This circuitious episode, hosted by me in Budapest with John Yoo in Dallas and Lucretia in her undisclosed desert location, starts off with the entirely predictable news that David Brooks drinks his whisky on the rocks (insert shudders and horror here), and quickly moves on to the news that hasn’t broken yet, so we’ll fix it: Gavin Newson is running for president. We know—he hasn’t offically announced, but he’s behaving like a candidate more and more every day. And why has no one noticed that Newsom would also solve the Democrats’ Kamala problem? (See the Constitution, Article II, Section 1, especially the passage that reads, “The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves.” That rules out Kamala as Newsom’s running mate, which is okay because Newsom and Harris hate each other.
We also devote too much time to the sartorial severity that is the Fetterman Senate Dress code, and you’ll just need to listen to hear who Lucretia calls “Senator Stripper Boots.”
From there I give a central European “sit rep” on attitudes there about the Ukraine War, American policy about the war, and general political matters, all gleaned from my conversations this week with some highly placed (and very smart) Hungarian sources.
We’ve been wanting to talk about a legal issue that’s been our mind for a while, and we finally get to it in this episode in depth: qualified immunity. We don’t quite reach a firm conlusion about how the doctrine should be reformed, but you’ll feel smarter for our dissection of it.
Finally, a few quick notes on the Kendi implosion, missing jet fighters, and other fun matters. But not to worry—we’re still drinking our whisky neat, even if David Brooks kills his with four ice cubes. In an airport.
So listen here, or over at our hosts at Ricochet when it goes up there, or wherever you source your podcasting pleasure.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.