May 26, 2025 • 35 mins
Hour 3 of the Monday, May 26,2025 A&G Replay contains:
- Ukraine/Don't Become Europe
- Jack's Monthly Meme Movie Theater
- Tim Sanderfur SCOTUS Birthright
- Tim Sanderfur SCOTUS Birthright Part 2
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong, Joe Getty Armstrong.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
And Jettie and he Armstrong and Getty Strong.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
President now claiming quote some progress in the effort to
end the war in Ukraine, saying he thinks Putin quote
has had enough, but Putin giving no indications Russia is
any closer to a ceasefire. President Trump now saying he
will leave it up to Ukraine and Russia to negotiate
for now.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
What about the Putin call? Remember we had a clip
of that? What was that about? Show years ago? Show
the Putin call? That's from like eight years ago, So
I don't remember that at the very beginning of Trump one. Yeah,
any who, Trump was on the phone with Vladimir Putin
for about two hours yesterday, and the takeaway seems to
be I'm gonna let them work it out. Which where
(01:11):
does that leave things? It leaves it as a win
for Putin. I think yes, although the ball is in
Trump's court because he has not said, at least as
of yet, Okay, if you're going to let them work
that out, does that mean them working it out while
we continue to give a tremendous amount of aid, intelligence
(01:34):
aid maybe being the most important to Ukraine or not,
Because if it's or not, it's a big deal. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
I feel like those of us who would like to
see the US backing Ukraine are digging through about our
fifteenth pile of manure looking for the pony in Trump's negotiations,
just this. Maybe he's got this up his sleeve, you know,
feeling or hope.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
It's just it's been dashed over and over again. Well,
he does have to go one way or the other.
We are either going to continue to back Ukraine the
way we have for three years or not. And if
we're not, that's a major change. I think it's more
likely that one happens. Will he announce it or will
it will it just become evident at some point, I
(02:22):
don't know, after this period of Zelensky in Ukraine and
Europe doing everything conceivable conceivable to make.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
It clear we want peace too, We're with you on this,
and putin never giving a single sign that he has.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Any interest in Trump's piece too.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
No, if it if the US policy becomes well and
you all are on your own, we're not going to
support a Ukraine well.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Then we've but it's not a nothing we've cided with
right now. In my opinion, I know one hundred that's
exactly my point. Yeah, And what seemed to be the
lean is indeed coming true. It was it was less
than Putin showing you wasn't interested in peace right now.
He gave Trump a long lecture about why Ukraine belongs
to Russia, and he said this will not end until
(03:11):
the underlying problems are solved. Well, the underlying problems will
not be solved until he has Ukraine correct. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
As Rich Lowry writes in The National Review, the play
for the Kremlin is obvious here. It wants to keep
pinching ahead with territorial gains, and if it continues to
string along the negotiations, has to hope that Trump tires
of the whole thing and cuts off USA to Ukraine.
That would reward Putin's intransigent with an important diplomatic victory
is split between the US and Europe and a chance
to make major advances against an increasingly hard pressed Ukraine.
(03:41):
And the only reference really to Trump being tired of
Putin and understanding that he's being played was that reference
to Putin's tapping me along.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
But I mean to.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Come out of the call yesterday and say, yeah, I
think we made progress.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
I don't know who that is.
Speaker 5 (03:57):
Well.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Jd Vance presented it as as well, if you guys
aren't interested, then hey, we're out. As if that is
a actually a neutral position. That is not a neutral position,
that's a taking the side of Russian position. So I
don't know if they're just trying, if they're trying to
fool people by presenting it is like we're just staying
neutral on this or what. So the ball is first off,
(04:21):
I think in Trump's court, but then absolutely in Europe's
court as they got to figure out what to do.
So they had a big meeting over the weekend of
European leaders with a couple of interesting things that came
out of it. A big defense meeting of the Germany,
the big people Germany, Britain, France, poland a couple of things.
They announced. Germany is going to lift their prohibition on
(04:42):
nuclear energy that they've had since World War Two, so
they are going to, like France, start using nuclear energy
so that they don't have to buy energy from Russia.
So that's a pretty big deal economically for Russia. Yeah,
they a so announced in that meeting that Russia will
(05:03):
does not present NATO a dilemma in five years like
had previously been thought if the war were to end soon,
but could within a year, like they could be back
up to speed enough within a year to present NATO
a real dilemma of what do we do now? If
they move on Estonia, they would be strong enough. That's
what the European countries announced over the weekend. And then
(05:25):
I really liked this quote that came out of it.
I think from the leader of Poland. Russia has been
playing hockey for years. We are not going to figure
skate our way out of this.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Oh that's some good ice sport metaphor slinging there, sir.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah, thatam well done. That went with also one of
the leaders saying the years of two percent funding of
our military are over. It's going to have to be
more like five percent. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
There are days I wish we had unlimited time for
this sort of thing because it's so interesting.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
I have all sorts of interesting.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Well I suppose you all will be the judge of
that when I delivered it, but I found it really
really intriguing analysis of Europe and everything that's wrong with it.
I think the Russia attack on Ukraine following the annexation
of Crimea, and the attack on Georgia and everything else
(06:17):
has has.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
And Germany continuing to buy oil from Russia after that happened,
and all those kinds of things, well, right, I think
it's finally gotten to the point that it's shaken the dopey,
dopey Euros out of their torpor, their their their sleepiness,
their fantasy land that they've been living in for the
past a bunch of years after you know, the US
(06:41):
security umbrella and enabled them to invest vast sums of
money into welfare states and socialism and the rest of it.
And I would I.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Would like to issue a hammering indictment against them for
all of that crap.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
But I think they're right about Russia and Ukraine. We're
not going to figure skate our way out of this. Yeah, yeah,
I love that. Here's the takeaway.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
And this was going to be the takeaway after I
built a case over many, many minutes, but I'll give
you the takeaway. We need to work every day as
a country to not become Europe.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
And there are a couple of examples of a.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
Great piece by Walter Russell Mead about why democracy is
in retreat, and he cites several cases in Europe about
anybody who does not go along with the very very
mainstream view of who ought to get elected and what
(07:38):
policies ought to be passed is decried as undemocratic and dangerous,
like the AfD party in Germany. And I could go
into detail on that. The more I learned, the more
interested I get. But their definition of democracy is the
results I want, and anything that challenges that is swept aside.
Like the AfD ought to be in an alliance with
(08:00):
the party that won the most seats. It's obvious the
efforts to keep them out because of a few crack
pots and being a little soft on Russia or whatever
is just it's twisting the German political system into knots
were sucsessed with it.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
The men declared a terrorist organization or whatever so people
can listen to their phone calls and read their emails.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
Well, yes, but actually, as long as we're talking about
this is let me click over.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
I think it's right there.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
Yeah, So last week the German government officially designated the
opposition party AfD as a confirmed extremist organization. The announcement
came from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution,
their domestic intelligence agency, blah blah blah. Then on Wednesday
they abruptly withdrew the extremist label. They will now monitor
(08:52):
the party only as a suspected case, which still allows
some surveillance in a way Americans would find repugnant, but
under much stricter judicial oversight. And somebody leaked the report
and it reveals that the evidence against the AfD consisted
not of plans for violence or insurrection, but just controversial
(09:12):
rhetoric and deeply nationalist views, none of which should have
triggered that designation. So it was the quote unquote mainstream
powers that be trying to label as extremist anybody who
dared shake their hold on power, which is exactly what
I was driving at. Their definition of democracy is democracy
(09:35):
with the right results, and that's terrible. The other thing
I really wanted to talk about is the Wall Street
Journal had a great piece about how huge tech is
in the world economy right now, technology in general, and
how tiny.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Europe's share of it is.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
The EU rivals, I mean, it's it's in the same
weight class more or less. If you take it as
a whole, the US economy and the Chinese economy, it's
a juggernaut. But you want to talk tech, Oh, it's sad,
it's pathetic. Apple's market value is bigger than the entire
German stock market, for instance. There's no Google, there's no Amazon,
(10:18):
there's no Meta. In Europe, there's nothing even slightly close.
And this Journal article goes into depth and has a
bunch of different examples of native born tech people, German
tech people who brought what they learned back from Silicon
Valley to Europe and were immediately crushed by strict labor laws,
a risk averse business culture, suffocating regulations, smaller pool of
(10:43):
venture capital, lackluster economic growth, no demographic growth, and said no,
and back to California they went, or other places. Yeah
and so, and you know that list. I'm going to
hit it one more time and we freemar marketers. So
hold old dragon fans. I know we're sad. And then
(11:05):
we ought to have industrial planning in tariffs and the
rest of it. But Europe is crushed by a timid
and risk averse business culture, strict labor laws, suffocating regulations,
smaller pool of venture capital, and lackluster economic growth.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Don't become Europe.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
That's what we as a country need to repeat to
ourselves every morning. You gotta make your bed. It's a
small act of discipline and positive something or other. I
believe in it very much, and say, let's not become
Europe today.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Like when you get up in the morning, I'm going
to be a good person today or whatever your mantra is, right,
I'm going to do kindness, whatever, do God's will today
and stay positive. Let's not become Europe today.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Yes, we're going to build a utopia through a million regulation.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yes. Hour two. I'll get into a little of what
I pulled out of the first part of Jake Tapper's
book that I started reading last night when I was
in bed again unintentionally hilarious, along with some interesting nuggets
about what was going on there. It's the biggest failure
of media in our nation's history, and it should not
(12:24):
just disappear as a minor thing. Luckily it has not
been for at least the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 6 (12:30):
Jack Armstrong and Joe The Armstrong and Getty Show, The
Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
So I watched the Minecraft movie over the weekend with
my son Henry, and I was about to talk about it,
and I thought I should look up a little of
how successful this movie was to back up my premise,
and I googled it first. Then I remembered what you
keep saying, No, you got to use the chat GP two.
I'm trying to get out of a habit of googling
and go to chat GPT. The answer I got on
(13:02):
chat GPT about I just asked chat GPT, was the
Minecraft movie a financial success? It's answer so much better
and thorough than googling it, I mean, not even close.
So I gotta get out of the habit of googling. Anyway,
a Minecraft movie has made almost a billion dollars worldwide
after a budget to make it of only one hundred
(13:24):
and fifty million dollars, which I gotta believe all of
the filming of the acting of that movie could have
been done in an afternoon probably. I mean, there wasn't
much to it, and it was all so much was
green screen. It was all CGI stuff and everything like that.
And like I mentioned, Jack Black, what an interesting dude.
(13:46):
I don't know is he married or not. I've seen
him in various interviews. He's certainly not trying to impress chicks.
He wears ill fitting clothes, he doesn't wash his face
or coma's hair. He rolls in, does his line's brilliantly
because he's really good, and and uh collects his money
and goes home. What an interesting thing that is? What
movie star has never wanted to care how they look?
(14:08):
Like Jack Black, he cames getting fatter and greasier anyway.
I mean, you ain't gonna be fat if you want,
maybe you think that's part of your appeal. You can
wash your face AnyWho. The Minecraft movie, first of all,
way better than I expected it to be. I thought
it was. It was only an hour forty five, but
I thought, uh, I thought this is gonna be kind
(14:28):
of tough to sit through. And it was quite entertaining,
pretty dang funny by the end it had it reminded
me of like all your Lord of the Rings movies. Okay,
another giant fight sequence. I just I can't do fight
sequences like a lot of people can, apparently endlessly. I
get it. But my main takeaway was, and if I
was rich, I would start if like really like Elon
(14:49):
rich I would come up with this idea today. It
was basically a series of popular memes that young people
get strung together so that everybody could laugh together about Hey,
I get this meme and feel part of something. That's
what it seemed like to me. And I'll bet you
(15:13):
could put one of those out once a month of
just whatever the most recent hot memes were, right, make
it like ninety minutes long. It's just a series of
meme jokes that every teenager gets and things to the hilarious,
and it would be super popular because that's basically what
the Minecraft movie was. So just a recognition slash belonging fest, yeah,
(15:36):
because other things aren't really working, but partially because this
is a reason to be together in the theater. It
is fun to recognize the memes together. It was clear
from my older son when he went and saw it
in the theater that that was a lot of the
appeal was all these inside jokes that they get and
laugh at, and it's fun to see him in a group.
I think this is a way to rescue movies. It's
(15:58):
gonna kill old time movies. But like just I don't know,
the most popular memes put together ninety minutes with a
loose script. I think that would right. Somebody steal that
idea and make it work.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
Well, it's either like irony or a perpetual motion machine
or something that online memes. The enjoyment of online memes together, Yeah,
in a room might convince kids, hey, this is really fun.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Wow, good point. Hello, But Mike constantly, my son would saying,
I know you don't get that, but to to various
things that were happening, characters and lines and stuff like that,
because they're here today. I mean, you could have had
a movie where the Hawktua girl was, you know, a
co star there for a couple of coffee. Oh please, don't.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
You and people would have go fought with laughter though
you know they mean studios. Yes, oh yes, now you
gotta start producing these. This is your ten million dollar idea.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
It's fine. I thought, I'll get another co host. I
thought of Friday Night. I thought, this is actu brilliant idea.
It would just take a lot of money to get
a going. You know, you'd have to pay for rights,
but you'd have lawyers to do that. They'd be easy. Yeah. Wow,
that's a great idea. Just your monthly meme cinema. Yeah, yeah,
and all the teenagers get together and feel cooler and
smarter than the rest of us because they get all
(17:12):
the jokes right. Yeah. We bought it though, cost twenty bucks.
So Minecraft's available at home now for streaming, but it
was twenty bucks to in it.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
I think it's got about a six month run. Your idea,
oh really, don't like, don't invest too heavily, thinking next
year will be even bigger.
Speaker 6 (17:30):
Trust arm strong, the armstrong and Getty shouts.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
My president decides to do something with an executive order
or whatever often that they promised on the campaign trail,
their voters get all excited, Yay, they did it day
one like they promised, And then then I get an
alert on my phone. Some judge somewhere I've never heard
of it said no, you can't do that, and then
it stops, and everybody's like groans, like, oh, they can
(18:06):
do that, and it keeps happening over and over again.
And do we want that system to continue that way
or not? Is part of what the Supreme Court was
arguing about yesterday. And as one of the justices said,
there are six hundred some federal judges and while I
do not question their motives. Sometimes they are wrong, so
do we want them to be able to hold up
the whole country?
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Let us discuss the very interesting and multifaceted oral arguments
yesterday before the Supreme Court with Tim Sandefer, vice president
for Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute, among other auspicious titles,
author of eight books, including most recently Freedom's Theories. How
Isabelle Patterson, Rosewilder and Ein Rand found Liberty in Age
(18:46):
of Darkness?
Speaker 2 (18:47):
I've recommended it many times. It's terrific. Tim. How are you, sir?
Just great?
Speaker 5 (18:51):
Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Guys published poet, gotta throw that in there. True, Yes,
a polymath as they say.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
Anyway, Tim, So, ostensibly everyone's talking about that we are
going to discuss birthright citizenship in front of the Supreme Court,
and that did come up. But would you agree that
the more significant discussion was about nationwide injunctions by individual
federal judges. Oh?
Speaker 5 (19:15):
Yes, absolutely. That was the focus of the argument, and
it was a very interesting argument. But I don't think
that it's a hard question. I think the answer is
obviously nationwide injunctions are perfectly fine. They're the ordinary way
of doing business in the courts, and people who complain
about them either don't understand the system or are trying
to get away with something illegal.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Yeah I don't. I don't always like that it happened,
but I can't see what the alternative would be. As
somebody pointed out, so you're gonna let me. I guess
it was you that pointed it out yesterday in Twitter.
The idea that so every time a president does something,
it's got to work its way all the way through
the courts up to the Supreme Court, and then a
decision by the Supreme Court before the Supreme Court might
(19:56):
say sometimes nine nothing, you can't do that.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
And during that whole period of time, the government is
still doing the illegal thing.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Right right. Wow.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
So clearly it's two to one for a judicial takeover
of the government.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
But I will stand up for liberty.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Is there no middle ground? Has got to be three
judge panel and not a single ya who in a
rural Tennessee.
Speaker 5 (20:19):
Yeah, I think. I think having a single unit yae
who in rural Tennessee is perfectly fine because that's what
the appellate process is sort of. That's why you appeal cases.
And by the way, that's why you should avoid appointing
yahoos to the federal bench. Might mention that too. The argument,
the argument against nationwide injunctions always seems to boil down to, well,
(20:39):
this is a democracy and the majority should always get
what it wants. And the answer to that is no where.
What happened to all of my friends who used to say,
this is a republic, not a democracy. The whole point
of our system is that the majority has to act lawfully,
and if it acts unlawfully, I can go in front
of a judge and get that give an order from
that judge prohibiting the government from violating my rights. And
(21:00):
the idea that we should do this piece meal, that
only a judge down here, that his order only applies there. Meanwhile,
the government can do illegal things to everybody else in
the country until the case reaches the US Supreme Court
makes no sense at all.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
The underlying theme here being folks, that what we really
need to fear is the power of the government in
this country. That's kind of the idea of forming it.
So there's no question that these nationwide injunctions were relatively
or practically completely unknown for one hundred and fifty years.
Then there were a handful of them, and the number
of them is now skyrots.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Every day. It seems like on my phone I see
a judge jumped in somewhere.
Speaker 5 (21:38):
Actually, right, I actually don't think that that's true. I
think that what happened was we just started calling them
by a different name. You know, there were been injunction
injunctions against unconstitutional government actions since before there was a constitution.
One of the points that was brought up during the
arguments was that British judges used to do this before
the American Revolution, and that was considered perfectly legitimate. It's
(21:59):
just that nowadays we call the nation right injunctions or
we have some judges who write sloppily and don't explain
what they're actually saying or something. And okay, that's a problem,
I suppose. But the idea that you should limit the
injunction power of federal courts is what that is is
that's open door to the majority violating individual rights on
a scale that I mean, they already do it, but
(22:21):
you can imagine what it would be if we took
away one of the most important protections for individual rights
in this country, which is getting an injunction from our
federal court. To protect your freedom, and it's insane.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
So I didn't want to get to this part too
fast because you're a lawyer, and this part can't be
fixed with the law. It seems to me that we've
got a cultural problem in that presidents are way more
likely than they used to be to want to challenge
the Supreme Court, either to like legitimately they don't think
the law is correct, or they don't care if they're wrong.
(22:55):
They just want to get the political credit for trying.
And perhaps I don't know this, but it seems like
a likely response. The six hundred some federal judges out there,
there's a lot more of them who are willing to
let their politics get ahead of their judge reasoning and
jump in and stop somebody they hate.
Speaker 5 (23:11):
Yes, you're absolutely right about that, and especially the thing
about the President and Congress being willing to do things
that they know are unconstitutional because they know that the
judges are going to strike it down and they can
blame the judges and say, oh, those evil activist judges,
or they can get away with their unconstitutional things. So
it's win when if you want to do something unconstitutional,
and honestly, every president's done this to some degree. Obviously,
(23:34):
Franklin Roosevelt.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Did this a lot.
Speaker 5 (23:36):
But the one that I always six in my memory
is George W. Bush when he signed the McCain fine
Gold campaign finance law and said when he signed it
that he thought it was unconstitutional, but that he would
leave it to the courts to deal with. Well, I'm sorry,
but if you're the president, you take an oath to
support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And
(23:57):
if you ignore that oath and sign something that you
know was unconstitutional just because you think the courts will
clean up your mess for you, I think that's disgraceful.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Yeah. Well, a lot of the pieces I've read that
have been following the growth of this use that as
kind of like the patient zero, because he said it
out loud, and then other presidents thought, hey, I can
do that, I just won't say it out loud, and
Obama did it, and Biden did it, and Trump did
it in whichever order, and then Trump again, and and
it's so, how do we fix this?
Speaker 5 (24:25):
Well, there's a long answer and the short answer. The
short answer is elect good presidents. The long answer is
that we have to restore respect for the Constitution.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
In this country.
Speaker 5 (24:34):
I think it's the long term damage that's been done
to Americans understanding and appreciation of the Constitution is horrifying.
We have prominent law professors. There was a law professor
at at Georgetown Law School a few years ago published
an article in the Washington Post saying the Constitution is obsolete.
I don't respect it at all. Well, you're a teacher
(24:56):
of constitutional law for crying out loud. And if we
don't respect the Constitution, we don't love it. It cannot
protect us. The Constitution is just a promise, and if
we don't honor that promise, then it's not worth the
paper it's written on.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
We should have written a law specifically putting him in jail.
In my opinion, Tim Sandefer is online from the Goldwater Institute,
a little constitutional humor for exactly design.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
For punish one man.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
That's a good idea, so you know, blah blah blah.
Disclaimer about it's difficult to read the tea leaves of
the oral arguments, blah blah blah. Did it strike you
that the justices, the sane ones that we like, we're
leaning in any particular direction as to the nationwide injunctions judges,
et cetera that we've been discussing.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Some of the.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
Judges have made clear for a long time that they're
against these what they call nationwide injunctions. Justice Thomas in particular.
Some of the others are a little harder to read.
Justice Barrett for example, and Justice Roberts, who have become
really the swing judges on this issue. I thought the
most interesting judge if you want, if anybody wants to
go and listen to the argument online, I thought Justice
(26:02):
Jackson was the one who is the most interesting. She
clearly understands how this area of the law works, and
she rightly says there's no there there that nationwide injunctions
are perfectly legitimate. They always have been and there's no problem.
So she'd be the one that I find most interesting.
But how to predict I think you're going to get.
I think Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett going to side
with the liberals and say, we don't have a problem
(26:25):
per se with nationwide injunctions, but maybe some of them
aren't very good, but as a as a blanket matter,
they're okay. And then they're going to want to hear
the underlying case about birthright citizenship, which obviously is a
huge deal.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
To me.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
Is it even worth getting into what happened on that
topic yesterday or do you think it's.
Speaker 5 (26:45):
Well, they really just talked about whether or not they
have a legitimate case in the first place, and they
haven't really briefed it or argued it yet. But that's
important because in order to get an injunction, you kind
of have to first show that you have even an
arguable point to make, and that was what they were
arguing about. And I will say, I know this is
talk radio, and we're all supposed to think that we
clearly have the right answer and everything. I think the
(27:07):
birthright citizenship question is a very hard question. I don't
think it's an easy question on either side.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Let's talk about that when we come back from the break.
I want to hear. I want to hear the arguments
on both sides of that. That's interesting And clearly you've
probably seen the breakdown. Who speaks the most words? The
chicks talk too much? Is that given?
Speaker 5 (27:26):
Well, jessic so to my art, does love cutting off
lawyers and not letting them answer her question?
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Yeah, the chicks talk too much. I think that's been
and the new gal talks more than anybody. That shouldn't
happen in any organization. I'm strong and get the reality
is this is fabulous. I thank you. That's enough of that.
This is crazy. That's just why it is. Yeah, but
damn it.
Speaker 6 (27:45):
We weren't allowed to ask about the big guys. This
is the United States of America.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
God, let's not play games.
Speaker 6 (27:51):
This is the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty, The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
Discussing the oral arguments before the Supreme Court yesterday with
Tim Sanderfer, vice president for Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute.
It was advertised as a birthright citizenship hearing it or discussion.
It really was much more a discussion of individual federal
judges and nationwide injunctions and that sort of thing. But
(28:24):
to the question of the Fourteenth Amendment, Tim, you said
before the break that it's not an easy call. I'm
glad to hear you agree. I've thought the same thing.
What should we know about fourteenth Amendment even come to
a semi intelligent opinion on this?
Speaker 5 (28:40):
Well, the first sentence of the fourteenth Amendment says all
persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject
to the jurisdiction thereof are US citizens. And all of
this case, all of these arguments turn on that phrase
subject to the jurisdiction thereof. What does that phrase mean.
It's really tough because the word jurisdic is one of
those words that can mean all sorts of different things.
(29:03):
It basically means power, but there's all sorts of different
kinds of power, and so that's what the argument turns on.
Some people think that it means you have to follow
the law. If you're born here and you have to
follow the law, then you're subject to the jurisdiction thereof,
and then that means you're a citizen. But that doesn't
really make a lot of sense because even foreign tourists
who come here for a vacation have to follow the law.
(29:24):
I mean, they have to stop at the red lights
and they can't steal things, So that can't be what
that means, right. Instead, the other side argues, jurisdiction thereof
means some kind of loyalty or allegiance, that there's citizenship jurisdiction,
as opposed to follow the law jurisdiction, and that different.
You can see that difference For example, in this if
(29:46):
you're a foreign spy and you sneak into the country
and you spy for some foreign country and you get arrested,
you can be prosecuted for espionage, but you cannot be
prosecuted for treason. Why because you're not a US citizen
and you don't owe loyalty to the US, so you
cannot commit treason against the US. And so there's two
different kinds of jurisdiction, is the argument. And so those
(30:08):
who are against birthright citizenships say, subject of the jurisdiction
thereof means that your parents owed loyalty to the United
States as opposed to some foreign country. And that would
mean that illegal aliens, if they have a child here,
that child is not assistant in the United States. Now,
that's also there's a problem with that. There's a couple
problems that. One of the problems of that argument is
that nobody has ever said that that's what it means.
(30:31):
In the one hundred and fifty years since this has
been in the Constitution, everybody has active like if you're
born here, you're a citizen all of that time. And
so suddenly discovering that, what turns out that we've been
misreading the Constitution for one hundred and fifty years. Would
be a huge, enormously radical transformation and how our system works.
(30:51):
That would cause tremendous disruption nationwide, and that would be
a real problem. But all of this, the real problem
here in answering this question is that when the Amendment
was adopted, there were no such things as the illegal
aliens because there were no laws against immigration. And that
means if you're an originalist and you think the competition
should be understood the way it was originally intended, the
(31:12):
framers didn't ever think about this because it wasn't against
the law back then, So we don't know what they
would have thought about this.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
Question, right right, Well, at the point that this enormously radical,
disruptive president has overturned, that's when you tag me and
Tim and I come in and explain to the good
folks that look, the nature of global transportation, the movement
of people or peoples from one place to another has
(31:38):
changed so vastly.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Joe's a living Constitution guy. You can hear it coming.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
Out of what No, don't you dare no that the
very nature of comings and goings from countries has been
so radically transformed a Chinese national with not the slightest
notion of making life in the United States can depart China,
arrive here, give birth, go back to China, all in
(32:06):
the span of seventy two hours. I'm inducing labor in
this case probably or getting very lucky, and that child
had citizenship. That's an eventuality unimaginable back in the day,
is the case?
Speaker 5 (32:18):
I think so, And that's sort of true. But on
the other hand, the Chinese question came up back then
because there were so many Chinese in California in the
eighteen sixties. And Senator's rast, well, isn't this going to
make the children of the Chinese immigrants who back then
did not intend to stay in the United States. They
intended to go back to China. The senator's rast, does
this make their kids us? Senator US citizens? And the
(32:39):
Senator from California said yes, and then he was immediately
thrown out of office. So what does that mean? Nobody
knows what that.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
Means a single case from eighteen ninety eight, or is
there more precedent?
Speaker 5 (32:51):
Really there really isn't. There's really just a handful of
presidents and no Supreme Court case has ever said that
birthright citizenship is in the in the Constitution. There have
been some that have kind of mentioned it or kind
of assumed it, but none has said so outright.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
I am surprised. The polling shows that only about a
third of Americans want to do away with the way
we do it now. I'm surprised by that. I do
want to get to this. This is a journalistic question,
but I think it has an effect on people's respect
for the law. It has come up recently. It has
become a pattern that anytime the media mentions a judge,
they mentioned what president appointed them. Do you think that's
(33:26):
a good idea or not? They didn't just barely got
a minute.
Speaker 5 (33:30):
I think I think it's fine. I think people should
know where these For instance, I think it would help
a lot of judges. You know a lot of Republican
appointed judges have been ruling against the Trump administration, and
I think it would be helpful for people to know
that these questions are not things where it's all partisan.
The law is not just partisan politics. It's something much
more profound and much more important.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yeah, well, I agree, but it implies that judges I
don't know.
Speaker 5 (33:55):
True. I used to think.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
I didn't used to think about it ever. If a
judge ruled, I just thought't want that's interesting now it's
all who appointed him? Oh, of course he.
Speaker 5 (34:03):
Said that that is true. That is a risk. But
I think we should air on the side of informing
people as opposed to keeping people in the dark.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
So that's always true. Tim Sander for the Goldwater Institute
on the line, Tim, final question, I've called for a monarchy.
You in favor of it? Yes or no?
Speaker 5 (34:21):
No, I'm against him monarchy. I'm for the constitution.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Joe. One more question. As a published poet, I was
thinking about this yesterday he won the Nobel Prize. Bob
Dylan good poet or not lousy poet?
Speaker 5 (34:31):
Now read Robert Hayden or Richard Wilbur instead.
Speaker 4 (34:35):
How about Ringo Star Octopus's Garden creative Tam. It's always
great and enlightening. Thanks Millian for the time. Let's talk
again soon.
Speaker 6 (34:44):
Thanks guys.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
All right, I was actually thinking about this listening to
Dylan lyrics. Why do they stick in everybody's head so much?
Why do people keep going back to them? If it's
just gobbledegook, like a lot of real poets claim.
Speaker 6 (34:59):
It can't be.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
It wouldn't lodge. It wouldn't it wouldn't make the market made,
would it all? Right?
Speaker 4 (35:05):
He was famously moody about his career and his music
in his Life's Philosophy. I think some of his stuff
is absolutely brilliant, and I think some of it's gobbledegook.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Huh. Maybe maybe more on that another day, or maybe not.
We got plenty of stuff to tell you. I hope
you can stick around if you missus. Segmann. I thought
that tim thing was really really good, and you want
to listen to it again and get the podcast Armstrong
and Getty on demand.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
Armstrong, arms Strong and Getdy on demand.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
We're not boring. A lot of news is boring and
tedious and depressing. It makes you angry.
Speaker 4 (35:38):
You don't want to live your life like that Armstrong
and Getty show.
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong, Joe Getty Armstrong.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
And Jettie and he Armstrong and Getty Strong.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
President now claiming quote some progress in the effort to
end the war in Ukraine, saying he thinks Putin quote
has had enough, but Putin giving no indications Russia is
any closer to a ceasefire. President Trump now saying he
will leave it up to Ukraine and Russia to negotiate
for now.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
What about the Putin call? Remember we had a clip
of that? What was that about? Show years ago? Show
the Putin call? That's from like eight years ago, So
I don't remember that at the very beginning of Trump one. Yeah,
any who, Trump was on the phone with Vladimir Putin
for about two hours yesterday, and the takeaway seems to
be I'm gonna let them work it out. Which where
(01:11):
does that leave things? It leaves it as a win
for Putin. I think yes, although the ball is in
Trump's court because he has not said, at least as
of yet, Okay, if you're going to let them work
that out, does that mean them working it out while
we continue to give a tremendous amount of aid, intelligence
(01:34):
aid maybe being the most important to Ukraine or not,
Because if it's or not, it's a big deal. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
I feel like those of us who would like to
see the US backing Ukraine are digging through about our
fifteenth pile of manure looking for the pony in Trump's negotiations,
just this. Maybe he's got this up his sleeve, you know,
feeling or hope.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
It's just it's been dashed over and over again. Well,
he does have to go one way or the other.
We are either going to continue to back Ukraine the
way we have for three years or not. And if
we're not, that's a major change. I think it's more
likely that one happens. Will he announce it or will
it will it just become evident at some point, I
(02:22):
don't know, after this period of Zelensky in Ukraine and
Europe doing everything conceivable conceivable to make.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
It clear we want peace too, We're with you on this,
and putin never giving a single sign that he has.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Any interest in Trump's piece too.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
No, if it if the US policy becomes well and
you all are on your own, we're not going to
support a Ukraine well.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Then we've but it's not a nothing we've cided with
right now. In my opinion, I know one hundred that's
exactly my point. Yeah, And what seemed to be the
lean is indeed coming true. It was it was less
than Putin showing you wasn't interested in peace right now.
He gave Trump a long lecture about why Ukraine belongs
to Russia, and he said this will not end until
(03:11):
the underlying problems are solved. Well, the underlying problems will
not be solved until he has Ukraine correct. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
As Rich Lowry writes in The National Review, the play
for the Kremlin is obvious here. It wants to keep
pinching ahead with territorial gains, and if it continues to
string along the negotiations, has to hope that Trump tires
of the whole thing and cuts off USA to Ukraine.
That would reward Putin's intransigent with an important diplomatic victory
is split between the US and Europe and a chance
to make major advances against an increasingly hard pressed Ukraine.
(03:41):
And the only reference really to Trump being tired of
Putin and understanding that he's being played was that reference
to Putin's tapping me along.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
But I mean to.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Come out of the call yesterday and say, yeah, I
think we made progress.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
I don't know who that is.
Speaker 5 (03:57):
Well.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Jd Vance presented it as as well, if you guys
aren't interested, then hey, we're out. As if that is
a actually a neutral position. That is not a neutral position,
that's a taking the side of Russian position. So I
don't know if they're just trying, if they're trying to
fool people by presenting it is like we're just staying
neutral on this or what. So the ball is first off,
(04:21):
I think in Trump's court, but then absolutely in Europe's
court as they got to figure out what to do.
So they had a big meeting over the weekend of
European leaders with a couple of interesting things that came
out of it. A big defense meeting of the Germany,
the big people Germany, Britain, France, poland a couple of things.
They announced. Germany is going to lift their prohibition on
(04:42):
nuclear energy that they've had since World War Two, so
they are going to, like France, start using nuclear energy
so that they don't have to buy energy from Russia.
So that's a pretty big deal economically for Russia. Yeah,
they a so announced in that meeting that Russia will
(05:03):
does not present NATO a dilemma in five years like
had previously been thought if the war were to end soon,
but could within a year, like they could be back
up to speed enough within a year to present NATO
a real dilemma of what do we do now? If
they move on Estonia, they would be strong enough. That's
what the European countries announced over the weekend. And then
(05:25):
I really liked this quote that came out of it.
I think from the leader of Poland. Russia has been
playing hockey for years. We are not going to figure
skate our way out of this.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Oh that's some good ice sport metaphor slinging there, sir.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah, thatam well done. That went with also one of
the leaders saying the years of two percent funding of
our military are over. It's going to have to be
more like five percent. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
There are days I wish we had unlimited time for
this sort of thing because it's so interesting.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
I have all sorts of interesting.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Well I suppose you all will be the judge of
that when I delivered it, but I found it really
really intriguing analysis of Europe and everything that's wrong with it.
I think the Russia attack on Ukraine following the annexation
of Crimea, and the attack on Georgia and everything else
(06:17):
has has.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
And Germany continuing to buy oil from Russia after that happened,
and all those kinds of things, well, right, I think
it's finally gotten to the point that it's shaken the dopey,
dopey Euros out of their torpor, their their their sleepiness,
their fantasy land that they've been living in for the
past a bunch of years after you know, the US
(06:41):
security umbrella and enabled them to invest vast sums of
money into welfare states and socialism and the rest of it.
And I would I.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Would like to issue a hammering indictment against them for
all of that crap.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
But I think they're right about Russia and Ukraine. We're
not going to figure skate our way out of this. Yeah, yeah,
I love that. Here's the takeaway.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
And this was going to be the takeaway after I
built a case over many, many minutes, but I'll give
you the takeaway. We need to work every day as
a country to not become Europe.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
And there are a couple of examples of a.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
Great piece by Walter Russell Mead about why democracy is
in retreat, and he cites several cases in Europe about
anybody who does not go along with the very very
mainstream view of who ought to get elected and what
(07:38):
policies ought to be passed is decried as undemocratic and dangerous,
like the AfD party in Germany. And I could go
into detail on that. The more I learned, the more
interested I get. But their definition of democracy is the
results I want, and anything that challenges that is swept aside.
Like the AfD ought to be in an alliance with
(08:00):
the party that won the most seats. It's obvious the
efforts to keep them out because of a few crack
pots and being a little soft on Russia or whatever
is just it's twisting the German political system into knots
were sucsessed with it.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
The men declared a terrorist organization or whatever so people
can listen to their phone calls and read their emails.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
Well, yes, but actually, as long as we're talking about
this is let me click over.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
I think it's right there.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
Yeah, So last week the German government officially designated the
opposition party AfD as a confirmed extremist organization. The announcement
came from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution,
their domestic intelligence agency, blah blah blah. Then on Wednesday
they abruptly withdrew the extremist label. They will now monitor
(08:52):
the party only as a suspected case, which still allows
some surveillance in a way Americans would find repugnant, but
under much stricter judicial oversight. And somebody leaked the report
and it reveals that the evidence against the AfD consisted
not of plans for violence or insurrection, but just controversial
(09:12):
rhetoric and deeply nationalist views, none of which should have
triggered that designation. So it was the quote unquote mainstream
powers that be trying to label as extremist anybody who
dared shake their hold on power, which is exactly what
I was driving at. Their definition of democracy is democracy
(09:35):
with the right results, and that's terrible. The other thing
I really wanted to talk about is the Wall Street
Journal had a great piece about how huge tech is
in the world economy right now, technology in general, and
how tiny.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Europe's share of it is.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
The EU rivals, I mean, it's it's in the same
weight class more or less. If you take it as
a whole, the US economy and the Chinese economy, it's
a juggernaut. But you want to talk tech, Oh, it's sad,
it's pathetic. Apple's market value is bigger than the entire
German stock market, for instance. There's no Google, there's no Amazon,
(10:18):
there's no Meta. In Europe, there's nothing even slightly close.
And this Journal article goes into depth and has a
bunch of different examples of native born tech people, German
tech people who brought what they learned back from Silicon
Valley to Europe and were immediately crushed by strict labor laws,
a risk averse business culture, suffocating regulations, smaller pool of
(10:43):
venture capital, lackluster economic growth, no demographic growth, and said no,
and back to California they went, or other places. Yeah
and so, and you know that list. I'm going to
hit it one more time and we freemar marketers. So
hold old dragon fans. I know we're sad. And then
(11:05):
we ought to have industrial planning in tariffs and the
rest of it. But Europe is crushed by a timid
and risk averse business culture, strict labor laws, suffocating regulations,
smaller pool of venture capital, and lackluster economic growth.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Don't become Europe.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
That's what we as a country need to repeat to
ourselves every morning. You gotta make your bed. It's a
small act of discipline and positive something or other. I
believe in it very much, and say, let's not become
Europe today.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Like when you get up in the morning, I'm going
to be a good person today or whatever your mantra is, right,
I'm going to do kindness, whatever, do God's will today
and stay positive. Let's not become Europe today.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Yes, we're going to build a utopia through a million regulation.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yes. Hour two. I'll get into a little of what
I pulled out of the first part of Jake Tapper's
book that I started reading last night when I was
in bed again unintentionally hilarious, along with some interesting nuggets
about what was going on there. It's the biggest failure
of media in our nation's history, and it should not
(12:24):
just disappear as a minor thing. Luckily it has not
been for at least the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 6 (12:30):
Jack Armstrong and Joe The Armstrong and Getty Show, The
Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
So I watched the Minecraft movie over the weekend with
my son Henry, and I was about to talk about it,
and I thought I should look up a little of
how successful this movie was to back up my premise,
and I googled it first. Then I remembered what you
keep saying, No, you got to use the chat GP two.
I'm trying to get out of a habit of googling
and go to chat GPT. The answer I got on
(13:02):
chat GPT about I just asked chat GPT, was the
Minecraft movie a financial success? It's answer so much better
and thorough than googling it, I mean, not even close.
So I gotta get out of the habit of googling. Anyway,
a Minecraft movie has made almost a billion dollars worldwide
after a budget to make it of only one hundred
(13:24):
and fifty million dollars, which I gotta believe all of
the filming of the acting of that movie could have
been done in an afternoon probably. I mean, there wasn't
much to it, and it was all so much was
green screen. It was all CGI stuff and everything like that.
And like I mentioned, Jack Black, what an interesting dude.
(13:46):
I don't know is he married or not. I've seen
him in various interviews. He's certainly not trying to impress chicks.
He wears ill fitting clothes, he doesn't wash his face
or coma's hair. He rolls in, does his line's brilliantly
because he's really good, and and uh collects his money
and goes home. What an interesting thing that is? What
movie star has never wanted to care how they look?
(14:08):
Like Jack Black, he cames getting fatter and greasier anyway.
I mean, you ain't gonna be fat if you want,
maybe you think that's part of your appeal. You can
wash your face AnyWho. The Minecraft movie, first of all,
way better than I expected it to be. I thought
it was. It was only an hour forty five, but
I thought, uh, I thought this is gonna be kind
(14:28):
of tough to sit through. And it was quite entertaining,
pretty dang funny by the end it had it reminded
me of like all your Lord of the Rings movies. Okay,
another giant fight sequence. I just I can't do fight
sequences like a lot of people can, apparently endlessly. I
get it. But my main takeaway was, and if I
was rich, I would start if like really like Elon
(14:49):
rich I would come up with this idea today. It
was basically a series of popular memes that young people
get strung together so that everybody could laugh together about Hey,
I get this meme and feel part of something. That's
what it seemed like to me. And I'll bet you
(15:13):
could put one of those out once a month of
just whatever the most recent hot memes were, right, make
it like ninety minutes long. It's just a series of
meme jokes that every teenager gets and things to the hilarious,
and it would be super popular because that's basically what
the Minecraft movie was. So just a recognition slash belonging fest, yeah,
(15:36):
because other things aren't really working, but partially because this
is a reason to be together in the theater. It
is fun to recognize the memes together. It was clear
from my older son when he went and saw it
in the theater that that was a lot of the
appeal was all these inside jokes that they get and
laugh at, and it's fun to see him in a group.
I think this is a way to rescue movies. It's
(15:58):
gonna kill old time movies. But like just I don't know,
the most popular memes put together ninety minutes with a
loose script. I think that would right. Somebody steal that
idea and make it work.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
Well, it's either like irony or a perpetual motion machine
or something that online memes. The enjoyment of online memes together, Yeah,
in a room might convince kids, hey, this is really fun.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Wow, good point. Hello, But Mike constantly, my son would saying,
I know you don't get that, but to to various
things that were happening, characters and lines and stuff like that,
because they're here today. I mean, you could have had
a movie where the Hawktua girl was, you know, a
co star there for a couple of coffee. Oh please, don't.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
You and people would have go fought with laughter though
you know they mean studios. Yes, oh yes, now you
gotta start producing these. This is your ten million dollar idea.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
It's fine. I thought, I'll get another co host. I
thought of Friday Night. I thought, this is actu brilliant idea.
It would just take a lot of money to get
a going. You know, you'd have to pay for rights,
but you'd have lawyers to do that. They'd be easy. Yeah. Wow,
that's a great idea. Just your monthly meme cinema. Yeah, yeah,
and all the teenagers get together and feel cooler and
smarter than the rest of us because they get all
(17:12):
the jokes right. Yeah. We bought it though, cost twenty bucks.
So Minecraft's available at home now for streaming, but it
was twenty bucks to in it.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
I think it's got about a six month run. Your idea,
oh really, don't like, don't invest too heavily, thinking next
year will be even bigger.
Speaker 6 (17:30):
Trust arm strong, the armstrong and Getty shouts.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
My president decides to do something with an executive order
or whatever often that they promised on the campaign trail,
their voters get all excited, Yay, they did it day
one like they promised, And then then I get an
alert on my phone. Some judge somewhere I've never heard
of it said no, you can't do that, and then
it stops, and everybody's like groans, like, oh, they can
(18:06):
do that, and it keeps happening over and over again.
And do we want that system to continue that way
or not? Is part of what the Supreme Court was
arguing about yesterday. And as one of the justices said,
there are six hundred some federal judges and while I
do not question their motives. Sometimes they are wrong, so
do we want them to be able to hold up
the whole country?
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Let us discuss the very interesting and multifaceted oral arguments
yesterday before the Supreme Court with Tim Sandefer, vice president
for Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute, among other auspicious titles,
author of eight books, including most recently Freedom's Theories. How
Isabelle Patterson, Rosewilder and Ein Rand found Liberty in Age
(18:46):
of Darkness?
Speaker 2 (18:47):
I've recommended it many times. It's terrific. Tim. How are you, sir?
Just great?
Speaker 5 (18:51):
Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Guys published poet, gotta throw that in there. True, Yes,
a polymath as they say.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
Anyway, Tim, So, ostensibly everyone's talking about that we are
going to discuss birthright citizenship in front of the Supreme Court,
and that did come up. But would you agree that
the more significant discussion was about nationwide injunctions by individual
federal judges. Oh?
Speaker 5 (19:15):
Yes, absolutely. That was the focus of the argument, and
it was a very interesting argument. But I don't think
that it's a hard question. I think the answer is
obviously nationwide injunctions are perfectly fine. They're the ordinary way
of doing business in the courts, and people who complain
about them either don't understand the system or are trying
to get away with something illegal.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Yeah I don't. I don't always like that it happened,
but I can't see what the alternative would be. As
somebody pointed out, so you're gonna let me. I guess
it was you that pointed it out yesterday in Twitter.
The idea that so every time a president does something,
it's got to work its way all the way through
the courts up to the Supreme Court, and then a
decision by the Supreme Court before the Supreme Court might
(19:56):
say sometimes nine nothing, you can't do that.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
And during that whole period of time, the government is
still doing the illegal thing.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Right right. Wow.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
So clearly it's two to one for a judicial takeover
of the government.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
But I will stand up for liberty.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Is there no middle ground? Has got to be three
judge panel and not a single ya who in a
rural Tennessee.
Speaker 5 (20:19):
Yeah, I think. I think having a single unit yae
who in rural Tennessee is perfectly fine because that's what
the appellate process is sort of. That's why you appeal cases.
And by the way, that's why you should avoid appointing
yahoos to the federal bench. Might mention that too. The argument,
the argument against nationwide injunctions always seems to boil down to, well,
(20:39):
this is a democracy and the majority should always get
what it wants. And the answer to that is no where.
What happened to all of my friends who used to say,
this is a republic, not a democracy. The whole point
of our system is that the majority has to act lawfully,
and if it acts unlawfully, I can go in front
of a judge and get that give an order from
that judge prohibiting the government from violating my rights. And
(21:00):
the idea that we should do this piece meal, that
only a judge down here, that his order only applies there. Meanwhile,
the government can do illegal things to everybody else in
the country until the case reaches the US Supreme Court
makes no sense at all.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
The underlying theme here being folks, that what we really
need to fear is the power of the government in
this country. That's kind of the idea of forming it.
So there's no question that these nationwide injunctions were relatively
or practically completely unknown for one hundred and fifty years.
Then there were a handful of them, and the number
of them is now skyrots.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Every day. It seems like on my phone I see
a judge jumped in somewhere.
Speaker 5 (21:38):
Actually, right, I actually don't think that that's true. I
think that what happened was we just started calling them
by a different name. You know, there were been injunction
injunctions against unconstitutional government actions since before there was a constitution.
One of the points that was brought up during the
arguments was that British judges used to do this before
the American Revolution, and that was considered perfectly legitimate. It's
(21:59):
just that nowadays we call the nation right injunctions or
we have some judges who write sloppily and don't explain
what they're actually saying or something. And okay, that's a problem,
I suppose. But the idea that you should limit the
injunction power of federal courts is what that is is
that's open door to the majority violating individual rights on
a scale that I mean, they already do it, but
(22:21):
you can imagine what it would be if we took
away one of the most important protections for individual rights
in this country, which is getting an injunction from our
federal court. To protect your freedom, and it's insane.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
So I didn't want to get to this part too
fast because you're a lawyer, and this part can't be
fixed with the law. It seems to me that we've
got a cultural problem in that presidents are way more
likely than they used to be to want to challenge
the Supreme Court, either to like legitimately they don't think
the law is correct, or they don't care if they're wrong.
(22:55):
They just want to get the political credit for trying.
And perhaps I don't know this, but it seems like
a likely response. The six hundred some federal judges out there,
there's a lot more of them who are willing to
let their politics get ahead of their judge reasoning and
jump in and stop somebody they hate.
Speaker 5 (23:11):
Yes, you're absolutely right about that, and especially the thing
about the President and Congress being willing to do things
that they know are unconstitutional because they know that the
judges are going to strike it down and they can
blame the judges and say, oh, those evil activist judges,
or they can get away with their unconstitutional things. So
it's win when if you want to do something unconstitutional,
and honestly, every president's done this to some degree. Obviously,
(23:34):
Franklin Roosevelt.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Did this a lot.
Speaker 5 (23:36):
But the one that I always six in my memory
is George W. Bush when he signed the McCain fine
Gold campaign finance law and said when he signed it
that he thought it was unconstitutional, but that he would
leave it to the courts to deal with. Well, I'm sorry,
but if you're the president, you take an oath to
support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And
(23:57):
if you ignore that oath and sign something that you
know was unconstitutional just because you think the courts will
clean up your mess for you, I think that's disgraceful.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Yeah. Well, a lot of the pieces I've read that
have been following the growth of this use that as
kind of like the patient zero, because he said it
out loud, and then other presidents thought, hey, I can
do that, I just won't say it out loud, and
Obama did it, and Biden did it, and Trump did
it in whichever order, and then Trump again, and and
it's so, how do we fix this?
Speaker 5 (24:25):
Well, there's a long answer and the short answer. The
short answer is elect good presidents. The long answer is
that we have to restore respect for the Constitution.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
In this country.
Speaker 5 (24:34):
I think it's the long term damage that's been done
to Americans understanding and appreciation of the Constitution is horrifying.
We have prominent law professors. There was a law professor
at at Georgetown Law School a few years ago published
an article in the Washington Post saying the Constitution is obsolete.
I don't respect it at all. Well, you're a teacher
(24:56):
of constitutional law for crying out loud. And if we
don't respect the Constitution, we don't love it. It cannot
protect us. The Constitution is just a promise, and if
we don't honor that promise, then it's not worth the
paper it's written on.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
We should have written a law specifically putting him in jail.
In my opinion, Tim Sandefer is online from the Goldwater Institute,
a little constitutional humor for exactly design.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
For punish one man.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
That's a good idea, so you know, blah blah blah.
Disclaimer about it's difficult to read the tea leaves of
the oral arguments, blah blah blah. Did it strike you
that the justices, the sane ones that we like, we're
leaning in any particular direction as to the nationwide injunctions judges,
et cetera that we've been discussing.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Some of the.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
Judges have made clear for a long time that they're
against these what they call nationwide injunctions. Justice Thomas in particular.
Some of the others are a little harder to read.
Justice Barrett for example, and Justice Roberts, who have become
really the swing judges on this issue. I thought the
most interesting judge if you want, if anybody wants to
go and listen to the argument online, I thought Justice
(26:02):
Jackson was the one who is the most interesting. She
clearly understands how this area of the law works, and
she rightly says there's no there there that nationwide injunctions
are perfectly legitimate. They always have been and there's no problem.
So she'd be the one that I find most interesting.
But how to predict I think you're going to get.
I think Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett going to side
with the liberals and say, we don't have a problem
(26:25):
per se with nationwide injunctions, but maybe some of them
aren't very good, but as a as a blanket matter,
they're okay. And then they're going to want to hear
the underlying case about birthright citizenship, which obviously is a
huge deal.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
To me.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
Is it even worth getting into what happened on that
topic yesterday or do you think it's.
Speaker 5 (26:45):
Well, they really just talked about whether or not they
have a legitimate case in the first place, and they
haven't really briefed it or argued it yet. But that's
important because in order to get an injunction, you kind
of have to first show that you have even an
arguable point to make, and that was what they were
arguing about. And I will say, I know this is
talk radio, and we're all supposed to think that we
clearly have the right answer and everything. I think the
(27:07):
birthright citizenship question is a very hard question. I don't
think it's an easy question on either side.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Let's talk about that when we come back from the break.
I want to hear. I want to hear the arguments
on both sides of that. That's interesting And clearly you've
probably seen the breakdown. Who speaks the most words? The
chicks talk too much? Is that given?
Speaker 5 (27:26):
Well, jessic so to my art, does love cutting off
lawyers and not letting them answer her question?
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Yeah, the chicks talk too much. I think that's been
and the new gal talks more than anybody. That shouldn't
happen in any organization. I'm strong and get the reality
is this is fabulous. I thank you. That's enough of that.
This is crazy. That's just why it is. Yeah, but
damn it.
Speaker 6 (27:45):
We weren't allowed to ask about the big guys. This
is the United States of America.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
God, let's not play games.
Speaker 6 (27:51):
This is the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty, The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
Discussing the oral arguments before the Supreme Court yesterday with
Tim Sanderfer, vice president for Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute.
It was advertised as a birthright citizenship hearing it or discussion.
It really was much more a discussion of individual federal
judges and nationwide injunctions and that sort of thing. But
(28:24):
to the question of the Fourteenth Amendment, Tim, you said
before the break that it's not an easy call. I'm
glad to hear you agree. I've thought the same thing.
What should we know about fourteenth Amendment even come to
a semi intelligent opinion on this?
Speaker 5 (28:40):
Well, the first sentence of the fourteenth Amendment says all
persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject
to the jurisdiction thereof are US citizens. And all of
this case, all of these arguments turn on that phrase
subject to the jurisdiction thereof. What does that phrase mean.
It's really tough because the word jurisdic is one of
those words that can mean all sorts of different things.
(29:03):
It basically means power, but there's all sorts of different
kinds of power, and so that's what the argument turns on.
Some people think that it means you have to follow
the law. If you're born here and you have to
follow the law, then you're subject to the jurisdiction thereof,
and then that means you're a citizen. But that doesn't
really make a lot of sense because even foreign tourists
who come here for a vacation have to follow the law.
(29:24):
I mean, they have to stop at the red lights
and they can't steal things, So that can't be what
that means, right. Instead, the other side argues, jurisdiction thereof
means some kind of loyalty or allegiance, that there's citizenship jurisdiction,
as opposed to follow the law jurisdiction, and that different.
You can see that difference For example, in this if
(29:46):
you're a foreign spy and you sneak into the country
and you spy for some foreign country and you get arrested,
you can be prosecuted for espionage, but you cannot be
prosecuted for treason. Why because you're not a US citizen
and you don't owe loyalty to the US, so you
cannot commit treason against the US. And so there's two
different kinds of jurisdiction, is the argument. And so those
(30:08):
who are against birthright citizenships say, subject of the jurisdiction
thereof means that your parents owed loyalty to the United
States as opposed to some foreign country. And that would
mean that illegal aliens, if they have a child here,
that child is not assistant in the United States. Now,
that's also there's a problem with that. There's a couple
problems that. One of the problems of that argument is
that nobody has ever said that that's what it means.
(30:31):
In the one hundred and fifty years since this has
been in the Constitution, everybody has active like if you're
born here, you're a citizen all of that time. And
so suddenly discovering that, what turns out that we've been
misreading the Constitution for one hundred and fifty years. Would
be a huge, enormously radical transformation and how our system works.
(30:51):
That would cause tremendous disruption nationwide, and that would be
a real problem. But all of this, the real problem
here in answering this question is that when the Amendment
was adopted, there were no such things as the illegal
aliens because there were no laws against immigration. And that
means if you're an originalist and you think the competition
should be understood the way it was originally intended, the
(31:12):
framers didn't ever think about this because it wasn't against
the law back then, So we don't know what they
would have thought about this.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
Question, right right, Well, at the point that this enormously radical,
disruptive president has overturned, that's when you tag me and
Tim and I come in and explain to the good
folks that look, the nature of global transportation, the movement
of people or peoples from one place to another has
(31:38):
changed so vastly.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Joe's a living Constitution guy. You can hear it coming.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
Out of what No, don't you dare no that the
very nature of comings and goings from countries has been
so radically transformed a Chinese national with not the slightest
notion of making life in the United States can depart China,
arrive here, give birth, go back to China, all in
(32:06):
the span of seventy two hours. I'm inducing labor in
this case probably or getting very lucky, and that child
had citizenship. That's an eventuality unimaginable back in the day,
is the case?
Speaker 5 (32:18):
I think so, And that's sort of true. But on
the other hand, the Chinese question came up back then
because there were so many Chinese in California in the
eighteen sixties. And Senator's rast, well, isn't this going to
make the children of the Chinese immigrants who back then
did not intend to stay in the United States. They
intended to go back to China. The senator's rast, does
this make their kids us? Senator US citizens? And the
(32:39):
Senator from California said yes, and then he was immediately
thrown out of office. So what does that mean? Nobody
knows what that.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
Means a single case from eighteen ninety eight, or is
there more precedent?
Speaker 5 (32:51):
Really there really isn't. There's really just a handful of
presidents and no Supreme Court case has ever said that
birthright citizenship is in the in the Constitution. There have
been some that have kind of mentioned it or kind
of assumed it, but none has said so outright.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
I am surprised. The polling shows that only about a
third of Americans want to do away with the way
we do it now. I'm surprised by that. I do
want to get to this. This is a journalistic question,
but I think it has an effect on people's respect
for the law. It has come up recently. It has
become a pattern that anytime the media mentions a judge,
they mentioned what president appointed them. Do you think that's
(33:26):
a good idea or not? They didn't just barely got
a minute.
Speaker 5 (33:30):
I think I think it's fine. I think people should
know where these For instance, I think it would help
a lot of judges. You know a lot of Republican
appointed judges have been ruling against the Trump administration, and
I think it would be helpful for people to know
that these questions are not things where it's all partisan.
The law is not just partisan politics. It's something much
more profound and much more important.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yeah, well, I agree, but it implies that judges I
don't know.
Speaker 5 (33:55):
True. I used to think.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
I didn't used to think about it ever. If a
judge ruled, I just thought't want that's interesting now it's
all who appointed him? Oh, of course he.
Speaker 5 (34:03):
Said that that is true. That is a risk. But
I think we should air on the side of informing
people as opposed to keeping people in the dark.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
So that's always true. Tim Sander for the Goldwater Institute
on the line, Tim, final question, I've called for a monarchy.
You in favor of it? Yes or no?
Speaker 5 (34:21):
No, I'm against him monarchy. I'm for the constitution.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Joe. One more question. As a published poet, I was
thinking about this yesterday he won the Nobel Prize. Bob
Dylan good poet or not lousy poet?
Speaker 5 (34:31):
Now read Robert Hayden or Richard Wilbur instead.
Speaker 4 (34:35):
How about Ringo Star Octopus's Garden creative Tam. It's always
great and enlightening. Thanks Millian for the time. Let's talk
again soon.
Speaker 6 (34:44):
Thanks guys.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
All right, I was actually thinking about this listening to
Dylan lyrics. Why do they stick in everybody's head so much?
Why do people keep going back to them? If it's
just gobbledegook, like a lot of real poets claim.
Speaker 6 (34:59):
It can't be.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
It wouldn't lodge. It wouldn't it wouldn't make the market made,
would it all? Right?
Speaker 4 (35:05):
He was famously moody about his career and his music
in his Life's Philosophy. I think some of his stuff
is absolutely brilliant, and I think some of it's gobbledegook.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Huh. Maybe maybe more on that another day, or maybe not.
We got plenty of stuff to tell you. I hope
you can stick around if you missus. Segmann. I thought
that tim thing was really really good, and you want
to listen to it again and get the podcast Armstrong
and Getty on demand.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
Armstrong, arms Strong and Getdy on demand.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
We're not boring. A lot of news is boring and
tedious and depressing. It makes you angry.
Speaker 4 (35:38):
You don't want to live your life like that Armstrong
and Getty show.
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Joe Getty
Jack Armstrong
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