35 Burst results for "Clarence"
Mark Levin
Gregg Jarrett: Previewing New Book 'The Trial of the Century'
"The trial of the century what is the trial of the century Which one You know there have been a lot of famous trials that have been dubbed as such by the media over the years The Nuremberg case Julius Ethel Rosenberg the O. J. Simpson double murder case which I covered for 9 months in Los Angeles They pale in comparison to the 1925 scopes monkey trial Because it stake was our cherished free speech rights America was at the precipice there was an effort and it was succeeding to ban books for example on evolution and they weren't going to stop there They were going to ban a variety of science books and other books And in the state of Tennessee they made it a crime for a teacher to teach out of the state approved textbooks a chapter on the cornerstone Darwin theory of evolution Because they feared it would undermine the story of the divine creation in genesis in the Bible Which it didn't Their harmonious and Clarence Darrow was incensed over it So when a young 25 year old school teacher was handcuffed criminally charged in front of the host gal Darrow came to the rescue the greatest trial lawyer who ever lived And he for free descended John scopes It became known as the scopes monkey trial which was derived from an evolutionary misconception that humans evolved from monkeys or other primates I traveled a couple of years ago to the courthouse in Dayton Tennessee where the trial took place It's closed now but buried in the archives of the basement and I gained access was the original trial transcript
Mark Levin
Mark Levin Calls Out Sunny Hostin for a Discussion on 'Racism'
"But listen to this sunny Houston He ignores systemic racism in America I'm mister producer I want you to contact her people at the view and ask her to come on the program Well we can have a short discussion About America and racism Okay I'm quite certain None of these people will come on the show So maybe she will In the clarence Thomas syndrome look at the hatred Look at the hatred That's why the view only exists because what is it ABC Syndicates of mister produce something like that So in other words ABC one of the major corporations in the world I guess it's is it still part of Disney I guess it is So it's the same corporate environment And so these people at ABC and Disney they provide a platform Like this these are haters These are nasty people It's like over at MSNBC They're provided a platform by Comcast Who rips you off every month By Comcast And they bring us the joy reeds of the world There's nothing joyful about joy Reid She's a nut Fact she's worse than a nut She's a bigot Am I humble opinion
The Charlie Kirk Show
Julie Kelly Exposes $100 Million Racket Led by Matthew Graves' Wife
"Ways that influence is exerted is through spouses. And you know, this is an attack baseless, by the way, that they tried to go towards clarence Thomas on. But meanwhile, Matthew graves wife runs this racket. I mean, I'm looking to this website, Julie, and I mean, it has a $100 million organization that almost no one's ever heard of. I mean, it's the national woman's law center. I mean, we were just marveling in the break. Just how much money that some of these groups have. We've never heard of them before, right? By the way, we have one of the clips up on the screen of their Twitter account. Abortion always is one of those things. Then they have another, again, Matthew graves wife runs this racket. Just let kids play is another one of their initiatives, which is all about having trans kids place, it's amazing. Julie, tell us about this connection, is there a conflict of interest? Why is this important to know? I think there are definitely is a conflict of interest. Look, she's the CEO and president of this very well funded nonprofit. This group is working hand in glove with people like senator White House. And other activist groups who are demanding the resignation of clarence Thomas, this group is behind the smear campaign against clarence Thomas and his wife. So how can you have the chief prosecutor who were supposed to believe justice is blind and he's treating people suspects and defendants all the same when we know that he's not have his wife who is such an outspoken activist trying to remove a sitting U.S. Supreme Court Justice working with Democrats in Congress to do that and create this smear campaign against him, she also has choice words and has about Donald Trump and his supporters. She referred to white women suggested that white women who voted for Donald Trump in 2020 people like me are racist and are only supporting a systemically white racist system in America. This is the sort of thing that she has said and her activism role.
Dennis Prager Podcasts
Dems Silent As Nonviolent Offenders Languish in Jail
"They've already been in jail two and a half years. But I thought I thought that the Democrats favor that even if you are alleged to have killed someone, you should be free until your trial. It's just these people who are in prison. I've interviewed people like John millis on my show a number of times from prison. He has not even had a bail hearing in now I guess two years. Not a bail hearing. And this doesn't trouble a single person in the Democratic Party. Half of this country actually probably celebrates this. They do. It also doesn't bother a lot of people in the Republican Party. I will say that there's no reason why. House Republicans should not call a judge like Tim Kelly. I mean, look at what the Senate is trying to do to clarence Thomas and Republican conservative judges on the Supreme Court. Why are we not calling? So let's say they did. Let's say they call judge Kelly to testify in Congress. What would they do? What would you like them to do? I would like for judge Tim Kelly to explain his decision to repeatedly deny bail to nonviolent offenders with no criminal record. So he can tell America it's because they were involved in January 6th of domestic. Why are the Republicans in Congress in the house not doing this? They control the house. They do. I've suggested it privately and publicly. Many times. And nothing has happened so far. But I would call Tim Kelly. I would call judge beryl Howell, who was the chief judge. I'm sure you're familiar with her name. She
The Dan Bongino Show
Kayleigh McEnany: Media Should Focus on Hunter Biden, Not SCOTUS
"Kaylee a couple thoughts at first you're right about the Supreme Court We've had a number of substantial wins on faith on firearms on Chevron deference which is a big deal I mean the regulatory bureaucratic state These are big issues They may not sound like it but they are I mean we effectively have the bureaucracy running the country right now I'm going to ask you quite a kind of already know the answer to it but I just want your thoughts You think that's behind me recent attacks air quotes on Clarence Thomas with these nothing burgers to he took a vacation with a rich guy My gosh everybody in Congress basically any human being with any connection ever would be out of a job if that were a crime That's what they're trying to do Discredit the Supreme Court because they can't use it anymore 1000% I mean that's what the media does They pick someone who's a successful conservative I mean I'm sure I know you've had this in media I certainly had to ask press secretary If you are succeeding in making a difference with your voice they will call you every name under the book They will make up things against you They will investigate clarence Thomas but of course they won't look at Sotomayor Kagan or ketanji Brown Jackson or anyone else They're only going to look at Thomas and Alito and Roberts in the like When meanwhile they should be focusing on where the smoking gun is And of course I'm talking about Hunter Biden and the Biden family But no journalism there instead the New York Post who hasn't done the only journalism there really they are left out of a White House event That's how it works You don't subscribe to the mob mentality URLs
The Charlie Kirk Show
"clarence" Discussed on The Charlie Kirk Show
"That's the accusation. You're too generous, clarence Thomas. Your friends are too generous. Meanwhile, while we're on the topic, someone who has never held accountable for not recusing themselves, justice Elena Kagan. Remember when she had to rule on the ObamaCare decision? When there were some very suspicious connections between her and her husband regarding companies that had business in front of the court. And that's the other thing. Is that Harlan court never had any business in front of the court? Not to mention, did you know that Sonia Sotomayor took $3 million from a book publisher and did not recuse it from case its cases, and they did have business in front of the court. So the clear thing is this Thomas never broke a law and this could have been targeted earlier. Why is it coming out now? Ideological motivations. The left obviously had a strategy meeting earlier this year, and they said, we got to start taking people off. And they've tried and they try. They were successful in Tucker, Tucker's been temporarily muzzled. They've indicted Donald Trump and they're probably going to indict him federally, of which is going to create a whole mess of things. And I'm not even sure how that's going to end up. Take out James O'Keefe, veritas way to effective. And they know they're probably going to be unsuccessful in taking out clarence Thomas. So then what is the secondary or third or fourth reason they're doing this? They're doing this to try to make an example that if you dare be courageous, if you do not tow the party line, we're going to try to ruin your life. We're going to obliterate you. We are going to put you on display the same way clarence Thomas predicted it during his confirmation hearing as a high-tech lynching. They're just trying to do it all over again. But do not underestimate the racial component here. They want to try to tar and feather and smear and slander any black American that speaks out against the American Democrat dominance over the urban community. Clarence Thomas represents a different way for black America. He represents a different path for black Americans. Play cut one 18 sunny hostin from the view speaking about clarence Thomas play cut one 18. It's interesting. Cornyn, who is a Republican, says basically is a racist attack, which is what they said when he was appointed to the supreme court. It's just not true. And I think the worst part of the fact that they're using the black heart in that way is that it lessens the real degradation when it happens to African Americans in this country. And so I think that's, you know, that's just smoke and mirrors. Yeah, just smoke and mirrors. You see how uncomfortable she gets though? She's not as articulate as soon as you use the race card against the left and you call them bigots which they are. They get unreal and comfortable footing. Same with the black only calculus course at Evanston, high school..
The Charlie Kirk Show
"clarence" Discussed on The Charlie Kirk Show
"Okay, let's get actually down to the substance of it, right? So there are accusations, the big one that they are throwing at clarence Thomas is all about payments. Okay, so ProPublica has a hit piece against clarence Thomas. It's all about tuition payments. This whole thing is super bizarre. So clarence Thomas, being a good Christian, a very devout Catholic, by the way. Fostered his grand nephew Mark taking custody of him and essentially raising him from the age of ten. As part of that, he sent them to hidden Lake academy a boarding school in Georgia. Dallas based Republican donor and a good man Harlan crow paid for two years of tuition at that school and once again, the complaint is that Thomas did not report this as a gift. That's just nonsense. It's well known that Harlan Kron clarence Thomas are very good friends. Harlan Crowe, for anyone that knows this, he's an incredible collector. He loves American history. And he has a friendship with clarence Thomas. Are you not a lot of friends? If you're on the Supreme Court, the only statement Thomas has made is that he and his wife are very close friends with the crows. That's well known. And then his understanding was that he wasn't required to report any of these things. And on both points, he's correct. There's no evidence of any bribery or corruption. But they're coming after him hard. They want criminal investigations. They want indictments. They want the whole thing. Mika brzezinski on payments to clarence Thomas wife because then it somehow involves something around Ginny Thomas. They're going after the entire family, everybody. Play cut one 16. We're going to talk now about the new reporting on payments to the wife of Supreme Court Justice clarence Thomas. Citing documents, it reviewed The Washington Post reports that conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo paid Ginny Thomas tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work, but gave specific instructions that her name be left off the paperwork. The same year the nonprofit judicial education project filed a brief to the Supreme Court challenging a landmark civil rights law aimed at protecting minority voters. That's the real key, isn't it? They don't like how he votes. They don't like his decisions. They don't like his opinions. You see, one of the reasons they hate clarence Thomas so much is they thought over a period of time with all of these nonsense attacks, he would moderate his positions. They thought that clarence Thomas would become like John Roberts, kind of vanilla squishy in the middle. They're coming after him because he's effective and he's persuasive. And his clerks are actually going on to make a massive impact. They view him as someone who never should have been there in the first place. I think we underestimate the power. Of scoring political animosity. Joe Biden was defeated. In the confirmation of clarence Thomas, and Joe Biden and his allies, they don't forget. They look at the judicial branches striking down his vaccine mandate, striking down, ruling by Fiat, and they want to find somebody to blame. The New York Times has come out regarding these accusations saying, enforcement actions for any failure to comply with the disclosure law have another's constraint. There's generally a four year statute of limitations for civil actions under federal law. The tuition payments fall outside that window, in his statement, mister Paola indicated that mister Crowe has paid for mister Mark Martin's tuition at the Randolph Macon academy in Virginia in the 2006 2007 academic year. Oh wait, so let me get this straight. The accusation is that clarence Thomas had a friend be generous towards a person in need? That was not his son..
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why the Left Hates Clarence Thomas
"ProPublica has a hit piece against clarence Thomas. It's all about tuition payments. This whole thing is super bizarre. So clarence Thomas, being a good Christian, a very devout Catholic, by the way. Fostered his grand nephew Mark taking custody of him and essentially raising him from the age of ten. As part of that, he sent them to hidden Lake academy a boarding school in Georgia. Dallas based Republican donor and a good man Harlan crow paid for two years of tuition at that school and once again, the complaint is that Thomas did not report this as a gift. That's just nonsense. It's well known that Harlan Kron clarence Thomas are very good friends. Harlan Crowe, for anyone that knows this, he's an incredible collector. He loves American history. And he has a friendship with clarence Thomas. Are you not a lot of friends? If you're on the Supreme Court, the only statement Thomas has made is that he and his wife are very close friends with the crows. That's well known. And then his understanding was that he wasn't required to report any of these things. And on both points, he's correct. There's no evidence of any bribery or corruption. But they're coming after him hard. They want criminal investigations. They want indictments. They want the whole thing. Mika brzezinski on payments to clarence Thomas wife because then it somehow involves something around Ginny Thomas. They're going after the entire family, everybody. Play cut one 16. We're going to talk now about the new reporting on payments to the wife of Supreme Court Justice clarence Thomas. Citing documents, it reviewed The Washington Post reports that conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo paid Ginny Thomas tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work, but gave specific instructions that her name be left off the paperwork. The same year the nonprofit judicial education project filed a brief to the Supreme Court challenging a landmark civil rights law aimed at protecting minority voters. That's the real key, isn't it? They don't like how he votes. They don't like his decisions. They don't like his opinions.
The Charlie Kirk Show
"clarence" Discussed on The Charlie Kirk Show
"It could be roe versus wade. And then they have a big table. No clerks allowed. And it's just 9 people. And they talk. And they have coffee and then they talk. And they debate. One of the reasons they hate clarence Thomas is that he's unbelievably charming because he's a great person. Let me say that again. He's a good person. And they're attacking him for being a generous good person. For basically helping out his nephew to go to college or a friend of his in Dallas, clarence Thomas is a good person. And guess what? So he's in this private room. 9 people and maybe he's able to win over John Roberts a little bit more. Maybe he's able to de radicalize Sotomayor and Kagan might be not that effective. Their vote, their votes have been terrible. But they hate clarence Thomas because this is what's important. He took the philosophical tradition from Scalia and continued it and carries it forward. You see, clarence Thomas has not done the John Roberts thing where he gets flimsy and goes to the middle. Clarence Thomas is actually holding down the conservative opinion. They look to him as a thought leader and they should the guy is objectively brilliant. So Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch come on, he's almost like The Godfather of the originalist viewpoint. The guy so well read, he's so deep, this is one of the reasons why the left hates him is because he impacts those dialogs in those discussions and those private 9 person and they can't control that. The administrative state is not able to impact them..
The Charlie Kirk Show
Exposed: Radical Left's Strategy to Destroy Conservatives
"Number 13 in the rules for radicals. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it. And polarize it. Rule number 8, keep the pressure on rules for radicals. Is one of the many, let's just say pieces of literature that radical left wing activists considered to be their gospel, how they operate. It's more of the technical side than the philosophical side. The philosophical side we've gone through, but the technical side of how they operate can be best explained through rules for radicals, amongst many other pieces of literature. But I think this is really important. Pick the target freeze it personalize it and polarize it. That's what they're doing right now to clearance Thomas. They've done that Tucker Carlson. They've done that to James O'Keefe. They see the movement makers on the right. They see the people that are willing to be effective, courageous, bold. You notice that they don't go after John Roberts? You notice that? John Roberts is not a big point of controversy. I don't know about Neil Gorsuch. Yep, but clarence Thomas is number one. And let's just be honest. The reason why they hate clarence Thomas is the same reason why they refuse to put clarence Thomas in the black history museum brought to you by the Smithsonian right there in downtown D.C.. It's because they consider clarence Thomas to be a race trader. That's how big it did these people are. They consider clarence Thomas to be a traitor to the black race and its white liberals that largely believe this because they believe they can control black people the same way that Democrats control black people through poll taxes and segregation, which they're doing again. And also through slavery, they just control black people differently through government handouts and goodies and voting for the Democrat party while white liberals remain rich and powerful, blacks continue to line up to vote for the American Democrat party. The whole thing is a scam. Candace Owens, Brandon Tatum are doing a great job of exposing that scam.
The Charlie Kirk Show
"clarence" Discussed on The Charlie Kirk Show
"Oh, you should have cut it, Ryan, ah, the best part of that C-SPAN footage. You know the best part of that C-SPAN footage? The degenerate Joe Biden is like this with his hands. You got to find the screen grab. I've seen that video probably 50 times. And then Joe Biden is just staring at him. That message was delivered right to Joe Biden, but guess what? Joe Biden's not involved in this current attack, but his allies are. They're striking back against clarence Thomas. And I'm going to walk you through all of it. They're trying to take this guy out. The same way they took out James O'Keefe, the same way they took out Tucker Carlson the same way that they've indicted Donald Trump. They got their eyes set on clarence Thomas. Look with all the danger out there in today's world, many people are concerned about the very real possibility of food shortages. That's why I urge everyone to secure a long-term emergency food supply while you can go to my patriot supply dot com that the nation's largest preparedness company and right now they're offering a special deal when you buy their three month emergency food kit, which lasts up to 25 years in storage, with each kit you order, you'll receive a bonus of crucial survival gear worth over $200 for free. The three month emergency food kit guarantees your family will have peace of mind during a disaster and the survival gear will help you be even more prepared. The kit includes breakfast lunch dinner drinks and snacks over 2000 calories a day. Best of all, this food is tasty. Your whole family will love it. To get your emergency food and your free survival gear worth over $200, go to my patriot supply dot com. That's my patriot supply dot com. We are 9 meals away from anarchy. What have you done to be able to protect your family against societal collapse, bedlam, chaos?.
The Charlie Kirk Show
How Democrats Changed the Game for Supreme Court Nominations
"Left has hated clarence Thomas since the moment George H. W. Bush to his credit, nominated him to go to the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, remember, Supreme Court hearings used to not be very contentious. Used to be 98 nothing and 72 ten kind of boring, you know, okay, great. Passerby. But then the Democrats decided across the Rubicon. The Democrats decided to derail one of president Ronald Reagan's nominees. The great Robert bork. Robert bork should have been on the U.S. Supreme Court. He was an unbelievable writer. He knew the constitution through and through, but they went after him, and they went after him very, very hard. They, not just condemned him, they mocked him. They made him seem like a radical, which he wasn't. He was a thoughtful, reasonable person. And the term borking, a nominee, was born. That you could derail a nomination. And they tried to do this Kavanaugh, by the way, and they were unsuccessful. And basically they were able to consolidate 58 Democrats to 42 Republicans to reject a Supreme Court nominee the first of which in over 50 years to be rejected by the U.S. Senate. Joe Biden was the instrumental person. He was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and derailed Robert bork's attempt to go on the U.S. Supreme Court. Play cut one 19. As a nationally known jurist and legal scholar, Robert bork was a mainstay of conservative jurisprudence for more than half a century. Those views fueled a Titanic struggle over his 1987 nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, a fight that became a seminal moment in altering the process for all future nominees. Bork's Supreme Court confirmation hearings unfolded in September 1987, and heralded a historic struggle over the ideological composition of the federal courts. The judges responsibility is to discern how the framers values defined in the context of the world they knew. Apply in the world we know. Brilliant, Ted Kennedy, who was an evil person. How many times can you say chappaquiddick? Was involved. Joe Biden was involved. The same cabal. They never go away.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Woke Totalitarian Arsonists Hate the Constitution
"We have known for a while that the totalitarian arsonists that are trying to take over the country. You could call them the woke, the Marxist, the American Democrat party. They hate the constitution. We know that. The constitution is the greatest political document ever written. This is exactly why they're doing everything they possibly can to abolish the Electoral College to add new states to give them the power to be able to have HR one. They've been engaging in a hundred year project to destroy the constitution. The promise of the founding fathers. They don't like the idea of separation of powers consent to the governed and independent judiciary. They don't like that. And they especially want the third branch of government, article three of the United States Constitution, the Supreme Court to act and absolute lockstep harmony with the administrative state. You see, Congress largely does the bidding of the administrative state. You want a war in eastern Ukraine. You want the borders wide open. You want to have the military go totally trans. You'll find enough legislators to kind of just turn a blind eye. The executive branch is the administrative state. That fourth branch of government. But the Supreme Court largely thanks to president Donald Trump, by the way, president Donald Trump winning the 2016 election giving us Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, running the table. Three Supreme Court Justices that have largely done a great job. I mean, there's been some decisions I don't like, but it's been a great job. Has changed the game. Now all of a sudden there is a counterbalance to this nonstop blitzkrieg on our freedoms and liberties brought to you by the unchecked fourth branch of government. You see the Supreme Court striking down roe versus wade, reconsidering the Chevron decision, reconsidering the lemon decision, their restoring the constitution as the bedrock authority for the American government and the left doesn't like that.
Mark Levin
Sonia Sotomayor Took $3M From Book Publisher While Ruling on Case
"Well they're going to have to call another hearing because it's been revealed that Sotomayor took in 3.6 million As reported by the daily wiring and excellent story 3.6 million From a book company that did have business before the Supreme Court at the time Greg price points out on his Twitter Sonia Sotomayor received over 3,000,003.6 for her books from penguin Random House publishing and then didn't recuse her stuff from the case In which they were involved before the Supreme Court where the company stood to lose money What did clarence Thomas do again In 2010 she got a $1.2 million book advance from doubles day group a part of the conglomerate 2012 she reported receiving two advanced payments from the publisher totaling 1.9 million That's a lot of money For advances on books and I guarantee she hadn't sold anything close to what I've sold Now that sound you hear is every Democrat who demanded Thomas and Gorsuch resign suddenly running away from any discussion of Supreme Court ethics While the accusations against the conservative justices were salient shallow there's actual meat on the bone regarding what Sotomayor did The publishing company in question actually stood to lose money depending on how the court ruled Yet she took millions of dollars from it anyway and then did not recuse herself from the case
AP News Radio
Justice Clarence Thomas let GOP donor pay tuition: Report
"There's another revelation about a GOP mega donor's financial ties to Supreme Court Justice clarence Thomas, a lawyer who has represented Thomas and his wife acknowledges Dallas billionaire Harlan Crowe paid two years of private school tuition for a child Thomas raised, ProPublica first reported the payments after earlier reporting Crowe paid for Thomas luxury vacations and bought property from the Thomas family. The justice did not disclose any of the payments or gifts and the reports have raised questions about his ethics and more generally about disclosure requirements, Democrats have used the revelations to push for high court justices to have stronger ethics rules. Republicans say the left is merely trying to smear Thomas, Sagar Meghani, Washington.
The Dan Bongino Show
Lisa Boothe: Are We Still a Republic?
"But I was also thinking about how Benjamin Franklin when he was walking out of independence hall after the constitutional convention in 1787 and a woman shouted to him you know what have we got A republic or a monarchy to which he responded a republic if you can keep it Are we still a republic Do we want to keep it I mean how many young people know that we're a constitutional republic What direction are we heading in You know and I remember when Joe Biden announced it in 26 or 2020 rather when we were covering the 2020 election And there was this persona that oh it's just Joe Biden from Scranton Pennsylvania just good old Joe He's a good guy He's a moderate Don't worry about him He's not scary I never really bought that because I saw him flip flopping on things like taxpayer funded abortions on fossil fuels did not seem trustworthy This is a guy too who slandered the truck driver who was involved in a car crash that killed his wife and daughter tragic but he lied about the guy He slandered him The poor daughter of the driver You asked from you know please apologize You know or you look at the fact that he's just a prolific liar You look at the fact that when he served over the Senate Judiciary Committee he was at the helm of two of the most awful Supreme Court confirmation hearings with Robert bork and clarence Thomas This is not a good guy You know the only reason people think he's a good guy is because he has suffered the kind of loss that he has And you can have empathy for him suffering so much loss But he uses it politically as a sword and a shield He's not a good guy
The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated
Supreme Court Rejects Senate's Demand for Disclosure
"The Supreme Court is the subject of a lot of withering criticism. Dick Durbin, your colleague in the Senate requested the chief justice to show up the chief justice said, no, I'm not going to do that. I don't know if they teach article one, two and three at Harvard Law, but I teach it every year. And I don't believe anything you pass requiring the Senate to requiring Supreme Court Justices to disclose anything is constitutional. What is your position on this? Because they are a separate but equal branch and they do not dance to the tune that the Senate and the Congress and the president call. Well, I think the chief was correct under the circumstances to decline the invitation. There are some cases where it might be appropriate for Supreme Court Justices to testify in front of Congress and an era of comity and to pursue actual legislative solutions for the federal court system. That's not what this was. This was nothing but dick Durbin and the Democrats trying to pile on scurrilous press attacks against clarence Thomas and Harlan crow, all of which admitted in the fine print and the 37th paragraph that's clearance Thomas had violated no law or no rule and he disclosed everything that the law required him to disclose. Yet it's the left, whether they're in the Senate or whether they're in the media continued assault on the legitimacy of the Supreme Court solely because they don't like the outcomes of certain Supreme Court decisions.
AP News Radio
Roberts declines Senate request to testify on court ethics
"Chief justice John Roberts has said no thanks to an invitation from the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify at a hearing next week on ethical standards at the Supreme Court. I'm Ben Thomas with the latest. Judiciary committee chairman dick Durbin invited Roberts testimony after ProPublica detailed a close relationship between justice clarence Thomas and a conservative donor, but nonprofit investigative journalism organization reported Harlan crow had purchased properties belonging to Thomas and his family in a transaction worth more than $100,000, but that Thomas never reported. In a letter to durban Robert said he would respectfully decline the committee's request, describing such testimony as exceedingly rare, noting separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence. He instead provided the panel with the statement of ethics signed by all 9 justices. It describes the ethical rules they follow about travel gifts and outside income. Ben Thomas Washington
On The Media
"clarence" Discussed on On The Media
"And the innovation of the conservative movement in the 1970s and Thomas articulates this very clearly in this 1987 speech is that if we can reimagine the activity of the businessman, the activity of the banker. Not as economic activity, but as speech. Perhaps that activity will then ascend in the moral imagination of America. And to send in its constitutional status, becoming something deserving of the protection of the Supreme Court. And where they begin this process is with advertising. Advertising, of course, it is the form of speech, it involves words and images. When I was a kid, mobile, the oil company would take out a quarter page ad on the op-ed page. It was a learned exegesis of the value of fossil fuels. And the question is, is that an advertisement, or is that political speech? And conservatives made the case in the court eventually came around to this position that that kind of advertising is in fact political speech. That was like the Trojan horse. They started moving out from there to all different kinds of other things. So if we can jump ahead 30 years, we had that case coming out of Colorado of the cake maker, the wedding cake maker. Right. The wedding cake maker did not want to make cakes for gay couples. And that was primarily a religious freedom case. Thomas and Gorsuch wrote another opinion saying, in addition to violating religious freedom, this violated the free speech of the cake maker because making a cake is like an artistic form of expression. And you note that Elena Kagan recognized the dangers of this position in her descent for masterpiece cake shop versus Colorado civil rights commission. She said that the First Amendment was being weaponized. Which you went on to say in that dissent of hers is, let's think about this. What part of the economy does not involve speech? You can't fire someone without either putting it into writing or saying to them, you're fired. In fact, all of American business activity operates on the basis of written contracts. Kagan was saying, look what's going on here. They're taking bit by bit. Pieces of the economy enveloping them in the fact that they come as speech acts, and then having done that, saying now they all have to come up under the scrutiny of the First Amendment. And that under this approach, you suggest the constitutional and civilizational order of the new deal could have been overturned. Exactly, because going back to that 1987 speech, the Thomas Gibbs, Thomas was talking about these mid century liberals. He had people like John Kenneth galbraith in mind, and what Thomas claimed was that they viewed money as really in bad form, I guess you could say that there was something unseemly about it instead. The people that they valued these liberals, according to Thomas, were what Thomas called the idealistic professions. Journalists, professors, lawyers, and Thomas describes them as people who make their living by producing words. There's something about speech that is elevated in the mind of the liberal. This is really the original cultural war between the right and the left. Really a civilizational struggle. Over the status of the man of words and the man of money. And Thomas saw it as his project to remorse the businessman and the banker. To give them not just constitutional status, a cultural status. So what might have been in Kagan's mind when she made that observation was the 1976 case Buckley versus valeo, that's a landmark case that ruled that limitations on campaign contributions are a legitimate means of eliminating the reality or appearance of corruption in the electoral process. And Thomas has spent decades successfully chipping away at this. Exactly. There's this famous Wallace Stevens poem where he says money is a kind of poetry, and Thomas takes that very seriously. When we make a donation to a candidate, we're not simply assisting their campaign, we're expressing our values. And Thomas runs with that fact. Because he says, in modern politics, we're always doing this. Most American citizens when they try to express their opinions. In addition to voting, they have to speak through a medium. And you have a lot of small dollar donors who give their money to various campaigns in the hopes that speaking through that medium, their message will get out. And Thomas says that is the nature of democracy. That's why money is speech. But Thomas acknowledges that in American democracy, these campaigns are expensive. He says quite directly that costly campaigns require big donors. This is in McConnell versus federal election commission, which was the case in 2003. He says the only effect that the immense aggregations of wealth will have on an election is that they might be used to fund communications to convince voters to select certain candidates over others. Corporations he goes on to say on behalf of their shareholders will be able to convince voters of the correctness of their ideas. He doesn't hide this anywhere. This isn't tucked in a footnote somewhere. This is a Supreme Court opinion. He has providing a road map here about why wealthy people like everybody else will seek to speak through their donations to convince candidates to take their positions and then ultimately to have those positions prevail in
On The Media
"clarence" Discussed on On The Media
"This is on the media. I'm Brooke gladstone. Earlier this month, pearl publica broke news about clarence Thomas and a Texas real estate tycoon for years justice clarence Thomas has secretly accepted luxury gifts from a GOP mega donor Harlan crow. He took these trips to places like New Zealand, Indonesia, on private yachts, private jets. A $500,000 trip to Indonesia when year. Many of these trips went on disclosed on Thomas's ethics filing despite that being required by law. Clarence Thomas has also reported accepting gifts in 2002, $1200 worth of tires from an Omaha businessman, a Bible, once owned by the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, which Thomas valued at 19,000, and a bust of president Lincoln valued at 15,000. It is the unreported largest that is illegal, but to Corey Robin, journalist, professor and author of the enigma of clarence Thomas, none of it is surprising. Robin says that accepting these gifts, these friendships are of a piece with Thomas most deeply held beliefs and his jurisprudence. Thomas always was open in his views, a black nationalist who held that whites and blacks could never really be reconciled, and that the only path to power in America was to use the readiest tool at hand. One that could be wielded with relative equality, money. In a way, as you will hear, it has shaped his decisions on everything from the right to refuse to bake a cake for a gay wedding to campaign finance reform. In a piece this week in Politico, Corey Robin noted that corruption is far more amorphous and pernicious than a simple quid pro quo. The way corruption often happens is that you have men of wealth and men of power who are part of a fraternity. They exchange words and they exchange ideas and they gain each other's respect and trust. And Thomas is a particularly important person in that fraternity because he really believes in the worthiness and the legitimacy in the standing and in the stature of those men of wealth. He wants those men of wealth to play more of a role in our society. So he takes their words very, very seriously. The problem here is that Thomas not only doesn't really hide from that, he's created an entire jurors prudence that justifies that. These are men who already see pretty much eye to eye on the broad questions, right? Absolutely. Thomas, you say, as someone who believes in the moral authority of rich people and businessmen, which is quite interesting because Thomas upbringing was not one of wealth and ease. And you would think that maybe he would see a moral authority, perhaps in poverty. Not at all. And it's a very good question. One of the most important people in Thomas life was his grandfather, Myers Anderson, whom you came to live with when he was 6 years old. Thomas had lived for his first 6 years in tremendous poverty. But Myers Anderson owned his own business, delivering wood and then cold and then finally oil to members of the black community in Savannah. Thomas grandfather was able to build a solid middle class home for clarence Thomas and his brother, put them through private schools and eventually a mask a bit of property and become a landlord. When Thomas thinks of wealth, he really thinks of people like Myers Anderson. In other words, they began dirt poor. I think Myers Anderson was maybe one or two generations removed from slavery himself. But they were able to build an institution that protected the members of the black community that came within its ambit. In a 1987 speech at a libertarian think tank in San Francisco, clarence Thomas really set out his views about wealth and American politics. The center character was his grandfather. And Thomas critique and attack on American liberalism was that it viewed men like his grandfather, with scorn. He still has in his mind this solid man of discipline of limited wealth who created a protective institution. In which someone like clarence Thomas could, not only survive, but eventually thrive. You wrote that in the 60s and 70s progressive lawmakers treated the freedom of political speech as sacrosanct and spent decades building legal protections around it, and in that Thomas saw a chance to apply those same legal protections to business activities. Exactly, in the 1960s, then in the 1950s, the 1970s, the Supreme Court and liberals came to a kind of settlement. Anything that the government did in terms of economic regulations, laws about business and all the rest of it. The Supreme Court would essentially give the executive branch and the legislature a pretty free hand. The idea being that these were legislative and political activities that did not rise to the level of constitutional scrutiny. On the other hand, there was a sphere of activity that really did deserve constitutional protection. And the heart of those activities, the palladium of liberty as it was called. Was the freedom of speech that words are our most intimate expression of who we are. We reveal ourselves as individuals as citizens through our speech. And so sacred is that an activity that we have to do everything we can in our society to protect it from the regulation and repression and constriction of the government and the state. Hence, the First Amendment. And conservatives looked at that settlement. And they thought to themselves this really puts us in a bind. Because it means the business community can be regulated, strangled, constricted in all sorts of ways in the constitution has nothing to say about it. So what are we going to do?
On The Media
"clarence" Discussed on On The Media
"Three. We get to see the bigot, he becomes lovable, but he's always exposed is the loser in the buffoon. Now, we have Logan Roy, who is completely unredeemable. And he always wins. And there is something kind of appealing about that. Logan Roy in his ruthless success by any means necessary, I think has got a modern 21st century American appeal. Donald Trump very much played up that. I'm rich, I'm successful, and therefore I should be admired. And I think that might be one of the dangerous and insidious things about Succession. Yes, it teaches us maybe about some of the, at least metaphorical detail of what's going on with the Murdoch operation. But it also domesticates it. And I am sure there are a number of people you could find if you went out on the street who would be happy to sport a Logan Roy for president button. Some of them with a wink and a nod, some of them completely seriously. You have said though that if the show were less good, it would probably cleave more to the Murdoch story than it actually does. What I think makes Succession a fine work of television art is the fact that, like so many other things, it is inspired by real things, but it then brings them the art and artifice that allows it to be more interesting. If we're watching the real series that is Rupert Murdoch, every now and again, things happen that are really unsatisfying from an artistic dramatic standpoint. The settlement that just happened is a perfect example of that. So I think it's a testament to successions, quality that it's not directly mirroring what's happening. If nothing else, and I haven't heard Rupert Murdoch talk a lot. But Logan Roy is certainly a more rhetorically dynamic person than Rupert Murdoch is. Anyone who believes that I'm getting out, please shove the bunting up your ass. This is not the end. I'm going to build something better. Something faster, lighter, Mina, wilder. And I'm going to do it. From in here, where do you want? Your pirates. You know, in great art, even when you are basing it on something. Let's go back to our friend Shakespeare. His history plays. If you want to know the history of the reign of Richard the third, you do not watch Shakespeare's Richard the third. No. There's all kinds of liberties taken both in the source material and everything else. However, if you want an extraordinary fictional dramatic artistic transcendent experience, you don't go to the sources and read the history of Richard the third, you watch Shakespeare's Richard the third. Right. What about the impact of Murdoch's empire on the broader culture? I think Rupert Murdoch has probably been more successful at doing bad things for the future of democracy and the republic that many other people have been doing for a long time. He's just been really, really good at it. However, we also have to acknowledge that within that building up of that empire, some really interesting and I think good things happen. The best example of that would be the Fox broadcasting network. And it really did provide alternative programming, including some voices that were not heard in the usual oligopoly of ABC CBS and NBC. The Simpsons before The Daily Show came along was probably the most trenchant political and social satire we had on all of regular broadcast television in living color would certainly not have gotten the Fox News seal of approval. I always used to say that in many ways it was once again brilliant synergy in that the Fox network would play TV shows that would then give the people on the Fox News channel next morning something to be outraged. This brings us to the final assessment of Rupert Murdoch and his impact on the culture and what he really cared about. Rupert Murdoch, I think, in the end, will be most remembered for really solidifying a major change in the way we think about what we once called journalism. And I think in almost every case he did that to the detriment of real journalism. And there's no way The Simpsons can compensate for that. If I'm up at the gates of Saint Peter's and I'm putting the Simpsons on one end of the scale and Fox News on the other end of the scale, I'm sorry Bart, but I just don't think you're going to outweigh that. Bob Thompson, thank you very much. It's my pleasure. Thank you. Robert Thompson is pop culture scholar at Syracuse's new House school of public communications. There is one bright side. I'm also forbidden from ever watching Fox. You can't even show it in the bar. That's right. And business
On The Media
"clarence" Discussed on On The Media
"On the media. I'm Brooke gladstone. And that's the ghoulish gothic opera theme of the wildly popular show's Succession. Currently in its fourth and final season on HBO. The show's creator and showrunner, Jesse Armstrong, asserts that succession is inspired by more than just the murder docs. If you look at the American media landscape, you have CBS owned by Viacom, which is a family business, the redstones you have NBC, which is a family business owned by Comcast, the robbers family you have ABC, which was Disney and she's no longer a family firm, but the politics are kind of Byzantine and not unlike our show. You have the Sinclair family who are buying up most of local TV, you have the Mercer family who are all over the data mining. There are a lot of influential media families in the U.S. for us to think about and draw on. Which sure, but the parallels between the Roy family and Succession and the real-life Murdochs are hard not to see. You've got the aging media mogul, the sparring kids, the divorces, the young girlfriends, the big sale of much of the company, and it was rumored that some Murdoch family members might have leaked storylines like this family therapy scene to the show. Disagreeing with dad is not treason. But trying to make one of his biggest enemies president is kind of a you. Oh, hey, dad. Dad, I like those stories you planted about me. Yeah. You forced my hand. There it is. Yes. Any lucky that was all. What you kids do not understand. It's all part of the game. Robert Thompson is a Professor of television radio and film at Syracuse university. He says the characters in succession are rather Shakespearean, but he objects to the incessant comparisons to king Lear, true, the patriarch, Logan Roy, as his name suggests, is a kind of a king, but that's where the similarity ends. In that Logan Roy is a lot smarter than king gear. It's as though Logan Roy had seen enough productions of Lear to know not to do what Lear does. In the very first scene, if I'm not mistaken of king Lear, the king marches out with a map and says, here are my territories. I'm going to divide them up between my three children to south Austin tenth to shake all cares and business for my age, conferring the man youngest strengths. What can you say to draw a third? More opulent than your sisters. Nothing. My lord. Well, nothing will come of nothing. Speak again. The beginning of king Lear, the heirs are announced. Rupert Murdoch has still not divided up the map. If I go on a bus tomorrow, the four of them will have to decide. Which are the ones should lead them. Who among them ought to be the heir apparent in terms of power, yes, in terms of leadership. They'll get treated equally financially. And nor did Logan Roy. You are not serious figures. I love you. But you are not. Serious people. The other big parallel between Logan Roy and Rupert Murdoch is the inseparable relationship between the media and political power right. In this dance with political power and journalism, administrations come and go. These big mogul run journalistic operations are there for the long run. Fox News has got more chronological continuity than the American democratic republic. They come many presidents, how many congresses have changed since Fox News starts in the mid 19 90s. Political leaders come and go, Rupert Murdoch comes, but never goes. And yet, for most people, he's pretty much known as an old guy who has romantic relationships with not so old women. And just a very powerful, global force of conservatism. What does Succession perhaps tell us or doesn't tell us? Succession lets us see Logan Roy, this kind of Rupert Murdoch stand in in all of these intimate situations because they get to make it all up. People can now watch Succession and like a Trojan horse secretly get in on all the things that are really going on in a big mogul run operation like Murdoch's. That would seem good that we're getting through fiction some kind of the foundation of what's going on in fact. However, I have found even in my own watching of this show, I'm ashamed to say, that there is what I would call the Archie bunker effect. Remember, Archie bunker back in the 70s was this bigoted guy who said all kinds of things that were racist and sexist. Don't keep quiet over there. I'm gonna call the cops on you. Is that? I'm calling people raw skated cops. But because he was on every week, he became this kind of lovable bigot. It is true that Archie bunker for all of his bigotry and ignorance was a lovable figure to many people who felt that he was winking at them, just like the Stephen Colbert right wing character. He played on The Colbert Report, was also seen to the horror of Colbert, perhaps, of being a winking acknowledgment of the truth. But the difference is that Archie bunker was fundamentally a loser and Logan Roy is a winner. It's true at the end of every episode of Archie bunker. He was exposed as the buffoon. He spouted all that racist stuff when Sammy Davis Jr. was in his living room, but Sammy Davis Jr. kisses him in the final scene of that episode. I want one picture taken with Archie bunker, my friend and me. You and me? Yes. Now on three, okay? One, two,
AP News Radio
Report: Thomas sold real estate to donor, didn't report deal
"More details are emerging of the relationship between Supreme Court Justice clarence Thomas and a major conservative political donor. I'm Ben Thomas with the latest. The revelations come from the nonprofit investigative journalism organization, ProPublica, citing state tax documents and property deeds, ProPublica reports Harlan Crowe purchased three properties belonging to Thomas and his family, the home in Savannah, Georgia, where Thomas mother was living, along with two nearby vacant lots. The price was a little more than $133,000. Thomas mother remained living in the home, which soon underwent tens of thousands of dollars in renovations. Federal officials are required to disclose details of most real estate transactions valued at more than $1000. Thomas would not have been required to report the purchase if the property was his or his spouse's primary personal residence, but that does not apply in this case. And Thomas did not report it. Crowe says he approached Thomas about the purchase with an eye toward creating a museum dedicated to telling the story of the nation's second black Supreme Court Justice. Thomas relationship with Crowe and the material benefits are fueling calls for an official ethics investigation. Ben Thomas, Washington
The Dinesh D'Souza Podcast
Why Does the Left Hate Clarence Thomas SO Much?
"The left simply hates clarence Thomas. I mean, they don't like any of the conservative justices, not even Roberts, but they particularly load clarence Thomas, and it's let's think about why that is. I think it's because clarence Thomas is, well, a black man who has left the plantation. Think about the left. The party of the plantations, the Democratic Party, maintained the actual plantations, but even after slavery, they love to keep blacks in political subjugation. And even now. But here's clarence Thomas, and he's sort of like, no, I'm going to think for myself. I'm going to speak my mind. I'm not going to be reined in by you people. And so they despise him. They hate him. They tried what Thomas himself called the high-tech lynching when he was first nominated to the court. They tried to to the Supreme Court. I mean, they tried to topple his nomination. They couldn't do it on substance and so they wheeled out, you know, Anita hill with absurd allegations about clarence Thomas, you know, made inappropriate remarks toward me all, of course, again, unsubstantiated. By the way, we saw a replay of all that later with Kavanaugh, essentially the same playbook and happily it didn't work the second time either, but now they're trying to go after Thomas again and this time on a completely different pretext. There's a nonprofit or sort of research group called ProPublica and they did a big expose and what is the expose show. Clarence Thomas for the last 15 years has been going on extremely luxurious vacations with a big Republican donor. In fact, it's a Republican guy that I happen to know. In fact, pretty well. His name is Harlan Crowe. His father travel crow built much of the Dallas skyline, Harlan crow is a kind of institution in Dallas. He was on the board of the American enterprise institute when I was a scholar there. So I got to know Harlan pretty well and have stayed in touch over the years, and any event, clarence Thomas's friend with this guy. And apparently they do stuff together and this guy buys Harlan Crowe, buys clarence Thomas dinners and takes him on vacation, probably flies him on a private jet. He stays a nice facilities. So what?
The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated
National Security Leak Could Be Bigger Than the Pentagon Papers
"Byron, let me get to the leak. This is a huge story. I really don't know how to handle it. All I know is it's a terrible blow to our national security and the lights beginning to go on in the media, isn't it? Well, I was listening to your conversation with David drecker about this. And one thing I've been thinking about. Is you were mentioning The Pentagon papers earlier, which is like a million years ago. There have been some extremely serious national security leaks in the past years. That were, if not tolerated, actually cheered on. In late 2016, early 2017 during the Trump transition, there was a leak of Trump's incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn's conversation with the Russian ambassador that leaked to David ignatius set off the Russia investigation basically it was hugely consequential. And intercepted conversations are really some of our most sensitive secrets.
The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated
Are There Any Good People in 'Succession?'
"You're one of my go to guys on pop culture. So I assume you're caught up on Succession. Well, you know, as a matter of fact, I am. All right, no spoilers, please. Did it occur to you that there is no one who is a good person in that show, not one person. I was talking with my son last night in The Sopranos, we came up with one or two people who were good people, but in white lotus, there are none and in succession, there are negative people. I mean, they turn not bad people into terrible people. Am I wrong? I think that is the most important observation you can make about this because you're absolutely right. And it's something that kind of wears on me and I just kind of ultimately give up because I want to actually find somebody with some redeeming qualities. You're absolutely right about The Sopranos. And if there were such people. And this is a show in which just everybody is horrible.
The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated
"clarence" Discussed on The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated
"But how has it been presented inside the beltway, Molly? Well, I'm glad that you mentioned, first off, about how these attacks on justice Thomas have been going on from well more than 30 years. Yes. In the beltway, there is a report from a left wing media group that says that justice Thomas has a very wealthy friend who has taken justice Thomas on trips and holidays together and that he has failed to report this. As required by the law, the problem being there's absolutely no such requirement of any of this or hasn't been for the entirety of his time as a justice. And that these types of trips have been taken by other justices. I mean, I think justice brewer took like 235 such trips that weren't reported. I mean, reported officially. And so it's trying to make is trying to impeach an unimpeachable character, which is what I would say about justice Thomas. Well, he is unimpeachable. As is Jenny Thomas, but there is a continual conflation of any insinuation innuendo and a bare fact here in the Harlan crow is a very wealthy man. Harlem Crowe is extended generosity to the thomases. Everybody in Washington, D.C., and I mean everybody takes care of the justices and other judges who are district court and federal court judges. Everybody does it as well for members of the clergy. Everybody does it for journalists, Molly, and there is no ethical breach moreover article three judges are independent of Congress and this insinuation never ends. Does it? It doesn't. And yeah, that's what they're trying to say. They're like, there are rules for other people that if they were to have a friend like this or have relations like this, they might have to report some aspect of it. If they're in Congress or if they're a federal bureaucrat. So therefore, justice Thomas is evil and wrong. Well, that doesn't mean that Supreme Court Justices have such reporting requirements. He actually put out a statement saying that when he had this friendship that had this type of aspect to it, he talked to advisers about what he needed to report what he didn't need important was told he could make reports. But it's not really about this anyway. None of this is about justice Thomas having a super wealthy friend. I want to just make one other point though. Justice Thomas is probably one of the least wealthy Supreme Court Justices in history. He's known for, in fact, taking his RV around the country when he goes on vacation and parking it in a Walmart parking lot because those are kinds of people he likes to hang out with. The idea that this guy is corrupted by having like one wealthy friend is ridiculous. But again, it's not about that. It's about the fact that justice Thomas is very clear in his legal reasoning that he's an important presence on the court in a manner that liberals would like him not to be. You know, Molly, I also think there's a larger agenda at work. They want to smear him as his work gains incredible reputation for its clarity. Now, I don't agree with the justice on his particular approach to substantive due process and his anti incorporation. Many, many things in the law. I don't agree with him. But if I want someone to understand originalism, I give him his opinion in McDonald versus city of Chicago, because it's completely fairly articulated there. The animus is race based. That's why they hate clarence Thomas. Am I correct? Oh, it's not even, you know, I don't think anyone even disputes that. I think you might even have many people on the left, admitting that. This is, this is a black man, and he very much even his even probably some of the disagreements that you have, such as on substantive due process, are related to his care and concern for certain provisions as they relate to the history of black Americans. And he comes out very differently than how white liberals would like him to come out. And they tried saying for years, if he didn't do anything. And it turned out that he was having so much effect on the court shaping its jurisprudence so much that that became a laughable why. And now they're just trying to tear him down and get rid of him. They've done a bit of obsessed with wanting to get rid of him. Since he was first even hinted at as a nominee. And this doesn't surprise me and it's timing. Not a conspiracy theorist, but I'm all the par has a new book coming out. Judge the parr has a brilliant new book about clarence Thomas coming out about how he always identifies with the underdog in these cases. He's always aware of like in kilo. Who's getting screwed by government. And he's very much onto the facts of that. And so they've got a great well research book by one of the most respected federal judges out there, district court judge, nominated by Trump to the 6th circuit he's on the 6th circuit now. And a superstar and he's right in this book, and now we get this ProPublica nonsense, and I just I weary of whether or not we're ever going to change the culture of Washington, D.C...
Opening Arguments
"clarence" Discussed on Opening Arguments
"As the Jew hater category was too small for Facebook to run an ad campaign, quote, Facebook's automated system suggested Second Amendment as an additional category, presumably because its system had correlated gun enthusiasts with anti semites end of his quote that's not just my addition. All right, well, so that's not a big shocker there. The correlation between the gun nuts and the anti semites. But okay. Yeah, so I think this argument, I mean, why I called it clever. Is designed to reach beyond the scope of just the right wing, right? So judge katzman's concerns like they overlap a lot with the concerns that you and I have, right? Considered a quote from the decision. Congress could not have anticipated the pernicious spread of hate and violence that the rise of social media likely has since fomented. Nor could Congress have divined the role that social media providers themselves would play in this tale, mounting evidence suggests that providers designed their algorithms to drive users toward content and people the users agreed with and that they have done it too well, nudging susceptible souls even further down dark paths. By contrast, when the CDA, that's the communications decency act became law, and thus gave a section two 30. The closest extant ancestor to Facebook and it was still several branches lower on the evolutionary tree. Love that aside, was the chat room or message forum, which acted as a digital bulletin board, and I like this a good argument and did nothing proactive to forge off site connections. So ultimately, the cat's been argument is that algorithmic decisions are self created content. And thus beyond the scope of section two 30, and that would put the onus on Congress to pass a new law extending section two 30 to algorithms, and that would mean, you know, doing nothing because Congress broke it, right? Right. And that's the middle ground that the government tried to argue at oral argument before the Supreme Court last week. And again, I mean, I'm curious your thoughts, Liz. Look, I mean, if you are concerned about the fate of the Internet and we both clearly are section two 30 is an issue that doesn't neatly or at least only divide along the left, right political spectrum. So, for example, judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, clearly a liberal, asked a lengthy question in which she opined that section two 30 was designed to protect ISPs that restrict offensive content, but is being used in here instead to promote offensive content. So then she asked, how is that even conceptually consistent with what Congress intended? And meanwhile, supreme good point, right? So meanwhile, Supreme Court reporter Amy Howe noted that even clarence Thomas appeared surprisingly sympathetic during oral argument to the idea that section two 30 protects recommendations as long as the provider's algorithm treats content on its website similarly. So his question is, if the same algorithm that recommends ISIS videos based on a user's history and interests also recommends cooking videos to someone who is interested in cooking, how can Google be held responsible for those recommendations, which I think I don't personally disagree with that, although I think that you should not do it. I mean, I think it may be morally reprehensible in a bad business decision, but I do take the point, yeah, I think the larger social question about YouTube and other algorithms is really one that we have to grapple with as a society, right? Like the idea that the feedback loop is designed to maximize engagement, right? That's what we have. YouTube wants people to spend as much time on YouTube as possible. And so it feeds them via the algorithm, videos that are designed to keep them on YouTube, and that can have the secondary effect of, oh hey, you seem ISIS curious. Here's a whole bunch of ISIS videos. You seem to be interested in conspiracy theories. Here's the Alex Jones show, here's a bit about how the earth is flat. Right. Like connecting QAnon people together. There would be no QAnon without these algorithms connecting these people, right? That is one of the things that we have to learn to deal with in this society. But I think part of the problem, if you're asking, I think that we anthropomorphize these algorithms and to pretend that YouTube knows something or to pretend that Facebook knows that you want to make friends who want to blow shit up. No, it's not. It's a bunch of mathematical formulas that were cooked up and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't, but they are not, they're not YouTube trying to do something. Facebook isn't trying to play matchmaker, it's trying to provide you with sticky content to keep you on the website so it can continue to show you ads. It's so I think anthropomorphizing it and pretending that this is like Mark Zuckerberg's plan is silly and not a particularly sophisticated or effective way to deal with these laws. I think that's a really excellent point that I haven't heard anyone else sort of make that lucidly. So I really appreciate that. What's your prediction as to where the Supreme Court is going to go on this? I mean, I think that they're not going to blow the Internet up. I agree with you that taking a maximalist position that would kind of gut two 30 in ways that would make the Internet not work. I mean, because the Internet runs on you to start generated content. So, you know, if they got rid of, if they made platforms, you know, uniformly liable for user generated content or even the algorithm, you know, the algorithmically generated content. The Internet wouldn't work. There'd be no social media. So I think that they're not going to take that maximalist position. And it was pretty clear from oral argument that that wasn't where anybody was really headed. Yeah, what do you think? Well, I am feeling optimistic today. And I guess I would say, you know, you say not the maximalist position, that would leave intact, you know, some version of the government's argument. I could see in a ferment, right? A kind of a weird alliance between Kagan and Sotomayor and perhaps some of the howler monkey contingent on one side, and then a Thomas Jackson descent, which may be the only Thomas Jackson. We get in the history. I don't know. I mean, usually you bet against just a straight affirmance, because typically speaking, the Supreme Court doesn't take cases to go, yep, you got that exactly right, 9th circuit. Good job. But I could see that happening here, right? Like I could see, okay, we took this to try and figure it out. We read the briefs. We heard oral argument and yeah, we're persuaded the 9th circuit got it right. But I have to say, because we just had oral arguments, our bet is going to have to wait four to 6 months before we can resolve it. The Internet as we know it lives to fight another day. Great. And that's going to be our show for today. Thank you so much, Liz, for being here. Cool. Really fun. Yeah. And we will see you tomorrow. You got into Harvard
Opening Arguments
"clarence" Discussed on Opening Arguments
"This is in the law, quote, provided by another information content provider. So in Thomas's view, editing, that's something like flagging on Twitter. Hey, this comment has been flagged as hateful, right? Would be actually editing the content rather than editing how we're choosing how that content is displayed. And so therefore you could sue Twitter if you were a Nazi for putting up label saying, hey, this is a Nazi. Yeah. And you know what? That whole editor distinction is really big in conservative circles. So we talked about the desantis law the other day that the Florida law, the Florida defamation law, has specific provisions about editing because that's just one of the conservative bugbears. I mean, it's less ridiculous than the rest of it, but it still pretty clearly contradicts the plain language of two a that immunizes content providers for any action, voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to objectional material. I mean, I'm pretty sure any still means any even to clarence Thomas. Probably. Yeah, no. That's a really, really good point. And I don't know how you can square that, right? Putting up a Nazi warning restricts access to Nazi content if you don't want to click on Nazi. Anyway, but clarence is not done. He wrote again about section two 30 in April of 2021, and procedurally this was a little bit different. This was not a denial of cert. This was a GVR. We have talked about that on the show, but again, just to remind the listeners, that's when the Supreme Court grants certiorari V vacates the lower court's decision and are remands the case back down to the lower court with instructions, right? So they take up the case all at once, they say, we're granting cert, we're overruling the lower court and we're sending this back with instructions to do it over. And you get GDRs really in two situations, right? You either get it when the law changes while the cert petition is pending. And at that point, the court sort of very sensibly is like, oh hey, yeah, the lower court got this wrong, but they couldn't have known that they were getting it wrong because the law changed, and we had announced it yet. So let's give a chance to do a do over, right? We're going to remand it back and say, hey, now the law's X do it over. Or in this case, when you have munsing wear Vaca tour. And if you don't know what Munson wear Vaca tour is, you need to go all the way back to episode one 81. It is a fun story about wartime profiteering during World War II and 1940s underwear. It's great. Anyway, the point is I'm staying off the rabbit trail. You should be proud of me less. The point is that GVR are another largely ministerial activity, right? Like the court is just saying, hey, we need to do that. And Thomas, once again, use that as an opportunity to just blow V8 at length to his fellow justices. So this case was called night institute versus Biden. That is another case. We broke down back when it was happening. This time in episode one 76. And the question in that case was whether Donald Trump had a cause of action for being blocked on Twitter and the answer is of course not you idiot. Unless you are clarence Thomas, who came up with outlook. Here's the actual quote. It's too stupid. I gotta read it. Quote, is the analogy between common carriers and digital platforms is correct that an answer may arise for dissatisfied platform users who would appreciate not being blocked. Laws that restrict the platforms right to exclude. Now that is dumb and terrifying, but also, since when does clarence Thomas think it's the Supreme Court's job to pass laws? And by the way, since when does any sane person think that blocking trolls on Twitter should be legally actionable? No answer to that. So look, when you hear that Thomas wants to overturn section two 30, that's not entirely correct, at least not from a judicial perspective, right? Like I'm sure his favored legislative and presidential candidates also want to write it out of. Look, the reason we went down that in terms of understanding this case is understanding that clarence Thomas wants to read all sorts of exceptions into section two 30s broad grant of judicial opinion. It's not a narrow thing no matter how often clarence Thomas says it no one else ever has. You pointed that out. And so companies like Google have argued and I think pretty persuasively that, you know, if the court starts wading into this area, that would undermine the entire point of section two 30 because once companies like Google are responsible for some content that their users create. You have to put a system in place to monitor content and you might as well just monitor everything. Why would you then exempt some stuff, but not others? Right, exactly. So most people covering this case have focused on Google's arguments, but of course the Internet companies would like to be immune from lawsuits because getting sued sucks. And of course the maga crowd wants to burn everything to the ground. But what we're really interested in is what the Biden administration is advocating. So let's go back to the facts of this particular case. Yeah, yeah, no, that's exactly right. So this is a good illustration of that Oliver Wendell Holmes aphorism that hard cases make bad law. Put another way, right? Like, this is one where the facts are really, really sympathetic to the plaintiff. And as we're going to see that that provides some looking at this issue, doesn't neatly break down on left right grounds, right? So this is a case, the underlying facts are about the 2015 ISIS terrorist bombings in Paris that killed a 129 people. One of those 129 people was a 23 year old woman named nohemi Gonzalez. She was a U.S. citizen studying abroad in Paris. She had the misfortune of just eating at a bistro in Paris when, as part of a coordinated series of attacks, three members of ISIS opened fire into the bistro the whole point was just to kill a bunch of people. And that left Gonzalez left her family without any serious recourse either for justice in any meaningful sense, or for civil compensation, right? Like, you can't practically Sue ISIS. You can't sue suicide bombers, right? Like, so I understand why they sued Google, right? Because that was someone they could sue. Google owns YouTube and the allegation was that YouTube violated the anti terrorism act, which is 18 USC section two three three three. Right, so that's the law that makes it easier for victims of international terrorism to sue anyone involved with that terrorism. And the crucial provision here is subsection D two, which has at liability may be asserted as to any person who aids in abets by knowingly providing substantial assistance to the person who committed the act itself. So the argument is, yes, ISIS coordinated the attacks, but YouTube aided and abetted those attacks by knowingly permitting ISIS to post on YouTube hundreds of radicalizing videos, which incited violence and recruited potential supporters to join ISIS to conduct a terrorist attacks. So the complaint alleges that YouTube affirmatively recommended ISIS videos to users by selecting the users to whom it would recommend ISIS videos based on what YouTube knew about each of the millions of YouTube viewers targeting users whose characteristics suggested they would be interested in ISIS videos and this is one to contemplate now that we're talking about AI because YouTube doesn't know anything. YouTube's algorithms know everything, which is like the AI, so it's just a thing to keep in mind here. Yeah, no, that's a really insightful point.
Opening Arguments
"clarence" Discussed on Opening Arguments
"But we're going to interpret this law functionally. And we're going to say, look, if Congress really intended for this absurd result, they can always change it. And they could, right? Congress hates Liz at pregnant women generally. We think the Supreme Court can read that in to the law and go, we're going to interpret this reasonably. And then the onus is on Congress to change it. And then, and similarly, like a conservative textualist court is free to say, oh, nope, sorry. We're a court. We don't do that. The law is what it is. The card says the loops. And so, you know, if you want to avoid absurdity, go to Congress, make them change the law, but until then we're going to stick with nonsense, right? And again, the difference between those provisions is the conservative court knows damn well that Congress is basically broken. And so, you know, you can see why textualism is frequently employed by people who just philosophically want the government to do fewer things, right? Except when it comes to abortion. Yeah, yeah. All right, let's move on from that. Anyway, the point is, section two 30 is a law written by Congress and as much as maga heads may want to repeal it and don't care about what happens because it would make liberals mad as you point out. The Supreme Court isn't going to do that much heavy lifting for them, right? And here, I think the first thing is, you may have heard and heard correctly that clarence Thomas isn't a fan of section two 30 and he is not. And you may infer that he is not a fan of section two 30, because he goes to bed every night next to a crazed insurrectionist. I thought this was going to be a reassuring episode about the Roberts court. Why are we talking about Jamie Thomas? And why did you make me picture that? What is wrong with you? All right, keep going. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. I promise. So look, the reason is because colloquially, people have said that Thomas wants to overturn section two 30. And what they're really talking about there is disturbing and weird behavior for a Supreme Court Justice, but let's unpack what it actually is, right? That is, his habit of pontificating an opinion in a way that literally no Supreme Court Justice in the history of the republic ever has. I mean, that seriously, that's not just me being hyperbolic. So the law beam is that clarence Thomas doesn't ask questions from the bench. That was true for a decade, but it hasn't been true since COVID. The new meme should be clarence Thomas deliberately writes lengthy concurrences or dissents when the Supreme Court does basic administrative stuff in which he uses those concurrences to lecture his fellow justices on his own very weird views about the law. Oh, that's a meme. I feel like that's maybe not how memes were. Perhaps we need a deep dive on memes. How do they go? My legal understanding is that 100% of memes are the dog in the house that's on fire and everything is fine. This is fine. So look, the first time I noticed that clarence Thomas had a propensity for doing this sort of thing, was also a tech case. It was called Baldwin versus U.S. in which the CERC petition was filed in 2019 and it directly asked the Supreme Court to overrule Chevron deference because as our listeners know, I'm the only person left on earth who cares about Chevron deference, right? 2019, you will recognize as a better time. I'd still scary, but never thought I'd be nostalgic for 2019. But a better time, at least for the Supreme Court in that it had one more Ruth Bader Ginsburg on it and one fewer Amy Coney Barrett. Anyway, back then, the Supreme Court declined to take up that Baldwin case, which the petitioners were asking it to overturn a specific application of Chevron deference or all of it. They have taken either one when it came to the tax treatment of certain Internet providers, right? So that 2005 decision that they wanted overturn was called national cable and telecommunications association versus brand X Internet services. Love that name. Which was authored by that notorious liberal clarence top. Wait, I'm sorry. Are you saying that Thomas dissented from a denial of cert to write an 11 page rant about how the court should have taken up that case so it could overrule a precedent which he himself authored. That is exactly correct. All right. In 2005, yet I know. So as far as I can tell, in 2005, Thomas was under the occasional misguided belief that prior cases served as actual constraints on what judges can do. Again, so today his views on that have evolved, we might say. So let's quote him quoting himself in his own concurrence from a 2018 case called South Dakota versus Wayfair. So quote, quote, it is never too late to third quote surrender former views to a better considered position end quote end quote. Yeah. Well, the Supreme Court has been surrendering a lot of former views lately. It's kind of a shit show. Indeed, it has. And we will begin to put this back in the context of Gonzalez versus Google after we return from the ad break. And we're back before the break we were talking about clarence Thomas quoting himself quoting himself. The significance of that is that Thomas has now pulled this trick of writing just abstract concurrences in places where he wants to lecture his colleagues on the bench. Three times about section two 30 alone, which is just crazy obsessed, right? So the first time was in a weird sort of concurrence that Thomas called a statement in respect to the court's denial of cert in a case called malwarebytes Inc versus enigma software. That was October of 2020. So again, better times. And while Thomas agreed with the court's denial of cert in that case, he still wanted to opine about, quote, why in an appropriate case, we should consider whether the text of this increasingly important statute, meaning section two 30, aligns with the current state of immunity, enjoyed by Internet platforms. Okay, so let me see if I can unpack this. First, Thomas characterized the two protections of section two 30 as quote limited protection, which is not how any other court is referred to it, but cool. To quote, enable companies to create community guidelines and remove harmful content without worrying about legal reprisal. Yeah, and that mischaracterization is absolutely relevant to last week's oral arguments in Gonzalez versus Google, because spoiler alert, the heart of that case is about what Congress meant when it used the phrase publisher or speaker. What clarence Thomas thinks is that the exclusion of the word distributor from that phrase means that, for example, if your website passes along material that say illegal, that gets around section two 30 entirely because I don't know reasons. Clarence Thomas knows. Cool. Well, that's crazy. Like the whole point of section two 30 is that Congress thought that it was impractical for AOL to monitor the content of its millions of users were generating and chat rooms in message or message boards because it's impossible, right? So that is completely at odds with you have to read everything they post and make sure it's not illegal. This is not workable. Yeah, no, absolutely, it's impractical. And it gets worse because Thomas also thinks that when a content provider edits content, that takes them out of section two 30s protection entirely because editing in his view is creating content and section two 30 ostensibly only protects content providers from liability for publishing information. And
Black Tech Green Money
"clarence" Discussed on Black Tech Green Money
"What do you thing happens in the tech space for black entrepreneurs. Do you think not enough of us. Have that or do you think so. Many of us have that that maybe they're not getting recognized. Like how come not enough of us to your earlier point and this is very well no not enough of us are raising capital like the levels that you have and that others that we've mentioned do not enough of us have that or is there. Are there other issues that keep keep us from getting to the place to where we're even having the conversation at that level with an investor. I see both ways to be honest with you. And this is yeah. This is always tough for me to talk about. There's one side of it from founder founder. Right founders where we like like we all think we deserve money and that's cool went and like yes. We should be more or whatever but on the other side of me which is a scout at true ventures out of san francisco. They wanted top cease as firms. I also get a lot of inbound from founders. And what. I see a lot of time. We're not ready for primetime and not only. Are we not ready for prime time. Because we've had to fight and claw express and have that kind of screw mentality were also don't have our ears open wounds here like what we need to hear to get to the next level and i give you. I'll give you a quick sample. I was talking to a founder a few months ago and we were going back and forth over zoom a like an. I'm not the to give advice. But i do give you like. Here's what worked for clarence..
Black Tech Green Money
"clarence" Discussed on Black Tech Green Money
"You had this idea for this warranty business. I wonder how did you go for capital or did you go for customers. I if you for customers you know how did you get that traction. You know if you're selling warranties that means you gotta have the money to be able to put it out if i break my device right yeah. I got lucky in the early days. I had some former angel. Investors who put a little bit of money in some time and some you'll build dot. I kind of mvp and so did a gay. Had you know we. While we were going at the customers we had a little bit of money in the bank of of folks that can help us But when we got into techstars text are really turned me onto what venture was and what it is and what it can be because before techstars. I didn't know how to ray that and raise one venture dollar. I didn't understand how you play the game. I didn't understand how you pitch. I just. I had a bunch of gumption to to try to do this but i didn't notice game. There was an techstars. Where hey you have all this possess in this charisma now. Let's teach you how to actually play the game the way it's supposed to be played so you can actually get money in the bank so say we probably went for customers. Firs. i'm indian. Learn how to raise money later. Let's talk about that. Techstars program. Because clarence met here today. Let's say you are reviewing that clearances application to techstars because you successfully got into the program. If you're reviewing your application as the reviewer what is it in histories clarence application. That says you know what this guy's guy something. Then let's let him because there's thousands of people who apply to these teams accelerators and boot camps. And you got in so if you are reviewing your application from that day what was it that said you're he's somebody we want. I don't believe that had us getting don't didn't have anything to do with our application. I think us getting it had everything to do with how bold i was walking into the program Some of it was fake boldness. Because i didn't i it internally. I really didn't feel like i just. I deserved to be an. You're asking me to go back to a time before. I know what i know now but going into the program. We have people from silicon valley who have from new york. I was really really intimidated. I was i was my wife will tell you i was scared because i was while this a woman silicone valley who was at hp for all these years and has network and it was great. And i think. I just had to be bold and and you know you know. My story is well documented. Like i'm gonna just a street kid man. I come from the hood. I grew up doing all the wrong things that you possibly can do..
Fresh Air
"clarence" Discussed on Fresh Air
"This is fresh air. I'm dave davies. In for terry gross. We're going to listen back to our interview with clarence williams. Third best known for playing link hayes. One of three hippie delinquent turned undercover cops in the abc series. The mod squad williams died june fourth at the age of eighty one. The cause was colon. Cancer williams got his start on broadway but his big break was being cast on the mod squad which ran from nineteen sixty eight to nineteen seventy-three. It was one of the. I chose to focus on the counterculture generation and one of the first to feature an interracial cast in the nineteen eighties. Clarence williams became known for specializing in quirky sometimes brutal characters. He played a killer and fifty two pickup and abusive father and prince's film purple rain and a heroin addict in sugar hill. He also had comedic roles. In dave chapelle 's film half baked and in keenen ivory weigh ins blaxploitation parody. I'm going to get you sokha. Andy had guest appearances in nearly forty tv series including hill street blues and empire when terry spoke to him in nineteen ninety five he was in the comic horror film tales from the hood about three young dealers looking for a lost drug shipment. At an address that turns out to be a funeral. Home the mortician. Who seems to come from the world of the dead is played by clarence williams. He opens up a series of coffins and terrifies the dealers with supernatural stories behind the death of each of the corpses. How this is all. I'm.
The Erick Erickson Show
"clarence" Discussed on The Erick Erickson Show
"Use our servers so you've got gotta go use a foreign country servers or some other less robust system because The woke target amazon and make amazon. All it's actually really damn hard now You can't just go build your own thing. You've got to go build your own internet and you build your own internet because ultimately you require access to the existing internet and the existing wires. You can't force a company to connect to your internet with. There's already an internet it becomes controlling and what we're finding is that the woke are using private companies to do whether they can't get the government to do and now you've got another decision in the supreme court that's come out. Where clarence thomas in the concurrence of case is saying we may need to treat some of these big tech companies like common carriers where a private company can discriminate. A private company can censor because the first woman doesn't apply to them but if they're common carrier than the rules become a little more unique and this was a case about Donald trump blocking people on the internet and the supreme court rendered moot because the president was order. The president and his account has been deleted from twitter and thomas and his curse essentially says how can twitter delete the account of the sitting president of the united states. How can discriminated against. These people and thomas may be on something here because as he points as he points out. You could potentially you you can if the railroad won't let you cross the river on the train and the toll road company won't let you cross the toll road. Will you could of course swim across the river. But we decide with common carriers. You can't discriminate among americans and say you can't cross the river unless you swim we're gonna have to come up with something. The supreme court. I think got the google oracle case right because we should allow innovation through copyright and patent. Trolls have made it very difficult to innovate and software this country. But thomas maybe right in this other case that we're gonna have to start doing something with big tech companies who are increasingly a behavior as a private police force for the left in this country censoring conservatives for example there's a growing movement to allow for example Radio over the internet apple has a radio button. you will notice. That apple has gone down the road of of talk except for. npr doesn't want to risk having a conservative. Like me on apple. And that's fine abbas. Want me that's fine..
Jungle Brothers Strength & Movement
"clarence" Discussed on Jungle Brothers Strength & Movement
"If you want to check out. Whenever s is about breast dot com which is an rsp. Never rest one word dot com. Check that out which are not super active on unless way event. Yeah but if you want to check out the website check it out. See what the event was about sold there. That's cole will push people towards it and give you a little tag on me out when we pisces episode. And and thanks again. thanks. I'm gonna go. I'll be listening excited to see number one. You might not think. It's a big deal but to the listeners. Ara poll west. Consider yourself cold. That'd be multiple guests. Let's say maybe it's a marathon episode. Were like a to. That could be cool. I'd like to see a bunch of people yelling at the top of each other guys. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy that episode please share with a friend. It helps to support our show but also helps to spread. Shawn's message and let people know about cystic fibrosis. So take a screen shot. Put on instagram tag. Tag him sent someone who would appreciate it and you're doing a lot of good things we'll catch you guys next week. And sean we'll see you at some point one hundred and something something down the track. Goodra thank you. Thanks and now if you want anything from us to jungle brothers dot com or if you're on instagram jungle brothers movement. Thank you for listening guys. Who catch you next week face..