Shownotes
In this episode of Common Sense Ohio, hosts Norm Murdock, Steve Palmer, and Brett Johnson delve into a wide range of topics, guided by their common sense perspective.
Ohio House Bill 187. What is the impact on property values, particularly for individuals on fixed incomes? They discuss how inflation, added taxes and constructive eviction further exacerbate the challenges faced by the elderly. The conversation exposes the effects of real estate investors offering life tenancies.
Ohio House Bill 161. Revised Code to eliminate the spousal exceptions for the offenses of rape, sexual battery, unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, gross sexual imposition, sexual imposition, and importuning and to permit a person to testify against the person's spouse in a prosecution for any of those offenses. What effect might this have on divorce settlements?
SAT and ACT's are continuing to be downplayed by a number of Ohio universities. They look at the evolving landscape of college admissions without standardized testing requirements.
Censorship by social media platforms and the potential erosion of constitutional rights. They draw parallels to George Orwell's "1984," and express concerns about the incremental erosion of freedoms and the dangers of political self-interest when granting power.
Stephen Palmer is the Managing Partner for the law firm, Palmer Legal Defense. He has specialized almost exclusively in criminal defense for over 26 years. Steve is also a partner in Criminal Defense Consultants, a firm focused wholly on helping criminal defense attorneys design winning strategies for their clients.
Norm Murdock is an automobile racing driver and owner of a high-performance and restoration car parts company. He earned undergraduate degrees in literature and journalism and graduated with a Juris Doctor from the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 1985. He worked in the IT industry for two years before launching a career in government relations in Columbus, Ohio. Norm has assisted clients in the Transportation, Education, Healthcare, and Public Infrastructure sectors.
Brett Johnson is an award-winning podcast consultant and small business owner for nearly 10 years, leaving a long career in radio. He is passionate about helping small businesses tell their story through podcasts, and he believes podcasting is a great opportunity for different voices to speak and be heard.
Recorded at the 511 Studios, in the Brewery District in downtown Columbus, OH.
Copyright 2024 Common Sense Ohio
Transcripts
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Steve Palmer [:You know, I I'd love Harper Plus, but there's room for more. And, you know, we have segments that can be sponsored.
Brett Johnson [:Give a bigger coffee mug. I mean, I've got this one with an h, but it it could be bigger.
Steve Palmer [:It could be bigger.
Brett Johnson [:And, you know, like, a big thing you get at, with the gas stations that are you know? The Gulp. The Big Gulp in just Right ploppering right in front of us.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. There you go. Yeah. So, what is Common Sense Ohio? Just briefly, we are coming at you right from the middle of Ohio, talking about all sorts of issues, political, factual, legal sometimes, maybe just fun, and putting a little common sense spin on it because, Let's face it, folks. Common sense is lacking everywhere these days. So, with that nor actually, you know, let's do the World War 2 fact of the day. For those who've been following you, we've got, this day in World War 2. And just so everybody understands why I do this, because back when I was, back in the nineties,
Brett Johnson [:any when when they used
Steve Palmer [:to have things called newspapers. We actually had 2 in Columbus. 1 was the Citizens Journal, and the other was the Columbus Dispatch. Right.
Norm Murdock [:And there was even a free one, like like a downtowner
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Kind of thing. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:I think that's still around, but the other paper still comes around to
Norm Murdock [:The other paper.
Brett Johnson [:But
Steve Palmer [:the old CJ would come out at 5 o'clock, I think, on, in the evening, and the Columbus Dispatch would come on would that be the morning paper? But, You know, they in this day in history or this day in World War 2, every single day is what, the dispatch ran. And I, you know, I just started reading it. So I thought that'd be interesting if we do that here. So I had tip to the dispatch. It used to be a newspaper.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Yeah. Sorry sorry, staff, but guess it did.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. So
Norm Murdock [:Now you line your litter box with it because it's not a newspaper. I don't know what it is now.
Steve Palmer [:That's right. Well, that's why people are subscribing in droves to our show.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Yeah. They should. Time.
Brett Johnson [:Absolutely.
Steve Palmer [:But the most important World War 2 fact of the day in December 1 teen 42. Of the list of ration items to the US, the things that you were that we were rationing, coffee, which, you know Wow. So it it I I think what they're saying is coffee joins a list of rationed items in the US, meaning there was less of it to go around, so people had to tighten their coffee belt a little bit. Or maybe they mean that the soldiers were getting morbid, which would be great because
Brett Johnson [:That was probably it. We don't grow coffee here.
Steve Palmer [:We don't. Right.
Brett Johnson [:So wherever that was coming from, you're talking about
Norm Murdock [:Well, we were having
Brett Johnson [:broken lines of shipment and because of the war.
Norm Murdock [:So Merchantmen We're getting sunk regularly off the Atlantic doing that transit from South America to North America Because they would be silhouetted against the lights of the cities on the eastern seaboard.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:And the Germans were just they they were sinking freighter after freighter.
Steve Palmer [:Yep.
Norm Murdock [:Full of oil, coffee, you name it. So I can understand why it got, you know
Brett Johnson [:And that probably was when the turn of instant coffee came into play. Yeah. It might be it might be it might be it might be it might be I think it was.
Norm Murdock [:Or is it Germans called it Ersatz coffee? Yeah. You know, fake cost.
Brett Johnson [:Right. I I think that is because of that. The it was it was the manipulation of it being instant. You use less of it.
Norm Murdock [:You know, Steve, the other big thing that was happening December 1 42 was, Hitler was ready to lose the 6th army in Stalingrad. They they were basically they had, like, 3 weeks to go.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. He attacked late fall, meaning that they had to invade the coldest place on the planet in
Brett Johnson [:that time.
Norm Murdock [:And then he cut his own army off.
Steve Palmer [:And then he cut his own army off.
Norm Murdock [:And he said, fight to the last man. I expect you all to die.
Steve Palmer [:And and what's interesting, there's there's a couple other things we'll talk about this day in World War too. But following up on what you're saying, he didn't supply his soldiers with the kind of cold weather gear that they needed, and he was it was more important for them to have, like, the boots that clicked on the concrete and sounded really cool, but there there was steel in those, and that caused their feet to freeze. And, you know, there's lots of other Oh, yeah. Little stupid mistakes that the Germans, which is ironic because they were so good at so many things. But, like, a couple of these little decisions that Hitler made that turned out to be enormous catastrophes for them.
Norm Murdock [:And it's not like he didn't have history to guide him, so I saw the recent, Napoleon movie.
Steve Palmer [:Oh, I haven't seen that yet. Okay. Oh, yeah.
Norm Murdock [:So Napoleon marched 460. He marched 460 men to Moscow. He came back with 40,000.
Steve Palmer [: uld that, it wouldn't fail in: Norm Murdock [:Right? Same thing. It was it was lack of winter provisions in clothing. In It was exactly the same thing.
Steve Palmer [:In fighting in a environment and terrain that I think is Underestimate well, clearly underestimated every time. But can you like, it gets bitter. I mean, we're talking, like, cold.
Norm Murdock [:18 below. Like yep. Like, freezing.
Steve Palmer [:Like, you're outside. You die. Can you warm up. Right.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. You just don't.
Norm Murdock [:The Soviet soldiers had felt boots, over boots made of felt. And, you know, they they they were well aware. The Siberians, you know, were well aware.
Steve Palmer [: survived the environment for: Norm Murdock [:Oh, yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And and letting Britain escape.
Norm Murdock [:Dunkirk.
Steve Palmer [:Dunkirk. Sorry. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:No. No. No. You had it.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. I just I couldn't come up with the name Dunkirk. But yeah. Yeah. And there's really no great explanation for that. I think that people surmise that Hitler thought he could make peace with, Churchill at some point, or Britain at some point Right. And, never did. I mean, just A couple of weird things like that, we're probably speaking German.
Norm Murdock [:He wasn't thinking like Hamas. Like, you know, okay. Wipe most of them out, But take a bunch prisoner, and then you've got leverage.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. These were soldiers. They they could've bagged the entire Britain British army.
Norm Murdock [:Exactly. Or
Steve Palmer [:at least a good chunk of it.
Norm Murdock [:Right. And just held them in prison and basically negotiate with Churchill to you want your guys back or not?
Steve Palmer [:Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Brett Johnson [:Right. Yeah. But
Steve Palmer [:And then listening to, Goring about the air force being able to conquer Britain
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Brett Johnson [:In
Steve Palmer [:the in the error and and didn't obviously fail.
Norm Murdock [:They will never bomb Berlin. If they do bomb Berlin, you can call me Meyer.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So, also in, If
Norm Murdock [:you guys find yourself in Volgograd, which is the new name for Stalingrad. There is one hell of a World War 2 Museum there.
Steve Palmer [:Oh, is there a line? Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:So I've been there on my charity rally, through Russia, and it lot of stories about that, which we don't need to get into today, but some really interesting stuff culturally about how Russia works versus the United States. It's just a lot there. We could
Steve Palmer [:do a whole show. We probably could. And then, so also on December 1st, probably more important to the The United States and and what we're doing here is that the the Japanese fixed the date of December 7th. So they decided that, in 6 days from now. They would attack Pearl Harbor.
Norm Murdock [:Wow.
Steve Palmer [:Change their codes, did a bunch of stuff. They that basically blinded us to, what they were doing. And and then the day that lived in infamy was next Thursday.
Norm Murdock [:I mean, other than the Trojan horse. Right? Pearl Harbor is probably the most Spectacular surprise attack in world history. It's it's unbelievable what they pulled off.
Brett Johnson [:Well, the Twin Towers.
Norm Murdock [:Twin Towers.
Brett Johnson [:Another one. That was that was that was a terrible attack. The modern Pearl Hawk for Pearl.
Steve Palmer [:Twin Towers and then, the Hamas attacking Israel recently. That was
Norm Murdock [:very crazy.
Steve Palmer [:Premise came out of nowhere.
Brett Johnson [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:And, you know, maybe it's not a surprise attack, but what we pulled off in d day was pretty significant too. Yes.
Norm Murdock [:Boat right.
Steve Palmer [:Pretty, all all interesting tidbits of history. But, I guess it's probably time to move on to the purpose of Common Sense Ohio. What do you got today?
Norm Murdock [:Well, so everybody knows, Steve Palmer is a renowned defense attorney here in Ohio in Ohio, and I think This particular bill that's moving through the Ohio General Assembly, it's, House Bill 161. It has passed the house, And now the house, sponsors are are doing their testimony to the senate to get the senate to, pass this. It there was only 1 vote against this bill, and it was a Republican from Xenia. But what is the bill? The bill ends Spousal immunity to rape charges even when there is no violence, even when there is no threat or coercion. And I am seeing I am seeing a lot of now now I get it. Right? Men should not ever rape anybody, right, including their wives. So yes. And that That is an existing Ohio law.
Norm Murdock [:Existing Ohio law outlaws violent rape against your spouse already.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Forcible rape.
Norm Murdock [:Forcible rape. But what this bill will do will take away the general immunity to such charges inside of a marriage, and, dude, I don't wanna be the contra guy that everybody says, oh, norm's pro rape. No. I'm not, but I see enormous problems with this, especially in divorce court is where I see I see I see potential for abuse of of of very unhappy wives And maybe a few husbands. You know? I don't know how. But Well,
Brett Johnson [:it happens the other way around too.
Norm Murdock [:Accusing Yeah. Accusing, Somebody of rape in order to gain an advantage in domestic relations.
Brett Johnson [:That's one of those pieces of legislation that they've gotta think it out. Yeah. Yeah. It's down. The next step. The next step. The next step. What can happen? Steve has brought up a lot of times.
Steve Palmer [: in Ohio Revised Code section: Steve Palmer [:So You can't commit rape if you're the spouse. When but it it you here's what here's what they're talking about. For the purpose of preventing resistance, the offender substantially impaired the other person's judgment or control by administering any drug and toxic and or control substance to the person surreptitiously or by force or threat of force. So, in other words, if your spouse is drunk and you engage a little hanky panky, there That's not right. Mhmm. The other person is less than 13 years of age, whether or not the offender knows the age of the person. So if you're married and, to somebody under 13, I guess, and the other person's ability to resist or consent is substantially impaired because of a mental or physical condition because of advanced age or the offender knows or is reasonable cause to believe the other person's ability to resist your consent is substantially impaired because of a mental or physical condition or because of advanced age. Alright.
Steve Palmer [:So none of this says that if you're the spouse, you're allowed to have forcible nonconsensual sex.
Norm Murdock [:It's already illegal.
Steve Palmer [:At that that section 2 covers that. No person shall shall engage in sexual conduct with another when the offender purposely compels the other person to submit by force or threat of force. Alright. So that's forcible rape. That's what most people think about rape. You you cannot do that to your spouse.
Norm Murdock [:That's right.
Brett Johnson [:I because that covers marriage. That covers Right Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:That's everybody.
Norm Murdock [:That's everybody.
Steve Palmer [:Now what they exempt from marriage is, like, if you're asleep or if you're drunk. That's right.
Norm Murdock [:And, you know Have a few glasses of wine. The husband takes advantage. He thinks maybe She's okay with it. Maybe she's awake. Maybe she's not.
Steve Palmer [:But it's not just the husband. Women do this too.
Norm Murdock [:Sure. Correct.
Steve Palmer [:Right?
Norm Murdock [:Right? Correct.
Steve Palmer [:So If you're the guy and your lady's been out on a girl's night out and takes the Uber home and
Brett Johnson [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:You know, has had way too many, Appletinis
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:And climbs aboard, You know, that theoretically now would be rape. Yeah. I'll just let that linger out there. That's rape, ladies. Yeah. And you could be prosecuted and thrown in prison for 10 years, 11 years actually, up to 11 years. You would be placed on a sex offender registry, and all sorts of horrible things would come. But I think now is that likely to happen? I think not.
Steve Palmer [:But I think your concern, Norm, is exactly what everybody what I would be thinking. It's like, imagine the abuse of this in domestic relations company.
Norm Murdock [:Man. It's gonna be off the hook.
Brett Johnson [:So why introduce this when you have that already on the books?
Norm Murdock [:That is my
Steve Palmer [:This has been politically incorrect for years. Everybody's like, I can't believe that you can't rape your spouse. Well, you can. You just can't do it this way. Yeah. And it's, so, you know, the it's there's pro I'd like to see how artfully it's written because I could see
Brett Johnson [:where trying to clarify a bit more, maybe drilling down a little
Steve Palmer [:bit more. I I would be all in favor of law that says you can't intentionally drug your spouse in order to have your way with them or her. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So you there's probably an artful way to write this that that satisfy that satisfies everybody's concern. And maybe that's what they've done. I don't know.
Steve Palmer [:We'll have to wait and see what it says.
Norm Murdock [: to being valued at a: Brett Johnson [:Until the house is sold. Till something. And then and then it kicks in.
Steve Palmer [:Into it.
Brett Johnson [:Totally. I totally agree.
Norm Murdock [:It should be grandfathered because you you're having people in very Low income rural areas all of a sudden have been there.
Steve Palmer [:That's not what they're saying. They're look what look what Biden said. You know, there was nothing going on in Johnstown, Ohio.
Brett Johnson [:Nothing was there. Nobody was there.
Steve Palmer [:We're just gonna so what you've really done is take nothing and put all these people,
Brett Johnson [:you know, by by You're gentrifying the place, honestly.
Steve Palmer [:They're constructively evicting people. That's right.
Brett Johnson [:That's what that is. That does.
Steve Palmer [:So we're gonna raise your property rates or property values so high so quickly that that there's no way you can afford it because you're on a fixed income. And by the way, Biden, you screwed up the inflation so much that your fixed income now is worth about 30% less than it was 2 year 2 or 3 years ago. Anyway. So now we're gonna add taxes to the equation. And,
Norm Murdock [:it's gonna kill people.
Steve Palmer [:But it looks good. It sounds good.
Norm Murdock [:It will literally kill people because when you take Yeah. An 85 year old widow out of her house and say, okay. You can't afford to be here, mom. You're gonna go to a nursing home. A lot of them check out. A lot of them just die, you know, because the it's a shock to their system.
Brett Johnson [:Because they wanted to die in that.
Norm Murdock [:They wanted to live out their life Exactly. In the In the old farmstead. Now I have talked to some of these real estate, guys that, and these are private investors. And what they'll do You know, and it sounds like to me, it sounds like a vulture circling, but what they'll do and make themselves feel like, you know, they're they're coming to the rescue of these old ladies Is they will give them a life tenancy on the property. So they'll buy the property. Yeah. They'll pay her back bill. They'll say, you get to live here for the rest of your life or until you decide to move, and they'll buy the they
Brett Johnson [:they sent a glorified reverse mortgage. That's what it is.
Steve Palmer [:That's what it is. And and what they've done is basically destroy generational wealth.
Brett Johnson [:That's right. Yes.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. What they've done is destroy generational wealth.
Norm Murdock [:So it's, I don't know where it's gonna end up. It's it's in its infancy, but house bill 187 maybe some relief. The other bit of Ohio news I have, guys, and this is just Kind of a seasonal thing. There's always one of these auto shops or body shops that that suddenly blow up this time of year, And it's and it's because a lot of times what they do
Brett Johnson [:know that was a traditional thing.
Norm Murdock [:Well, it is. It is. It wasn't. So so
Steve Palmer [:they just season to blow up your eyes. I know
Norm Murdock [:it's sunny side. So in hills Hillsboro, Ohio this week, 3 guys died in this I'm sorry. I'm laughing. It's me dying.
Steve Palmer [:I don't mean that.
Norm Murdock [:It happens every year, and it It it is almost like the indoor, kerosene thing, you know, that catch on fire in in in in the near east side or or whatever. Down in Cincinnati, the over the Rhine people supplementing their heat
Brett Johnson [:Right.
Norm Murdock [:Right. Stupid electric things or the kerosene thing, and then, you know, everybody dies from asphyxiation or, You know, whatever, carbon monoxide. So what happens in these body shops is they use these chemicals. Right? They get down low on the pavement
Brett Johnson [:Mhmm.
Norm Murdock [:In the inside the shop, And then they have an open flame. They're either doing some welding
Steve Palmer [:A settling torch or something.
Norm Murdock [:Or something, or they've got a, a hot water heater that's gas fired, And and they forget, right, that that that they're working with explosive solvents? Boom.
Brett Johnson [:And because all the garage doors are being closed. That's a cold weather. Cold. Actually.
Steve Palmer [:Speaking of explosive situations, has anybody at this table or in the studio parked in the back in space number 12? No. Why not? Well, there's a I think we have a we have a, trespass parker.
Norm Murdock [:Oh, today?
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Right now. So I just wanna make sure that nobody in our show is getting towed. No. No. No.
Norm Murdock [:No. I'm I'm no. I'm elsewhere.
Brett Johnson [:It's not me. Fair enough. I've got I got some some Ohio focus.
Norm Murdock [:To man. And
Brett Johnson [:I and and Go. All 3 of us will relate to this because we felt the pain of having to take these tests and seeing our kids take these tests, That the ACT and SAT test requirements are going away slowly. Yeah. I love it. I I thought That is such a money grab and serves no purpose.
Steve Palmer [:I don't know what to think of it.
Brett Johnson [:I I I You know? I'm a bully. To me.
Norm Murdock [:I'm torn on standardized tests.
Brett Johnson [:I I think it could be a piece of the puzzle. It's not the whole thing. And I like that universities are looking at it holistically, that what else are they doing beyond that? Because in your life. And when I walked into it, hearing this from both my kids that ACT and SAT, they going into it, they said, you will have to take this test 2 or 3 times.
Norm Murdock [:Right. And it's terrible.
Brett Johnson [:A red fucking flag.
Norm Murdock [:Well, and it
Brett Johnson [:You had to take this test 3 times, and it's a 4 hour ordeal.
Norm Murdock [:I get it. It is terrifying. The only thing is about it, Brett, is when you have a disparate Incoming collegiate class that you're considering for admission. Say you're say you're the admissions officer at, you know, Cleveland State, And you've got you've got all of these applications. What standard do you have to judge across all of them, The whole spectrum of application.
Brett Johnson [:You figure it out. It's your it's you know, I'm certain that's that's the job that's any job of any corporation that Irish people.
Steve Palmer [:I'm with you. But this is the problem.
Brett Johnson [:You know?
Steve Palmer [:To replace to be replaced with what would be the question I would ask
Norm Murdock [:you to.
Steve Palmer [:And here's what's gonna happen. I I I don't know this to be true or for sure, but I've got a hunch that standardized testing came into being because of a fear of adverse or disparate impact on races, on genders, on bodies.
Norm Murdock [:Biaso. Exactly.
Steve Palmer [:Sure. Alright. So you wanna eliminate racism. We're gonna make it all standardized. Well, then what happens is they said, well, certain races and certain genders and certain ethnic origins perform worse on standardized tests than others, so that became a problem. And now we're back to the same problem that we started with, which is
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Now we're gonna have to ask people to actually do their job, to screen candidates, to determine whether despite a GPA or a grade point average that might be a little bit less, somebody has other qualifications that make them a great, candidate for college.
Brett Johnson [:They were a huge volunteer in their community. They did lots of other and I I love that big I love that big picture.
Steve Palmer [:Daddy or grandfather gave enough money to name a stadium after him so they can them in for that reason. Right. Right.
Brett Johnson [:That's gonna happen. That's gonna happen outside of ACP. Legitimate reasons.
Steve Palmer [:All those might be legitimate. Yeah. Now my dad used to run the at one point, he I just had breakfast with him last week. It was his birthday, 90th. And he said when he was on the college or the, law school admissions committee, he looked for people with no more than, like, a 3 point, who had played small college athletics, or maybe even big college athletics. Men and women both, they didn't care. And And I would guess it's probably more guys, because more guys were applying to law school back in those days anyway. But, in in the idea was, look, these people are obviously hard workers.
Steve Palmer [:They're committed. They've They've, they've got lots of stuff going on in their lives. They've been classic, maybe, underachievers, but they've got huge potential because they had enough wherewithal to show up at college athletics for 4 years in a situation where they weren't getting paid to do it. And by getting paid, I mean, no scholarships. Right. And, you know, and it's no secret that that was also his background. You know, he went to Oberlin and played division 3 athletics.
Brett Johnson [:But he but but but he has knowledge about it. But he has knowledge of it though. And it
Steve Palmer [:was right. All the guys I went to college with, we got we all were, like, solid threes or 2 eights or 2 nines. But everybody I know that I went to that I played football with is very successful now. You know? They they we figured out. We we had lots of I don't know what it was. You know? But we we were all done quite well.
Norm Murdock [:Well, not afraid to work hard.
Steve Palmer [:Maybe we're at
Brett Johnson [:the end
Norm Murdock [:of the show. And that's why commitment. I mean, we've had a a rash of veteran, people come in here as guests of this show, And a lot of them are not college graduates.
Steve Palmer [:Right.
Norm Murdock [:But they're successful in life because they're not afraid To put in the work. To put
Steve Palmer [:in the work. Right. Or they they think a little bit differently. Now about your standardized test, Brett, I'm terrible. My AC teacher score.
Brett Johnson [:Gonna go there too.
Steve Palmer [:They're solid 23.
Brett Johnson [:There's a guy there's a guy I I get all that. That do terrible
Norm Murdock [:on tasks. This is gonna screw are the people that this the To not have a standardized test of some kind is going to screw the people that wanna come in come in To a university and be judged on their merit. Well Meaning meaning their scholastic merit. And so we just had a big lawsuit Found in favor of the Chinese and the Indian students at Harvard and Yale. Mhmm. Big decision. Supreme Court smacked The university is down and said, no. You can't use race.
Norm Murdock [:You've gotta use some kind of standard.
Steve Palmer [:Criteria. Right.
Norm Murdock [:And and now we're not gonna then.
Steve Palmer [:Well, so I would think that there's probably a middle ground. There's probably a middle ground where you can rely on standardized testing, but it it it had become the end all be all because we went through this phase where the only thing that matter was your standardized test, because then nobody had to do their job. Nobody had to say, well, you know, I'm gonna pick this person even though this person didn't do so well because of x y z.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:And they were afraid maybe of getting, labeled a racist or labeled whatever
Brett Johnson [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:Or being accused of nepotism. So they were just it it became alright. So the policy is we we start with test scores. And if you don't have a certain test score, you don't get in, and then everything else went out the window. Now that's gone too far, but I think it's probably a a a measure too far to get rid of testing altogether. There's probably a better better way to
Brett Johnson [:do that. And I and I believe it's a lessening of focus on that. It's a holistic look at it.
Norm Murdock [:Because, I mean, I know that But if they're ending it, Brett, then there isn't gonna be I don't think
Brett Johnson [:it's not gonna end. No. Well, first of all, it's never gonna end because AT ACT and SAT It's way too much of a moneymaker. Right. They will they will stay in there. I think a lot and I think it's more of a holistic look. Okay. Take the test, but we're not gonna focus on that completely.
Brett Johnson [:It's a holistic look. What did you do with your grades?
Steve Palmer [:That's a fair assessment.
Brett Johnson [:I think it is too.
Norm Murdock [:But I I thought the news item was they're gonna eliminate
Brett Johnson [:No. No. They're it's it's It's less of a focus.
Steve Palmer [:It's less
Norm Murdock [:of a focus.
Steve Palmer [:Schools I
Brett Johnson [:may have I may have led that way, and I didn't mean to.
Steve Palmer [:Sorry. Schools are doing just that, though. Surgery schools are are completely eliminating the requirement for ACT or SAT in to gain admission.
Brett Johnson [:Via because of COVID. That that's how that started.
Steve Palmer [:And let's talk about some adverse consequences of that decision. So
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:If you if like, for for me, particular, if I were out of my high school trying to apply to a school, like Harvard or Yale, and I'm talking back when they were real schools. Yeah. Right. I'm not saying they're not now, but they're not the same now.
Norm Murdock [:They're not the same. They're not the same.
Steve Palmer [:You know, I don't think I I think it would have been doing me a great disservice to stick me in a group of of, of individuals who had different preparatory, background than I did.
Norm Murdock [:Sure.
Steve Palmer [:You know, I went to Big One High School. I love the place. I learned a lot there. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Great schools.
Steve Palmer [:But Some of my some of my colleagues at the College of Wooster clearly had an advantage over me. It was an obvious advantage mathematically. Sure.
Brett Johnson [:And maybe
Steve Palmer [:I could I've taken advantage of more math when I was in high school. And it's it's not that it wasn't there. It's that it wasn't incentivized for me.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:And you could blame my parents, or you could blame the school, or you could blame all sorts of things. But I wasn't I wasn't as qualified as others there, and I wonder what would have happened if I'd have been thrown into an environment where I I probably been blown away. I had to drop out of math as it was, and there's other reasons for that. But, you know, it's like, you you maybe not be doing people a service by sticking them when they're unqualified with other people who are more qualified.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:And look, I'm not the smartest guy in the room. I've never been the smartest guy in the room. I totally and freely admit that now.
Norm Murdock [:Yes.
Steve Palmer [:I may not have been able to do that when I was 17 or 18 to know that I didn't belong in certain academic environments because I couldn't excel there.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Brett Johnson [:And that that may not
Steve Palmer [:be a real popular opinion, but it sort of makes sense to me.
Brett Johnson [:No. No. It does. No.
Norm Murdock [:I think that's actually very mature Not to think that you're the smartest person in the room. When you know the kind of people that I'm talking about where They just think that they've got it, and and you can't even discuss anything with them because they know everything.
Brett Johnson [:Well, those
Steve Palmer [:are know it alls, but I'm talking like people who truly habit. You know? Like Gifted people. Gifted people.
Brett Johnson [:Mhmm.
Steve Palmer [:Right. There's gotta be a like, I can't compete in that world academic. You know, I compete in that world. I and compete in all sorts of other worlds that they don't hold a candle to me. Right. Right? So they couldn't play division 3 football. I could.
Norm Murdock [:Right. But gifted people often make very big mistakes because they don't
Steve Palmer [:mean they have an advantage.
Norm Murdock [:Because they don't prep. A lot of them don't prep. They they oh, I got this. I know that case.
Brett Johnson [:They're very tunnel vision tunnel vision.
Norm Murdock [:And then you pop into court, and you've Get something hot off the press, like, oh, court
Steve Palmer [:I'm not even prepped, but maybe I can come into court, and I've got a better communication skills.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:But I couldn't do you know, maybe I couldn't get an a or pay get a, a 100% on my LSAT law school admittance exam. Now and I've I've always thought The the person who is most impressive to me is the person who can play in both worlds. So I've got a very close friend. He was a He's a Mensa guy. He's a genius. He was a football player. He was a whiz at math. He was a wizard.
Steve Palmer [:Anything he ever did sort of academically. Yeah. But he spoke both languages. So he wasn't just a relegated guy.
Norm Murdock [:He could
Steve Palmer [:only do that in a corner of a cube cubicle Right. Like a computer programming house.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. A a Fran Tarkington,
Brett Johnson [:you
Norm Murdock [:know, a guy like that, Roger Staubach, you know, guys that are gifted across a spectrum.
Steve Palmer [:Yes. They're all rounder, but but, like, elevated all around. Like, mostly all rounders you like, my my vision is, like, alright. You're pretty good at a lot of stuff, you're not great at anything. Yeah. He was great at almost everything. You know?
Norm Murdock [:It's Kenny Kenny Anderson got a law degree, you know?
Steve Palmer [:And and
Norm Murdock [:it's Bengals quarterback. Chris Collinsworth got a law degree.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Don't don't don't ascribe law degree to any intellect.
Norm Murdock [:Oh, no. I don't. At the table.
Steve Palmer [:I know. We have 2 of us. We have 2 of us.
Norm Murdock [:And Well but
Brett Johnson [:it's a dedication to doing it, though. One of us. To doing it, though.
Norm Murdock [:One of us is
Brett Johnson [:a degree is a dedication to doing it.
Steve Palmer [:Well, what's interesting is this. My LSAT score, my this is the law school admins exam
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Was I was in the solid 50th percentile, maybe 53rd percentile, which is extremely low for the LSA team. That gets you into, like, the lowest tier schools Or
Norm Murdock [:doesn't get you in.
Steve Palmer [:Or doesn't get you in at all.
Norm Murdock [:At all.
Steve Palmer [:And then when I got to law school, I decided that I was gonna read. If they said read it, I read it.
Brett Johnson [:Mhmm.
Steve Palmer [:And not only that. If they said read it, I read it. And if I didn't understand what I was reading, I looked it up, then I read it again. Mhmm. And I did that for, like, the first semester or 2 or maybe 2 and a year and a half.
Brett Johnson [:And
Steve Palmer [:then I got all a's. And it so, like, at least in my case
Norm Murdock [:You put in the work.
Steve Palmer [:The law school admittance exam reflected nothing on my ability to
Brett Johnson [:be a lawyer. And and your example right there goes to this.
Steve Palmer [:Right.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. You know, you're not I call, you know, pulling in the 28, 20 nines or whatever the top number is for ACTs. You you still did it.
Steve Palmer [:But I got in
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:To a lower tier law school at or standardize. And, I I excelled there. Now I don't know what and law school is one of those places that's always on a curve. At at least it was when I was there. So, you know, my grade is irrelevant unless it's compared to yours.
Norm Murdock [:K. That's right. It it really Yeah. That was true. May I ask, how was your GPA? Was it pretty pretty good
Steve Palmer [:in law school?
Norm Murdock [:No. Your GPA from college applying to law school.
Brett Johnson [:It's
Steve Palmer [:like a rounded up three point. Okay. So maybe, like, a 29 ish that I would have rolled
Norm Murdock [:out of. A b plus student.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:You know, but ultimately
Norm Murdock [:says that My dad, the former
Brett Johnson [:judge Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Used to always say the b plus the b student lawyers, best lawyer. I was just gonna that all the time.
Brett Johnson [:There is a place For that type of lawyer
Steve Palmer [:Mhmm.
Brett Johnson [:In our society, we need the Steve Palmers of the world.
Norm Murdock [:Dad said Yeah. I mean If you know
Brett Johnson [:what I
Norm Murdock [:mean? They were the best lawyers. Right. He didn't he he Said the a plus lawyers, just not as good. Well, I said,
Steve Palmer [:look, and and it's gonna sound sort of condescending. I don't mean it that way. I've always said my law practice in in my life. I can hire the eggheads. And I mean that with respect. I mean, I can hire the people that are better that are smarter than I am in a certain place to do what I need to have done.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:But a lot of times, they can't do what I do, which is decide what needs to be done. Right.
Brett Johnson [:In That executive function.
Steve Palmer [:Right. It's a different level of it's not one that's better than other. It's just different.
Norm Murdock [:It's different.
Steve Palmer [:And that's why, like, the the eggheads don't run corporations. No. Generally speaking. You know, they're they're they're pigeonholed, and they're great at what they do, and it's a singular focus. Like, the engineers who put people on the moon, you know, it's like they we need that.
Norm Murdock [:And That's right.
Steve Palmer [:I can't do it. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:They
Steve Palmer [:cannot do it. But they also can't do what I do. My dad also said of lawyer's norm, go to law school because when you get done, one, it's a great education. It teaches you how to think in life and how to find out answers in life, which is true. You you
Norm Murdock [:That's why I went to law school. I was gonna be a journalist. I never was gonna be a lawyer.
Steve Palmer [:But you learn how to think and solve problems. Right? It creates a framework that you can operate in for your life.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:And then the other thing he always said is that I can I can do almost what everybody else can do as a lawyer? So I can I can be I can do accounting? I can do, MBA type stuff. I can do all this other stuff, but they can't do what I do. Almost by definition because you have to pass the bar exam and and and have a a credential. Not with accounting, that's sort of the same. But you always meant that we can we can learn to do what other people do because of our education.
Norm Murdock [:That's right.
Steve Palmer [:But the other side key it's not reversed. Now some of that, I don't think is true, but all some of it is. You know, there's some there's a little bit of truth in what he used to say. Yeah. And now it costs too much, so don't go wrong.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. The cost of law school should be going down because, frankly, you could do it online. I don't understand where you even
Brett Johnson [:need to go. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:I disagree with that. Okay.
Norm Murdock [:That's cool.
Steve Palmer [:But I disagree with that.
Norm Murdock [:I think if you're gonna be a lawyer,
Steve Palmer [:I still believe
Norm Murdock [:If you're gonna learn to be a lawyer see, I went to law school not to learn to be a lawyer. Oh, look. You did. I went for all the other reasons.
Steve Palmer [:To think like a lawyer. And to learn in order to think like a lawyer, you've gotta be subjected to the Socratic method of teaching. Right. And I don't think that online, even Zoom, will be duplicate that.
Norm Murdock [:I get that.
Steve Palmer [:I get that. You gotta be called on in class and terrified.
Norm Murdock [:Sure. Right.
Steve Palmer [:And only then are you broken down to the lowest common denominator. Damn.
Norm Murdock [:I get it. Other than moot other than moot court, however, There is no yeah. I mean, if you could do a Zoom meeting where the Socratic method could engender the same kind of terror That you're talking about for an unprepared law school student, I then I'm with you, but probably it can't.
Steve Palmer [:You probably can't.
Norm Murdock [:It'd be because that's You got
Steve Palmer [:the same.
Norm Murdock [:That social pressure When you've got 35 of your classmates enveloping you and you're the target, and he goes, well, mister Murdoch, tell us about Jones v Smith, You know, explicate the case and and give us both sides, and you haven't read the damn thing. It's it's your ass. It's your ass.
Steve Palmer [:And that teaches you something.
Norm Murdock [:That teaches you something. Right? Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And if you haven't read it and you've been skimming it per while the class is going on. Right.
Brett Johnson [:It
Steve Palmer [:teaches you how to do that.
Brett Johnson [:That's right.
Steve Palmer [:And I mean that with sincerity. It's not just that you're not prepared. It's how to get prepared really quickly when you're not prepared. It's how
Brett Johnson [:to wing it when you need
Steve Palmer [:to be when you have to wing it.
Brett Johnson [:And that's life.
Norm Murdock [:That's life. That's life. And in those cases, I bounce back to the professor. Well, you assign pages 155 to 195, and that case isn't between those 2 page numbers. Well, Is that is that what you think, legal education's all about, mister Murdoch? So it's that kind of colloquy back and
Steve Palmer [:forth You learn how to argue.
Norm Murdock [:That totally destroys your preconceptions of fairness and and preparedness and, you know, how to get through life. Right?
Brett Johnson [:Mhmm.
Norm Murdock [:That you're gonna be Checked it to all kinds of ridiculous
Steve Palmer [:Terrorizing.
Norm Murdock [:That's terrorizing. Terrorizing. Right.
Steve Palmer [:And they wanna eliminate that in law schools, and it's a shame. It's a shame because look. We're we're caught. It's give everybody a trophy, make them all feel warm and fuzzy,
Brett Johnson [:and give
Steve Palmer [:them a little law degree at the end. And it's terrorizing. Yeah. The other thing is interesting is that I think what you're gonna say is it really has nothing to do with being a lawyer. So when I get you know, I I was I was woefully underprepared by law school. Now I was prepared because I worked for a small law firm.
Norm Murdock [:As a clerk.
Steve Palmer [:As a clerk. I was otherwise willfully underprepared to run a business and and actually make a living being a lawyer. Right. Right. You know, I I could read cases.
Norm Murdock [:Oh, the secretaries at my law firm were way more hip to what's going on than I was. Yeah. I mean, they would say, well, go to the 2nd floor, room two zero six. Mhmm. Ask for Bill.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. They knew the people.
Norm Murdock [:And you're like, holy shit.
Steve Palmer [:Why don't
Norm Murdock [:you practice law? You know more than my you know, the partners here at the firm. You know exactly who to go to and what form. I'll type it up you, Norm, get on your motorcycle, run down the courthouse, and file this son of a bitch. And you're like, okay, Mary. Yeah. You wanna write the brief too?
Steve Palmer [:I learned more from the old school legal secretaries than I than I did anywhere else. I had to run a law practice.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [: en I first hung my shingle in: Norm Murdock [:They were they are fantastic, and I'm sure every executive assistant listening to this is gonna ask their boss
Steve Palmer [:for a raise tomorrow.
Brett Johnson [:They do that. Common Sense Ohio says I need
Norm Murdock [:a raise.
Steve Palmer [:He's like, oh, boy.
Norm Murdock [: NGOs, and this was started in: Norm Murdock [:Right? But even they get it. I mean, they are leading the charge. They said, well, then using that logic, So do we have 35% of our constitutional rights? Like, if I have a 3 story house, do I have to, allow soldiers to be quartered in the first story, but the 2nd and third story I get to keep. I mean, what it what kind of mindset would say that 35% of excluding people's expressions online is conforming To the to the first amendment. Yeah. It's bizarre. I
Steve Palmer [: we read: Norm Murdock [:That's what this is.
Steve Palmer [:That's what this is.
Brett Johnson [: ple read have read, will read: Steve Palmer [:Well, mister
Brett Johnson [:Cooks, you don't feel that way.
Norm Murdock [:You're you're right on top. Mister Cooks,
Brett Johnson [:like this is the game plan. Let's do this.
Norm Murdock [:Dude, you're right on it. Of truth. God. Goldman called that 35%. He said, well, that's reasonable. They didn't they didn't censor A 100%. They only censored about a 3rd, and these guys are looking back at him like Dude. Dude.
Norm Murdock [:So, like, The 10 commandments, you would say, like, the government could take The first
Brett Johnson [:3, let's wipe out.
Norm Murdock [:Or the first 3 bill of rights or the first 3.
Brett Johnson [:Like, when It's only it's only a 3rd of them. Yeah. Yeah. It's only a 3rd. You still got 66% left.
Steve Palmer [:Mentality. And when's the last time the government stopped at a 3rd?
Norm Murdock [:Whenever you send it.
Steve Palmer [:Once you start giving it Right. They they keep grabbing the rope until it's gone.
Norm Murdock [:Well, let's do the 2nd amendment like this. We'll take every 3rd weapon away from you.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. This is my classic art. I always hear this all the time. You brought up second amendment. And I was it's perfect because I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking what you were getting at is everybody always says, you know, we can it's not like when they're arguing about 2nd amendment, everybody always argues, well, it's not like we don't also censor speech. And, you know, there's all sorts of restrictions on freedom speech, like, in schools and this and that and the other. You can't do those things.
Steve Palmer [:No hate speech blah blah blah blah. And then they use that as a justification to take away second amendment rights.
Brett Johnson [:Thank you.
Steve Palmer [:I'm like, listen. Yeah. I don't agree with the 1st amendment rights being taken away. Right. And so now it's like it's already bad, so you're gonna make it you're gonna use the bad precedent to create more bad press. Right. Right. That's what happens.
Steve Palmer [:You get accustomed to this deprivation of freedom, and then they take more. And then you get accustomed to that, and then they take more. This is incrementalism, and incrementally, it is gone. It won't take long before it's gone. So right now, it's a 3rd, and they're gonna say, well, that's okay. And next time, it'll only be 40%. That was only 40%.
Brett Johnson [:Let's experiment with 40. 40. It worked. Yeah. Let's do it.
Steve Palmer [:It's not like they took all of it, and pretty soon it'd be 70% or 80%. And, you know, that's what they do. Yeah. And why is that? Because that's what happens when you give people power. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Brett Johnson [:And I think anything that calls themselves a league. You gotta you gotta watch.
Steve Palmer [:A league is like giving me a law after someone.
Brett Johnson [:Right? League after taking a break, you know.
Steve Palmer [:You know what it is? It's taking, like, these individuals with political self interest and then creating a league out of them as if Somehow that sanitizes. Like, it's for everybody instead of just their individual.
Norm Murdock [:So this this Shellenberger guy you guys might remember, he is the wild man. No. You shouldn't call him. He I mean, you know, he's he's actually a very reasonable guy, but he's the guy that took on Gavin Newsom. He ran in the Democrat primary for governor, and he was, like, the only competition Newsom had. He is also the the author who has exposed a lot of the, fake environmental greeniness stuff. The stuff that makes no sense. Like, we're creating more pollution to, do all this electrification than if you just let things happen with market forces.
Norm Murdock [:Yep. Let let people make their own choices. So Schellenberger is a great Example of, if you will, the classic kind of liberal.
Steve Palmer [:Right. He he would be a guest at the table. He'd fit right in.
Brett Johnson [:He could fit right in. A little
Steve Palmer [:bit of dose of common sense to his viewpoints on life. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Alright. I urge people to Google, or DuckDuckGo, Michael Schellenberger and Matt Taibbi. These guy I mean, Matt Taibbi used to write for Rolling Stone, and now he's persona non grata there. And he's a guy that came out with all this Twitter stuff.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. I mean Right.
Norm Murdock [:You know? And and he's just saying, hey. These are the facts.
Steve Palmer [:I looked at, you know, everybody sees these sort of shorts or reels or videos on on social media where guys go around college campus and asking kids questions. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Steve Crowder.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Crowder does it, but there's a bunch of other people that do it. And I don't know who was doing this. Just happened to see 1 where they were going around and talking to students and asking them, when's the last time a conservative ever, prevented a liberal from speaking. And it was about that quiet.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Wow.
Steve Palmer [:What a question. Like, you know, you bring a conservative speaker on campus, and then the liberals go or the That you
Brett Johnson [:don't want
Steve Palmer [:people to go crazy and have protests and do it. Right. They they try to reverse it. Like, when's the last time a a conservative group prevented a or tried to prevent a liberal speaker from sending out or, portraying their message or purveying their message. Mhmm. And nobody had any example No. Ever.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:And people are scratching their head. It was sort of like a, oh, that's interesting. I even stopped for a second. I was like, that's an interesting way to do it.
Norm Murdock [: +: Norm Murdock [:Wow. Really?
Brett Johnson [:That's the spectrum. That's the that's the complete spectrum there.
Norm Murdock [:It's just unbelievable
Steve Palmer [:with that information.
Norm Murdock [:And I don't know. It's it's unbelievable to me. It's almost like He just is trying to punish Musk for owning Twitter.
Brett Johnson [:Because if he's going from unfollow all the way to retweet, That's the spectrum. That's the
Norm Murdock [:whole spec anybody involved. He wants to know anybody who was involved in Trump's Twitter account, including, of course, all his direct messaging and all that.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. I mean
Norm Murdock [:It's just government
Steve Palmer [:I I did this research not that long ago for somebody, and it was in the context of a gun manufacturer, investigation. And the the DEA has been sending out or Department of Justice has been sending out subpoenas. And they've been sending out to subpoenas to, like, small gunmakers. And they say we
Norm Murdock [:want not the ATF. This is the DEA?
Steve Palmer [:I said, DEA. I I miss I misspoke. The ATF and Department of Justice
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:They're sending out investigatory subpoenas, grand jury subpoenas Okay. For information about gun parts and to whom they're being sold, how much they paid, and and identities of people buying them. Wow. And they're going to these private manufacturers. So, You know, there there's an old saw in my head that is, like, you know, if they wanna subpoena you, they like, their their subpoena power has no limit. And my research basically confirmed that. The government subpoena power the federal government subpoena power for a grand jury subpoena investigation is virtually limitless, and they can they can just do it because, you know, companies will hire me like, look. Our customers are gonna be saying, this is crazy.
Steve Palmer [:Why are you giving out this information to the government? Because, look, If I buy a gun part, I don't want the government knowing I did that, and I don't even know why I don't want the
Norm Murdock [:government knowing I just don't. A gun part most gun parts until you have a certain number of components,
Steve Palmer [:like uppers or receivers
Norm Murdock [:or whatever. A firearm. It's not regulated.
Steve Palmer [:Well, it can be a firearm if it's stamped.
Brett Johnson [:That this one's just crazy.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Certain assemblies.
Steve Palmer [:A hunk of metal can become a gun even even though it doesn't do anything.
Norm Murdock [:But let's suppose I just wanna buy a replacement front sight. Let let's take some like a front site. Yeah. Just a little piece of metal with a tip. Right?
Steve Palmer [:Subpoenaing that kind of stuff.
Norm Murdock [:That see, and it's not a firearm. Like, ATF should have no interest And who is fine?
Steve Palmer [:Government is investigating this stuff. Yeah. And they're sending out subpoenas, and they're they're I don't know what the purpose is, but there's, You know, this is the stuff that goes on Sure. That that people don't connect the dots. And, you know, I've always said there there's a way to connect the dots to form a conspiracy theory, and there's a way to connect the dots that is just like government chaos. And it's probably a little bit of both. And, you know, and and all of it is based upon this deprivation of information. Like, we don't know what's going on, and they're not telling us what's going on.
Steve Palmer [:That comes back to this free speech component to it.
Norm Murdock [:So so what a lot of these tinfoil hat guys are doing, and they're probably, actually, probably smart to do it. And maybe I'm dumb, but I still will buy ammunition or parts or whatever to fix my guns or whatever, online. Right? Mhmm. But a lot of people tell me they will not buy a gun Or any parts or any ammunition from anybody other than a fellow citizen. They will not go to a store. They won't go to a gun show. They will not order online. They don't want any documentation.
Brett Johnson [:Get out and stay off the grid, basically.
Norm Murdock [:Any documentation.
Brett Johnson [:How can you blame them?
Steve Palmer [:So I'd like to stay off the grid. And there is a group of people out there because of that would say that I must be doing something wrong.
Norm Murdock [:That's right.
Steve Palmer [:They somehow I'm not participating.
Norm Murdock [:They would jump to that conclusion. Yeah. 100%.
Steve Palmer [:And I just and when I'm when people ask me why, it's like, just because.
Norm Murdock [:I don't need to know what I'm doing. They call that what what private
Steve Palmer [:sale. Stream.
Norm Murdock [:Well, that's called the gun show loophole. Yeah. Right? It's when a private individual, you know, in his garage, sells a gun to his neighbor. It's just like, I'm done turkey shooting. I'm not gonna hunt anymore.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. You want the
Norm Murdock [:shotgun. You want the shotgun.
Steve Palmer [:It's yours.
Norm Murdock [:Exactly. Right. And they wanna make that illegal.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. And I've I've purchased guns that way.
Brett Johnson [:Sure.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Well, that's the only way I've heard that a lot of people are buying anymore.
Brett Johnson [:They will How do you know
Norm Murdock [:that not go to a store.
Brett Johnson [:When you buy a gun that way that that gun was not used in of a nefarious way.
Norm Murdock [:Okay. I don't I have no idea. Okay.
Steve Palmer [:I Okay.
Brett Johnson [:And But the reverse is the true though as well. Well, no. If you bought it from a dealer, you would know that it's a clean gun.
Steve Palmer [:Not necessarily.
Brett Johnson [:Not necessarily. Okay. Just curious. I've never done that before to know.
Steve Palmer [:Not necessary. So if I if I say Have you
Brett Johnson [:ever thought about that? Have you ever thought commit
Steve Palmer [:a murder with a pistol, and I later go and sell that pistol to a gun shop, a pawnshop. And then you come along later and you buy it from the pawnshop. Well, that gun's in the books. Right. It's it's registered in the books. They call it booked. You know? It's in there. Mhmm.
Steve Palmer [:It's been formed to or whatever it would be. And and now they're now they know where the gun they can trace where the gun went. And, you don't know that that gun was used in a homicide. Now it may come up later than it was. They may they may somehow track it back to you.
Brett Johnson [:And how much of a ringer are you in? If you none. Okay. Oh,
Norm Murdock [:no. It's perfectly okay.
Brett Johnson [:I mean, you know how much of an anal probe you're gonna go through in case you're willing the gun. Right.
Steve Palmer [:Let me take it from you.
Norm Murdock [:Let me give you let me give you an example. There's nothing wrong, legally
Steve Palmer [:Mhmm.
Norm Murdock [:With owning a gun that was used in a condition of a crime. Example, Jack Ruby's family Got his revolver back from the city of Dallas, and they auctioned it off, the very revolver he used to kill Oswald.
Steve Palmer [:Yep. Okay.
Norm Murdock [:That's what I'm asking. You can own a gun that killed somebody. Okay.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. And I've got guns. You know, I've who knows? You know, that were, like, family inheritance type things. I don't know what the heck is
Norm Murdock [:going on. Guns that are from World War two.
Brett Johnson [:Oh, I'm
Norm Murdock [:sure they were used for all kinds of horrible things.
Brett Johnson [:Sure.
Steve Palmer [:But, you know, I don't know I don't know where they came where the necessary history of all those guns, and I don't know what the government's interest in those guns are, and I don't don't really care. Yeah. It's like Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. It's like It's a thing.
Steve Palmer [:I'm not gonna do anything bad with those guns.
Norm Murdock [:It's like owning a shovel to me. Yeah. That Shovel could be could have been used to bury
Brett Johnson [:a body. By the way,
Steve Palmer [:by the way, I
Norm Murdock [:It's just a tool. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:My properly purchased 3 50 legend rifle, which is a a now a deer gun in Ohio. It's a straight wall cartridge rifle.
Brett Johnson [:Oh.
Steve Palmer [:I bought it from Vances.
Norm Murdock [:Okay.
Steve Palmer [:I go up into a tree stand Okay. On Tuesday night, Tuesday evening. Okay. And one of the biggest bugs I've ever seen in my life walks right behind me. And I've got an awesome vortex scope on that gun. And it was it was still within shooting light, but it was, you know, the the end of the light. Yeah. And I can see him as bright as day because I've got a great scope.
Steve Palmer [:And I pull the trigger, and it goes click. Oh, for god's sake.
Norm Murdock [:What happened?
Steve Palmer [:I have no idea. Oh, no. Oh,
Norm Murdock [:no. Defective right from out of the box.
Steve Palmer [:No. Because the week before, my son, during youth week, shot a deer with it.
Brett Johnson [:So I
Steve Palmer [:don't know. Oh, no. This has nothing to do with Common Sense Ohio. It's just my own frustration. Yeah. I have no idea
Norm Murdock [:That's so true.
Steve Palmer [:Why that one click. And then I I tried to re I tried to, cycle around. But he heard he
Norm Murdock [:heard that. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:By then, he was
Brett Johnson [:gone. Bing.
Steve Palmer [:And then Two things happened. He he left. The buck left, and I lost the round that went click, so I couldn't even look to see if it had a print of a firing pin. Yeah. It's it's in wood somewhere. Just the craziest craziest scenario I've ever involved in. Anyway, so off off to this point.
Brett Johnson [:But but as a nature lover, you got to see the biggest
Steve Palmer [:It was one of the best hunts I've had.
Brett Johnson [:You know? Because it was I remember my now deceased uncle talking about that that sometimes it's what it's that give and take of just going out to see or to kill. Yeah. Enjoy enjoy enjoy just seeing just seeing. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:For those of us who have seen The Deer Hunter, the movie with Robert Robert De Niro
Steve Palmer [:Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:The Scene where he decides so he's Vietnam vet. He's on a deer hunt, and he does sob in the mountains. He's in Pennsylvania. It's gorgeous. And he He looks at this massive racked, male deer at the buck, and he just nah. I'm not gonna shoot it.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:And
Norm Murdock [:he just He takes his gun down and just watches it and just Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:There's something to that.
Norm Murdock [:That was Steve's moment.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Right. I've done that. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:I mean, not not
Steve Palmer [:with a massive buck like that, but I've I've sat and I thought, I'm just gonna watch.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. It's too majestic.
Steve Palmer [:Just I'm gonna watch.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. It's just like I'm not taking that down. Yeah. You know? I took down enough NVA over there in NAM, I guess, as well.
Steve Palmer [:I guess to relate that to Iowa, this is the the week of, gun season. So the Orange Army is out in the woods, And, it ends the 1st week any anyway, ends on Saturday or Sunday, and it picks up an extended gun season 2 weeks later.
Brett Johnson [:And please, hunters, be respectful of, landowners that don't want you on their property.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:I,
Brett Johnson [:Please don't. Follow
Steve Palmer [:the rules.
Norm Murdock [:I won't even go in the woods until season's over. I will not go in. Yeah. I don't care. I will not go in wearing a Rudolph, you know, with lights flashing and our orange jacket. Yeah. I want Nothing to do with being back.
Steve Palmer [:Woods, but I know you know, I've got a pretty good idea of what I'm doing and where I'm going and
Norm Murdock [:who's talking to. Good enough for me. They've shot Farmers off the tractors, like I said in previous years, out in Lincoln County.
Steve Palmer [:And I'm I'm like They
Norm Murdock [:have. I'm done.
Brett Johnson [:Where
Steve Palmer [:I'm hunting, it would be hard you'd be hard pressed to run an Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Hey, guys. I one of my favorite topics that makes me just incredibly angry, is this, hate Crime enhancement thing that we have in our society now. So you've heard about this Vermont shooting where some guy who recently moved from, I think Buffalo, New York moved to Vermont, and they can't figure out why he did it. But he shot 3 Young man of Palestinian extraction in his community where he he just got his apartment, And, there's no history of hate, against Palestinians on his social media. They so rather than just prosecuting Shooting him for assault and battery or whatever, attempted murder. They all 3 survived so far. Okay. The the big focus by the media is, you know, The hate aspect.
Norm Murdock [:Right? You know, did he hate? Did he not hate? If he did hate, why did he hate? All this. And I relate that back to the old story. Well, now it's only a few months old, but it's now it's ancient history. The trans, female, the bio female in Nashville that Went in and shot those children and the the teacher and the principal and the maintenance, man there at the, Nashville, Christian School. Her hate manifesto has been suppressed. Right? It has not been released. There was a small leak, and some people in the police department got fired for leaking 1 or 2 pages of it, but the whole manifesto is being suppressed until the court does a victim The victims of the dead people in the Christian school need to tell the court that it's okay to release her manifesto. Right? Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:But it's like, well, wait a minute. When the Unabomber, you know, or anybody else that has a manifesto, it gets immediately.
Steve Palmer [:If it were a, a a racist white supremacist, it would be all over the media.
Norm Murdock [:Be all over the media. New York Times would have the whole
Steve Palmer [:I'm not saying it should be, but it would be. It would be. Right. Right. So hate these hate crimes to me are so just logically, inconsistent.
Norm Murdock [:It's flawed. It's a whole flawed philosophy.
Steve Palmer [:System basically goes back to the common law. And the common law said, in order to commit the traditional type of crime, we'll call them, like Malleman say, things that are bad just because they're bad. Yeah. Requires basically 2 things. You have to have an act or a failure to act when you should act. So they call that an actus reus in Latin. Yeah. And then you have to have a thought, a a mental intent.
Steve Palmer [:They call that mens rea, the mental thing. So, yeah, like, so certain crimes require specific intent. I act like on this rape. You acted with the purpose to compel somebody by force or threat of force. That is the mens rea element of that crime. The act then would be actually having the sexual conduct or contact with the person depending on the type of crime. So sexual conduct conduct is the act, and the purpose is the intent. Mhmm.
Steve Palmer [:Usually, those crimes and not only usually, those crimes are inevitably higher up in the hierarchy of the criminal offenses in the Ohio revised code and everywhere else I practice. So those kind of crimes already reflect more severe punishment already. Yeah. Or already have attached them more severe punishment. Yeah. You don't need a greater enhancement. Now the this sort of begs the question or not begs it. It demands the question, how do you prove intent? Well, the the jury instructions on that would typically be like, look, you can't look into the eye or the minds of others, but you can imply or infer intent rather from the certain acts or behaviors of the person committing the act.
Steve Palmer [:You know? So if if somebody prepared for it, For instance, if somebody went through great went to great lengths to, to tie somebody up and then commit it, like, then then well, they they pretty much did that on purpose. Right? So you can You can infer 1 from the other, and that's okay. The problem with these kind of things, these hate crimes, is that they don't really define how you, How do they prove the extra hate element? Is it because the person once said a racist thing, so therefore, this must be racist? Is it because, you know, what would you do beyond the typical ordinary men's rare requirement to prove it? Right. You can't look into somebody's mind. So how do you do it? And then then you would sort Flippantly say, isn't every crime tied to some degree of hate? And how are you gonna define hate? With a racial animus, that's ins it's absurd. So what they're gonna do is imply racism just because the victim happens to be the different race of the perpetrator.
Norm Murdock [:It's insane.
Steve Palmer [:That's not I that that doesn't logically connect. That's a non sequitur because you can commit crime without racial animus on somebody who is a different race. It it it just, it's dumb. Yeah. It's political theater.
Norm Murdock [:They never proved any racial element between Chauvin and George Floyd, for example.
Steve Palmer [:Correct.
Norm Murdock [:You know? I mean, he did what he did with his knee on his neck, and it was in the manual of the Minneapolis Police Department that you could restrain a person using your knee on their neck. He did it for too long. He's you know, he he was unwise to do that, etcetera. We can go into all of that.
Steve Palmer [:Sorts of bad police work going on there.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. But there was no proof whatsoever that Chauvin hated black people.
Brett Johnson [:None. I mean None. It never came at all.
Steve Palmer [:This is when I I've told this story before. I've texted some of my friends at the time this is going on. He said, did you see this? I was like, yeah. I wonder if the guy I wonder if it's race related. And my my buddy said, of course, I don't even need to know that. I need that's that's obvious. It's like,
Norm Murdock [:White cop, black guy, had to be. Had to be.
Steve Palmer [:It's not so obvious.
Norm Murdock [:It's not so obvious
Steve Palmer [:at all. And if it were and, you know, I've always said, if at word, and the proof will come out, and they can prove it, and they can treat them accordingly. And, you know, you can also reflect those things. Those those kind of consequent or those kinds of, Can't think today. Those kinds of circumstances can also be accounted for in the sentence. So, like, Ohio's Ohio revised code criminal code, if you commit a felony, the first degree, which rape would be, it carries a a maximum pot or a range of punishment from 3 to 11 years. And it's mandatory. Rape is a mandatory sense.
Steve Palmer [:If you commit rape, you're doing at least 3 years. So then the judge gets to pick 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, or 11. And And then a lot of times, there's other crimes that go along with it, like kidnapping or unlawful restraint or assault or who knows. So then there's another decision whether those offenses can be run wild as in the game or run concurrently. In other words, you're doing 10 on the rape, and then plus you're gonna do 10 on kidnapping for a total of 20 years on one act. That gives a huge broad range of discretion to the sentencing judge. Yeah. And, you know, if the judge wants to say, look.
Steve Palmer [:This was done there's evidence here that this was done with all the wrong animus. Like, for the worst possible reasons, they can bake into their sentence, a number that accounts for that. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Sure enough.
Steve Palmer [:Without a special hate crime.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Like, Charlie Manson was trying to start a race war and and, make it appear as if the Black Panthers had committed those murders at Sharon Tate's house. Right. Right? He was trying to start a race war between whites and blacks. Now he's white. Right? But he wants he wants the races to fight each other. And in sentencing, I'm sure that was taken into account.
Steve Palmer [:And there is a sentencing provision in the higher revised code that Basically tells the judges, the sentencing judges, what they're supposed to look at. And without going into too much detail with it, one of the things is, is this worse than the normal type of offense that creates the or the normal conduct that results in this crime, or is it, lesser than the normal?
Norm Murdock [:You know,
Steve Palmer [:it's like Yeah. They account for it. Yeah. Like, is this the worst form of this crime or something less than the worst form of the crime?
Norm Murdock [:I just wish we'd get off of this. I wish that the Supreme Court would just say, look.
Steve Palmer [:It's all theater.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. The this these hate motive enhancements just need to go. I mean, they they just need to do it. If if if I'm murdered by a guy that hates me because of my ethnicity Versus a guy that just wants to break into my house and steal my shit. I'm still dead either way. Yeah. I I don't understand why it matters If he
Brett Johnson [:had me repeat it. The latter is not a news story. That's right. It doesn't look as good as good as good. Exactly. It's just ridiculous.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. It's not. Alright. Well, we're we're sort of reaching the end.
Norm Murdock [: st road race for: Norm Murdock [:But, anyway, Eagles Canyon, in early March. Oh, I cannot wait.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. There you go. So now
Norm Murdock [:I'm with racing. I'm jazzed, man. I'm jazzed.
Brett Johnson [:Awesome. Good.
Norm Murdock [:Steve's hunting.
Brett Johnson [:Brett, what are you up to, man? I'm just Doing what I supposed to do. You know? Just my head keep my head down.
Norm Murdock [:Today, December 1st, called Saint Nick's Day. Like like, you can do a surprise gift.
Brett Johnson [:Oh, Saint Nicholas? Yeah. I think you're right. It is. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:That's only for you idolistic Catholics. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:I think there is one. Yeah. You're right. You're right.
Steve Palmer [:You're right.
Brett Johnson [:There is something bad.
Steve Palmer [:I didn't I didn't read that in the New Testament. Good
Norm Murdock [:good one, man. Good one. You got me.
Steve Palmer [:You're right, though.
Brett Johnson [:I think
Steve Palmer [:it is. Yeah. Alright. Well, then we're gonna wrap up Common Sense Ohio, we hope you enjoyed your weekly dose. And if you didn't get enough, that's no big deal because you can get more next week. Or if you don't even get more as enough you need next week, you can go back to the backlog, and you can do that at the common sense ohio show .com website. And while you're there, you might as well like, subscribe, and share. What do I mean by share? I mean, Like, on social media share, there's a little arrow that most people have somewhere in there, either the phone or computer or the platform.
Steve Palmer [:It's it it it's it's like a little curved arrow. It says share. Share. Share. Share that or the, or the symbol that shares it with your buddy, and and they can then like and subscribe. Then we can grow. There's gonna be lots of opportunities coming for sponsorship. We have that available now.
Steve Palmer [: ed a lot. Maybe a buck from a:
