OA603: California Court Rules That... Bees are Fish?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:01:17 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 603. I'm Thomas and that over there is death itself. How you doing Andrew? Poor guy.

0:01:29 Andrew: I'm full of COVID, Thomas. How are you?

0:01:30 Thomas: Oh no, I'm so sad to hear it. We're all, you everybody obviously saw that the Q&A didn't happen. That was scheduled for Tuesday due I'm sure a lot of people are very worried about how you're doing. But so tell Tell the listeners, how's it hitting you? How are doing?

0:01:45 Andrew: Not great. Thanks for the well wishes. I'm going to try and conserve so that we can get through these episodes. I am still so excited to bring the show to you that, you know, nor wind, nor sleep, nor pandemic. But yeah, no, it's bad.

0:02:02 Thomas: Dang.

0:02:02 Andrew: And I really appreciate all the well wishes that, friends, uh, and listeners and everybody have have said.

0:02:08 Thomas: Still able to give us OA somehow. That was a bonus. I'm just glad you are okay.

0:02:10 Andrew: Thanks. Better news, Thomas, how are you doing? I

0:02:15 Thomas: Oh, Andrew, I got to say, I am just a basket case of emotions today. Day, I can't, I just, if you can spare a minute for a wholesome story, or what do you think? Okay.

0:02:24 Andrew: Love it.

0:02:25 Thomas: Well, uh, I've kind of mentioned, uh, we moved recently, uh, just the end of last year, and we move to what, what is, you know, nice area, great, better yard for the kids, all that kind of stuff. But that meant that, you know, the kids are moving, they're still young, but they're moving from their daycare, you know, and they have all their little friends. It was really hard, but Phoebe, uh, since it was close enough to when Phoebe's going to kindergarten, we let her finish out that school year. So we were commuting and stuff. And she just had her little graduation last Friday with her. They had a little gowns, caps, and she graduated from her preschool and she's ready for kindergarten in about whatever, two months, whatever it is. It was so cute, really hard though. She had all her little friends and everything that she's going miss because now she's probably not in the same school district as them. However, just today she finally started her, there's a little summer kind of daycare program at the kindergarten she's going to be at.

0:03:17 Thomas: And so today she just started that. We drop her off this morning and Phoebe being Phoebe, she's incredibly shy. She's, she you a little nervous, she a little anxious, she incredibly shy, totally okay.

But any, you know, any new situation, she does the cling to us and, you now, it takes her a minute it to warm up so we take her to this little kindergarten kind of playground thing and and we'RE dropping her off and you know she's clinging to us she doesn't want to go and then just out of nowhere absolutely unprompted by anybody these two little girls took it upon themselves they brought her this little like you know plastic butterfly toy nonsense they had found and they brought it over to her and we're like trying to make her feel more comfortable and it was the most wholesome sweet thing I've ever seen in my life and part OF ME IS LIKE MAYBE SHE JUST MET HER CHILDHOOD FRIENDS YOU KNOW BECAUSE THIS IS HER new school and it was, uh, it was the sweetest thing, and uh, sorry for the the gushing, but if anybody wanted a little wholesome story to balance out some of the doom that we normally get, It was, I just, I've just been crying all morning. I can't

0:04:04 Andrew: Yeah. I

0:04:20 Thomas: Even handle how cute it was for

0:04:20 Andrew: I Love that so much, and since won't, I want to put in another plug for Dear Old Dads, it's full of wholesome stories like that, but like much more, I listened, now you've only put out the two episodes, I think, uh, I, listened to those two episodes while I was traveling with COVID, and it was uh, I fell into that comfortable pattern just now, really, right? Fantastic stories, funny, heartwarming, uh, great stuff. So, uh, it looks like you're off to really tremendous success with uh, with your Old Dads, which uh, with, I, I wish you the best On that, man.

0:04:35 Thomas: Normies. Yeah.

0:04:54 Andrew: That's such Such a fun Show Or

0:04:53 Thomas: Oh, thanks, buddy. I did want to say two very short things about it, which is one, tons of I, people have the very, very understandable impression that this is just a show for dads. And I wanted to emphasize, I think I forgot to say this in the last promo. This is absolutely for anyone. One. Obviously it'll be more resonant for people with kids, but like a lot of it too, is just stories about how we were brought up and they are hilarious. And so if you have kids or if you ever were a kid, this show is for you. So I think that covers, and it's about, you know, of shedding some of the crap that we were raised with too, you Know, and, and uh, it's really interesting.

And it also, with this story that I just told, I kind of was thinking about it. And if OA is the, you know, it's the fight, it's what's wrong, how do we change it, how do we fix it, constantly keeping that up. For me, from my side, Dear Old Dads is the like, why are we fighting? You know, like, what are We fightin' for, and who are we foughtin' for? And what are the reasons that we are keepin' on in this, what seems like an impossible struggle, to try to make the world a little better? And that's what OA is for. So it's kind of a cool pairing.

But I appreciate you givin' me another, another two seconds, but people want to get on to OA, so let's get on OA, uh, about, we already mentioned the January 6th hearings, um, and I wanted to say, Andrew, you did tell us that they coordinated with with the basketball finals schedule, which is great. Didn't realize they didn't coordinate with the better sports schedule, the Stanley Cup finals. So it's on at the same time as the Stanley Cup playoff game tonight, but damn it, I guess I have to skip that Stanley Cup playoffs game, but

0:05:21 Andrew: Or If you hate kids Hmm.

0:05:46 Andrew: Let's Yeah.

0:06:27 Thomas: That's at five, five Pacific, right? And then eight, 8 PM Eastern. So we'll be tuning into that and rest assured. We're going to have some things to say about that on Tuesday's episode. That's the only announcements. Announcements. I think we're all done. So let's get on to our main segment.

0:06:42 Clip: Down the law, down the law.

0:06:46 Thomas: Andrew, I see in the main segment on the whiteboard, what looks like a very, I don't know, angry or confused manifesto. What's happening? Is this the COVID brain or?

0:06:55 Andrew: I Thought, I thought you should witness my mental breakdown down live, uh, and on air. Yeah, uh, bees are fish, uh, bats Are birds, uh, nothing, everything is made up, the points don't matter. No, I, I'm actually going to convince you by the end of this segment that bees, uh, are indeed fish.

0:07:09 Thomas: Oh, bees are fish.

0:07:20 Andrew: So This is a California appellate court ruling that has garnered a lot of attention, uh, the holding is in fact that these are fish, it has led the likes of Elon Musk to tweet out there's so many crazy rules like this that make it extremely difficult to build anything new in California. And so we're gonna break that down, um, I also, I sent you a picture in the show notes, this will be available for anybody who gets the the show notes every episode, a picture of hate, and anybody who really has Google image now, because I'm going to tell you what it is, um, but late into the Beast Wars toy line, uh, those were Transformers that turned into realistic animals, right, they came up with these gimmicks, right, because after you've done all the like cool animals, and then you do a run of like

0:07:20 Thomas: Of

0:08:09 Andrew: And I'm not kidding, there were rabbits and penguins and giraffes, and you know, very non-menacing animals, you got to come up with something else, and they came up with Fusors, right, which were Transformers that turned into robots that were half eagle and half wolf, you Know, right so super cool right absolutely love these things the most bizarre was one that was half bee And half fish And it is called Injector and it, it is the ugliest, most ridiculous toy. And so I'm hoping you will use it as the show graphic. I've included it on the show. Everybody should check out Injector. It's ridiculous.

0:08:25 Thomas: Course. Yeah, absolutely.

0:08:51 Andrew: I love it.

0:08:50 Thomas: That reminds Me, Andrew, you might not have heard it because I doubt you went back and re-listened just for the T3B winner, but the T3B winner on Monday had uh very interesting funny comments on on your thing about Dinobots. They you remarked On how Dinobats, you since they're dinosaurs, they don't have big brains, that's why they talk like a cookie monster. And the T3B winner said, yeah, unlike regular Transformers, which are cars. And so they have big brains that, you know, are not like dinosaur brains.

0:09:22 Thomas: And I thought that was funny. And I assumed that you would have like a 15 minute deep dive on why that makes sense for us. But but you know what? We don't have time for it. So we'll have to move on. Oh,

0:09:21 Andrew: I Have No, that was it. Okay. OK, so before we get into this ruling, which, again, sneak preview is 100 percent correct. It reminded me of my favorite kind of backlash from when I was a kid, which was did Ronald Reagan really declare ketchup to be a vegetable? And the answer is yes. Yes, the Reagan administration did. In fact, one of the very first things that Reagan did when taking office was to slash feeding poor kids in public schools because, just a quick reminder, these people, and by these people I mean Republicans, have always been monsters. Right, so let's set the stage, 1980, there was backlash against out of control government spending and huge deficits, right, so Jimmy Carter, just to be clear, on the deficits that were rung up, 54 billion dollars, right, budget deficits, 1977, 59 billion in 1978, dropped to 41 billion in 1979, swelled to 74 billion dollars in 1980. Okay, so as a result, 1980, election year, there was tremendous pressure to reduce governmental spending. The idea was, you You know, we're, we're borrowing money. You've heard it for the past 40 plus years. Right.

0:09:48 Thomas: Yeah. Oh yeah, Yeah, of course. Right. But for reference, Trump's tax bill blew a $2 trillion hole in the budget. So it's only bad when we do it. When we, yeah.

0:10:52 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, it. Oh, oh, oh. This is going to be even more hypocritical than you could possibly imagine.

0:10:58 Thomas: Ugh, joy.

0:10:59 Andrew: Right. But because Democrats responded to that in good faith, they went about cutting government programs in 1980 as a result of, you know, trying to show the voters, hey, we, look, can be fiscally responsible. And they, in the context of this debate that you've ginned up, that's imaginary, that no economist thinks is real. And so they reduced the federal school lunch and child nutrition program budget by eight percent. And the idea was, look, yeah, we went through. OK, you don't need three dietitians on the government staff. Well, we'll get by with two, we'll do this right, they cut in good faith eight percent out of the budget that represented what they thought, kind of trimming all the fat, the way the national school lunch program, 1970s style, bipartisan, right, like not old 60s liberal government handouts, this was the government would reimburse local school districts to implement lunch programs, the lunch programs had to meet certain federal criteria. And if they did, then you would get reimbursement from the federal government,

0:12:00 Thomas: Yeah. Just so I understand, this wasn't like the first place they looked to trim the fat, was it?

0:12:05 Andrew: Oh, everywhere.

0:12:06 Thomas: Okay. So everywhere. I gotcha.

0:12:06 Andrew: It was across the board. Yeah,

0:12:08 Thomas: Gotcha.

0:12:08 Andrew: Yeah. And by the way, providing poor kids with at least one nutritious meal a day is one of the most important things that the federal department can do to reduce crime, promote pro-social behavior, reduce poverty, increase economic growth. It literally is a no-brainer, right, if you are analyzing public policy in any way, uh, combating malnutrition is, uh, at the school level, is seriously one of the most important things you can do.

0:12:08 Thomas: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

0:12:38 Thomas: It even if you were like a Scrooge going merely by the numbers, and you didn't give a crap about kids, you'd be like, well, this is a good investment, obviously do this.

0:12:46 Andrew: If you were Jonathan Swift and all you wanted to do was fatten up the kids to eat them, this would be the right thing to so do. Right. Carter, big show, cut eight percent out of the federal budget, eight percent out of school lunches to show that, Democrats, you were also tough on spending, um, guess what, that didn't work.

Uh, Reagan won in a landslide, swept in a whole bunch of conservatives into office, uh, who did not, do not, and never will care about balancing the budget or budget deficits, but do care about stopping the government from doing things because that takes away the major reason to vote for their opponents. Right. So proof: Reagan's first year, 1981, his annual budget. His budget that year added $79 billion to the deficit. Yeah, more than Carter, more than anyone in history. That went to $128 billion in 1982 and $208 billion, $209 billion in 1983. Okay, so the federal government was spending a record amount of money, but also cutting more and more from the actual good stuff that it does for people. And so that 8% cut to the National School Lunch Program in 1980 became a 25% cut in the Omnibus Reconciliation Act. That's the budget of 1981. I'm going to quote from the, because although I was able to pull up the actual budget, it's 937 pages long, and I did not read all of it just for, to figure

0:13:29 Thomas: Oh yeah

0:14:15 Andrew: Out the money. I've

0:14:16 Thomas: Since you have COVID, you probably only read six or seven hundred of those, huh?

0:14:19 Andrew: Read a lot, but I'm gonna quote from the Christian Science Monitor. At the time, President Reagan trimmed $1.46 billion from $5.66 billion earmarked for child nutrition programs. Critics of the cutback point out that the money saved roughly equals the $1.4 billion spent last year in federal subsidies for the Pentagon's five executive dining rooms for military officers. Okay OK, so, yeah, so we cut less than one and a half billion dollars from school lunches. And specifically, this is the part in the budget that I did read. It did so by by doing a bunch of things. First, it reduced the things that count as reimbursable meals, lowering the income threshold to qualify for getting that reimbursement. You, as a family, earned $11,520 or less. That was cut to $10,990. So if you made $11K, all of a sudden your children were no longer eligible for free meals. They lowered the qualifying level for subsidized lunches from $17,560 to $15,630.

0:14:40 Thomas: Oh my god wow wait

0:15:31 Andrew: So again, cutting off thousands of kids, who are clearly living in poverty. Okay. But that's not enough. They also reduced the amount of subsidies to schools, um, for sponsoring the programs themselves. So they increased the cost of the school subsidized lunch. They doubled it from 20 cents to 40 cents per lunch.

0:15:56 Thomas: But who pays, doesn't the school pay for that anyway

0:15:57 Andrew: So the school, in other words, the amount that the school could deduct back. Right. So, yeah. So, in Other words, The school would then say, hey, you know, yeah, if your local school district could afford to continue to subsidize lunches on their own there, these laws are rife with. Well, there's nothing to stop them from offering more lunch or, you know, paying the cost themselves. But let's be realistic? The, you greater Baltimore City Independent School District does not have the funds to pay for subsidized school lunch programs. They rely on the federal government for that. And so they they decreased the reimbursable amount, thus effectively saying, hey, you can either pay you can either charge 40 cents a meal or charge 20 cents a mil, but you're gonna have to pay that difference yourselves. OK. And it allowed school districts to save costs by changing the regulations as to what counts as a meal. And by that, I mean replacing expensive, healthy-ish food with cheaper crap.

0:15:58 Thomas: Oh I see, see, yeah oh that's freaking

0:17:01 Andrew: This is the worst part and less of it. We're going to get to all of that. Okay, so this is 46 CFR 44452. These are some of the cost-saving measures that I am not kidding were proposed in connection with this, subsection 4b1, which allowed peanuts to replace meat in dishes. By the way, note, peanut butter was already permitted, right, so they could serve you peanut butter sandwiches, but they couldn't serve you a bag of peanuts as the protein on your meat. This proposed that they could. Allowing donuts to to replace bread.

0:17:01 Thomas: Pan pizza crap, flat, oh oh my gosh, donuts cheaper than bread, oh what

0:17:44 Andrew: Uh some are, and the one that led to the backlash, uh, could credit a condiment such as pickle relish as a vegetable, end of quote. Administration's comment on this was, I swear to god, actual comment, actual, uh, Ronald Reagan FDA, it would be a mistake to say that that ketchup per se was classified as a vegetable. Ketchup in combination with other things would be classified as a vegetable, and so then the follow-up question was asked, well, what other things?

0:18:17 Andrew: Well, if it were served with French fries or a hamburger. So yes, yeah.

0:18:14 Thomas: With what other things yeah, okay an emergent phenomenon, it doesn't actually, you can't observe the vegetable at the catch-up state, it's only when combined with other things the vegetable emerges,

0:18:31 Andrew: So I want to give you some good news and some bad news. The right good news is that was so stroking a white cat while sitting in your volcano lair evil that it prompted backlash to the Reagan administration. And they abandoned that specific level of recommendations regarding alternative meal planning. So, OK, your kids' lunches in the 80s did not get replaced with packets of peanuts and packets of ketchup and pickle relish. Okay. However, this is the bad news.

0:19:02 Thomas: Would probably be healthier than what it did get replaced with.

0:19:05 Andrew: The substantive part of what came next, because it didn't have a you're turning ketchup into a vegetable on it, wound up sailing through. I literally want to read you the paragraph that is the next section. So after going through and going like, we'll call donuts bread, we will call packets of condiments vegetables like mwahaha, mwahahaha, I didn't say, but almost does, right?

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0:23:14 Andrew: Says, quote, "Preceding section will generate some local cost savings. However, the amount of savings will vary greatly among schools and institutions, and we do not anticipate that the savings generated will be significant. Therefore, to carry out the requirements of the Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1981 to significantly reduce local costs, we have determined it's necessary to reduce the quantity requirements of the meal patterns." Again, translating from evil lawyer ease to English, we came up with all of these alternative ways to give you unhealthy meals, but turns out that's not gonna save that much money anyway, we're still gonna do it, they back down on it, but but we also going are going to need to give you less food, how much less food?

0:24:07 Andrew: They pegged it to 17 to 18 percent of of your daily caloric intake per day.

0:24:14 Thomas: That's the amount less, or the amount you're getting

0:24:16 Andrew: No, that's the amount, in total calories, that's amount that each meal would now provide. So for, at the high school level, that was pegged to 440 calories, and then adjusted downwards for smaller children. Now, those of you mathematically inclined may think 17%, that's about 1 6th, and kids eat three meals a day, so we're basically saying lunch is half a meal. Yes, Reagan administration told preschoolers, you don't need a whole ounce and a half of meat, you can survive on two-thirds of that ounce of meat per day, per lunch. Elementary school went from two ounces to an ounce and a half. By the way, if you're thinking, like, how do I think about an ounce and a-half of meat, I mean yeah, a, get out your kitchen scale, weigh an ounce and a half of meat, and then, uh, you know, think of what a lovely meal that might make for your sixth grader, right? Yeah.

0:24:33 Thomas: Yeah it's nothing Arlo is three, he'll house a whole steak like what

0:25:07 Andrew: It it you know, if McDonald's marketed a 1.5 ounce patty, it would be the tenth pounder, right? Like, that, that's literally how small that is. High okay school kids, you don't need three quarters of a cup of vegetables, half a cup, that'll do just fine, right? Like I said, the condiment thing, that seemed ridiculous, okay, all right, ketchup as a vegetable, that's too far. Uh, but all of those cost-size, uh, restrictions went through. Um, today kids get a lunch at school that is, uh, substandard and subpar under the, uh, under the school lunch Program, even Still today, By the way, that the real effect was that hundreds of school districts, covering millions of kids, 2.8 million fewer kids participated in the school lunch program in 1982 than participated in 1981, because you were basically like, hey, why don't you pay twice as much for a third less food?

0:25:13 Thomas: Even Still? Today, wow. Wow.

0:26:01 Thomas: Right,

0:26:01 Andrew: And Lots Of school district were like, hey, wanna, you know, no.

0:26:02 Thomas: Right, right. Did a lot of them or states or something just decide like, oh, I guess we have to do this and we're on the hook for it.

0:26:10 Andrew: Exactly as you might imagine, and in blue states, they just picked up the slack, and by the way, uh, that cost an awful lot of blue state governors re-election in the early 80s, as Their states, Yeah, as their states now ran up massive deficits, right, and had to raise taxes And Otherwise

0:26:21 Thomas: Oh, wow. And even in blue states, they couldn't be like, yeah, but we're feeding children. I guess everybody was really conservative in the 80s,

0:26:32 Andrew: Was a lot of That, and, and other states were just like, okay, well, we're just not going to have those programs anymore, And, and Again, remember that's the point, right, if Your belief in government is that it doesn't work, this is you're like, hey, look, see, we just, government can't feed kids Well,

0:26:33 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, mm hmm. Not Without getting rid, rid of one of the dining tables in The general's lounge or whatever the heck you said, oh.

0:26:50 Andrew: Yep, So, this opinion I'm here to tell you that that bees are fish is is the exact opposite of that, and I wanted to kind of wrap this all together, have this be an uplifting story, so Let's see where we go. I want to start with the law, right? The law is, uh, the California Endangered Species Act, it's section 2050 of the Califonia Fish and Game Code, and it says, um, It does that thing that we've talked about that smart laws do, which is when you have an evolving problem, you delegate the enforcement of that problem or at least the identification of that program to an executive agency. Right. And so here it says, hey, California Fish and Game Commission, which is now the Department of Fish and Wildlife, should create the list of endangered species in California. And if you're thinking, OK, well, they just do fish. Not at all. Section 2051, right, says the legislature hereby finds and declares all of the following.

0:27:04 Thomas: Yeah,

0:27:55 Andrew: A certain species of fish, wildlife, and plants have been rendered extinct as a consequence of man's activities, untempered by adequate concern and conservation. And, by the way, the man is archaic in there, this is from 1970. Other species of fish, wildlife, and plants are in danger of or threatened with extinction. These species of fish, wildlife, and plants serve ecological, educational, historical, recreational, aesthetic, economic, and scientific value to the people of the state, and their conservation, protection, and enhancement of these species and their habitats are of statewide concern. Okay, so, you know, we're going to put this under the Department of Fish, right? But this is about protecting the environment. The legislature finds it is the policy of the state to conserve, protect, restore, and enhance any endangered species or any threatened species and its habitat, and that is the intent of the legislature consistent with conserving the species to acquire lands for the habitat for these species. So, just as background, this is not a fish law, right?

0:28:52 Andrew: It goes about this by telling the Department of Fish and Wildlife, make a list of endangered species. That's Section 2070. And the committee can add or remove species from the list if it finds, based on the scientific evidence, and based solely upon the best available scientific information. God, laws in California are written fantastically.

0:28:52 Thomas: Did What?

0:29:12 Andrew: Anyway, that the action is warranted. Okay, so I'll post a list in the show notes, um, but it covers, endangered species. Endangered species, and this is where we get to the opinion, are defined under section 2062 as native species or subspecies of a bird, mammal, fish, amphibian, reptile, or plant which is in serious damage of becoming extinct, extinct throughout all or a significant portion of its range due to one or more causes, including loss of habitat, change in habitat, overexploitation, predation, competition, or disease. Any species determined by the commission as endangered on or before January 1985 are considered an endangered species. And that just has to do with these 1984 amendments to it that are important procedurally, but not in terms of how the laws apply. Plot.

0:29:57 Andrew: So, before we get to how bees became fish, it is important to note that, uh, a much more ridiculous argument was made and, and lost, and that is the argument that salmon aren't fish. Yep. Specifically that coho salmon not be protected under the act. And here's how that happened, this is a 2007 decision, salmon of these species, I'm gonna get this wrong, Oncorhynchus kisutch, so that covers the entire species, which are, salmon that occur in the north Pacific Ocean, Russia, Alaska, and the North American coastline, okay. OK, that's the overarching species within that species, or what, what scientists consider to be environmentally significant units.

0:30:46 Andrew: OK, there are areas of and here I'm just going to quote from the opinion, genetic discontinuity or transition. Okay. One is from Punta Gorda south to the San Lorenzo River, and that is called the Central California Coast Coho Evolutionarily Significant Unit. So ESU for Evolutionarily Magnificent Unit? And then from Punta Gorda north across the state up to Oregon is the Southern Oregon slash Northern California Evolutionarily Significant Unit, ESU. ESU is what it sounds like. Right. It is an area that is a discontinuity. They have restricted genetic flow and result in a level of reproductive isolation. Right. So something becomes a new species when it is entirely reproductively distinct from its parent species. Biologists.

0:31:33 Thomas: Where's The part where they're not fish? Are they growing legs? Are they? Are They Walking Around And smoking a pipe?

0:31:38 Andrew: Oh, we're going to we're gonna get there. We're gonna go there.

0:31:40 Thomas: We Got some salmon.

0:31:40 Andrew: Yeah, we were working.

0:31:41 Thomas: I want to meet these salmon.

0:31:42 Andrew: So you are not a new species if you are capable of interbreeding, okay, but that's kind of dumb, right, that distinction, I don't want to say it's kindof dumb, like, sorry, I'm not a biologist, that, that description does not cover biological reality, which is if you have two, two different subpopulations that very rarely interbreed. The fact that they could interbreede, right, is not the right, like, tells you, hey, look, the coho salmon in Northern California are reproductively isolated from and therefore genetically distinct from the coHO salmon that are in the Punta Gorda, Central California coast.

0:32:12 Thomas: Right, So Like, it's not that they can't reproduce, but they just haven't met the right salmon yet. You know, if they got, got the right salmon, little date, little mood music, all that, they could reproduce, you know.

0:32:34 Andrew: Well, and it would be harder to maintain the genetic diversity of the first pool if that first pool were to go extinct? So you'd have these slightly different salmon, and right, is that important biologically? Yeah, that's important for biological ecological diversity. Now, here's what happened, which is the the Northern California coho salmon are endangered, right? And they are endangered by overfishing where they were endangered by overf fishing. And so, uh, environmentalists went to California department of fish and and said, hey, Northern California coho salmon are being overfished. They belong on the endangered species list so that we can stop the overfishing and preserve this subspecies. And after four years of study, they put them on the list. The Punta Gorda salmon, fine. I think the reason for this is that the further south you get, the less tasty that fish is, right?

And so it becomes, you can replace, like Alaskan fresh-caught, line-caught salmon tastes different and superior to, Yes, tastes superior to. And again, all grown under, you know, fished under very specific conditions to be sustainable. That tastes different, uh, and superior too, uh, aquaculture raised salmon, you're right, sustainably tank farmed salmon. You can grow anywhere. But line caught, I'm speaking in broad terms. There's less distinctiveness when you're the further south you go, right? And so the southern cohort of the coho salmon is not overfished, so didn't require being on the list and isn't on the listen. So what happened? The salmon farmers who fished north of San Francisco filed a lawsuit, and they said, hey, you're 2062, let's go back and read this, and let's be good textualists. Says endangered species means a native species or subspecies of fish and all this other stuff that's endangered.

0:32:45 Thomas: Hmm. Hmm. Oh, that's interesting.

0:33:41 Thomas: Oh, you mean the kind that Moink sells?

0:34:36 Andrew: Well, um, California coho salmon is not a recognizable subspecies. It's an, it's evolutionarily distinct unit, but that's that doesn't rise to the level of subspeacies. Coho salmon are going to be fine. What are you talking about? Let us fish the hell out of coho salmon in northern Califonia, even though the economic implications of that would be that coho salmon north of Punta Gorda would be fished into extinction. Same, right? Species in a different ecological niche survive? It would, but would that change the underlying ecology? Absolutely. And that was their textual argument. And the California Appellate Court said, you know what? We're not super impressed with this argument. This is an environmental protection statute.

0:35:22 Andrew: We should read it liberally. And then we should defer to the agency's own interpretation of the scope of its rules. So we're to look at what the Department of Fish has done. They are looking at the overall purposes of the act, which were spelled out, which, you know, I read to you, to preserve the environment, and that we are not going to infer that members of the California legislature thought, thought, okay, when we say subspecies, we definitely mean only cladistically recognized subspeacies and not, uh, evolutionarily significant units that are almost like a subspecie but not quite. No, you definitely, you have no, because this is a question of congressional delegation of authority, right? It is. Do you have the power to regulate this kind of collection of, of animals.

0:36:08 Andrew: It's a question, and of, did we think Congress intended the Department of Fish to be bound by the precise scientific language? Or do we think Congress intended the Department of Fish to be able to use its discretion to protect groups of wildlife? You will not be surprised that the California Appellate Court said, as we go back and look at the endangered species list, um, throughout since 1970, repeatedly they found a dozen different endangered species that were neither subsets of a specific, uh, or a subspecific taxon, right? So in other words, yeah, we protect local habitats all the time below the level of subspecies, notwithstanding the plain language of the statute.

0:36:54 Andrew: That's how we're going to interpret it. This is 2007. And now, flash forward to today. Bees are fish. Specifically, bees are arthropods, They're right? Hexapods, which are cladistically included in the subphylum crustacea, right. And crustaceans, right, are specifically defined as fish under the California law. That subsection 45 of the Fish and Game Code. It says fish means a wild fish, mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate, amphibian, or part spawn or ovum of any of those animals. And so just using the plain scientific definition, you would say, OK, well, bees are crustaceans. Definition says crustacea.

0:37:33 Andrew: Yeah, they are cladistically, uh, included under the subphylum. But, but, they're not

0:37:39 Thomas: They are. Andrew, you can use that word as many times as want, and I still won't know what it means.

0:37:45 Andrew: I'm using it to, to cover up the fact that, you, I was a b plus biology student, not an a plus biology students. What it means is that if you look at the, the larger body, like take the body plan of a bee and the body plan of the shrimp, right?

0:38:01 Thomas: Well, shrimps are insects. Yeah. Bugs of the ocean.

0:38:06 Andrew: That's right. Like that's why you will hear, you Alton Brown will call lobsters bugs, because right, they basically are. Now, biologically, the difference is pretty stark because lots of those arthropods live in the sea and insects tend to, fly you and live on land. You might say, all right, I thought the 2007 case said we don't look to the precise scientific definitions, but we should really look to, you kind of the general vibe of the thing, You know, a bee isn't a shrimp, right. There is a little bit of some persuasive power to that. But then the question is, how do you deal with the fact that that Section 45 of the Fish and Game Code also includes invertebrates, right? Things without bones. Well, bees are obviously inverteBRATES, right, like, they don't have any bones.

0:38:08 Thomas: Point. Disgusting. Bugs. Hate them.

0:38:24 Thomas: There's.

0:39:07 Thomas: No bee skeleton in there, like. A Yeah.

0:39:09 Andrew: Little teeny tiny bee skeleton, no. And the argument there is, come on, that clearly means marine inverteBREATS, problem with that kind of multiply, the first is, as far as I know, there aren't marine invertebrates that are endangered, like things like jellyfish are an invasive species. And in fact, fact that they have no nutritional value anywhere, right like this is a major problem is, the invasiveness of jellyfish.

0:39:17 Thomas: And Members of Congress, am I right? Sorry. Yeah.

0:39:39 Thomas: Yeah, as the famous tweet says, they're, uh, the jellyfish are not very edible, they're angry bags, eggs.

0:39:45 Andrew: I love it. So the idea is, should we narrowly construe the word invertebrate as expressing a limitation on the delegation of power from the California legislature to the California Department of Fish? Or should we say this seems to be part of an overall scheme of protecting the environment, and it doesn't really matter the proper, like, interpretation for the word invertebrate should be, is this the kind of thing that the Department of Fish believes reasonably that it has the jurisdiction to regulate? And so one of the things you might look to do that is history and tradition. And yes, I am laying it on thick in this episode. So here, the history and traditional of what the Department of Fish has done seems pretty strongly to favor the bees or fish interpretation. Right. In 1980, for example, with zero controversy, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife declared the Trinity bristle snail to

0:40:18 Thomas: A dinosaur?

0:40:52 Andrew: Be an unendangered species. And I'll include you could go. I clicked on it right now. You can go to the list of state and federally listed endangered and threatened animals of California as of April 2022. It's this handy little Excel chart that goes on not that many pages, right? Like I know you got Elon Musk. There are 177 total animals listed on this thing, This is not, thousands you and thousands of, you can't walk somewhere without stepping on some planarial worm. It isn't. These are really things that have been determined by the best scientific evidence to be endangered.

0:40:54 Thomas: No.

0:41:17 Thomas: Yeah.

0:41:31 Thomas: Well, not only that, if we had a bazillion endangered species, that would also be important that there were that many endangered species.

0:41:37 Andrew: That's fair.

0:41:39 Thomas: It's like the attitude is like, ah, we're only going to allow like 10. If you're saving more than 10, we don't care. Screw it.

0:41:44 Andrew: So as you look on the list, you right, see strong evidence that invertebrate was always meant to be and has always been interpreted broadly? So, yes, does it include some marine invertebras like abalone? It does. Uh, the vernal pool fairy shrimp, haven't heard of that before, but yes, but it includes this, uh, gastropod snail slugs, the Trinity bristle snail, a terrestrial snail, lives only on the land, 1980, October 2, 1980, uh, was declared uh an endangered species in California. What else is on there? Well, the Zyante band-winged grasshopper. Okay, um, that doesn't really seem to fit under the definition of marine invertebrate. Okay, well, maybe grasshoppers like live in puddles sometimes, right? What about the Valley elderberry longhorn beetle? Um, the Deli sands flower loving fly. There are are plenty of insects on this list flower loving fly

0:42:44 Thomas: Its official name is flower loving fly. I love that. You're so famous for your love of flowers it's in your name as a species that's great

0:42:48 Andrew: Yeah, the San Bruno elfin butterfly, um, 1976, uh, was recognized as a protected species.

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0:46:17 Thomas: Maybe I'm missing something. Is this because the whole thing they're trying to do is care about protected species and not just care about specifically fish species? Oh,

0:46:26 Andrew: And the and entire question is, is does the Department Fish have authority granted to it by the California state legislature to list this type of animal on its endangered species list? And the question is, when it says you can list, because we read out that, so we start off with Section 2062. Twenty right? Sixty-two says that endangered species can only meet. This is the great where you're stuck with this language. Right. And if the legislature screwed it up, the legislature screw it up. You got to go back past another law says a native species or subspecies. We dealt with that already.

0:46:52 Thomas: Okay.

0:47:00 Andrew: Right, that subspeacies can also mean things that are slightly below a subspecie. Right, because they didn't mean that with the level of precision of a scientist. Us, that's what allowed us to protect the coho salmon of a bird, mammal, fish, amphibian, reptile, or plant. Okay, well, you look at all of that and you're like, well, gotta tell you, bees are not birds, mammals, fish, amphipians, reptiles, or Plants.

0:47:00 Thomas: Did Did They not put the catch-all that they should have put or something, where it's like, and any other, you know, something Or

0:47:27 Andrew: Absolutely. Should have said and any other animal, they did Not So

0:47:30 Thomas: Do You Think there really was an intent of like anything else, we kind of don't care about, they're on their own?

0:47:36 Andrew: There is some conflicting testimony on that. Right, there's a 1998 opinion letter by the attorney general that says invertebrates were explicitly excluded from the act. The, OK, problem is that opinion, A, it's just a sternly worded crunch wrap, and B, it didn't discuss the Trinity bristle snail. Right. So you look at it and go, OK, we're trying to figure out here exactly what happened. And can I say that it is unambiguous that they just didn't write in bugs because they're like, wait, in the 1970s, they're like, wait, bugs go extinct, who knows? Like,

0:48:09 Thomas: Until The bug Life matter movement, they didn't care.

0:48:10 Andrew: Right? Yeah, bug lives matter. That is 100%

0:48:16 Thomas: Yeah, Until A Bug's Life came out, actually they didn't really care about that.

0:48:16 Andrew: True. Think, and this is part of why I wanted to go through this whole story, because of the things that is an enduring feature of the ordinary method, ordinary method of jurisprudence, is its honesty about the state of the evidence, right? And that is when we try and figure out what the legislature was doing in 1970, real lawyers, not ideologically motivated hacks, admit, well, you know what? Our evidence is not super great. We are piecing together from a bunch of different things. And so what we have to do is is figure out the best way to make choices in light of the admittedly poor state of the evidence. So what, right, do we have here? We have some practice that suggests that insects get on the list.

0:49:06 Andrew: We have the Attorney General of the state about halfway in between, right, in 1998, halfway in between then and now, saying insects shouldn't be on the list. We have other canons of interpretation. Right, we have multiple courts that have said, uh, we've looked at this statute and based on the interpretive canons, uh, that this is to be construed broadly, right, like this was meant to and includes in sweeping language, uh, things that, uh, you know, says it is the the sense of the legislature to, you know, not just prevent animals from going extinct, but to acquire new habitats to prevent them from going extinct. Well, you put that all into a blender and then you ask, would it have offended the same legislature that passed this bill? That said, hey, Department of Fish, we want You to identify animals, birds, amphibians, fish, plants. Chance, um, Would it have offended them if you started regulating bees as well, right? We didn't come back and said, well, you Didn't say beat Not we

0:49:57 Thomas: Yeah, Oh, No, Screw bees, I would never have voted for this had I known bee Stung My kid the other day, I want Them all dead.

0:50:09 Andrew: I'm Of Thinking Of the fantastic Simpsons bear tax episode where they're chanting that we're here, we're clear, we don't want any more bears, um, and just, we're here, we're clear, we don't want any more bees. That really, to me, right, want to give voice to the other side for just 30 seconds. And that is, you have a right not to have an administrative agency overstep the bounds that were granted to it by the legislature, because that's the kind of thing that should be subject to a public vote. And so if it's ambiguous, if it is not clear that it was delegated to that executive branch agency, then we ought to defer to a modest interpretation and go back and amend the law if you do not like it.

0:51:01 Andrew: And I steel-botting am this a little bit, because it is easy to see how disingenuous that is at the federal level where we do not pass laws. Right. But maybe it's not so disingenuous at the California level. Laws, right, get passed at the state level all the time. California legislature doesn't seem to be broken. Seems to be pretty progressive. Why not just say, hey, go back and amend the statute and add in the bees to be clear. I don't think that's a terrible argument.

0:51:21 Thomas: Yeah,

0:51:34 Andrew: I very clearly seems to be a broad grant of discretion to the Department of Fish. They didn't seem to care that the Department of Fish was getting authority over, you know, plants aren't fish, amphibians aren't fish, right? Rhinoceros aren'tfish, they got right, the authority over all of that.

0:51:46 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah, We got to protect that California rhino, it's Really, I don't, I haven't seen one in years, actually. Well,

0:51:53 Andrew: It's true. Does it offend the separation of powers to say, Yeah, no. And also, yeah, put insects on the right. Who care? Right. Like the idea is to identify species that are at risk and protect the environment. You are the agency that has a 50 year history of expertise. Go ahead. Do it.

0:52:11 Thomas: Yeah, I mean, Would the alternative be that they would have expected us to make a department of bugs to just tell us the bug ones that are extinct?

0:52:13 Andrew: Yeah, that Is. And I know you're laughing a little bit, but yes. If, right, you read Section 45 as including only marine invertebrates, it would say you would need to have the legislature establish a separate right environmental protection for Terrestrial Invertebrate Act of 2022. And then say, by the way, the Department of Fish is also empowered to add to its list bees and insects and terrestrial invertebras. Prints those are the only things that are left out as far as I, I mean, you know, again, single-celled organisms, right, like planarians, don't appear to be on the list as well, but right, that's the question is, do you read this statute in conformity with practice, or do you insist that you go back and create a new law specifically to protect the bees?

So think, very consistent with the prior 2007 opinion, very consistent with the history, very consistent when you look at the identification of species that are on this list, to say, you know what, it's, um, environmental protection statute, people who passed it were not biologists, they meant to include everything, they kept listing stuff, uh, and they ran it, they were like, yeah, vertebrates, invertebrates, I don't know, just put it on there, and we ought to defer to the interpretation of the Department of Fish as to whether they thought invertebrates meant only marine inverteBRITs or marine and terrestrial inverteBITs.

0:52:21 Thomas: Yeah, all

0:53:47 Andrew: If you take the latter, it includes both. It gives you the somewhat counterintuitive results that bees are fish, but I gotta tell you bees are fish man it

0:53:56 Thomas: But does it really say that, mean it doesn't literally say bees or fish, it's just like, like, this is also covered under this because who cares?

0:54:03 Andrew: Says it says to it says that the definition of fish includes invertebrates and always has you're right like well

0:54:10 Thomas: Well, I'm actually genuinely wondering if that was just the conservative, you talking point insult of the thing. If that's being embraced as like, yeah, they count under fish, it's fine. Because beetles aren't fish. How did that get worked in?

0:54:24 Andrew: Correct yeah yeah they're under the invertebrates that's right this is a selective level of outrage right snails aren't fish um jellyfish aren't fish right and that would be just as

0:54:34 Thomas: It's in the name, Andrew. That's absurd.

0:54:38 Andrew: Portuguese man o'war are not fish and that Would Be Just As Offensive To A Biologist Right To Say A Jellyfish Is A Fish Than To Say You Know A Bumblebee Is A fish so so yes that that's That is my point, is that these categories have never been rigidly defined. There are plenty of exceptions already in the past. It is well and good to have a chuckle, but the danger in having that chuckle was, I think, well illustrated by the ketchup is a vegetable part of the segment and by the Elon Musk, like, see, this is how the regulations make it impossible for me to have Tesla. Like, what a self-contradicting, yeah.

0:54:45 Thomas: Yeah.

0:55:13 Thomas: Oh, that guy sucks so bad.

0:55:14 Andrew: Yeah. Anyway,

0:55:14 Thomas: Okay. But I am actually, sorry, I'm genuinely trying to understand like the nuance. Is is it that people were like, hey, they just didn't list things. They didn't listen to catch all. But we know the point is they're trying to protect endangered species. So fine, just put it in there because of that. Or they had to specifically be like, here's the closest category that made sense. And, you know, you can make an argument that it includes bees.

0:55:39 Andrew: So here's what the court says, the appellate court says. Which I think will answer that. "For the foregoing reasons, we agree with the department that the commission may list any invertebrate as an endangered or threatened species under the act if the invertebre meets the requirements of those statutes, and thus may also designate any invertebrate as a candidate species if the species or subspecies otherwise qualify as an endangered or threatened species." In other words, the question was, did the word invertebrid in the definition of fish implicitly mean only marine inverteibrates, or did it cover terrestrial non-marine inverteBRITs? And the appellate court said, yeah, it covers non-Marine inverTEBRITS, because it covers a whole bunch of stuff. So, yes, the definition of fish, right?

0:56:25 Andrew: What covers the grant of authority for the Department of Fish to regulate includes invertebrate. Bees are invertebras. Does it have this implicit restriction on it? No, it doesn't. It does not have. They must be marine invertebra on it. So why it's important for the bees to be fish. It's not just we don't care what the words are. Right. I want to be very, very clear about that, because, you could not if there were endangered planarian worms, you might have a problem. Right? Right. Like the problem here is that the plain meaning of the text, right, says fish include things that are not fish. Right. Mollusks and invertebrates. And then the question was, OK, well, we get it that clams aren't fish, but clams are kind of like fish in the sense that, you know, you eat both for dinner. Right.

0:57:12 Thomas: Yeah, I think that's actually what's motivating a lot of this is, is it on the dinner menu in a seafood restaurant?

0:57:18 Andrew: So I think that's right.

0:57:19 Thomas: So I can't wait to order a nice plate of bees, a delicious plate of peas, raw bees.

0:57:21 Andrew: They're in So there we go. That's the that's the basis for the Authority. Correct.

0:57:27 Thomas: Right. It doesn't require anyone in the government or whatever thinking a is a fish. It doesn' really mean that. That' just a gotcha. It' more like, hey, this falls under a category in a statute that obviously was meant to be protective of whatever species. Okay. Well, thanks for the breakdown. I guess bees are fish. No, they're not.

0:57:38 Andrew: You

0:57:50 Clip: Oh, no associate of this firm has ever failed the bar exam. No kidding.

0:57:56 Thomas: Now it's time for T3BE, Thomas takes the bar exam, where I answer a bar exam question using nothing but my pet bees that I keep in my fish tank. Let's see what the bees think this week.

0:58:08 Andrew: All Right, Thomas, a State A resident man and a State B resident woman were in a car accident in State B. The man filed a lawsuit against the woman in federal court in State A, alleging that the woman was negligent. Man filed a lawsuit against the woman in federal court in State A, alleging that the woman was negligent. The man decided to serve the woman at her parents' house, which is a few miles from the woman's house, but but located just across the border in State A. The man knew that the woman visited her parents occasionally, but she was not present when service was made. The woman's parents accepted service of process and notified her of the lawsuit. The woman timely filed an answer denying the allegations against her. A few weeks later, the woman filed a motion to dismiss the case. State A's rules of civil procedure are identical to the federal rules of civil procedure.

The motion to dismiss is properly granted, what would be the most likely reason why? A. The method of service was improper. B. The man was asking for $75,000 in damages. C. The woman did not have minimum contacts with State A. Or D. The car accident did not occur in State A.

0:58:33 Thomas: I Thought it'd be funny, it was like, it did not occur, and then it's like a real twist in the fact pattern, and it wasn't, it actually, a ghost the whole, whole time. That's why it would be dismissed. No. If you and I get in a car accident, I'm from State A, you're from State B, it happens in State B, I think, I think you've said, I have my choice, you know, the, I'm master of my own complaint, complaint, I think I can, I can sue here, that, well, then again, I mean, car accident, you would think the, like, the traffic laws of State B would be more important, but then again, if it's federal court, I guess that, then we could decide, federal court might apply the law of State B, if that was what was important, then we get this process thing that I don't know if this is significant, so he, so serves the woman at her parents' house, is a few miles from the woman's house, but located just across the border in State A. know, the man knew she was there occasionally.

And then it says the parents accepted service of process. I The woman timely filed, so that seems okay. And then she files a motion to dismiss and saying, if that's granted, why? Why? A, the method of service was improper. I don't think that's going to be it. The past, we've had the service of process stuff. Just doesn't seem like in a case like that. I could be wrong.

Maybe this is a letter of the law thing that I'm going to get wrong. But just looking at what happened, he served her at a place she occasionally is and someone accepted it and notified her and she had it in timely fashion. Like, I feel like that's kind of like, all right, no harm, no foul. You timely filed. But at worst cases, you would just redo it anyway and do service better.

1:01:01 Thomas: So I don't know. I think it's not A. B, the man was asking for 75,000 in damages. Oh man. I just had a thought that I'm now is going to ruin my chances of getting this this right. Is it greater than $75,000? Or is it greater than or equal than? Oh, what if that's the key? What if it needs to be $75001? Oh man, this sucks. I can't remember. I'm not going to eliminate B. be That a dastardly trick question. But maybe I hope, oh, we'll see. Okay, see, the woman did not have minimum contacts with state A. I don't know why that matters. Did not have maximum. Because if you're suing in federal court in state A, need diversity, don't you?

1:01:48 Thomas: Isn't that the opposite of what you would need? So you need adversity and, than 75 or greater than 65. Crap. No, it's got to be and, right? Yeah. Yeah. So if he's in State A and she's in State B, think that's diversity, right? I don't know why she would also need contacts with State A. Don' think C's right. D, the car accident did not occur in State A. There's so many little technicalities that I'm just not, not remembering the exact details on, because I'm not a lawyer and I haven't studied for the bar. If, what, if it's the 75,001 thing, that would be the funniest thing ever. Is I thought, cause I think it's always phrased greater than 75, oh my gosh. All right. I think I'm between B and D, and I'm, you know what?

1:02:35 Thomas: I'm going to go with B just for for fun, just because if it is the 75,001, that's going to be the most fun thing to have gotten right. And if I got it wrong, I don't think I was getting the other answer anyway. So that's kind of my, that'S my gamesmanship strategy for this one. I'm going final answer B for fun. And, uh, D is my second choice.

1:02:52 Andrew: And if you'd like to play along with Thomas, you know how do that, just share this episode on social media, include the hashtag T3BE, include your guests, your reasons therefore, we will pick a winner and shower that winner with never-ending fame and fortune. Fame and fortune not guaranteed.

1:03:04 Clip: And thank you, Let's go!

1:03:05 Thomas: And now it's time to thank our new patrons at patreon.com/law enjoying all the goodies, enjoying missing a Q&A that, due to COVID reasons, enjoying, but you know it was fun for them to ask the questions, I bet, and a lot of awful movies coming up pretty soon, all the great stuff, thank and you know what, Andrew's gonna sit there and either cough or not have to talk, I'll go ahead and read them all, thank you to Trojan Horse News, a funny meme to share with the big news of the day in the comments on Facebook at TheTrojanHorseNews. Cool. I wish my biceps were also an ethyl group.

1:03:41 Thomas: AL not A.I. All right. Chris Palmer. Beezy Bear Larkin. James McBreaty. Skyshroud Elf. Oh, that's another magic card that I vaguely remember. Lee S. I think it is anyway. Maybe not. Jamie Steele. Matthieu Grieger. Stephen Martinis. Uncle Frank's nephew, what advice do you have for an incoming HLS 1L? Well, sorry, I can't give you any now. Ask, ask. My advice is ask Andrew when he doesn't have COVID. JR, Mark F. Prosser, and Melanie Schattle. Thank you so much, new patrons. We love you. Join their ranks, patreon.com/law for all the goodies. And that's our show, Andrew. We're wishing you well. Get better soon. But we're also going to be keeping an eye on those hearings. Sorry, Andrew, COVID is not an excuse to miss those hearings, you have to watch this. I don't make the rules. So looking forward to that. Tune in, everybody. Can't wait.

1:04:08 Andrew: Nope.

1:04:30 Andrew: Absolutely. Absolutely.

1:04:35 Clip: I move for a bad court thingy. You mean a mistrial? Yeah, that's why you're the judge and I'm the law talking guy.

1:05:08 Clip: www.openargs.com. Be sure to join the Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/Yodel Mountain and follow us on Twitter at OpenArgs. This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media LLC, all rights reserved. It is produced with the assistance of transcriptionist Heather Leverage, production assistant Ashley Smith, and additional contributions from Morgan Stringer and Debra Smith. Special thanks to Teresa Gomez, who runs our live shows and heads up the OA Wiki, follow at OA Wiki on Twitter. Additional thanks to the moderators of the Opening Arguments Facebook community, Emily Waters, Alicia Cook, Eric Brewer, Natalie Newell, Brian Ziegenhagen, and Teresa. And finally, thanks to Thomas Smith, who edits the show and created the fabulous theme music, which was used with permission.