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March 19, 2025 34 mins
(March 19, 2025)
Amy King joins Chris Merril who is filling in for Bill for Handel on the News. NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore return to Earth after 9 months stuck in space. Ukraine and Russia exchange attacks overnight, hours after Trump-Putin call. Zelensky announces talk with Trump on March 19; says Russia attacked Ukraine’s power grid despite claimed pause.
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listen Saints KPI AM six forty The Bill Handles
show on demand on the iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
App and now Handle on the news. Ladies and gentlemen,
here's not Bill Handle.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
Indeed not Bill Handle. Chris Maryland for Bill Today. Thanks
for hanging out with me yet another day. The long
national nightmare is nearly over. We'll be gone the next
couple of days, but then back again next week. It's
like waking up from an ap and going back and
resuming that nightmare right where we left off. So that's
what's happening. That's your programming note. Join me normally on

(00:42):
Sunday afternoons. There's always a pleasure being with you, and
I thoroughly enjoy every opportunity we have to hang out together.
Although I'm loving Amy King's shirt because the greatest thing
we got out of the pandemic was an excuse not
to hang out with people. I don't want it. I'm
a bit of a missing throat that way, not really

(01:02):
a gorphobic, but I really if I if I just
hang out at home, I'm fine with that. I realized
the older I get, the more hermit like I become,
and I'm totally okay with it. I'm fine with just
I'm just gonna go home and I'm just not gonna
spend time with people because generally speaking, people suck. Individual people, okay,

(01:25):
but people in a group. She's just I got no reason.
There's just no reason. A few years back, you know,
I've never been to Disneyland. What never. I don't do it. No,
I can't.

Speaker 4 (01:39):
The crowd.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
Like it. My wife is working at a big lab
that was in San Diego years ago, and I realized
I started to develop this sort of social anxiety. It's
not it's not bad, but I'll have these moments and
we're at this we were at the museums there in
Bilbo Park, and I have these moments where if there's

(02:03):
too many people and there's too much chaos going on
and it's a confined space, and we were doing this
big Christmas party. They planned it at the museums at
Balboa Park, so there were like a thousand people packed
into this place, and there were kids running everywhere, and
there were people going in all different directions and there
was no real order to it, and my mind couldn't
process it, and I started having this panic attack and

(02:25):
I just got this whole the you hear people talking
about it. If you haven't experienced before, it's terrible. Everything
started to get really narrow, right, everything got really tunneled,
and I just said, I need to I need to
just find a corner and stand in it for a while.
And he just had my back against the wall where
I feel safe. And my wife said, why are you
ruining my Christmas party? You're doing this to me? Why

(02:48):
would you do this?

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Ah?

Speaker 3 (02:49):
The empathy, she well, she had never experienced it, she
didn't know anything. And I said, I said, I don't
know what's happening right now, but I'm freaking out. I'm
completely freaking out. And it's only happened to me a
few times. That was the first time. It was only
a couple of years later that my wife had a
genuine panic attack. You know the ones where all of
a sudden you think you're having a heart attack, which
is horrible feeling.

Speaker 4 (03:09):
I had one of those during the pandemic, did you Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
How horrible is that? Is it? The worst feeling or what?

Speaker 5 (03:15):
It was awful and we had to I called paramedics
and everything.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was doing work. I was working
in Arizona. She was still living in San Diego, and
then I was driving back and forth on the weekend,
so she was there alone and I get this phone
call that says I'm waiting for the ambulance, and I went,
you're waiting for what are you? What's going on? She said,
I think I'm having a heart attack. So of course
I'm freaking out, and I'm grabbing everything I can to
throw it in a bag and get ready to take off,
and I'm calling my boss and I'm saying, my wife's

(03:41):
having a heart attack. I have to go. And then
she called back later and she said, it's not a
heart attack. They think it was a panic attack. And
it was my first experience with people that have experienced
panic attacks. What a horrible, horrible thing to go through.
And she's had a few sins. But of course, you
once you experience it once, you have kind of an
idea when it starts coming, and you know what that
feeling is, and that in itself feels like a little

(04:02):
bit of control, not a lot, but at least you
kind of know what's happening to your body. What a
terrible feeling. So when when the pandemic hit, how great
was that? Oh? I didn't have to spend time with people.
I didn't have to go into crowded spaces.

Speaker 4 (04:15):
There was no crowded spaces.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
Nine. Oh, I felt me during the pandemic. I was
like the only guy. I loved it.

Speaker 4 (04:23):
Oh, yeah, that's what one.

Speaker 5 (04:24):
Remember when they had the you know, you had empty
seats next to you.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Yes, I had empty planes next to me. I think
I was on a flight and I think there were
six people on my flight. You remember the old days
when you could take a red eye and there'd only
be just a handful of people in the flight. Now
they do a much better job of booking them and
getting them all full and making sure every seat is taken.
But it took me back to those days, you know,

(04:49):
twenty plus years prior, when you could get onto a
late night flight and there was nobody else on there.
But yeah, oh boy, was that something. And then we'll
not have any beverage service because we don't.

Speaker 4 (04:59):
Want you to kill Oh that's right, they didn't know.
You didn't get anything on the planes.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
No, it's great. Why we're talking about this, go ahead.

Speaker 5 (05:08):
Do you know why we're talking pandemic stuff today? Well,
I know why I'm wearing the sweatshirt.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
Yeah, we're at kind of an anniversary, aren't we.

Speaker 5 (05:15):
Yeah, it's the five year anniversary of the lockdown.

Speaker 3 (05:18):
Okay, yeah.

Speaker 4 (05:19):
Governor Newsom announced it on March nineteenth.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
Or what I told the good old days. Oh so great,
so so great.

Speaker 5 (05:28):
And as I started lifting the restrictions, you were like, no, no,
that's what.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
I Yeah, that's that's how I was. And then it
just so happened. It coincided. My wife and I had
just I was I lost my full time gig and
I was doing fill in work all over the place,
and we decided, let's get let's strip everything down and
pay off all of our debt. So we moved into

(05:52):
a fifth wheel camper and parked it at my parents' place,
which is deep in the woods in northern Michigan. And
we lived in that for two years. Michigan winters on
propane in a camper. It was terrible. It was the
most miserable thing. We paid off all of our credit
card debt, we paid off all of the cars, we
paid off all of the student loans, we paid off.
Everything got back to zero. And since then we've you know,

(06:16):
obviously I do a little more work, and her her
business is going pretty well, so we've built things up.
We got ourselves in a nice little cottage on the
lake there, and now she spent summers there and I
spent summer here. So but it got us ahead of things.
So it just so happened to coincide with the pandemic

(06:36):
that we moved into this thing. So we were already
sort of social distancing. But what was crazy is in
this really remote rural area, short lots fewer people on
the roads. But then you started to see more and
more people. And I noticed this because I did do,
like I said, a little bit of travel. So I'd
travel from this remote area into some cities where I
was doing some work, and the cities streets are still

(06:57):
empty freeways, you know how, we got to eight lanes
wide on a freeway and there's hardly anybody on it.
And yet if you went back to my tiny little town,
you'd have a two lane road and there'd be traffic.
So the rural areas really disregarded a lot of the
advice that the more urban areas definitely leaned into. And
I think part of that has to do with when
you live in a rural area. First of all, there's

(07:19):
an inherent distrust of government, I think in rural areas.
But also you are You're just naturally socially distanced. If
you walk out of your front door, it's not like
you're walking into an apartment hallway. You're walking out into acreage,
you know. So it was just an interesting dichotomy between
those two perspectives. Okay, speaking of social distancing, imagine if

(07:42):
you could be two hundred and fifty miles away from
all of humanity. Oh, dear Lord, please does that sound glorious?
Stuck in space?

Speaker 1 (07:53):
No more?

Speaker 3 (07:53):
The astronauts are back. I just heard you talking with
Jim Ryan about this in the wake up call. Amy King,
and you guys pointed out what I thought was the
coolest aspect of the whole thing. One. I loved watching
the capsule come down. I love that they were able
to get a camera on it from I think it
was still eight miles high or something like that, so
you could actually see some of the heat coming off
the shields as it was re entering the atmosphere. It

(08:15):
was an amazing shot. And finally the the parachutes deployed,
it splashed down in the Atlantic and then was surrounded
by dolphins.

Speaker 5 (08:24):
Was that just the most like weird, amazing thing ever?

Speaker 3 (08:28):
And I think it's because we love dolphins. Now we go,
that's cool. The wildlife came to check them out. They
were greeted by dolphins. Had it been great white sharks,
we probably have a different take on the whole thing.
We go, oh, look, the wildlife came. But if it
had been great white sharks, we go, oh, they're going
to be eaten. They survived the re entry and now
they're chumped.

Speaker 4 (08:48):
That would have been end.

Speaker 3 (08:50):
No. No, Who do you think was the most relieved
when that capsule came back and splashed down and everybody
was safe. Had to have been Elon Musk. This guy
must have been sweating bullets because he's had a couple
of couple of rockets exploded last week. Right, He's had
let's say, a not great couple of weeks on the market.

(09:12):
Tesla's dropping like a rock. People are attacking his cars
at showrooms across the country, including what they're calling a
terrorist attack, and if we want to go that far,
but it was a certain degree of vandalism in Las Vegas.
I don't know if you saw those cars that were
lit on fire. It was terrible. He's not.

Speaker 4 (09:29):
That's a certain degree of vandalism.

Speaker 3 (09:31):
Certain degree certain I don't know if I'm going to
go so far to say terrorism, but it's certainly vandalism.
So all of these he's not had a great couple
of weeks, so he must have been pretty relieved. A
couple of notes, quick notes on this. When the astronauts
went into space last June, it was the Gulf of
Mexico when they splashed down. It was the Gulf of

(09:52):
America when they went into space in June of last year.
Elon Musk had thirteen kids. When they splashed down. Musk
added another one. So the world changes, the world changes,
see you, Amy.

Speaker 5 (10:10):
There may be a peace deal in the works, but
it hasn't stopped the fighting. Ukraine and Russia exchanged aerial
assaults overnight. That's a nice way of saying they're bombing
each other hours after the Kremlin agreed to temporarily halt
attacks on energy infrastructure targets. It stops short of signing
off on the broader cease fire that Ukraine has agreed

(10:33):
to that was broker by the US residents. Putin and
Trump talked on the phone for a couple hours yesterday,
Putin did not agree to that thirty day truce that
Trump is endorsing. Zelenski says, while they support a pause
on attacks on the energy targets, he wants to know
the details of the proposal before he signs off on it.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
Yeah, I think that's understandable. A lot of people are
hearkening this to the Yalta diferences. You remember this. This
is when the United States we had Churchill was there,
Roosevelt was there, and Stalin was there, and they all
got together world War two and they decided who got what?
In in Germany, who's what's communist, what's going to be capitalist?

(11:18):
Who gets what? And they just went through and they
decided what the other country would do. It's a similar
situation here where it sounds like we're getting together with
Putin and were saying, Pitton, what do you want? You
want access? You want those ports? That's cool, I'm gonna
need some minerals. Looks like we're gonna get everything we
want out of this and who gets left out start

(11:38):
looked like Zelensky might be the guy that gets hosed
on some of this stuff, which is why Zelensky doesn't
want to sign off on anything because he says, wait
a minute, you guys are negotiating a peace deal without
one of the participants in the war. Uh, and your
negotiations are what of my stuff are you taking? It's
not at all unlike I have three kids. The two

(12:01):
oldest would sometimes pick on their youngest brother, and the
youngest brother would start crying, and then the two oldest
would then go into his room and they would start
taking his toys and they would decide who got what toy,
and the youngest kept saying, why am I losing out
on all my toys? I didn't do anything, and the
youngest would say, those are my toys. You can't take them,
and the two oldest would say, shut up, there are

(12:23):
toys now. That's basically what we're seeing going on in Ukraine.
We're just divving up the little brother's toys. So sorry, Zelensky.
Zelensky is supposed to speak with Trump today and he says,
I will contact President Trump. We will discuss the details
the next step. He says, I believe everything was going

(12:44):
in the right direction, although not for Russia, which is
unhappy when something goes right. So it does sound like
he is a bit more optimistic. Of course, he wants
a ceasefire. He doesn't want to give up any territory
at all. They lost a lot of leverage because they
had they had a slight incursion in the north of
Ukraine into Russian territory, but then the Russians just recently
beat them back, and so they lost some of their leverage.

(13:07):
I don't Zelenski's fighting for his life. The people of
Ukraine are fighting for their lives for and I don't
mean that. I mean that patriotically. They're not. Of course,
when you fight in war, you're fighting for your life,
but in this case they're fighting for their entire identity.
And Russia doesn't seem to care. And Putin is willing

(13:28):
to put people into the meat grinder. He says, was
just grab some more people, throw them into the meat grinder.
That's fine, North Korea. You want to bring some people over,
We'll throw them in our meat grinder too. He doesn't care.
And this is Russia's history when it comes to war too.
It's simply to outman and overpower other countries. They have
in the past taken significant losses, but that's sort of

(13:50):
their whole strategy. We're just going to outlast them. Even
if they take out one and a half. People want
to have soldiers for each one that we take out.
We have so many. That's how they do it. They
grind other countries down. That's what they've done throughout the
throughout history. So that is it's nothing new. And now
Putin looks like he's gonna get what he wants because

(14:11):
he's got he's got an ally in the White House. Now,
Amy King, that's all I gotta say about that.

Speaker 5 (14:18):
Okay, fine, then let's move on. You got nothing else,
Scotis speaks out. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts did something
that the justices don't normally do, and that was that
he had something to say about Trump's call to impeach
the judge who ruled against his deportation plans. Trump posted
on social media that the judge who ordered that plane

(14:40):
to turn around and bring the Trende or Ragua guys
back should be impeached, and Justice Roberts said, for more
than two centuries, it's been established that impeachment is not
an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. He
said the normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
So really interesting that Roberts is taking a stand here
because he didn't have to. Roberts is the head of
the judiciary, not just the chief of the Supreme Court,
Supreme Court being on top of the entire branch, and
he's the Chief Justice. He's basically if you think of Congress,
and you've got the Speaker of the House, and you've
got the Senate Majority leader as sort of the leaders

(15:22):
of the legislative branch. Of course, the President the leader
of the executive branch. The Supreme Court sits atop the
judicial branch, with Roberts being the Chief Justice, whose voices,
of course amplified louder than anyone else's. He didn't have
to say anything, so for him to stand up and
speak out is a little bit peculiar. We're going to

(15:42):
dive more into this a little bit later on of
the show. It's a bit peculiar, but it's not unheard of.
Roberts has had he said things in the past, and
he has even you remember they ruled for Citizens United
when Obama was still in office, and Obama brought that up,
I believe it was at a State of the Union
address and he made some swipe in the joint session

(16:04):
at the Supreme Court. And you'll recall that Robert's sort
of mouthed not true, not true. So he's not exactly
a wallflower when it comes to what's going on outside
of the Supreme Court, especially if it impacts the judiciary.
And what I think is going to be very interesting
about Roberts speaking out is does that embolden any other

(16:28):
Republicans who may have some reservations about President Trump sort
of ignoring much of the judges orders when it comes
to the the deportation orders. Again, we'll talk more about this. Oh,
I think we've got this plan in the seven o'clock
hours sometimes, so we'll tackle it in there a little
more in depth as well. Is it back to me now, Amy? Oh?

(16:54):
Another good reason not to ride public transit? Yeah. Ian
police departments are for a man who allegedly stabbed someone
at the Metro train station near Universal Studios last night
a little after eight o'clock in the B Line. I
got to the Universal Studio City Metro platform. The victim
they say was in stable conditions and Metro this is

(17:14):
my favorite Metro extents. It's wishes for a quick recovery
to the victim. Thanks the LA Police Department of Fire
Departments for their prompt response thoughts and prayers. Sorry you
got stabbed suspect right away before officers arrive, Please say
you the man was wearing a black jacket and black
Adidas joggers. All right, So two things. Stay away from
public transit and also stay away from people who wear

(17:36):
jogging suits in public. Fair Fair just never been a
fan of mass transit. I know, I know it's essential
to a city like ours, I get it. But if
it's so essential, then why are there's so many cars there?
Why does will have a job telling us where all
the traffic is backed up? If we're all using mass transit, right,

(18:00):
we're not. The number of people that use mass transit
percentage wise, is so minuscule that all you're doing is
just risking your life. When you go there, you're going
to take mass transit and you're going to be stabbed,
and then you're going to be urinated on, and you're
going to sit in somebody else's poop. That's what happens.
That's the only thing that happens. Better off to just

(18:20):
sit in traffic in your own poop.

Speaker 5 (18:22):
Well, this guy has something and it's not trunk derangement syndrome.
There's a state senator in Minnesota. It's Republican Justin Icorn.
He was one of the authors of a bill seeking
to define Trump derangement syndrome as a mental as a
mental illness. Well, he's been arrested for soliciting a minor

(18:44):
for prostitution. Detectives say they communicated with the senator over
the phone and say Icorn believed he was talking to
a sixteen year old girl, but no, it was police
and they busted him.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
Oh now we've got pedophile deranged syndrome. Amy King just
feeding into the nonsense. Can't believe you and your prejudices
against kitty diddlers. How dare you define that as a
mental illness? This person was leaning so far into MAGA
that they wanted to say that anyone who didn't love
the president was mentally ill. Of course, this has met

(19:22):
with all kinds of cheers from a number of people
who have continued to push that liberalism is a mental
illness narrative for a long time. Of Course, political affiliation
is not a mental illness. We know that, except some
people are so deranged by their own tribalism that they

(19:46):
believe anyone who doesn't see it their way. There's no
other explanation than to say their brains don't work properly.
I've seen this play out. Let's take this out of
the world of politics. I've seen this play out elsewhere
behind the scenes. A lot of people don't realize this.
But behind the scenes, Amy King and producer Ann don't
share a studio together. And part of the reason is

(20:09):
Ann is a Podres fan, and of course Amy is
a Dodgers fan. And I've I've spoken with it's spoken
with Amy many times about this, and I say, Hey,
what's going on with Anne? And she says an stick
in the head, And of course I'm actually I'm I'm
a Padres leaning kind of guy. But I don't really

(20:32):
say that to Amy because I don't want her to
think ill of me. So I'm sort of a closet
Podres fan.

Speaker 4 (20:38):
Yeah, there's no escaping it here. I'm in her face.
But then they always.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
Arrangement, so it is I do. Fun fact, I crossed
off a bucket list item at Petco Park. I got
to throw out the first pitch at a game.

Speaker 5 (20:55):
Really, Yeah, that was amazing.

Speaker 3 (20:59):
And the funny thing is the radio station. You know,
they would try to find people. And I've worked at
other places where they do this too, And so the
teams are always trying to find who's gonna be the
next person that we're gonna have out there. Sometimes it's
somebody from first responders make a wish or something like that.
And then when they don't have anybody else, then they
call the radio station and they say, you guys, got
anybody you want to give it away? Like a dairy

(21:21):
queen coupon and a first pitch kind of thing. And
so they came to me and they said, do you
want to do this? And I my heart dropped and
I went, oh my god, yes, that's a bucket lest item.
Of course I want to throw out a first pitch
in a Major League Baseball game. Yes, And everyone around
the station was like, Okay, that's fine, we've all done it. Okay,
well you're cool. Dream come true for me.

Speaker 4 (21:41):
I think it's very cool.

Speaker 3 (21:42):
Yeah. So somehow we just went from from a Minnesota
state senator who just got Chris Hansen to I threw
out a first pitch at a Padre's game. See how
that works? I like it? Yep. That's called stream of
consciousness radio. All right? How about this? A lawsuit? Last year,
Card and Grove is suing six Flags Magic Mountain alleging

(22:06):
their twenty two year old son suffered traumatic and fatal
breeding injury sustained while riding one of the themes the
theme park. Excuse me, most infamous and popular roller coasters
X two. Anybody here bent on X two? Can you
describe it in any way, shape or form? All right,
that's just how famous it is. A Christopher Hawley is
a recent graduate of San Diego State with his younger

(22:28):
brother Alex. They were at six Flags Magic Mountain. The
trio climbed aboard X two. His brother and cousins sat
together right behind Christopher, who was in a row all
by himself. It's a fourth dimension coaster designed with rotating
seats that move independently as the ride progresses. I'm gonna
throw up just thinking about it. It has a two
hundred and fifteen foot drop suddenly flips and rotate and rotates,

(22:50):
all while reaching speeds of up to seventy six miles
an hour. Who designs this? This is an absolute sadist engineer.
They got near the end of the ride, the coaster
suddenly and abruptly and violently jolted to a halt. It
jarred the twenty two year old and the other two
boys in their seats. One dude was holding out of
the rail for stability, and then when they came to

(23:14):
his aid after he left the ride, he mumbled that
his head hurt. Then he slumped over to his side
and lost consciousness. His parents said that he was an
excellent health. He was taking to Henry Mayo Newall Hospital
in Valencia. CT scan showed that he suffered catastrophic right
subdural hematoma resulting from the roller coaster, which means he
had a brain bleed and then he died. They say

(23:35):
it's all because that roller coaster came to a stop.
Another good reason, aside from the crowds and the exorbitant expenses,
to never go to theme parks. I know I'm alone
on that one. You are, I know I do like
a roller coaster. I just don't like waiting in line
for it. All right, you want to pause, now you

(23:55):
want to do one more?

Speaker 4 (23:56):
Let's do one more?

Speaker 5 (23:57):
Is nothing sacred testing on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
So Galgadat is getting her star in the Hollywood Walk
of Fame yesterday and protesters, both pro Palestinian and pro
Israeli turned out for it. They got in each other's faces.
One ripped a flag away from the opposing group. That

(24:19):
led to some violence. Police made a number of arrests.
The ceremony for the Wonder Woman star was delayed by
about fifteen minutes. Of course, she is Israeli and has
spoken out in support of what's happening in Israel in
the war with Hamas, and she's been unapologetic about that.

Speaker 3 (24:40):
This is where to give credit. This is where Bill
really shines when he's able to talk about these things.
But here's my hot take on this. Good for her.
I love Galgadot one of my favorites, and I know
that's not always a popular opinion, but I think she's fantastic.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
She is.

Speaker 3 (24:58):
I think she's a lovely person. To everything I've ever
seen about her. She's proud to be Jewish, she's proud
to be in ISRAELI all that stuff, No problem with
it at all, none. But then she gets protested because
of it. And that's because there's a war going on
in Israel, and there's bombings going on Gaza Strip and
everything that we already know about. What I think is
remarkable about this is had had there been someone who
is Palestinian that was given a star, would there be

(25:21):
Israelis or Jewish people protesting a Palestinian getting a star
on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. My guess is no.
I don't know that definitively, but my guess is no,
which indicates that right now, one of the prevailing opinions
is that the Palestinian people are the oppressed and the
Jews in this case are the oppressors. I'm not saying

(25:42):
it's right or wrong. I'm saying that's what the perception
is right now, which is interesting because throughout all of
human history, the Jews have been the oppressed, not the oppressors.
So we have flipped the script. In the last I
don't know, handful of decades, whatever it is, we've completely
flipped the script. And now you've got no, you're an oppressor. No,

(26:06):
I've always been oppressed, and I'm proud to be a
person who's fought and overcome oppression. And they've got the
other side that says you overcame it only to oppress
other people. And the cycle continues and round and round,
and round they go. We've got a judge in Wisconsin
that is upsetting a number of people by defending free speech.
Who knew that would happen. So imagine that you've run

(26:29):
across a guy who's got the kitty porn. My god,
what a terrible thing. You can't have kitty porn. Look
at the victims. You've victimized these children, except it's AI
generated kitty porn. So the guy was charged. He's forty
two years old, charged with four federal criminal counts related
to alleged production, distribution, and possession of AI generated images

(26:50):
of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct. The case that
could set major implications for how AI generated porn child
porn excuse me is legally handled. You recall that we've
had an issue in California with some schools where people
were high school kids were taking the faces of their
classmates and then using AI to undress them. Of course,

(27:14):
we don't know if it was accurate or not. It
AI's interpretation based on full body photos, and what AI
could ascertain from those photos is so what somebody's shape
might be like. The difference is, of course, is that
if you're using a photo of an actual person, and
then you're generating it, you are victimizing that individual. However,
what if the person doesn't exist at all, and you've

(27:35):
seen the AI generated photos of people and they look
incredibly realistic. I'm not talking about porn photos ConA. I'm
talking about just general pictures of people. Who is this
person real or is this AI generated? Now there are
some tip offs to it. Skin might be too perfect,
they might have twelve fingers. All these things are clues.

(27:55):
But AI is getting better and better and better. And
so what if you have somebody who has AI generated
picture of children in sexually explicit scenarios? Generally we say
not a great idea. Is it illegal to draw and
under if you are a very good artist, could you

(28:16):
draw an underage child in a sexually explicit position? Is
that illegal? Well, we'd say, well, it's distasteful, but it's
art and would be protected under the First Amendment because
that person created it, and so that would be protected.
So how is that different than AI. Well, the person
didn't necessarily draw it out. AI did, But does the

(28:38):
person have the First Amendment right to witness it? The
guy allegedly used text to text to image generative artificial
intelligence in a model called stable diffusion created thousands of
realistic images of prepubescent miners. In an argument to dismiss
the possession charges, the man said that he has the
right to possess and produce obscene material in his own home.

(29:00):
He cited a previous Supreme Court ruling that prohibited cribalt
that prohibited, excuse me, criminalizing obscene materials at the home.
So what happens to this guy? The case will go on.
The judge in Wisconsin allowed three of the charges to
move forward through one charge out. The judge argued that

(29:22):
the First Amendment protects the possession of virtual child pornography
and one in one's home. Prosecutors have appealed that decision.
So it will be very interesting as we're seeing a
twenty first century challenge to free speech limitations. Amy, you

(29:43):
got one more?

Speaker 4 (29:43):
Yep?

Speaker 3 (29:44):
All right?

Speaker 5 (29:45):
So did you CLA just sit back and watch? Jewish
students and a faculty member have claimed that UCLA enabled
anti Semitic actions during the pro Palestinian campus encampment last spring,
in the protests where they blocked access to certain students
and that kind of thing. Well, on Monday, the Trump

(30:05):
administration got into it when the Department of Justice filed
court documents supporting the right of the students and faculty
to sue for discrimination and accused UCLA of trying to
evade its responsibility for alleged anti Semitism on campus.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
M All right, So this puts a real spotlight on
the protests. As we know, you have the right to protest.
Even if the majority of people don't like what you
have to say, you have a right to say it.
We know this. We know this because we've had it
reinforced time and time again the old and it's now

(30:44):
been overturned, but not overturned, but it's been clarified. Remember
the people say, you can't you'll fire in a crowded
movie theater, Well you can.

Speaker 4 (30:52):
You can, Yeah, you can. I thought you really couldn't.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
No, They they limited the restrictions to say that it
has to be inciting imminent danger and so you have
to have a reasonable belief that what you're about to
do is going to incite people and put people in danger.
So they clarified that years later. But the original case,

(31:15):
you can't yell fire in a crowded movie theater was
a real test and the limitations of the free speech.
And I don't mean to trample too much into handles
world here, but I read a lot of Twitter, so
I know law very very well better than most lawyers.
In fact, if you just spend a lot of time
on Twitter, you're generally smarter than everybody in the world,

(31:37):
and your viewpoints will be reinforced. But here's what I
learned getting smarter on Twitter. You is that the original
case where they said you can't yell fire in a
crowded movie theater, which of course was later clarified during
the Brandenburg case. That was all about a gentleman who
was handing out leaflets promoting socialism, and we said, well,

(31:59):
you can't do that. You can't and handout leaflets promoting socialism.
We're fighting socialists. This is early in the twentieth century.
We're fighting socialists, and you're out there promoting something that
is abhorrent. We as a country will not stand for socialism.
You're part of the problem. And we've seen this play
out through time in various various instances. The Red Scare,

(32:22):
the McCarthy hearings. You remember, we had the finger pointing
in Hollywood was going on. I'm not a communist. He's
a communist. I'm not a communist. He's a communist. And
we did we did this whole communist witch hunt thing
in the United States, and I'm starting to see this
happening again, especially when it comes to the protests, the
campus protests, and we're saying that guy is supporting Hamas

(32:43):
that kidney doctor from Brown University, she went to a
Hesba La funeral, she must be a danger to the
United States. We've got to put a stop to this.
We don't like that viewpoint, we don't like the worldview.
You're out. You you're a permanent US resident, but you
are supporting Palestinian protests. We are going to be a
pro Israeli country. You're out. So what's happening though at

(33:06):
UCLA is and I think this is reasonable to say
these are the limitations. Where does it extend? And that
is that at UCLA, if in fact the university was
allowing for a group of students to be harassed or
prevented from accessing the university, then the university has been

(33:28):
derelict in their duty to protect those students. While while
they're worried about not trampling on the free speech of
the protesters, they are in fact limiting the rights of
the Jewish students who are trying to get to class
that are trying to live responsibly, and so it's a
balancing act that the schools have undergone. The Trump administration,
of course, is going to take action against UCLA or
at least investigate UCLA as they are I think another

(33:50):
fifty universities. And part of this is all political, but
there is a legitimate There is a legitimate gripe here.
If you're a Jewish student who couldn't get to class
because UCLA was busy protecting the rights of the protesters
and then they decided not to protect your rights, that's where,
all of a sudden we run into a problem. And remember,
as a public university, you got to protect everybody's rights.

(34:12):
You can't just pick and choose and say, well, we're
protecting the free speech over here, and we're not going
to protect your rights. And if there's a compromise that
needs to be made, then it needs to be made
in some of the university to do that. Okay, I'll
shut up now. Chris Marrilyn for Bill Handle Today KFI
AM six forty were live everywhere in the iHeartRadio app.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show. Catch my
Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am, and
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.

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