Welcome back to another week of Common Sense Ohio, where we try to cut through the noise and get to the bedrock of what's really going on in America. This episode came out of the gates on a topic that’s far too often dismissed these days, how foundational checks and balances are to our system, and what happens when we lose sight of that.

One concept discussed was how politicians and activists are pushing to do away with the Senate or pack the courts for what they claim is the “greater good.” The conversation focused on why our country’s founders put these safeguards in place: to stop mob rule and protect individual rights. There was real concern about the current climate, where the prevailing sentiment among radicals seems to be, “We know best, so just trust us.” That’s a dangerous road. When you think you have the moral high ground to override process and rule by emotion, you’re tapping into the same ugly impulses that have fueled witch hunts and tyranny throughout history.

Another key theme that emerged, especially as we compared policies across political parties, was a consistent disappointment in how both left and right, but lately especially the far left, wield power for their own ends. Whether it’s social media companies cooperating with the government to suppress information, or politicians deciding your freedom is optional based on how “righteous” they see their cause, there’s a pattern of disregard for the rights and autonomy of the individual.

We also took a detour into the insanity defense that’s playing out in the Lindsay Clancy case, as well as controversies around Meta’s new rules for kids on social media. There’s always tension between individual rights and collective safety, but too often, it feels like the solution is more surveillance and less freedom.

Several points were raised, including how quickly we, as a country, forget that the tools and rules we create can all too easily be used against us. If you want a fair, free society, you have to protect those principles, even when it’s frustrating or when your guy isn’t in charge.

And yes, we capped it off with a bit of Dolly Parton versus modern celebrity “virtue signaling.” At the end of the day, we celebrate the folks who bring people together and respect everyone’s freedom to think, speak, and live as they choose.

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

[email protected]

Harper CPA Plus on website

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.

Copyright 2026 Common Sense Ohio

All right, here we are. commonsenseohio.com.

That's where you can find us. Sponsored by Harper Plus Accounting. Our

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No, no. He has tools that

would make your average collection agent

thrilled. Yeah. You know, to be able to attach

Your tax refund, for example. Everything in life, right? You know,

so bad, bad stuff. Anyway, this— today in history, Barack

Hussein Obama was nominated. Hmm.

Um, and forever after screwing up our country. I mean,

well, you know, whatever. Yeah, it turns out he

actually is a socialist. You know, another one of

these, uh, typical situations all over the

country. We're seeing this where You know,

candidates run as one thing and then govern in a completely different

way. And then when society gets even more

radical, like the DSA has within the Democratic Party, you're

seeing Hillary and Obama and Schumer, uh,

just throw in with, uh, well, El-Sayed and,

and these other whack-a-moles. It's interesting because Hillary and Obama were

both Saul Alinsky sort of— Oh yeah.

Followers. Yep. Back in the day. Right. Look up Saul Alinsky if you don't know

what I'm talking about. Absolutely. And here's what's interesting about this.

The DSA's platform: disband the Senate,

change the power structure of the executive branch, pack the court,

and then take over, uh, a House of Representatives and rule by

majority. Like, what could possibly go wrong? Yeah. What's interesting about

this is that I actually saw, and this is going back

maybe during Trump's first presidency somewhere,

an interview of Obama. And help me out, listeners, if you can remember,

maybe you can remember. He was talking to

somebody. I can't remember who it was. I should have noted this

at the time, but he was talking about

the need for the Senate is now passé. Yeah, sure. Disband the

Senate. Yeah, right. I looked for that recently online and

I can't find it. Okay. I can't find it anywhere. Okay. And, uh,

I'm, I'm in this debate with a buddy of mine who says, nah, Obama never

believed that. I was like, no, he said that in an interview. I remember listening

to it and I can't find it. It's been scrubbed. Yeah. Uh, now the

DSA is, it's their mainstream platform. So Obama always had these ideals as

a president. Always did. And dreams of my father. who was

a communist. His father was, you know, like, yeah, you know, he,

he's implied it. He's now

completely out, uh, and just,

you know, on board with the DSA. So, uh,

yeah. Um, the thing is about having

2 senators from every state regardless of size of

population of course, was to address

the rule of the mob, the, you know, the, the

lynch mob. And, you know, whether it's Mary Shelley's

Frankenstein or, uh, The Scarlet Letter

by Nathaniel Hawthorne or The Crucible by Norman,

um, Mailer, you know, whatever you're

looking at, uh, these stories of

the majority ruling or the scourge of the

majority against the minority, where,

you know, you have somebody who's innocent

or somebody who's committed something in the view of the majority is

a sin, and then you crush them. You put them to

death. You ostracize

them. You oppress their free speech rights,

whatever. There's a long history of protecting

minority populations, and by that I mean

not just racial or religious, but also

ideologically minority populations.

Yeah, right. And by equalizing— and that was

the point of the bicameral legislature, was to have one house

where all states were equal and another house, the lower

house, where bigger states have more congresspeople.

And, and, and that was to address the potential

mob rule. And now, and now the DSA is in favor of

mob rule. Because they're right. They're righteous. So it's interesting, if you go

back and read the debates on the Constitution and the founding of our

country, Adams was on our side on this.

John Adams. And I just looked up some of his quotes on this, and he

was adamant about this because, no pun intended, right? Yeah.

Adam about it. He, uh, because he knew that the rich would eventually take over,

the powerful would eventually take over, and it would be the same aut—

aut— autotra— you know what I'm saying? Authoritarian,

uh, government that they were trying to run from. And here's what he says about

it. It's interesting. A single assembly Meaning just the House of Representatives.

Yeah. Is liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an individual,

subject to fits of humor, starts of passion, fights of—

flights of enthusiasm, partialities of prejudice, and consequently

productivity of hasty results and absurd judgment. And all

these errors ought to be corrected and defects supplied by some

controlling power. And it's— and all of what you just

read, Steve, is amped up even more in the

age of social media where

people come to these knee-jerk

conclusions based on their feelings at that time. What

would've happened during COVID Oh my gosh. Right. I'd

be in a concentration camp. Jackboots on the ground rounding us up because we didn't

want to get the shot. Because listen to what he says.

Fits of humor, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm. That's right. Partialities of

prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty

results and absurd judgments. Right. I have

heard it was a well-heeled, I think it was

one of the Ivies law professor, and this is back right before COVID

talking about how we needed to get rid of the Senate. We needed to get

rid of some of these balances of powers, pack the court, because Without all the

power, his party couldn't fix these existential threats

like global warming, world destruction, racism,

white supremacy. As if, one, as if those things all exist

on the level that he's talking about. Right, which they don't. Which they don't. And

2, that given the proper power, he could fix it with righteous morality that

would not end up corrupt. I mean, it's so insane that these people think this.

Well, the only reason you even have representative

democracy is because it's always been

impractical up until now. Okay, so

here's where I'm going. It's always been impractical

to ask the people to decide every issue, right? Well, now

with what, 95% of people or more

having cell phones, Uh, you have an instant ballot

means right in your hand. We could— there's no need even

for the lower house. Mm-hmm. The only reason we have the lower house is

because, you know, a group of, say, 5,000 citizens back in

the 1820s or whatever, well, they couldn't all go to DC,

and, and the founders knew that. So you have a congressional system set up

where they pick one out of the 5,000 and say, you go to

DC you represent us and you vote our interests. Yeah.

But now that we have the technology for you and I to

individually vote our interests, I mean, you could make an

argument to dispense with Congress and we'll just have a

plebiscite on every issue. You know, uh, oh, there's

been a tragic mass killing, so do we ban guns,

yes or no? And then instantly people without any analysis, without

any thinking, without any reference to the Constitution, just say,

yeah, you know what? Nobody has a need for, you

know, an AR-15. That sounds like somebody being— So let's just ban it

right now. Just ban it. Sounds like somebody being productive of hasty results and absurd

judgments. Exactly. That's the point, right? That's the point. Knee-jerk

reactions. Exactly. We all have them. Right. We

all see like, holy crap, this is horrible. We should stop this now. And then

you wake up the next day and, all right, well, maybe it's a bit, what

can we do about it? Oh, gee whiz. Because now I read where a

farmer held off a bunch of bandits

with his AR-15. He didn't kill any of them, but he arrested a few

as a citizen and waited for the LEOs to come. Yeah. I

mean, there's positive uses of it that never get covered in the

media. But as Adams wrote, under

the hot glare of the instant satisfaction

You know, let's go kill Frankenstein and, and, and the, you know,

and the creature that he made in his lab because we're scared of it.

Um, you know, that's how— that's if you

can justify, you know, it's always the ugly thing in the law

that lead us to these absurd conclusions. If you can

justify without any trial killing a

Frankenstein, then you're off and running. You know, why not

just put me and Steve in prison 'cause we didn't get our COVID shots? There's

a reason we call it mob rule. Mob rule. Right. The lynch mob. It doesn't

work. And understand, the majority

controls the minority in that. So people, and people confuse this all

the time. Well, we have a democracy. Isn't that how it should be? No, we

have a constitutional republic. We don't have pure democracy where

majority rules. We don't. Right. Not at the federal level. Right. And

not at the state levels. Yeah. At the local levels, at times you do. Yeah.

In my household, it's an authoritarian regime. I'm in

charge. The democracy stops at the front door. Yeah.

But that's my theory. So there's different types of—

there's different scales of this. Right. And if

you had majority rule on all these issues of the day,

think how awry our country would've gone in like slavery

days. Oh, sure. Or Jim Crow days. Sure. Right.

They could have drummed up a majority and just kept Jim Crow in place.

Right. Yep. Yep. We are a country

with a philosophy that the individual rights of each

of us are our own

search for our own destiny in our own way with our

own religious or non-religious thoughts.

the idea of individual freedom

triumphing over the collective interest

is the predicate for America. It's that regardless

of what the majority thinks of you or, or what they

think of your choices, as long as you don't hurt anybody

else physically, you can do whatever you want. Go

be quirky, go be gay, go, go, go, go do

whatever you want to do. Just don't You can't do 2 things.

There's a few things you can't do. You can't hurt somebody else by doing

those things, and you can't force somebody else to agree with you. That's

right. You can't do those things. That's right. And as long as you don't do

that, you can go live a life however you want to live, right? Within the

bounds of the law. Right. Yeah. And this is where I always ask

people under— this is an interesting question I get. I know we're probably off the

news here, but I am enjoying this. under the Trump

regime or under any of the person you hate the most,

Trump, what rights did you lose? Individual rights did

you lose or were even threatened? Yeah. And

people always stop and pause. And the only one they always say is, well, he

almost overthrew the government with the right to vote or something. I'm like, yeah, no.

I mean, even if I gave you that that was an actual attempt, it

failed ab initio. It failed immediately. It was never going to— nothing like

that was ever going to happen. Right. Um, it's like his talk about a third

term. He floats these things almost just—

he's trolling people. But at the individual level, he's never

advocated for you not to have the right to

whatever sexual preference you have. Yeah. He's never advocated that you shouldn't be able to

say things. He's never advocated that you shouldn't, uh,

that you shouldn't have the right to bear arms. the other side does it all

the time. Well, again, we're going down this

path, but it is interesting. If I were to make a

list of the truly awful things—

crimes, pogroms, even

like the internment of people of Japanese descent from the West Coast—

if I were to draw up a list of all the really awful things

that happened in American history, the

overwhelming number of these awful, awful

government policies and decisions by government would

be on the, quote, liberal side. They're,

they're the ones, they're the administrations that

got us into more wars, that used

atomic weapons, that put people in concentration

camps, that were defending slavery, uh,

that founded the Ku Klux Klan. I mean, you could just go down the list.

It's unbelievable where that

whole party is. And now we're so

close to really National Socialism, and

people don't understand that people like El-Sayed, who is

antisemitic, running for Senate in, in, uh, Michigan

with Hasan Piker as his cheerleader. These guys are

anti-Semites who believe in a strong

America, but a socialist America. And I'm like, oh,

I've seen this record before about— like, I've listened to this record

before, like 100 years ago in another very

cultured country where calls to exclude

certain people from the social fabric or

or to blame them for, oh, it's the bankers,

it's the international bankers that are doing this, that, and the other thing.

It sounds very much the same to me. And it's coming from

so-called liberals. It's coming from the same people that it came from before. Yeah.

And I'm going to disagree on one point. I don't think they want America.

Hasan Piker, these people hate America. Well, he hates the current America. That's for sure.

They hate America. We deserve 9/11. We're horrible. I mean,

you've got El-Sayed now saying, did you hear him

compare circumcision to castration? Yeah, right.

It's lunacy. It's lunacy. And you got Piker

screaming how horrible America is, that we deserve

9/11. These people don't like the country. They want to change it. As

Mr. Obama said, I want to fundamentally change the

country. Right. Now, nobody ever, everybody sort of implies that like

the evil thing. Well, we're gonna fundamentally change the country. What do you mean by

that, Mr. Obama? He means this. Right. He means we're

going to just get rid of this and build a country that they want. Now,

what's interesting in this, it's all founded in sort of the same

flaw, that the human can

figure out what's best for everybody else. Right.

That I am smarter, I am

blessed, I've studied.

I'm special. I'm special. I know the most. But trust

me, I even saw some, you know, one of these street

journalists interviewing some guy in California. It's like, well, I'm educated. I know this and

I know this. And the interviewer's like, what's up? I've been to college. That's what

he says. I've been to college. I have 2 degrees. And it sounds like you

think you're smarter than the people over there. And he's like, I am. Yeah, there

you go. They think that. Right. They think that. Of course. Which

means they know best for you. Right. And it's always this grounding

in the self as opposed to something bigger. Right. Right.

And if you ground yourself in something bigger and you say, look, I don't know

every damn thing, then you don't end up down that

path. And what Adams was trying to do was protect us from that.

See, I think so. We're

in sync. I'm projecting and

thinking of what would happen

if a socialist took over. And I'm looking at Mamdani

as a micro laboratory for what he's doing in New York.

And certainly he doesn't believe in a weak government structure for

the city. Not at all. And neither would say AOC

or Bernie or any future socialist

president of this country. I believe they do believe

that they want a strong, even militarily,

United States. But what they would use it for is stuff

like river to the sea. I mean, they would

have a completely different set of strategic goals.

but they certainly want to use force. They want a strong governmental

power. Oh yeah. And they would use it on— they would turn the

military against the people even. Of course they would. Just like

good old Schicklgruber did in Germany. What would've happened during

COVID Yeah. Just what would've happened? Mass arrests, man. And

there's still people out there that agree that that should've happened. That's right. And

still people masking to this day, even doing it as a

symbol of comply with the government. Virtue. We

told you to do this. They were right. And they were

excusing Dr. Fauci, which is his intentions were

pure, which is, they think, absurd.

You're a bit older than I am. I didn't grow up in the '60s,

'70s counterculture era, but those people, like

those true sort of what I'll call the first generation of— Sure. Ben

Jerry's. They never, never would have cottoned to the government

forcing something like that on it. I mean, that was their— like, we're just going

to comply and call that virtue, right? It's lunacy. Well, think of the

inconsistency. So during COVID the same people who

were telling us it's a woman's body,

therefore she can choose, okay, that her

choices about her body reign supreme over any

other interest, including the very life of a child she may

have inside of her. This feeds into Lindsey Clancy, by the

way. The same people who told

us that told us you have no interest in controlling your

personal body when it comes to COVID. The

only message is they know best. They know best.

And they get to— So it really had nothing to do with your body. I

was talking to a young law student. And your decisions. Exactly. I was just talking

to a young law student that's working for me now, and she is taking constitutional

law, and she's struggling with it as we all did in law school. Sure. Because

you don't see the forest for the trees. You're just reading these cases of this

hard language and whatever it is. Right. I started to give her a bigger picture.

I said, this is all— like, the facts are interesting of the individual cases

you read in constitutional law, but it's really all about the levers of power that

the government is pulling. Right. And what control do they have? Right. And how does

it work? Right. And I said, this is why those who try to

manipulate that always end up disappointed, because if we have a court that's doing what

it's supposed to do, it doesn't focus on the facts or

an out— a factual outcome. Right. Or it shouldn't.

Uh, it was always political. It focuses on the lever of power. So it

was— yes, it was always bent, Steve. You know, constitutional,

um, digestion by a court, it's

always political. And it shouldn't be that way.

It should be— and this is what frustrated me during, uh, law school,

is I wanted to approach con law like it was

engineering, right? Mm-hmm. That I have principles. I

even have like firm laws of how to,

uh, how to how to analyze a particular case that,

you know, you would refer to previous decisions, you'd look at, uh,

you know, where our common law comes from. And, and just like

some kind of human AI machine, I

would digest all this information and I would spit out,

you know, an answer on my punch card. And it simply

doesn't— it doesn't work that way. It's a fascinating meld of all

these things. That's right. And when done correctly,

your way, the way you would prefer it, is

most of it. Yeah. I'm never going to say it's all of it. No, but

it's most of it. Yeah. It's always got a political bent to it. But it

has to. Yeah. I mean, it's a— these are— it's a governmental entity. And they're

appointed by politicians. Appointed by politicians. Who vet them. But, uh,

you'd be a Hugo Black, right? No law means no law. And that's what I

mean. Yeah, no law. It says no law, you can't pass a law. And there's

a lot I do. I have another podcast and people give me these comments all

the time. I said, look, I can't say I disagree, I'm just telling you what

happens, right? And, um, and then you have

Scalia, who is a very strict construction guy, uh, but

then you get the others. And there's been some recent decisions now, um, I

think Jackson, Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote this ridiculous opinion. Amy Coney

Barrett went after her for it. But it, you know, You have

to have some objectivity in this and not control outcomes

using a lever of power. Now, the socialists that we're talking about, they don't think

that they have to adhere to those boundaries because they know best.

Right. They know what you should do. Right. They know what is right. Right. They

know for you what is right, even if you don't know. Right. This is Marx

101, right? When in Italy, when the uprising

didn't happen, they thought, well, Now we have to do it for them because they're

too stupid to even know that they're miserable. Right. Yeah. And this is

unfair. Yeah. KBJ is the perfect example of a

Supreme Court justice that wants to

enact policy. She's not really interested at all

in basing her arguments on the Constitution. Not at all. Not a

bit. It's just if

something looks to her Unfair or wrong or

not generous or not with a happy outcome.

No, no, no. The outcome that she thinks is right. Well, happy outcome to her.

Yeah. Is, uh, you know, that's what's unconstitutional. Yep.

And, and the hard part of the legal system is

that the outcomes aren't always what we like. Right.

Hence, you change the Constitution

in some way, which we've done What do— what, what,

27 times? Yeah, there's— as my buddy likes to say, well, there's

an instruction book. It came with a book. It came with a book. It's like

The Greatest American Hero when he finds the instruction book for the suit. Like, it

comes with a book. You can, you can, uh, you can change it. You can

change it. You can call it— you can even call another constitutional convention if

you want. Yep, you can do it. It's all provided for. But I'd be curious

to see how these DSAs propose to do what they're talking about

doing. How would they affect— would it be a constitutional amendment? Of course not. They

would take the power And just cram it down. Right.

Just cram it down. And if you've packed the court with your people, I mean,

this is a coup. This is what they're calling for. Absolutely. Is an

overthrow of the American government. Yeah. That's what they're talking about. Yeah. They're not

talking about amending the Constitution. No. They're talking about packing the court so they can

put their people in that will vote their way corruptly because they're their

people, and then just take it over. Oh, we don't need the Senate anymore. We

don't need to amend the Constitution. We're just going to say it. Yeah.

Civil war would— and here's the problem now.

I heard Jordan Peterson ask this. This is years ago, and so it's not new,

but he just says, well, the problem with these people that

hate all the Trump supporters is that it's like half, right? What

are you going to do with the other half? These are people. Right.

Yeah. And the reasons for hating Trump,

I mean, if When you really do a deep interview,

which is hard to do, but when you do that and you peel

away the layers, it gets down to some really strange

perception issues.

Very few of the people really understand any of these issues

that they claim they oppose Trump because

of whatever, immigration or or, uh,

you know, trans stuff or, or whatever it is, building up the

military, very few of the people really understand the ins

and outs. They, they use these words or they use these

phrases, um, as like epithets.

And, and when you try to drill down past that and try to really—

even the DSA people don't even understand Marx

and Engels and, and Stalin and Well, they're running around wearing

Maoist shirts, right? Yeah, and Che shirts. And

basically they don't even understand what they purport to

represent. And the problem with a lot of

this is that Trump, to so many,

especially suburban women, he's an icky guy. He

reminds them of their dad or their grandpa.

He's like Archie Bunker or whatever. And they build from

that this construct that, well, whatever he says

must be wrong. And like, it's just an immediate reaction.

It's— they can't— the Democratic Party quickly

realized that they can't control him. Yeah. And that

makes him dangerous to them. So you and I,

when we analyze any kind of government program,

whether it came from Biden or Ronald Reagan or Obama or

Trump, I look at that program

dispassionately and try to analyze, well, what do I think of that

program? And I could care less if it came from Obama or

Biden, for example. If it's a good idea and it comes from

them, I accept that. Mm-hmm. You know, if I've

analyzed it and thought about it, So it's

not like an authorship thing, but for so many, this half of the

population that Jordan Peterson, who's interestingly enough

a psychologist, is the psychology

behind their enmity towards Trump a lot of

times has nothing at all to do with the issues. It

just has to do with some kind of personal revulsion. We

hate that guy. We hate that guy. He's horrible. So then every— like

Trump is fond of saying, if I came up with a cure for

cancer, you'd be against the cure for cancer because I found

it. But if Biden found the cure for cancer, it'd be a wonderful thing. This

shot came along under Trump, and I remember Congress saying,

I'm not going to take any shot that he created. Right, right, right. And then

they get power. The Trump vaccine. The Trump vaccine. Then they get their power. Now

they force everybody to get it. And I think to say what you and I

are saying is I, I, we always try to be— I can't promise I'm always

consistent and perfect, by— not by any means, but I always try to look at

what it is. Yeah. And I wouldn't have taken that shot under if Trump were

president. I wouldn't have taken that shot if Biden were president. Wouldn't have made it,

or whoever comes next. Well, on this show, Steve, we, we have a whole host

of things that I think you and I mostly, uh, are in sync on.

Not everything, but, uh, that Trump has proposed or done

which I think are clearly not good ideas. This New Canada thing,

I think, is a mistake for him. We may disagree on this. Right, right. I

agree. I think this is a mistake right now. It is a mistake. And I'm

not saying go Trump just because— No. Because we can look at this and

say, all right, I can criticize this part of it. This is what being an

American is all about. We get to do this. We get to say, look, I'm

not just gonna adhere to this party line. Think how fascist this sounds. You

have to agree with everything your leader says or else. Well, we just hit $40

trillion in debt, right? When Trump

started in office, we were at $33 trillion. He is

spending like a drunk sailor, and he keeps coming up with more and more

socialist-oriented kinds of programs like banning

large companies from buying homes, like this

Trump account for babies. I don't like any of it.

Yeah. I mean, you know, it— and, and even the thing

that really got him, you know, some

comity with, uh, the, the

African-American community, this, this

spending on predominantly or historically Black

colleges to the exception of other colleges. I don't like it.

That's crazy. I don't like it. It's color, it's color, it's race-based.

favoritism. And here's what— but he does it for political reasons, maybe.

Um, I mean, at least that's the presumption. Well, he likes giving away

government money. This is my problem with DeWine and most RINOs.

And I think Trump is not— he's not the

classic RINO, but he's close. He's— he dabbles,

right? He dabbles in these kinds— I don't think he's— look, I don't think he's

ever— I think he's been a Democrat his whole life. I think he likes playing

Santa Claus. Yeah. You know, just like the wine. And he likes this idea

of taking our tax money that, you know, we were just talking

about, Glenn. You know, we have to go see an accountant, spend a lot of

money, you know, throughout the years doing our

bookkeeping, keeping track of where money goes, hiring an accountant.

And then we spend a week or 10 days compiling all these

records, shipping them off to our accountant, all of this

stuff. Right? And then we have people in DC

taking our hard-earned money and giving it to other

people as if it's like playing Santa Claus. Yeah.

And it just blows me away that they can think like that

when Thomas Sowell and, and true conservatives would say,

well, when you take money from somebody involuntarily

with the threat of imprisonment, Right. I.e., taxes. You're,

you're, you're really— you're stealing from them. You're stealing. Now look, to some degree

we've agreed with it. Um, you know, that there's a Constitution

and Congress has the right to tax, but it's been expanded so much that now

they're taking our money to do what they will at their whim. Yeah. With

an executive order, no less. I mean, it's lunacy to me. It is lunacy. I've

been howling at the moon about this now for years, but, uh,

I guess the point we're trying to make underlying all of this is that we

can see the both good and bad out of this stuff, right? But it seems

like a lot of people on the other side never did. Not all of them,

right? I mean, Bill Maher is now sort of saying, look guys, this is insanity.

Why are you going along with this? He said, I might vote for, uh, J.D.

Vance. Yeah. And, or Marco Rubio, whoever the Republican,

because like, I can't vote for AOC. Because Bill Maher is more

of a traditional blue dog Kennedy-type Democrat.

Right. Well, he's certainly not an anti-Semite being Jewish himself. Well, he's

not an anti-Semite and he is not a DSA guy.

Yeah. So he's kind of part of the Democrat Party that's

just been abandoned. They've written off those

kinds of Democrats. Carville being another example, James

Carville. Lots of these,

if you will,

middle-of-the-road, pretty much pro-union.

They think of themselves as the vanguard of the working class and all of that

stuff. That's all gone. But that's all gone. They hate the working class. They do.

The elites have taken over. This is what Adams— it's like we just get right

back to this— what Adams was most concerned about.

And if you go read some of these debates he had with Jefferson, I mean,

this is it. This is boots on the ground what he was

worried about. Right. And he was the champion for the little guy. Yeah. And

Adams was smarter than all of them, as, as urban as a, as

a, uh, as a founding father could be. He was an urbanite,

and Jefferson was a farmer. And, and you couldn't—

you— the classic inability of

Jefferson not to absorb and understand what's going

on in the teeming masses of places like Boston

which weren't really teeming, but I mean, that was as urban as it got back

then. It, it's, it's striking, and it's, it's sort of

understandable how Jefferson had this remote

idea that the, the lofty, the, the good angels in people would

always overcome their negative impulses. And Adams

knew better. Adams knew better. Adams was, Adams was, uh,

just a boots-on-the-ground— Absolutely. slugger, you know, just

saw— but really, really smart. If I, if I could be like any of them,

it would be Adams. And he was fair-minded. He did represent during

the Boston Massacre. He represented as an attorney,

right, the, the, uh, the British

soldiers who opened fire on the crowd and created enough

doubt in the minds of the jury that they let them off. They,

they were not convicted. And that was Adams Certainly he was a

revolutionary, but he was also a believer in due

process and fairness, even

for his enemies, his political enemies,

not his mortal enemies. Yeah. And

wasn't he the guy, didn't he represent

the slave ship? Slave ship. I believe he did. Yeah. I'm looking that up right

now. Right. Amistad was the movie. Yeah, Amistad, which

washed up on shore and, oh, a

whole cargo load of African

slaves. Well, what do we do with these people? Well, shouldn't they be

free? They landed in a free state. Yep.

And I think Anthony

Hopkins played Adams in that movie, if I'm not mistaken. But

anyway, we've digressed a little bit. Yeah. Uh, we should probably hit some news.

Well, the Lindsay Clancy case, uh, we were, uh,

disgusting before the show. Um,

I'm fascinated that somehow this has taken on

the abortion debate for some reason. Okay,

clearly she strangled babies long after

they were born, so it's not abortion. Um,

And she sent her husband away. I

remember from law school this basic

precept in the law that you, in order to be

convicted of a crime, you must know basically, I'm

boiling this down, the difference between right and wrong. And the

argument by her team, her defense

lawyers, is that At the time of the killings, the

strangulation of these 3 babies of hers,

children, she did not know

right from wrong, and an interior voice appeared in

her head and told her to commit these murders.

Militating on the other side of that, of course, is that she

concocted a plan to get her husband out of the house,

So that she could do these murders. Well, it— I don't think those two— here,

here's how this goes. There's an old test in common law that most of us

learned about in law school, and I know about because I practice criminal defense. It's

called the M'Naughten test, and it's M apostrophe

N-A-U-G-H-T-E-N. Has to do with a case back in England,

um, and it's the test for the insanity defense. So ordinarily,

if you're gonna— if you're the government, you're gonna accuse me of murder, you have

to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I, with purpose, or in the old

days, with malice aforethought, killed somebody. Yeah. One life,

taking one life. If you remember your common law definition, taking one human life by

another with malice aforethought without mitigation, justification, or excuse. Yeah. That for bar exam.

Yeah. But there are defenses to that.

Some are mitigating defenses and some are just outright defenses. Mitigating would be

something like hot blood, caught the guy in bed with your wife and

that pissed you off so much that turns a murder into a manslaughter because

some mitigating circumstance. Mm-hmm. Right. Insanity

is an absolute defense. Self-defense is an absolute defense that falls on

the lap of the defendant to prove it. So yeah, lack of mental

capacity. If, if you're, uh, let's suppose,

uh, a, a, I don't know, a mentally retarded, uh,

diagnosed mentally retarded, uh, child— Not

competent to actually stand trial. Or, or, or adult. And, and, and somebody says, hey,

would you watch our our children while we go to a movie and, and

something bad happens, like he lets them meet, you know, Drano or

something, you know, you, you probably can't convict that

person because they lack the mental capacity. So the M'Naughton

test is basically 2 parts. It is the person did not

understand what they were doing, and they did not know that their action

was legally or morally wrong. So the SEALs say they don't know right from wrong.

So you don't understand what you're doing and you don't know right from wrong. Right.

There was a competing test called irresistible impulse where people

would just, I just had this impulse to kill. Yeah. Well, that's pretty much been

abandoned by everyone. And monotonous is sort of the baseline for most tests.

So the question is, does Clancy, did she know right from wrong? Yeah.

And I think that she did. I think that she did. But the defense is,

of course, that she was had this, um, she had

depression, she had post— Postpartum. Postpartum

psychosis. Yep. Uh, and depression complicated by all sorts of meds that

were ill-prescribed and overprescribed. And all that is true, right? And I'm fascinated by this

as a lawyer. And by the way, I would be arguing the same thing if

I were representing her. I would be doing this. Well, it would be your duty.

And hats off to that lawyer, he's doing a hell of a job making that

argument. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it sort of calls into question the M'Naughton Rule and

whether do we find her not guilty for killing her children

because she didn't know right from wrong. And I think she did know right from

wrong. I don't know what the jury's going to do. Yeah. Because there

is a mitigation to this. Now, ordinarily, this

kind of thing is baked into the cake with the

prosecutor doing his job. The prosecutor's going to say, look, it's a

horrific murder. We understand you had this psychosis. We'll offer you a manslaughter or offer

you something else. A lot of times that's what happens. But in these showcases,

they're going to trial, right? And, uh, that's, that's where the lines have been drawn

here. So it's, it sounds like it's going to be an all or nothing. I

don't know if there's going to be lesser included. There might be. Well, I saw

today that the, um, that the

presiding judge, uh, and quite rightly, is

allowing the defense to, um, construct a

backup case of manslaughter, you know. So there is, there, there

is going to be a lesser included offense of manslaughter. And that's probably

where the case should end. It's probably where it'll go. And people are going to

say, well, how dare you, that she killed these kids. And other people are going

to say, um, yeah, but she was insane. Like, legally speaking, if

I'm just analyzing this, not advocating for her, analyzing this,

yeah, um, my strategy would be, if I'm not getting— if the prosecutor's not offering

me a reduced murder, right, I would do the same thing this lawyer's doing.

That's what he's doing. I would advance an insanity defense, and at the same

time, I would try to leave room over here for lesser included. So the jury

says, look, we're not going to quite buy that, but we'll give you that. And

I think, Steve, you said something similar probably should have

been allowed or should have happened by the defense

in the Carmelo Anthony case, that stabbing at the

track meet between the 2

kids over who got to sit under a shelter.

And, and some, you know, this, it's turned out that Carmelo

was looking for trouble. There's lots of evidence now on his cell

phone and talking to his girlfriend or whatever, that he was looking to

get into a fight with somebody and didn't have those guys

in particular in mind, but he was going to use that knife and he was

going to go do something to somebody. And, and it,

it would be like that hot blood example that you, you— Well, this may

have been why they— I don't, I, I don't know the case well enough to

know if the defense tried to get a manslaughter out of that. Yeah, they may

have. I think, I think, I think we found that

they did not. Okay. And you were— may have been— this goes

back months, and I believe you were critical of the defense for

not pursuing that. Now I may understand why. Yeah, because if you pursue

a manslaughter, it may have opened the door for admission of all this other

evidence that looks really, really bad. Yeah. So in other words, if I'm going to

say it was hot blood, I was just in the moment, I got so upset

at this That I committed this crime and I'm sorry. So they're going to say,

well, hold on a second, look at all this other evidence that's out there. So

Steve, what's interesting about that is the piece that I read

said that the prosecution and the defense had a gentleman's

agreement not to present this

other evidence about him, but also

about the 2 brothers, one of which who was stabbed in the heart.

that he had been caught by school

officials or the police or something putting

up racist graffiti and had

engaged in racist kinds of discussions

about Black people. So was

somehow his mannerisms or his affect

leading up to the stabbing in some way

racial. And they decided, if you leave out this stuff

about Carmelo noodling on his phone and talking to his girlfriend

about, I'm going to mess somebody up today, we'll leave out all

this stuff, like the

cops in the O.J. case. We'll leave out the

background of the victims. I don't know if they— it's interesting. I don't know if

that That all got left out of the case. And it—

they— I guess what I'm saying is they may— that those 2 things may not

have been connected exactly. Oh yeah, for sure. If—

but it would poison— No, I mean, there might have been— there might— in other

words, the agreement, if you don't do this, we won't do that. Yeah, that may

not be connected. It might be that, look, we're going to agree

that this evidence is not admissible. And there— my

guess is there was some conversations with the court There was probably a judge that

had weighed in on some of this that said, look what's out there, guys.

Is this admissible? Is this going to be considered, quote, 404-type character

evidence that shouldn't come in on either side? Steve, it said it was a

gentleman's agreement. Well, I understand. I wonder what that means. What that means is— It

sounds like it was around the back of the judge. It sounds like that, but

I, I, I would need to know more. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I have all

sorts of— I am speculating. All sorts of agreements like this

with prosecutors, look, we're not going to— I have one right now with a trial

I'm going to have. Hey, look, are you going to make me bring in a

keeper of records for these documents? Are you going to object? No, we're not going

to object. You can go ahead and do it. Is that a gentleman's agreement if

the judge isn't involved in that? Well, yeah, I guess, but there's nothing wrong

about that. No, I'm— no, that's part of the— Yeah. So the question

is, it might be, look, I'm not even going to try to admit this stuff

because we are agreeing that it's not admissible. Well, that's a gentleman's agreement. Right, right.

And you don't have to go fight it and we don't need to go have

a hearing about it. we agree with you. Yeah. And it might have been that

way on both sides. Right. And it might have also been, look, if your

defense is XYZ, I think this stuff comes in to refute that

defense. So let us know what your plan

is and we'll go talk to the judge about it. Right. And so that— those

kind of things happen a lot and there's nothing wrong with them. And I think,

I think a lot of the media attention, the conservative media attention, is upset about

this, saying, well, this is to protect the defendant and it was done to this.

And I don't think so. I think this is to protect a fair trial. Yeah.

If it was an arm's-length agreement between the two

sides— For evidentiary reasons. Yeah. Then— But if we're just

saying, yeah, we're all going to agree on the defense side to lay off the—

or if we're going to agree on the prosecutor's side to lay off the

defendant because we don't want to impugn him because of race,

well, that's a problem. But I don't think that's going on. Yeah. So

I guess Lindsay Clancy, she's got this GoFundMe,

millions of dollars. She has hundreds of women

outside that courtroom this week.

It's insane. It's insane. And they're conflating this with

abortion. Oh, it's so horrible that women have to have kids. Yeah. It's so

horrible that we have to raise kids in this world. It's so horrible that this

is the way the world is. I find this lunacy. Yeah.

Lunacy. Yeah. This crime is

horrific for all sorts of reasons. It's horrific for those kids.

It's horrific for her that she— because I believe

that in a sane, completely

state of mind, she wouldn't have done this. So that doesn't mean that she shouldn't

be convicted of it, and maybe she shouldn't or maybe she should. It's not— Right.

But I don't think that she was of sound mind because I don't believe that

somebody kills their kids unless they're crazy. I wish that there was

a mechanism, and I don't— I'm not smart enough to come

up with one, but this always bothered me,

the idea of the insanity defense, because,

you know, it's indisputable that she killed 3 kids.

And whether she was— I'll just go ahead and give it to her.

Let's say she was insane,

full-on, totally insane. There still should be

some way to institutionalize people

that have that insane capability

to kill other people. She shouldn't just walk

if they— They typically don't though. Yeah. With evaluations

and usually with periods. So what's interesting though is now in Modern science, now

with this quote, modern advanced science. Again, I always ask, what could possibly

go wrong with all this? So now let's throw

something at you like I would in law school. Yeah, okay, so that's the traditional

insanity, meaning somebody is

just— we all agree that there are people like that that exist.

They're just— Sure. They're just— absolutely. Whatever it is, they've been touched with it. There

are insane people, no question about it. But now we're creating insane people. And diminished

capacity people. Now, people with Down syndrome or whatever you have. But

now we're creating insane people with drugs. And this is

where you— the curves crossed on this was something called temporary insanity.

So, and was I temporarily insane? Meaning now I'm cured, but at the time

I was temporarily insane because of these drugs I was taking or because of postpartum

psychosis. But now I'm totally sane. What do you do with that person? Really difficult

question. Now, the good news is this rarely happens. Yeah. So, you know, whenever,

um, whenever these things come up, it's like,

all right, yeah, I get it. It's a, it's a conundrum that maybe has no

answer, but at least it hardly ever happens. Well, uh, another

big legal, uh, matter involving Meta

or Facebook, um, for $16

billion, just settled with, uh,

47 states and territories of of

America. 29 state attorney generals

did what I call a reverse RICO, ganged together,

29 states, and sued Meta. The trial started this week in

California, and yesterday they announced

that they settled the case. So it's not going to go through the full

trial. And basically what they were accused of by the

The 29 AGs is the old,

at this point for me it's old, but the old

idea that, well, you have intentionally created an

addictive product

and that product being Facebook where

underage and the magic age in the settlement

is children under 13. I don't know why

that's— I don't understand that because, you know, if you take the

McDonald's Big Mac case, that involved adults. So these,

these cases where they accuse a company of creating an

addictive product and therefore they're liable

in some way for that, those addictions and the outcomes,

health outcomes, suicide outcomes, these kinds of

things. So what Zuckerberg and Meta

agreed to do is you're going to have to— we all are going

to, because of this case, if you want to participate

in social media, because I think other social media companies will copy

this because this will be the approved system. Yeah, this will be the tobacco

rules. Exactly. They're going to make the rest of us

demonstrate that we are above age 13. And

how will we do that without giving up our privacy in social

media will be a very interesting thing. Well, here's— it says there's now

a default daily screen time limit of 2 hours will be imposed on all teen

accounts. Uh, nighttime blocks, prevent late-night scrolling,

right? Lock accounts during sleep hours, right? School disruption pauses,

rapid response mandate, must respond to reports of harmful content within 6 hours, at

least 90% of the cases. So if you're Doogie Howser and you're under 13

and you're brilliant and you're well-adjusted and your parents are are, are

very involved in your life. This is an impingement on

those who are under 13 that are well-adjusted, uh, children.

Or let's say you just happen to be a vampire. Well, I mean it, like

you function at night but not today. But Steve, more importantly, like what they're doing

in England and at the EU, and like Communist China does,

is if somehow the people running

Meta, and therefore the government, If you

and I have to identify who we are before we go

and do our library search, like on Wiki or

Meta or whatever, or do AI,

well, we were talking about COVID before. So

if they know when I'm online, oh, that guy's okay,

he's an adult. But now, they— yeah,

I know they can kind of track me anyway, but now it's really in your

face that they're going to know Steve Palmer or Norm

Murdoch are on their computer. They're above age 13.

And oh, look at Steve, he's, he's looking at, uh, he's

looking at what Dr. Bhattacharya says about COVID uh,

you know. And yeah, look, I mean, this is the Big Brother— Yeah. Problem. This

is— and they love that. They love that in communist and, and authoritarian

countries? I've got no great answer for it other than, I mean, look, the response

from the government's gonna be it's a private company, they can ask you for whatever

they want. You just don't, you have a choice not to use their platform. Right.

Now that hasn't worked traditionally with things like the FCC because they say there's

limited platforms and, you know, there's different issues that can come up,

but— Or when you're President Biden and you send the FBI. Or you take, or

the government gets in bed with these platforms. And I don't think under Trump and

I don't think under Biden it's any different. I think the government is totally embedded

with these platforms. Um, well, I think the purpose may be

different, but I don't think the Trump FBI is telling

the tech bros that they need to squelch

any kind of speech. But I bet they are involved looking

for people that are committing the crimes that they like, that they want to

prosecute. Well, like terrorism. Uh, whether it's terrorism,

whether it's ICE, whether it's whatever. And look, you can say, well, that's okay because

it's terrorists. But what you're— what does— back to our conversation, there's a lever of

power being employed there that will ultimately be employed against you or the cause that

you think should not be involved. This is why we have— this is why we

have a Fourth Amendment. Well, yeah. So— And this is why

the courts are— the Supreme Court— I'm sorry to interrupt you. The Supreme Court is

starting to protect this in issues like searching for your Google

data and searching for your online data. The Supreme Court has

actually been pretty decent about requiring warrants and protecting this.

So there's 2 different ways they can do it. They can get a search warrant,

meaning go into a court with probable cause or go into a magistrate with probable

cause, or they can issue something called an investigatory subpoena, which is

basically we convene a grand jury and we're going to go get records. The first,

while still you may not agree with it, but at least it complies with the

Fourth Amendment. The other way is what we don't like. Well, the

system set up in this country to track internal

communications by

the FBI is they have to go to this system we set up

called the FISA court system. And that is directly

overseen by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Mm-hmm. So

John Roberts rides herd personally on the

FISA system. where that is

dependent upon truthful

statements, assertions by the investigatory

agents like the FBI. And under Biden,

they found that agents had just flat out lied and created

a situation where they went after George— Weissmann. what was his name,

Papadopoulos or something like that, where, where they said he was

a Russian asset. And that's how they got this entire,

like, um, a Trump, uh,

Putin, you know, this, this Russia hoax. Russia hoax. They

got the whole thing rolling based on lies to the FISA court.

So there is a system in place for domestic surveillance

of social media and your telephone records and all of that.

But for talking about COVID or talking

about, um, you know, the right to life, or talking

about teachers, uh, using

pornographic, uh, books to make kids

think about trans, uh, you know, uh, surgeries,

that's a little different. We're back to where we started, right? Because there

are rules in place that the these actors don't think they should have to follow

because their cause is the right one. I'm just arguing, I don't think our

current DOJ is doing that. Uh, I hope not. I don't know, but

to me it's the same lever of power. So it, it's all about— all

right, so if you have a rule and it is susceptible to corruption,

well, it's going to happen. Like, it did, and it did happen. And it— if

it's not happening right now, it's probably happening in some other context that you're not—

that isn't so offensive, but it's still happening. You and I in this show, we

were oppressed. We were actually shadow

banned by Facebook, by social

media, and so were hundreds of other

middle-of-the-road or conservative podcasts.

I'm just saying, when people

tried to discover us back during the Biden administration, it

was harder to find this program. Yep. I mean, that's just a

fact. I don't think that's happening under Trump.

That's happening under an authoritarian mindset that

I believe is the liberal mindset. I believe that— Well,

they're using that because they're abusing these levers of power

corruptly. I mean, the whole reason I am a Republican, or the whole reason

why I vote Republican, even, you know, not

always exclusively, but sometimes I'll vote for Democrats,

Um, or independence. But the entire reason that I am this

way is because I believe in personal freedom. I

believe in rights. I believe in individual

rights. Yeah, we're on the same page. And that's what the Republican Party

mainly stands up for, in— or should,

unless, you know, you're a RINO Republican. So

I don't know where else to go with my philosophy. There, it's said

that the, the libertarians are more pure And all of this, but

they're pure without a moral founding. That's the problem.

That's the problem with it. Yeah. And I tend to strike more libertarian than you

sometimes, but I understand the argument against it. So, well, look, let's do some

good and bad. Yeah. So, um, I'll

start out with my, my losers because I have several.

Um, one would be this.

I have to go back to George Bush II. Or

shrub, as he is disparagingly called.

So 9/11 happened on his watch. That was September

coming up soon, September of 2011

or 2001, excuse me. No, no,

9/11. So we're talking

15 years ago. So We have

this Khalid Sheikh Mohammed guy who has

just been told that his trial for being the

mastermind behind 4 airliners,

over— well, with the firemen and police that have died since

from cancers, over 3,500 deaths

and all of those families affected, the loss of The Twin

Towers, damage to the Pentagon,

and thousands of our military lives

lost in Afghanistan,

lost in Iraq.

All of this coming out of 9/11.

It pains me that the trial for this guy is scheduled

for June Of 2028. And my problem,

the reason Bush is a loser, the reason

Congress is a loser, and the reason Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is a

loser is all because of the way we pursued

the attacks on 9/11. We pursued it as if

it was a police matter. We did not approach

9/11 as a— like we

should have, as a military. It was a war on terrorism.

Oh, it was sort of this hybrid, which is the worst of both worlds. It

was crazy. So we're going to have a trial. This guy

should have just been frog-marched in front of a wall and

shot out of hand. Yeah. And there may be a reason for a trial. Another,

there might be a benefit of a trial, and that's exposing facts and circumstances that

the world— that maybe that people— there's a message that comes out in a public

trial. But I'm with you. Yeah. So anyway,

Amy Acton, she's a loser this week. She lost the

endorsement. She's a doctor and she lost the endorsement

of the Ohio Medical Association to Vivek Ramaswamy, which

I find fascinating because people say, well, he

concocted a cancer drug that he then swindled

investors by, because he knew it didn't work. You

know, that's the That's the loose allegation, but the OMA has

endorsed him. And then the WNBA, they, they still can't

define a woman, and they're, they're, they're backchanneling

that these 2 former male NBA stars

that want to come in and play in the WNBA, they're backchanneling, well,

they can't play in the WNBA because they're not women. This is the— I'm like,

well, wait a minute, you're in favor of not women not

girls, meaning boys, playing in high school and college sports.

This is, this is back to our theme. Totally inconsistent. This is John Adams, right?

Because I know, I know what's best, even though it might seem inconsistent

to you, Norm. Right. We know best. We, we got it figured out. We got

it figured out. So we don't need a consistent standard because we know it when

we see it. My winners, uh, of course, Dolly Parton.

Yeah. Who we lost this week. Ohio is the only other state

besides Tennessee that has a license

plate program to support her Imagination Library

charity. Over 300 million books

distributed for free to help children

with literacy. And my other winner is Roger Penske

for staging that Freedom 250 in Washington, D.C. Oh, wasn't that cool?

That was just off the hook. So you picked mine. Dolly,

you know, hats off. Yeah. Off to greater and hopefully to

meet your savior. She was awesome. I

remember watching an interview with her and Barbara Walters where Walters was sort of going

after her for being this phony. Why you dressed like this

bimbo, whatever. Wow. And go watch the interview because Dolly's awesome. Yeah.

Yeah. She's— I know exactly what I'm doing. 25 number one hits, dude. She knew

exactly what she was doing. Yeah. She knew exactly what she was doing.

And she did it her way, and good for her. So I didn't always agree

with everything she said, but she knew exactly— No, no. Uh, I love this story

that's suddenly in circulation that

when she had nothing and had not yet, um, you know, had

taken on board the Porter Wagoner, uh, TV program yet,

that she was approached by Colonel Tom Parker,

Elvis's crooked business manager, just an

awful human being. He approached her and said, hey,

little girl, I understand you wrote this great song Elvis would like to

record, I Will Always Love You, which of course Whitney Houston

famously, uh, turned into a mega hit. Elvis wanted to

do that, but what we demand is that you give him

co-authorship of that, that he wrote that song. Yeah. She said no. And she said

Up yours. She had no money. Yeah, no money, man. I mean, and she's telling

Elvis Presley who she wants to go to Nashville. I mean,

you know, Elvis owned, uh, Tennessee, and she said

no, but he didn't write it, and that would be a lie. And I just,

you know, can't— and I don't think Elvis would want that. Hats

off to her. Yeah, yep. Rest in peace, Dolly. Uh, Jelly

Roll, up your ass. No, geez, come on, Jelly Roll. I don't care about Jelly

Roll anyway. And I, you know, I like all art. Like, he's an artist, he's

an entertainer, and I appreciate what he does. He has a skill set that I

clearly don't have. And great, it's awesome, right? I choose now

to say I don't give a rat's ass about your politics. I just don't.

No. I like— and if you think that somehow

you're— I feel like I'm inconsistent here, but I think

I can justify it. I think I, I think I can sort it through. He's

entitled to his opinion for sure. Just like you said, we all have our opinions.

But what bothers me is when these people think that they're— I feel like they're

saying their opinion is somehow more insightful or

smarter than mine because he's an entertainer

or this elite or I'm not. And maybe that's what turns me off. And

there are lots of people that can choose not to listen to him, and he's

apparently okay with that. He says, fine, don't listen to me, which I don't anyway,

and I won't. Right. But there are lots of other artists and entertainers that I

listen to their— I listen and consume their art, right? Even

though I know they disagree with me. But as soon as, as soon as they

start cramming it down my throat like I'm a dummy. Yeah.

It turns me off. Well, there's a difference between celebrities who just do

straight up charity, like we talked about Dolly or

Willie Nelson, who did Farm Aid, or

Bob Geldof, who did, you know, the charity for Bangladesh.

right? The concerts. That's, that's like,

that's wonderful. I mean, that, that's, that's a great use of your celebrity

is to bring people together. But when you're Bruce Springsteen or Jimmy

Kimmel or Jelly Roll and you're using it to divide

people and to create enmity, well, then you've gone from

being just an entertainer to being a divisive element in our culture.

So the, the perfect example On the other side, Vanilla Ice saying,

look guys, we're just having fun, right? Art, have some fun. This is what an

opportunity to reach everybody, right? And they say, no, you're

so deplorable that we don't even care if you listen. So, uh, hats off to

Dolly, up yours Jelly Roll. What a difference right there,

huh? Like everything good. Yeah. Everything bad.

Yeah. Just, it's, it's, it's, it's, he's squandering his

celebrity. It's, it's, it's an opportunity. That's right. Opportunity lost. All

right. So Common Sense Ohio coming at you each and every week right from the

middle.