Welcome back to Common Sense Ohio, where we bring reason, debate, and real-world perspectives to the pressing issues facing Ohioans and the nation at large.

In this episode, the conversation focused on the two-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision, examining its impact on abortion access and the complexities surrounding constitutional rights versus state governance. The discussion explored the historical lessons of the Berlin Blockade, the symbolism of walls in free versus unfree societies, and the everyday freedoms many Americans might take for granted.

A key theme that emerged was the evolution of revolutionary ideals in America, contrasting the independence and opportunity sought by early patriots with the contemporary push for social programs and government intervention. Several points were raised, including the consequences of collectivism, the sustainability of social benefits, and the responsibilities tied to individual freedom.

The episode also tackled current legal debates, such as religious expression in the workplace, the intersection of marijuana laws and gun rights, and the ongoing challenges posed by federal versus state inconsistencies. On a local front, the hosts offered a deep dive into Ohio’s handling of data centers, economic incentives, government transparency, and land use, all while addressing concerns over special interests and environmental impacts.

Finally, listeners can expect thoughtful takes on the future of the death penalty in Ohio, Supreme Court term limits, and recent news stories that underscore the importance of personal responsibility and national unity—even when passions run high. All this and more, delivered with a blend of historical perspective, legal acumen, and, of course, a dose of common sense.

Recorded at the 511 Studios, in the Brewery District in downtown Columbus, OH.

[email protected]

Copyright 2026 Common Sense Ohio

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.

All right, it is that time again. Common Sense, Ohio. I missed

it last week. I just felt like I was. Everything was off. I

felt like nothing made sense. And the weather

was spectacular. There was just no sense of the world. If you felt that way

too, it's because you didn't get your weekly dose of common sense. But we're back.

June 26, 2026. Interestingly, you know,

it's funny. History is a funny teacher,

you know. Yeah. And two years ago today, the Dobbs decision

has been that long. Right. Dobbs, basically

eliminating the fictitious constitutional right to get an abortion. Right,

right. The penumbra. The penumbra. Right. Do

the math or do the research. Look, yeah.

Even liberal legal

scholars like Ruth Bader Ginsburg knew this

new. That it was complete bullshit. Yeah.

Roe was an invent anyway, that was two years ago today. But in the Cold

War. So going back to 19.

Oops. Going back to

1948,

I believe. Let me make sure I got the year right, because I was. And

while you're checking that, I think it's good to mention that abortions are

actually up about 10% since

Dobbs. Is that right? Yeah. And what they say is, because

the whole mail order thing, where you

can get the day after pills

went nationwide, and basically

even Trump's DOJ said, hey, this is a state issue from

now on. Yeah. And this was the argument I always had. There's no federal

enforcement. To be intellectually honest about this, I always

said, look, first of all, I don't agree with

abortions. I. I have my own opinions on that based on logic, reason,

and common sense, as well as some of my

religious beliefs. Right, right. But aside from that,

this was a constitutional debacle. There was

never written in the Constitution a right to go get an abortion. No. It was

foolish. It made no sense. And I used to argue with even the most

stringent, like other academics and lawyers, and they would argue with me, and I'm

like, listen, just because you get rid of the constitutional right doesn't mean you're gonna

get rid of abortions. It's gonna go to the state level. Yeah. And I

used to predict this. There'll probably be more abortions. Yeah, there have been.

Because, you know. Anyway. So. Yeah. But anyway, turning

back to the Berlin Blockade, Norm, 1948.

Oh. You know, we decided long ago after. We decided after

the war that we weren't gonna go fight the Soviets. America didn't have the stomach

for it, and I don't blame him. Yeah. We just chopped up Europe a little

bit. Yeah. You take that. We'll take this. In fact, let's just cut Berlin in

half. Yeah, yeah. And create these zones where France,

Britain, Russia and the United

States, the four Allied powers,

you know, they chopped off Germany and they administered,

you know,

the affairs of their district. And they kind of did

that with Berlin and the three powers, the

three non Russian, created this West

Berlin district. And the Russians were like, hey,

it's a little. All of Berlin was floating like an island

in their administrative area. And they were like, well,

we'll just take it. We'll just take. Yeah, we'll

deny you a route to resupply

the part of Berlin that you supposedly are

administering. So we did this airlift that you're talking about, Berlin

airlift. Go read about it. It's really sort of fascinating. And

we took casualties. What dawned on me is this, with all

this immigration and border and all this other crap,

what you never see out of a free country

is a wall that keeps people in. That's right. Ever.

Yeah, ever. Right. And that's what

inevitably occurs in these types of

communist countries. That's right. People want to leave.

They don't want to stay there because it sucks. Yeah. And I remember as

a kid watching a movie, I think Disney made it, it was about a family

who was trapped in the east and they took a balloon right over

the Wall. And I remember also as a. Maybe I

must have been 12 years old, going to visit the Berlin Wall. I mean, there

were guards on the top with guns, not to keep

us out, but to keep them in. Yeah, exactly. Now, we couldn't just storm it

either, but they had the Zone and everything else. I mean, it's just crazy

times. And what you say goes back to antiquity. Hadrian's

Wall, you know, that the Romans built in England to

keep the wild Celts

out of the Roman part of

Britain, the Great Wall of China, you know, again,

to keep the Mongols out. Yeah, that was to keep the marauders out.

Exactly. But it wasn't to keep their people in. You could always leave.

But the thing is, when you have a good free country like ours, people don't

want to leave. No, you're bs. You don't want to leave. Suddenly we're finding

out, or the media is fighting out with all these World cup

fans in America from Europe,

that all this terrible perdition that they were

reading about and hearing about on like the BBC and

other foreign media, they come to America and they're like,

this place rocks. They're even singing our national

anthem in bars at night, like

the Scottish fans after America beat

Australia singing our national anthem. It's pretty incredible, isn't it? I mean,

it just blow me away. It's like, yeah. So they kind of like,

you know, once they experience things, they kind of like it. You know,

they're like, you guys have a lot of freedom here. You could do what you

want. You could. You know, you have so much

material choices to make here, whether it's

food or, you know, retail shopping.

It's just unbelievable what your market economy has

allowed you to have, rather than a command economy. Well, and what's

fascinating, I've told this story probably on this show and lots of times in my

real life. I represented some folks one time that were Armenians,

but they came from old Soviet times. Wow.

Yeah. And they came here and they, you know, they started

businesses, they did whatever. And the guy just looked at me and goes, you people

are nuts. Yeah. You can do whatever you want here. Right. What are you

complaining about? Exactly? You can just go start a business. Right. Go do

it right now. You can also fail. There's

an analog. So you ever play chess? Sure. Yeah.

There's an old analogy, like when the chess piece is in the middle of the

board, so your queen's in the middle, it has the most impact because she

can go all sorts of places. She's in a corner. She can all go like,

we're in the middle of the board here, guys. You got the queen in the

middle of the board. You can do whatever you want. Now. You can also

go commit suicide. You can also decide to do nothing and

stay there. And then somebody's pawn is going to take you. Yeah. With that freedom

comes responsibility. Yeah. So I was thinking about this.

You brought up something that happened on this

date, and really not a signal

kind of event occurred during the Revolutionary War period, but

more debate on June 24 about how

to declare independence. Whether to declare independence.

This is within the Continental Congress, and they're considering this

resolution by William Henry Lee,

you know, curiously enough, Robert E. Lee's great grandfather. Oh, is that right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, who would himself

lead a revolution against America

of his own kind as a Confederate commander. But at any

rate, I was thinking about the contradiction between the

election results last night and what they were debating

in the Continental Congress. And give me a minute here.

So I'm thinking of what American revolutionaries

were, like, 250 years ago. Okay. They were largely

British educated. They were from British families. They were of

the mercantile class. Right. So they had a stake

in Adam Smith economics.

Like, work, your Ass off. You have

an opportunity. If we get our freedom from the King,

we'll have an opportunity not for an equal

outcome, but for an equal opportunity to succeed

everybody in this country. Then you

won't have these onerous taxes, you won't have

impressment, you won't be forced to house

British soldiers in your house. All of these

things in our Bill of Rights and in our constitution will be in play

is what they're envisioning on June 24,

1776, as opposed to the revolutionaries today.

Like Mamdani has this now he's a power

broker and he's gotten all of these socialists and communists.

They won their primaries last night and what do

they want? What is their revolution about?

It's about disgorging from their fellow citizens

largesse. It's about freebies. Well, we want free

daycare, we want free buses, we want free college

education. We don't even want just. And then

often we don't even want criminal penalties

for breaking the law for shoplifting, or even

to deport non citizens for murder or rape.

So I'm thinking about what 250 years ago

a revolutionary was and what it is, what it means

to Americans today. And it's so vastly. I feel like I'm on

another planet. It's 180 degrees opposite. And when they say they want

free, we just want free stuff.

That's really just another euphemism of saying we want to take

your stuff and give it to you, or this guy's stuff and give it to

you. And we're the ones of course, that have the

deciding. We're the ones that know best on who gets what right.

Right. Which is another euphemism to say give us power.

Yeah, give us power. Because we're going to decide. And then magically, at

some point, 500 years in the future, all this will disappear and we'll live in

this utopian dreamland that they've never ever,

ever, ever, ever, ever, ever been able to achieve. Because

it's against human nature in every way, shape or every. And you talk to like

your Armenian clients or people from Poland or

our first lady who came from the

oppressed Eastern European area

when it was under Soviet rule. And

they'll all say it doesn't work.

What are you people doing here? You have literally

a utopian situation where you can

dictate what you want to do for a living and how hard

you want to work. If you want to be lazy, you can be lazy. If

you want to work like Elon Musk and become the world's first

trillionaire. You can do that too. Well, and not only that, the consequences for doing

that in our country right now and really for the last maybe,

I don't know, fifty hundred year. I don't know. But the consequences of doing nothing

aren't that bad anymore. No. Right. So you can still, like, if you want to

be lazy and you don't want to buy, you don't. And let's take lazy out

of it. If you don't care what you have around

you. In other words, you don't want the big house. You don't need the big

house. Need all of this. You don't need the fancy car. You want to

subsist. You can do that. You can do that. And you can do that by

doing virtually nothing. Yeah. In this country. And you'll still get an iPhone and a

computer and. And access to TV and the Internet. We are at

that point. Excuse me, Steve, I'm sorry, but stepped on you there. But

we are at that point now where

the majority of the people are not paying

any federal income tax. I mean, we have

gone past that 50% line. That is insane. Which

is just insane. And these people are celebrating. I mean,

so no skin in the game, Steve. It can't survive.

So this is. This is not long. This is not

sustainable. Unsustainable is the right word. Exactly right. And

how it ends, I don't know whether it ends violently, whether it ends just it

dies on the vine sort of slowly, or whether something in the middle,

it cannot sustain itself because as Margaret Thatcher said, you run out of other people's

money, and sooner or later you're gonna run out of other people's money. Well,

you mentioned violence. So that same group of people,

the Democrats, Socialists of America, they have now

started militias. Like they actually have.

Like they are talking about, you know, at any

cost, at any price, by any means. They're using that

kind of rhetoric that sounds a lot like, you know,

Castro, it sounds like. Or Khrushchev or

Stalin. It has that ring to it, like, you know,

let's use the Second Amendment to stock up, not for the

purposes of individual rights, but for

the purposes of overthrowing if at some point

the status quo. Yeah. Which will be our freedom. They're

detractors, right? Yeah, yeah. They don't. I once

said to somebody, I'm not going to mention who it was, but it was a

text, and clearly we were on different ends of the polar planet.

And I think it was about this. It was about when

I think Amy Coney Barrett, in the middle of COVID writes a decision that

basically says you can't shut down the church or

synagogue at the same time you're opening up the private stuff. You know,

you can't do that. Something like that. Right, right. And

I rarely post anything. I posted something, and this guy reached out to me sort

of in Facebook and said, well, that's interesting. Yeah, it makes sense. You're treating other

people unfairly. And he was clearly a communist. You know, he was.

But he was trying to get his head around what I was saying. Yeah. And

I somehow led to this final statement. I said, yes, but I will always choose

individual rights over a collective goal. You know, it's

like, you know, always. Because individual rights lead to better for

everybody. Right. Ultimately. So I always choose individual rights

over collectivism because it's collectivism that takes away individual rights.

Right. And that's what these guys are doing, that they. They want to take your

rights. And if they want guns, rest assured, they want to take

yours. Oh, for sure. Absolutely. They're not saying we're all going to

have guns and protect ourselves from the government. We're saying we're going to have guns

so we can force what we want on you. Yeah. They have the right think

to use Big Brother talk because they know better. So fitting right

into that, Steve, is this. Even though it seems

like small beer, I think it illustrates your point, the point

you just made about individual rights. Perfectly. So there is

a long stream of Supreme Court

decisions upholding the individual right to

express or to hold your individual

religious beliefs and political beliefs. And they

had a gay pride night out in San Francisco with

the San Francisco Giants. And at first, these

pitchers, three of San Francisco pitchers

were wearing hats where they added a

reference in the Bible to a particular line, like in Genesis

or whatever. And they would scribble that. Three

pictures scribbled in white letters, very small.

They didn't, like, cross out the gay logo, but they

added their own Bible quote

on their hat. And Major League Baseball and

the Giants management came down on these guys and said,

you do that again, there'll be some enormous fine or

you might be suspended. And then the Department of

Justice opened an investigation into this, which

is currently pending based on these Supreme Court

decisions. Like, famously, there was that Walmart case where the

lady was wearing a crucifix and her manager said, you can't wear a

crucifix at the register at a Walmart. You know, that's

oppressing other people. And the Supreme Court upheld their right. Her Right

to have a crucifix. Yeah, it's an interesting. So I gotta. Let's chop

this up a little bit. But we have a First Amendment right that guarantees,

among other things, the free exercise of our religion. In other words, the government.

And almost like in conflict to that, we have an establishment clause, so the

government can establish a religion, and we have the right to free

exercise of religion. So we have these things.

But it does not prohibit. If you read the Constitution, nowhere would the Constitution

say that I, as an employer, can't prohibit. Preclude you

from wearing a cross when you sit at your desk or preclude you from

praying five times a day or however many times a day. Facing

it doesn't say it because I'm a private individual. Now, if there's a law. If

the government passes a law that says you can't do that, that's a different thing,

because now you're impeding on the free exercise of religion. By government, I mean,

any government, whether it's the federal government, a state government,

a city government, a local township government, or even, you

know, the smallest of form of government you can have. If it's government action. Right.

Can't do it. So we're entering into this weird realm where the

government is telling private companies what they can and can't do. Yeah. And this

has always been the problem with the civil rights laws, the Title seven,

you know, it's always been the issue because you're imposing upon private

citizens what they can, how they run their

businesses. Right. And I have always. I forget who the center

was it when all this stuff, when the Civil Rights act, he goes, I

prefer my. My freedoms. Like my coffee. I just. I want it straight, you know?

Yeah, yeah. Or with my liquor, I want it straight. No mixers, you know, because

it. Look, it sometimes can lead you to these things you don't like,

but at least it's free. And then the idea is the market would come. So

if I say, I'm not going to hire women because I don't

like women, well, guess what? Or if you said that in your law firm

and I say, well, that's interesting. Norm's next door to me. I love. I'm gonna

hire all the women I want. I can't, because then I can get more business.

Right? That's the idea of it. Yeah. Yeah. I think what makes

the baseball thing

more of a civil rights case is that

they were compelled, they thought, to wear the gay

pride hats. Okay. So their

employer was saying, hey, this political speech, or

if you want to look at it, possibly a religious

tenet, we're going to

impose upon you by you wearing this

hat, your endorsement of gay pride

and whatever message that means and all of

the attachments to that logo, you know,

we're making you wear this hat. Major League Baseball, after the

DOJ announced they were looking into civil rights

violations, then backed up and said, well, wait a minute,

the Giants did not. They

did not use the correct policy. The correct policy was

and is that you are not

required to wear special endorsement

hats or T shirts or logos that the players

actually had the right to just say, I want to wear the standard

Giants hat. I don't want to wear the Gay Pride hat. I just want to

wear the regular black and orange hat or whatever it is.

But they were being told, Major League

Baseball says the Giants failed to tell them they had that option.

And so these players thought, well, if I'm going to be compelled to wear this,

then I'm going to express how something that I believe

in. And so they were not basically

against the gay pride event. They just

wanted to say, okay, if I have to wear this, then I'm also going to

say that. Yeah. And just to be clear, the DOJ is acting under the Civil

Rights act, not the Constitution. That's right. Not the Constitution. That's right.

And what they're basically saying is you can't compel certain religions. Religion. You can't compel

certain people. That's right. And again, because in

a way, the Giants were compelling. That's right. An endorsement

of a lifestyle. And maybe these guys, you know, I

haven't interviewed the three pitchers. Maybe they would say, I don't care,

you know, about what other people do. I just wanted to express myself.

Or maybe they do have a problem with the lifestyle. Yeah.

And, you know, at the end of the day, I understand what the law says

the Civil Rights act says, and maybe DOJ has a point, but I'm not saying

I agree with it. Yeah, sure. I'm not saying I agree with it because I

do think on some level the NBL should be able to say, look, you gotta

wear it, or. Well, I know you're kind of saying that those civil rights

laws themselves are really sort of out of order, that

they really. They either went too far or they shouldn't

exist in toto. And I understand the

intellectual argument for that. Like, you know, if. If you're

Woolworths back in the 1960s and you have no black

served in the front window, well, you're an idiot because you're turning

down Business. And I follow what you're saying, because maybe the

Waffle House next door says we serve all. Yeah,

they're going to get more business. And I get it. There's an argument. This is

an academic. It's a public accommodation kind of. This is an academic argument because,

you know, on the one level, we did have some extreme problems in the country

back in Jim Crow days. We had some extreme problems with some segregation. And if

the government wanted to get involved, they had to do it somehow. You know, perhaps

a constitutional amendment or something might have been. But I just, as a purist,

they were a little over their skis on it and. Well, look. But it's already

been decided. It is what it is. I'm a lawyer. I appreciate it. The law

is what it is. Yeah. And it's pretty old now. I mean, it's

been around. It is now. It's been around. So at the end of the day,

the MBL backed off. They did. They backed

off. And I think they found a compromise. Yeah, yeah. And they have

that. What do you call it, that antitrust

exemption that Congress gave them. And I think they

were looking at that and thinking, do we really want to

doodle around with that? This is it. If you make a deal with the government.

You made a deal with the. That's right.

You did some research into the Supreme Court case on the

marijuana recreational user getting his gun rights back.

Yeah. Sort of an interesting case. So this is. Comes from a string of cases.

It started with Heller and going

back that says we have an individual constitutional right to bear arms.

It's an individual right. And then

as the Supreme Court addressed this issue,

I think Bruen was the case that sort of says, look, here's how we're going

to analyze Second Amendment issues. We're going to look at the history, text and

tradition of the constitutional amendment or of the

Constitution and determine if a government regulation or

government law violates it. In other words, it used to be a different standard called

strict scrutiny. For you legal geeks out there, it means that you really had a

good reason, you had to have a good reason to violate somebody's constitutional rights. But

now they've sort of changed a little bit. And they said, look, if conduct is

permitted based on the history, text and tradition of

our country and our Constitution, well, then you can't pass

a law that violates that or that prevents that. And that's sort

of the backdrop for this case, which was United States versus

Himani. And basically the first sentence is great, or the first

paragraph is great. Gorsuch writes the opinion. Ali Humani uses

marijuana a few times a week. That fact alone, the government says, means he is

automatically banned from possessing a firearm under federal law.

And because Hermani admits, or Hermani admits he owns a gun

despite this ban, the government now seeks to prosecute him in

imprison him for up to 15 years and disarm him for life. This case

poses the question whether the government's prosecution of Mr.

Hamani is consistent with the Second Amendment. Like, I love Supreme Court.

Right? Like when it's written. Well, it's like I like if I taught legal writing

in school or in law school, I would say read this. Yeah, that's very succinct.

It says it in like four sentences. Right? What it is, Right. No big

words. Yeah. Just here's what it is. Common people can read that

and get it. Yep. Yeah. Enter the Federal

Gun control Act in 18 USC

section 1922 or 922G.

It basically has this list of things that disarm people. Ones if you have a

conviction, if you have committed domestic violence or,

you know, and a conviction, by the way, is something that is a felony. So

more than a year imprisonment would carry. And on that list

is anyone who is an unlawful

user of or addicted to a controlled substance,

you're automatically banned for, from

guns. Now, for those of you who have any interest in

the most famous case probably ever of somebody being sort of targeted for this, it

would be Hunter Biden and anybody who's bought a gun that has

a little checkbox in those forms. Right, right. One of them is, are you an

unlawful user of marijuana or any other illegal drugs? Yeah. And the

court basically says limited to the facts here. So they're not saying anything yet

broadly about other drugs, but limited to the marijuana user here.

They're saying it's unconstitutional, this is unconstitutional for the government

to apply this law, to apply this restriction against

Hamani's gun rights. And I

love it. Yeah. We still have this

dichotomy, I guess

Trump the department of.

What would it be? Department of Health and Human Services

or whoever decides what schedule a

particular drug is on. They have taken marijuana

now off of that highest level

threshold of drugs federally. Now

they haven't legalized it like many of the states, or I should say

most of the states. But, but so we still have this

federal versus state inconsistency, let's

put it that way, where some states say, hey, you know,

it's just open season state sanctions and

state licensed stores are selling this stuff

for recreational Use, including Ohio. And

so, you know, you gotta say, you gotta say, like

Trump has addressed the contradiction in, in part by

taking it off the highest schedule. But it's still

illegal federally. Yeah, it's still legal federally. And this is coming up.

Well, look, I'll just give you there's a case I'm working on, in fact, I

have a hearing on it today, I'll bet, where the police stop a car

based solely on the odor of marijuana. They search the car. Yeah.

So there's a rule that says if you stop a car, a police stop of

motor vehicle is a significant intrusion that requires justification under the Fourth Amendment,

reasonable suspicion. And they can search. The police can then

search the interior compartment of the car, even closed containers, if they have something called

probable cause. What's probable cause? I don't know. But they know it when you see

it. Yeah. It means something more than enough to stop a car. Less than four.

Yeah, whatever. Yeah. So you have some, or you have some

basis to reasonably conclude that there is evidence of

contraband in, say, the center console. Yeah.

And in this case, they're using the odor of marijuana

as the basis to develop probable cause to do the search or further the

investigation. And our argument is, look, it's legal conduct

under the Ohio Constitution. Yeah. The government's argument is going to be, the

prosecutor's argument's going to be, yeah, but it's still illegal under the federal Constitution.

And I'm going to say, well, look, how is that? So on the one hand

you are giving it, on the other hand you're taking it away and you're

punishing somebody for exercising their constitutional, Ohio.

Constitutional right. Right. Or at least statutory rights. Right. But

not even though it's in flux or in contradiction with the feds.

That's a due process. So we're gonna like, this is coming up everywhere. It's a

mess. It's a mess. It's coming up everywhere. It's a mess. It, it, it needs

to be resolved somehow. And

at any rate, I, I think it's a good decision. I, I,

you know, and that's not coming from

a pro pot point of view.

It's just that in the scale of

offenses, recreational use of marijuana

to me is no worse

than recreational use of alcohol. In fact,

it may be less worse. It may be less worse. And I think

that kind of medical research, now that it's off the

schedule, I think we're going to learn a lot more about marijuana

and what the downsides are and the possible upsides. Well,

look, I guess we'll find out it's a drug. It is a drug. And it

wouldn't surprise me if they, if they, being the studiers, the researchers

find something that is beneficial about the drug, it will also not surprise me if

they find exactly what is not so good. Yeah, about the. I choose not to

use it. Yeah. You know, like the wine producers like to say,

oh, a glass of red wine, you know, actually help your health.

Nonsense. Yeah, nonsense. You know. You know, but no,

wine is still better for your health. Right. And even tobacco, years ago,

they, they would have like a doctor on TV saying, you know,

I use filtered palm oils and they're great. And they,

they actually maybe keep colds away, you know, like,

you know, so all of this we'll find out in due course.

But I think, yeah, taking away somebody's constitutional rights,

I mean, what's next? A guy can't vote? I mean, what else are you going

to take away from him? So I'm glad, I'm glad for that

decision. Even though I have my reservations about marijuana

use. I thought, I thought we'd bring up, maybe do

a deeper dive than we've done in past shows about

data centers in Ohio. And the reason is

the news hook is this week it came out that the,

the people who wanted to put a ban on the ballot

this fall on data centers

put a statewide moratorium on new

data centers that haven't broken ground yet,

failed to get enough signatures to put it on the ballot.

They're still going to collect them. I'm sure it's going to be on the ballot

at some point. But

there's also, at the same time, you got Governor DeWine's

study group, and you've got various

pieces of legislation cooking in the

General assembly. And one of the House bills

is kind of an omnibus of different ideas, and

it has bipartisan support for lots of

pieces of it. And the Buckeye Institute, whom

we've had on the show,

gave testimony and I think, and they're

largely a conservative think tank.

And it shows to me that conservatives,

if you will, Republicans are starting to grasp

that not only are there some injustices going on

out there and some skullduggery by developers,

but. But there's also a political battle happening

out there in really bright red MAGA land. And

I think they're starting to come to grips. Even if Vivek

and Amy, you know, the two candidates for

Acton for governor, even if they aren't really on board

yet, I think it's good. So the

Buckeye Institute said that four big things.

We should restrict DNA

or DNA NDAs as a tool

to keep the public ignorant of pending data centers

being planned. What's the

counterargument be to that? Well, like the. Well, so

the data center people like Google or whoever it would

be that's building one, or Meta, they would say,

well, our competition then will know that we're

planning one in New Albany or Baltimore,

Ohio, or some other place in Ohio. They'll know what our

plans are. So we're not really trying to. Their argument is. Of course,

it's bs. Their argument is we're not trying to keep it from the public.

We're trying to keep it from our competitors. But

mayors, township, trustees, county

commissioners, all kinds of their employees

are signing these NDAs, or at least acting as if

one is in place voluntarily as

they try to, you know, get the ball across the

goal line of getting these centers built because they think it's

a boon to their area or it. Or maybe they have a

conflict of interest. They have some land to sell. So

one of the Buckeye proposals is to restrict

NDAs. The other one is to.

Sadly, they want to keep the sales tax exemption, which has

cost Ohio $1.6 billion so far that

John Kasich put into place

by fiat, like, he didn't even pass legislation.

He, as the governor, apparently has some emergency

power. And this has been now through the

DeWine administration as well. And people,

including the legislators, are just now finding out many cases

that this exemption existed. I mean, it's kind of been

like, under the table. So when you think of jobs, Ohio,

and you think about all the other giveaways, the tax deferments,

the free roads, the infrastructure, the water use,

the annexations, all the other tools that these data

center developers have gotten. In addition, they've

gotten a secret sales tax exemption on every piece of

steel, every piece of drywall, every turbine,

every piece of copper wire. That's. And I don't. I mean,

you and I have to pay sales tax on that. You just build a house.

What's the benefit for Ohio? Like, why do that? It's

bizarre. It really is bizarre. I'm sure it made us more

competitive, you know, versus other states.

But we're finding out the benefits of having these data centers are,

you know, sucking up energy, sucking up water,

pissing off homeowners that live next

to these things that have to listen to the thing humming all night

and light pollution and, you know, the trucks and the

beating up the roads. So one of the other things is

they don't want Eminent domain. So another Buckeye

thing. No. Eminent domain used

to grab land or to grab new roadways

for data centers. Yeah. Eminent domain for those who don't know. It's actually a constitutional

provision, but basically it says every now and then, the government, for

a good reason, can go take your land, even for private development,

which we know from. Who's the Supreme Court justice that

resigned, and then a developer did it to his land,

and he wrote the decision saying.

The skinny guy. I can't forget his name, but he wrote that

crazy decision that said the government doesn't have to take

your land just for the government to use. They could take your land

away and then give it to, I don't know, the Trump Organization

or a data center or somebody to develop

Suter. Suter. David Suter. Yeah. Which

was beautiful because he got hoisted by his own petard in

that case. Well, it says he never actually lost his land, but he was famously

targeted for the property seizure by angry activists in retaliation for

his 2005 decision in Kilo vs City of New

London. You know. Yeah.

Eminent domain is one of those things that it's like, you sort of.

You can tolerate it because you can understand why it might be necessary

sometimes on highways and stuff. Right. They have to pay. The government has to pay

you value for the land. You can't just steal it and give it to somebody

else, like Mandame would do. Yeah. Or regulate you out of existence

and then say, well, since you can't meet our regulations, we'll just take it. Right.

It's not that. Yeah. The last thing Buckeye

said, and I agree with this, is they want to restrict the

abatements on property taxes for these data centers, because

that truly is outrageous. Yeah. Look, if I'm paying tax, they should pay tax. This

is. This is the stuff that always pisses me off. Yeah. Like, you know. Right.

It happens. So I, like the argument would be norm or what say to this.

I mean, if other states, if this is a. Take data centers out of it.

Yeah. Like, I know Ocasio Cortez

famously sort of shunned. Was it Amazon? Yeah. Right.

In her district, it was something like 7,000 jobs or IT was a huge

number of jobs. Yeah. Not only in Brooklyn, where they need the job. They

need the job. Like, so I get it. There's sometimes good

reason to give some incentives for big business to come in.

But on the other hand, if nobody gave incentives, it would all be an equal

playing field. So, you know, it's sort of like. Right. It's like

Leveling the playing fields on recruiting and college football or

NFL, how much you can pay people like this nil thing. It's almost like

you need a national policy because otherwise

it's a big mess. It's a runaway system. You got Indiana and Kentucky and Ohio

all vying for, say, the same automotive plant and

they're fumbling over each other to give away everything.

So look, but if we're going to stay true to our values

here, let the market fix it at some point in Ohio. If Ohio doesn't want

to compete in this level, then Ohio's going to fall behind and eventually they're going

to have to say, all right, we're going to play the game too. But the

other way to keep the market right is to keep the playing

field level. But that would require federal legislation. Yes, it would require

federal legislation. Yeah. So my

additions to this data center thing would be. And I'm sure you

have some ideas, Steve, but mine is

that I think in addition

to NDAs, I think there needs to be

a positive requirement

requiring local officials to announce on social

media whenever a developer or

whenever a. A proposal

is before them that not only

can't they sign an NDA, but that they have

a positive duty to inform the public that

there's some scuttlebutt that there, that there's inquiries being

made as to factories. And I'm going to. I'm not going to

talk about apartment buildings and stuff like that. I'm gonna stick with heavy

industry. Cause that's what these data centers really are. They're making

a product. And there is heavy industry

byproducts from that. Just like a

steel foundry, just like an automotive assembly plant, just

like a coal fired power plant, when you have something of

that scale, a feedlot with fecal lakes,

when you have something of that size moving into a community,

your local officials should have a positive duty

to report that. Well, and I think if it's not already obvious,

then it should be made even more obvious that

whatever interest the people on whatever local zoning

board have in this development. Meaning

if the data center is buying your land. Exactly. Or your

uncle's. Or your uncle's land. Yeah. Or somebody. There has to be some

transparency because otherwise it just. Even if it's not corrupt, it certainly looks like

it is. Right, Right. And there's many things in our ethics

laws that talk about avoiding even the appearance

of a conflict. Not just real conflict,

but even the appearance. And as an attorney, you have that

duty, for example. I mean, that is a duty that the

Ohio Ethics Commission really has. Has not imposed on

local officials near enough. And the easiest way as a lawyer

to avoid even the appearance of some sort of impropriety

is truth is transparency. That's right. Is just tell my clients what's going on. That's

right. That's right. So when I used to represent the school

treasurers as a lobbyist,

there was a requirement that they disgorge other

businesses that they own, that they have to report that. And I

explained it this way, even though I had reservations about the privacy

concerns, because now it's a public record. And what business

really is it of somebody to know that, let's

say some local school treasurer owns a pizza

parlor or where he's partners in a pizza parlor? And

I explained it this way. Well, if Your school orders 200 pizzas

for a graduation event and it comes out later

that you, the treasurer, more or less paid your own pizza

parlor to supply, you know, like, that's not gonna look good for you

this way you've disclosed it. Yeah. Like you said, the truth. Put it

out for bit. Put it out. Exactly. I think

Jobs Ohio needs to be audited and

possibly that

whole funding mechanism where they, where they get

their budget from the Department of Liquor Control, all of that needs to

go away. I think Jobs Ohio needs to be a state

agency, run like any other state agency with a

director and employees of the state and be

fully, again, transparent and audited.

I think that the data centers need to pay for their own

energy needs without any impact on the

homeowners. I think. I think the Public Utilities Commission of

Ohio has been. All they've been is reactive. Oh,

so they look at the energy requirements and they go, oh, I

see Duke Energy is saying that they have twice the demand,

so we're going to let them raise their rates by a factor of two,

you know, like. Well, no, you should be telling

the people who want to be hooked up to the grid that aren't on the

grid yet. Sorry, we don't have enough capacity for you.

You're going to have to figure out another way. But we can't make grandma's

electrical bill double overnight because you want

to supply computing power to Meta

back in the Silicon Valley. That's not right. There's always

everybody. The mistake people make here is that they attribute.

They only look at what the good can happen. Yeah, they never look at the,

like, what are the consequences? What are the actual aftershocks of this? There

are tons of them. There's tons of these. And my final one,

Steve and I think you will like this. I think we've talked about this before.

So Ohio, as a former and well, still current

industrial state. Right. We have these

brown sites all over the state that are already, if

you will, compromised. I mean, they need, you

know, epa, they need. Before you would,

let's say, grow corn on them or have cattle graze

on these brown sites. You'd have to get the pollution out of the ground. Yeah.

So you're talking about brownfields. Like, and what happens is there's a. There's. The

EPA gets involved at the state and actually I think at the federal level. Yeah,

yeah. And they have to come out and sort of give you the.

Give you the. Because the owners have walked away in many cases. Yeah. So it's

like an old gas station. Yeah. As underground storage. And they're just like, hey, you

can have it. I give up. And believe it or not, there's something called Buster.

Bureau of Underground Storage Tank Removal. Yes. Agency that goes in and they

get it cleaned up. And you know, some of the worst are dry, old

dry cleaning sites. Wow. Yeah. I can only imagine if you happen to live

near an old dry cleaning site. Yeah. That's why the Mad

Hatter went mad. Because of the chemicals in

dry cleaning. Yeah, Dry cleaning. And I think also another bad one. I mean,

aside from paint pesticides. But parking lots are terrible. Oh, yeah,

right. Yeah. But pesticides, dry cleaning sites

and hair places. So I've never

understood this why, like the Columbus

Chamber of Commerce and, you know, all the

rah rah groups in Columbus were so thrilled, for example, when

intel said, well, we're going to go out to a green field. Where

Biden said, it's just empty space. We're going to go out to. Yeah,

nobody cares about your farm. Yeah. We're going to go out to a green field

that's currently growing, you know, corn or

soybeans or whatever, and we're going to stick our chip

factory out there. When there's brownfield

sites all over Columbus and you're just like, well, that would be in the

Columbus school district, which could certainly use the tax base

and there's a lot of need for jobs within Columbus. And

you're just thinking, why didn't they shop this

around? Because it's still near the airport. There's still plenty of water,

you know, so why didn't they. I don't know why they didn't. Like, why not?

Why not? They don't want to bring their executives in to live in those places.

Okay. I mean, that's the only thing I can think, look, we're going to go

out to this place where it's beautiful, there's countryside. We can build our own little

cities out here. Yeah, Fancy suburban

neighborhoods out here. Look at this quaint little old historic downtown

area, Norm, with cool little diners and restaurants. And we're going

to gentrify all this and make. We're going to modernize all this and make it

look like New Albany. Well, certainly the, you know, and

by the way, the permits deal with the owners of that land and they're going

to make millions. Well, the permitting and the regulatory

side by these rather unsophisticated

rural townships, they can steamroll them.

And not only that, the government's created the

insanity that it would take to develop something like that in the city. What do

they do? They avoid it by going cities where they didn't create. That's true.

That's absolutely true. And you see that with the

rebuilding of, what is it, something like 3,000

homes or whatever it is in LA. In LA. Right. They can't rebuild. Yeah,

yeah, because the cities and most cases trip

over their own. You know what's. Because

they've made it so complex for people to build even

a home. I can only imagine. You're right. A data

center in Columbus. They have to come in and meet all the Columbus regulations, pay

all the Columbus taxes, do all the Columbus stuff. And then, by the way, they

have to have their wealthy executives coming into a part of town that is undesirable.

Well, they live in backslayers, but

they don't want to do that. Well, some other news,

Steve, I think this is good, too. The

Cleveland Clinic has settled a legal case

with apparently several

claimants to provide detransitioning

counseling for those that they

transitioned who are now saying,

hey, you horribly mutilated me

and you did it when I was a child. Makes me cringe. And you

know, I think it is

positive that lawyers, doctors,

the Cleveland Clinic itself, that they got together and

they came up with some sort of compensation and

plan to assist those kinds of people. Yeah. But ultimately, you

know, it shouldn't have happened. But, you know, who's paying for this? We are. Well,

yeah, we are. Because these lunatics created all this

stupid policy and engaged in all these stupid practices. Now

they're going to have to settle billion dollar lawsuits and

it's not there. It's insurance money. Right. So insurance companies are going to pay and

guess who they're passing that cost off to. So this is. All of us are

paying the Price for this lunacy. Well, I'm going to

throw. I love it that lawyers are making money. I'm going to throw a

couple of legal things at you here happening in Ohio,

and these are philosophical things. What do you think, Steve?

I know you are highly suspicious, if not

against the death penalty because it's imperfect.

And it's one of those things that when it's final and the guy's put

to death or the woman's put to death, well,

you can't bring them back if it's later found out that the evidence was

tainted or they got poor representation. But Governor

DeWine wants to eliminate. It's come out now. He wants to

formally, and I guess it would be by legislation,

but he wants to go through some kind of process where Ohio will

forbear and formally

get rid of the death penalty as an option. You know,

I'm a walking contradiction on this. I know you are. Because on the one

hand, I agree in theory with the death penalty.

I mean, I think as our good friend Paul Scarcello, who's been on our

show before, and he's probably prosecuted more death penalty cases when he worked for the

Ohio Attorney General's office than anybody I've ever met, he just says, look,

some people need killing. And he says it sort of jokingly because

really what he's saying is when he says it that way,

he is pointing out that the standard for when you impose a

death penalty is, I don't want to say a farce, but

you know it when you know it, but you can't quantify it.

Sort of like pornography, right? Yeah. Yeah. So the problem with the

standard is that, I mean, first of all, assume you get all the. You're only

getting the people who are actually guilty, which I think is an assumption that's a

bridge too far because it does happen that people have been executed that were innocent.

Yeah, it has happened. And then you've got to decide. The harder question then is

who gets to live and who gets to die. And then how do you standardize

that across Ohio with different jury pools and different

people and different this. And let's just stipulate there is no way to do. There's

no way to do that. There's no way to do that. And the implementation of

it then is very difficult. And then, you know, it cost a lot of money.

There's a lot of. But really, I think this is a lot of a do.

I don't say about nothing, but I have seen in the last 20 years

I've been practicing 31 years now doing criminal defense work. I haven't seen a

death penalty case in Franklin county in the last 15 years. I don't think.

And I think they're. They're fewer and fewer and fewer in number

because it's just not for all the reasons we're talking about. And juries are not

imposing the death penalty in many cases. And the ones they are.

Some people need killing, I guess, is what the other side would say. So, look,

I'm. Like I said, I'm a walking contradiction. What's

DeWine got to do with it? Well, he's the governor, I guess. So he's. He's.

He doesn't get to. Now DeWine doesn't get to just say no death penalty. Right.

He's imploring the General assembly, our legislative body in Ohio, to abolish

it. And they have every right to abolish it if that's what they want to

do. Okay. Throw another one at you.

I didn't actually know this until I went to my class reunion, my high

school class reunion, and I

reunited with a friend of mine, a

classmate who's on the Ohio Supreme Court,

Pat Fisherman. And Pat told me. I

don't know how I missed this, Steve, but I thought the term

limits in Ohio for public officials were for

legislative and administrative

offices. I don't know how this got by me.

It shows you how. You just can't know everything. The Supreme

Court is also term limited, and that blows me away, really,

because we don't have that on a federal level at all. Yeah.

Federal life appointments. And of course, they don't run for office. No, they're appointed.

They're appointed and approved. They're elected in Ohio and

they can only serve two terms. Yeah. Which I did not. That did

not confuse. I think I did know that, but I've never really given it much

thought. Yeah. And. Well, I think he's a hell of a jurist, and

it's not because he's a friend of mine, but

I hate to lose that talent. I mean, I think that's terrible

that term limits are. It's one of those

debates, right? There's pros and cons of all that stuff, man. You get a good

Supreme Court justice. And Pat,

he has not ruled. It's not like my

agenda is the same as his. He's ruled for. Against.

Just as an example, he's ruled against some of the

redistricting proposals by the Republican Party. And

he's a Republican, so he's been part of that majority

that turned down two or three maps. This is what I like to say.

He's a good guy. And if you fall even the US Supreme Court politics and

the law are not the same. Yeah. Just because you got

appointed by a Republican or just because you identify with the Republican Party. Just because

you got to let. Once you like the law. Like you've seen me here. You

are correct on this sort of weave around. Oh, yeah, we talked about the Civil

Rights Act. Right. Yeah. So. So look, it's the law and political. You may

disagree with it, but it's the law. So you have to follow it. And as

lawyers, we are hopefully trained.

Maybe not if you're not. This is what people hate about lawyers because we're trained

to look at it both ways. I mean, you can just sort of say, all

right, I get this. But over here is this. And you and I

have gone at it on this kind of stuff. Sure. Yeah. Because I just sort

of have to look at it like, look, here's the trade off. Here's what it

is. We have no choice. We got to follow along. Yeah.

You're denying the public the right to reelect

somebody that the public otherwise would reelect. I guess

in the case of Supreme Court justices, I guess that would be

my one exception because I think eight years

might not be enough. Like two four year

terms. I think that, I think I agree with you. Somebody gets some gravitas

at a certain point. Point. And I'll just tell you, Pat

left a major law firm. He

took such a haircut to become a Supreme Court justice that

it is. I know people won't believe this, but it

really is to people like him, a service to

society. He gave up a huge

legal practice at a law firm to become a

justice. And now he'll go back to that and God bless him.

But I can tell you this. If we didn't have term limits,

I think he'd run a third time. But he's done in two years. So

I just thought I'd throw that out because I wasn't aware of that.

And it just shows you that. So just so you know, states with

initial elections. 22 states have initial elections for their Supreme Court judges.

Partisan elections. Are eight states

nonpartisan. Are 14 states with

appointed the highest one nonpartisan? So you know it's not a

Republican versus Democrat. Yeah. States with a point of

system. 16 states appointed by the governor. There are

14 states appointed by the legislature. Two more retention election states.

It's all over the map. They combine the two. 18 states here initially

appointed to the bench, either by the governor or the General Assembly. But then if

you want to keep your job, you got to go get a retention election. So

all sorts of different ways. Yeah. It's also final thing,

Ohio related, this ufc, you know, the big

fight on the White House lawn that by all reports

was a huge success. Supposed to, I, you know,

I didn't watch it. I'm not a wrestling guy, but I'm told

that the, the meets, that the contests were

thrilling and lots of upsets, and that was a

very high quality event.

A local Danville, Ohio, that's out in Knox County.

Young guy, he took the 3,000 bucks he got for

graduating from high school, and his mother noticed he

was buying body armor and guns and that he

was communicating with people that

she didn't know and that he was acting strange. So she

reported it, I guess, to the Danville police or the

Knox County Sheriff. And they in turn got hold of the FBI

and they uncovered something like, is it 13, 14 people

and growing that had this.

None of them were in D.C. they didn't follow through, but

they were putting together some concepts to

assassinate people, to kill them at this

event. And we'll never know if

they maybe would have done something later on or how

far they got. But at any rate,

the two amazing things about this is that this was

interstate in scope. So it's clearly within the FBI's

purview. It's. It's not something that just happened in Ohio. This

guy had accomplices or

schemers that were in on it in California. I think one

of them was a non US citizen, a

Mexican citizen. So we'll

see. But the other amazing thing to me is

just the idea of a parent turning

in their son, reporting on their son. I

think the mother is a hero in this case. It's gotta be one of the

hardest things she's ever done. It's gotta. I mean, you know, because, Steve, you've been

there in sentencing, when a mother comes in and

she's bawling and asking the judge for mercy for a

son who maybe, you know, did something terrible, what she

did here was the ultimate act of motherhood. I mean, it

really, I mean, even, I mean, you. I could drill down on this. You see

this man? I mean, look. So you have. The ultimate act of

parenting. You and I have talked about this is not protecting your

kids, but the opposite.

Offering only the boundaries necessary for them to move forward and

grow on their own. And I've had to watch my

kids fall down the stairs metaphorically many times

and cringe Because I knew that I could have stopped them,

I could have helped them them or I could have done it for them. Right.

I, I, this is true. I was in, I was in a meeting one time

with one of, one of my sons at their parents ever the, the school. And

they were like, well, you know, your son may not pass the whatever grade and

whatever. I said, okay, flunk them. Yeah. And they looked at me like I was

crazy. Yeah. And I, I said, I'm serious, guys. Yeah.

Look, it's fifth grade. Yeah, who cares? I believe in

object lessons. What's he going to learn, you know, to

help mold a child? You know, object lessons are good.

You know, my son Paul, at one time, I love

this story, but he came home from grade school and he

obviously had heard about something called Children's Services,

right? So I punished him for something.

Now, none of my punishments were physical in nature, but, you know,

like, you can't use a computer for a week or whatever it was. And,

and he wailed and he stomped around the house and he said, I'm

gonna call children's Services. And I got out a quarter. Here

you go. Please, please call Children's Services.

Nothing would please me more than to hear you come back after a week

of eating hot dogs and baked beans about how

miserable it was. That's a group home. Yeah,

right? Winners and losers. Yeah, let's do it. Okay,

so the Senate, with

four Republican, I don't know, I don't

want to call them traitors. What would it be? Outliers

passed this war powers referendum,

which really has no effect on the

US Iran war, because we're currently in a

ceasefire. There's this memoir of understanding

that may or may not lead to a treaty. But at any

rate, Senators

Cassidy, who Trump famously

endorsed his opponent, and he's going to

lose office. Ron Paul,

libertarian, who's just against any kind of executive power.

Susan Collins, who's running against this Nazi guy, and

then Lisa Murkowski, who's just, she's the biggest

rhino in the Senate. So they all voted to

take away, in theory, Trump's power

after this stipulated period of time in the War Powers Act,

I think it's 60 days, they

voted with the Democrats to take away his right to prosecute the war

in Iran, which most scholars say, well,

now that we've had a ceasefire, the clock will start again. It's a new set

of data, It's a new 60 day period if it ever goes back.

But to me, it's upsetting that you would do that

because all it does is give Iran this idea that,

hey, we're starting, you know, Trump is losing

the support of not only the Congress, but the American people.

My winner would be John Fetterman, who voted against

the War Powers act because he has said many times for

47 years, everybody said they can't have a nuke.

Trump actually takes action to

wipe out, at least for the next 20 years, their nuclear

program. And so, no, he did the right thing.

Maybe gas prices are higher in the short term,

but that's a small price to pay to take a

nuclear power off the table. Interesting. And I wonder

if this latest peace deal or the truce is. So he gets a new set

of downs. Maybe Trump really is playing three dimensional chess.

Yeah. A lot of people think he is doing a rope a dope thing. Let's

get through the midterms. Let's just string. If Iran wants

to string this out, I'll rope a dope with him. And then after the midterms,

if I still have a Republican House and a Senate. Rock and roll.

We're rocking and rolling. All right, my good and bad. Yes, sir. We'll start with

the bad. People who hate the country just

because they don't like the president. People who

are metaphorically pissing in the.

In the Lincoln pool. A reflection pond.

The reflection. It's like, come on, guys. Yeah.

Why? Come on, it's still a country.

If Biden would have done this, would you have had the same reaction? The answer

is no. Well, and in fact, Obama did spend 14

million to try to clean up the reflecting pool,

and Trump spent just about the same amount. But it's a crime

when he does it. Yeah. It's just so insane. So that's my loser. All you

people are losers, right? Look, I get it. Don't vote for the man. I could

care less who you vote for. I mean, I care who runs the country, but

I don't hate the country because when. When the people that I didn't vote for

are in charge of the country, guess what? I still love the country. Exactly. Which

brings me to the good. Exactly. Robert Van

Winkle, AKA Vanilla Ice. Ice. Ice,

baby. You win this week, my friend. You win because. What's he say?

He performed at the I love the 90s portion of the celebration. Yeah.

And he basically just said his quote. Shut up and play. Yeah, shut up and

play. I'll play for Putin if that's what you want. I'm playing my music, man.

We're going to have fun. We're going to celebrate the country. Agreed. That's exactly what

should have happened. Agreed. And these artists who think that because they can play an

instrument, they can play some music, they can act on TV or on the stage,

I think you have God given talent that is remarkable. But that

doesn't mean that you understand politics any better than the rest. Right? Right.

And I don't need to hear your opinions on it. I could give a rat's

ass about your opinion unless I ask for it. Right. A

good example of how the country has changed would be

like when you look at presidents who were controversial, like

Lyndon Baines Johnson or Richard M. Nixon,

you would have people who were clearly on the other side of the political

spectrum, like Diana Ross or

Stevie Wonder. They would go and perform at the White House.

And they weren't there to say, nixon's my guy. They were there

to say, we love the country and I respect the office of the President.

The President's asked me to perform and I'm not going to do

it for him. I'm going to do it for the office and

for the country. As they say in the military, salute the man or salute the

rank, not the man. And I'm not going to. You know, Aretha Franklin. You know,

these kinds of people who were great musicians would

just go and do their art and they

weren't using the occasion to chastise

the President. So stupid. All right, well, look, that's your weekly dose of common

sense, at least for now. We

are coming at you right from the middle till next week.