trump basically cultural heroin compared him to

45:37

Hitler. And now those guys are both

45:39

in the running. So perhaps Noem to have a better chance

45:41

should have been more critical of Trump.

45:44

Can you actually give us a little bit on the sweepstakes,

45:46

John? I mean, what do you think Trump is looking for?

45:48

Is there any strategic choice? Is

45:50

there anyone that would actually hurt him? So what you

45:52

get with Trump is that he's doing he appears to

45:54

be doing in this case with his vice president what

45:56

he did with a lot of other cabinet officials. And

46:00

I'm not sure that he did with Mike Pence actually,

46:02

but anyway, he's having a chat with lots of people

46:04

kind of testing out some names and things like that.

46:07

There's a formal process, but he has his own idiosyncratic

46:10

process. Rubio checks

46:13

some interesting boxes. Obviously

46:16

he's bilingual. He has

46:19

strong ties to the foreign

46:21

policy conversation. And

46:23

so I'm not sure whether that's a real

46:26

asset, frankly. Like how does that

46:28

actually play out in terms of voters? Does somebody say,

46:32

oh, because the vice president has a nuanced

46:34

view of

46:37

American anti-terrorism policies. I'm gonna vote for

46:39

the guy at the top of the

46:42

ticket who has a completely different set

46:44

of viewpoints on foreign policy. But anyway,

46:46

that's one of the things that gets

46:48

mentioned in the Rubio dossier

46:51

is that he has this foreign policy experience.

46:53

The problem with Rubio is, and Emily, you

46:55

would know this better than I, but the

46:57

constitution says you can't have two people from

46:59

the same state on a

47:02

ticket. And so Rubio or Trump would

47:04

have to leave Florida, which

47:10

actually is not that hard to do. Cheney did it with

47:12

Texas. He moved back to

47:14

Wyoming so that he could be on the Bush ticket.

47:16

And also like who's gonna, well, I was gonna say

47:19

who's really gonna like press the point, but obviously somebody

47:21

will somewhere. So there's some problem

47:23

there. On the other hand, it really

47:25

serves Trump's purposes to have Rubio in

47:27

the conversation, both with

47:30

the help it might give him with Hispanic voters and

47:32

also you want Rubio in your team. He would help

47:34

with those moderate voters to the extent there are any

47:36

left. And also Rubio dangled the

47:38

secretary of state in front of him. So

47:40

things are looking good for Rubio. And JD

47:42

Vance gets mentioned. He's been

47:45

a real warrior out there for Trump

47:47

on TV, which Trump likes, even though

47:49

Trump, even though Vance said all these

47:51

things about Trump, he called him

47:54

cultural heroine, called him loathsome and the rest. He

47:57

seemed perfectly willing to

47:59

rewrite everything. he previously believed which

48:01

is you know i wonder for trump

48:03

who has a dominant one of his

48:06

strengths and attributes is the understands

48:09

dominance in power and i'm i'm

48:11

enjoying dominance i wonder if to

48:13

be a vice president you it

48:15

requires a certain. I'm out

48:17

of supplication that another is he doesn't want

48:19

somebody that is just gonna do the job

48:21

he wants someone that is a is a

48:24

is a symbol of his

48:27

power over the supplicant and so these

48:29

people who said these awful things about

48:31

him have now bent the

48:33

knee and and are every day

48:35

a reminder of the power of the guy

48:37

at the top of the ticket and i

48:39

think that might be actually appealing to certain

48:41

voters and certainly would be appealing to what

48:43

we know about don't know. Let's

48:46

go to cocktail chatter.

48:50

I'm having some friends for cocktails

48:52

tonight and thinking about

48:54

bringing out the vermouth i think it's summer time

48:57

for some red vermouth. That

48:59

will be the drink that i am chattering around. Emily

49:03

what are you going to be chattering about and possibly what

49:05

will you be drinking as you chatter about it. I am

49:07

interested in the story of this week by

49:09

gall beckerman at the atlantic it's about pan

49:12

america it's called a prominent free speech

49:14

group is fighting for its life and

49:17

it's about a fight at pan america.

49:20

Connected to the wrong Gaza about whether

49:23

pan america has been sufficiently denouncing

49:25

of israel and done enough

49:27

for. Palestinian

49:29

writers and it's a fight

49:32

that really threatens to pull down

49:34

pan america itself there are some.

49:37

Members who just feel like they may be

49:39

want to not only call for new leadership

49:41

but actually just like tear down the whole

49:44

organization and i. Was

49:46

interested in it because i think it's

49:48

part of an attack on independent institutions

49:51

on the left as well as the right that

49:53

are trying to stand for an abstract

49:56

principle in this case like speech

49:58

and. free

50:00

expression as opposed to having

50:03

wing in only on the side

50:06

of progressive causes that

50:08

are linked to speech and free expression.

50:10

And I thought that Gal Beckerman just did a

50:12

good job of laying out the issues. So anyway,

50:14

check it out. John

50:16

Dickerson was your chatter. You'll

50:18

be drinking a gin martini. I know that. I

50:21

will be and it's well,

50:23

we're in about 28 hours. A little

50:26

more than that from when I will get

50:28

my next one. By

50:30

the way, 28 hours puts us

50:32

at noon on Friday. I

50:35

was trying to do the math to think if

50:37

maybe 26

50:47

hours. By the

50:49

time I get to Friday, I'm

50:51

so wrung out that why

50:53

not in your cornflakes? As

50:56

listeners of the show, no, I have a

50:58

fascination with and it has a super romantic

51:00

claim on me this finding of old things

51:03

that were sitting there for

51:05

thousands of years waiting to be discovered.

51:07

And the latest example of this is

51:09

the discovery of or the proper location

51:12

of Plato's burial place. And

51:15

it was found by basically, there

51:18

was a proprietor scroll 2000 years ago, written

51:21

on and it was destroyed

51:24

or they thought destroyed, mostly destroyed

51:27

in the in

51:29

volcanic blast of Mount Vesuvius,

51:31

which extinguished, as we know,

51:33

the town of Pompeii. So

51:35

this charred clump of old

51:37

scroll was nevertheless kept. And

51:40

now as a result of

51:43

two technological advances, scanning technology,

51:45

which can basically, you know,

51:47

look through the charred hunk, which

51:50

you can't open because they, you know, it would

51:52

destroy itself as you open it, but can read

51:54

the ink based on the carbon, which

51:56

survived the intense heat and

51:59

can figure out What is actually

52:01

lettering and then i where you can

52:03

feed information and have it like turn

52:05

the rubik's cube billions of times

52:08

really quickly, decipher the two

52:10

thousand character two thousand characters and discovered

52:12

that in fact the pull of the

52:14

philosopher was in turn the gardens of

52:16

the Athens at his academy where he

52:19

tutored Aristotle so now, like

52:21

they know that they know and they also know that

52:23

he was a slave during a certain period but i

52:25

love, this kind of discovery

52:27

that was sitting there waiting to be made for

52:29

two thousand years and is just now been made.

52:32

My chatter is a

52:35

new york times photo essay photographer and

52:37

can he hold on. One

52:40

of my favorite things that any movie doesn't really

52:42

matter what the movie is is

52:44

a scene where a submarine

52:47

emerges in the arctic,

52:49

and like some rain comes up through the ice in

52:52

the arctic and i love any scene you

52:54

make a movie you can make a movie really could be.

52:57

Could be a small domestic it's small that's

52:59

a comedy but i got a romcom. Yeah

53:02

and some reason merges in the arctic i am there

53:04

for it. Horror

53:07

movie i would see a horror movie if it has

53:09

a submarine emerging but can you hold on when on

53:12

a nuclear powered attack submarine.

53:15

The Hampton i think was called under

53:17

the arctic ocean or he he went

53:20

to see it emerge in the arctic

53:22

ocean where they're training for arctic warfare

53:25

with various submarines and. There's

53:28

a photo i say about this what life

53:30

is like on a submarine under the

53:32

arctic and it sounds terrible sounds absolutely

53:34

miserable sounds like a terrible place to work

53:36

and live and i definitely don't want to

53:38

do it but the photos are. Wonderful

53:41

and it's just super interesting photo

53:43

i say in the times called

53:45

inside a navy submarine navigating the

53:47

arctic. Listeners

53:51

please keep your listeners coming where we're in

53:53

a little bit of a chatter birth right

53:55

now we're having a coming like an italy

53:58

birth situation here we need more others. So

54:01

please email them to us at gabfest

54:03

at slate.com. And our

54:05

listener chatter this week comes from

54:07

Christina in Philadelphia. Hey political

54:10

gabfest, this is Christina from Philadelphia. My

54:13

listener chatter is a piece in box

54:15

called Mega Drive Sues Explained Everything Wrong

54:17

with American Cities by Marina

54:19

Balocha-Nikova. Marina reports on

54:21

the rapid expansion of drive-throughs from well-known

54:23

chains, fast casual brands like

54:25

Sweetgreen getting into the business and

54:28

drive-through designs with two, three, or even

54:30

four lanes for vehicles. Marina

54:32

coins a new term to describe these changes,

54:35

the mega drive-through, that depressingly

54:37

describes, quote, an urban landscape

54:39

that is almost paradoxically vast,

54:41

yet dominated by placelessness. Her

54:44

reporting also touches on the loss of small

54:47

businesses, urban design that is hostile to pedestrians,

54:49

and the environmental impacts of idling cars

54:51

and miles of asphalt. I

54:54

also see a connection here with the growth of

54:56

order online and pickup only options, and the loss

54:59

of social third places. Box's reporting on

55:01

transportation planning has been stellar. I

55:04

often think about the great strode piece in 2022. Okay.

55:18

That's our show for today. The gabfest is

55:20

produced by Shane O'Roth, a researcher, Celie Hugin,

55:22

a CD musicist, they might be giants. Ben

55:25

Richmond is senior director for podcast operations

55:27

and the mission Montgomery is the VP

55:29

of audio for Slate. Emily

55:32

Vazlana, John Dickerson, David Plath. Thanks for listening. We

55:34

will talk to you. Hi,

55:43

Slate Plus, how are you? We're

55:47

joined by Deborah Turkeheimer of

55:50

the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. I

55:52

think everything in Illinois, is it by law?

55:54

Everything has to be named after Pritzker. We

55:56

have a lot of Pritzker. Deb is here

55:58

to talk to us about why Harvey... Weinstein's

56:00

conviction was overturned by the New York Court

56:03

of Appeals. So why was it overturned?

56:05

Yeah. There's David's

56:07

artful question to start you off. Well,

56:10

I mean, it would be weird if he said, if

56:12

he's here to talk about this. And then he said,

56:14

how do you make a fruit salad? It would be

56:16

weird. Okay. So what

56:18

happened in Harvey Weinstein case is

56:20

that several women who

56:23

were not the victims of the

56:26

charged crimes testified against him. There

56:28

were three, let's call them additional

56:30

women. And the Court of

56:32

Appeals, when the case got to the Court of

56:34

Appeals held that that was unfair

56:36

and that it violated a rule

56:39

in New York. And this is a

56:41

common rule that says that generally

56:43

a person comes to trial and

56:46

is only going to face the

56:48

evidence that pertains to the specific

56:50

charges and relates very closely to

56:52

those charges. The Court of Appeals

56:55

held that the rule was violated in this

56:57

case, that the trial judge shouldn't

57:00

have accepted the prosecution's

57:02

argument and that it was

57:04

so... That was just a snippet from

57:06

our Slate Plus conversation. If you want to

57:09

hear the whole conversation, go

57:11

to slate.com/gab test plus to become a

57:13

member today. Do you ever

57:15

feel like there's nothing new in the news?

57:18

You know, there are urgent things happening in the world

57:20

around you. All you

57:22

hear is noise. That's

57:24

why we made What Next. Our goal

57:26

is to tell you the stories you haven't heard before, or

57:29

maybe a different side to the story you thought

57:31

you already knew all about. I'm Mary

57:34

Harris, the host of What Next. And

57:36

I love my job because it helps me cut through the noise

57:38

of the news. And then I get to bring

57:40

it to you together. We can figure

57:42

out what next. Hi,

57:45

this is Dalia Lithwick, host of

57:48

Slate's legal podcast Amicus. If you're

57:50

listening to this show, you might

57:52

be interested in Amicus's live show

57:54

that we're hosting in Washington, D.C.

57:57

on Tuesday, May the 14th. Mark

58:00

Joseph Stern, and I will be

58:03

talking to some amazing guests, including

58:05

Sherrilyn Ifill and a sitting state

58:07

Supreme Court justice. All

58:09

about how originalism, a relatively

58:11

recently invented way of interpreting

58:13

the Constitution, has taken over

58:15

the Supreme Court and radically

58:17

reshaped the law. It's

58:20

been doctrinal rocket fuel for the

58:22

conservative legal movement and facilitated the

58:24

rolling back of abortion rights, the

58:26

expansion of gun rights, and

58:28

the obliteration of the separation of

58:31

church and state. And as

58:33

another wildly consequential Supreme Court

58:35

term careers to its end, the

58:38

Court's originalists are on a tear.

58:40

But there's something you can do about it,

58:42

and we hope you'll join us in DC

58:45

on May 14th to explore the possible

58:47

pathways out of the current situation. Go

58:51

to slate.com slash amicus

58:53

live for tickets.