OA638: Citizens United, Part 2

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 638. I'm Thomas. That's Andrew Torres, Esquire. How are you doing?

0:01:23 Clip: Oh, I am fantastic. Thomas, how are you?

0:01:26 Thomas: Great. We're finally getting to part two of our deep dive

0:01:30 Clip: We're finally getting to Citizens United in our deep dive on Citizens United. But, yeah, that would be that would be crazy. Who would do that? I am super pleased because a friend of the show, a real life friend, a former guest, and election lawyer Beth Kingsley is fly specking my deep dive. So if I screw something up, she will tell me, and she said no immediate errors in part one. So I feel like riding high and ready to double down.

0:01:35 Thomas: Hey, that's how a deep dive works. You don't just start with the thing you're deep diving. I mean, come on.

0:02:00 Thomas: Nice. Love it. Well, then let's get to part 2.

0:02:18 Thomas: Andrew, it's time for part two of our Hardcore History-esque episode on Citizens United and the history. I know we got all the way to the year 1976, I think, last time. Did anything happen after that or is it all cool?

0:02:34 Andrew: A little bit happened after 1976. And what happened after '76 was everything Whizzer White predicted. Campaigns got idiotically and exponentially more expensive. And the restrictions, the guardrails that were put in place on contribution limits were flouted. Flouted, the Reagan era FEC decided to interpret the regulations on advertisements, quote, "in connection with a candidate," in a way that was idiotically self-serving. And so by 2000, that was a major campaign issue. And it was, in fact, one of the first issues that really put Senator John McCain into the national spotlight. Right, so, uh, we're still not quite to Citizens United, but we're close. This case is called McConnell versus Federal Elections Commission. It's a 2003 case. Yes, of course it's that McConnell. Don't, do not be deceived, Mitch McConnell has all, has been evil since his horrible turtle birth 400 years ago.

0:03:32 Thomas: Somehow, though, like when he was in college, he was like a Democrat. That's not important, but weirdly, yeah. Yeah.

0:03:36 Andrew: I he was definitely evil back then. This issue was the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. And again, I like pointing these out, um, this had, was, you mostly Democratic support, uh, with mostly Republican opposition, uh, in the Senate. It pulled, uh, all 48 Democrats, the one independent, and also 11 Republican senators, uh, to reach a 60 40 vote to break the filibuster. Mitch McConnell's filibaster. Some things don't, you know, never change.

0:04:06 Thomas: Wait, he held the majority. What?

0:04:07 Andrew: Did not hold the majority. Back then, but you know, he he was the voice, I mean, that's why it's, he's the plaintiff, right, he was the voice of the opposition, uh, back in 2002.

0:04:08 Thomas: Oh, OK. Gotcha. Gotcha. I was pretty sure he wasn't the leader back then. But yeah, gotcha.

0:04:16 Andrew: No, he was not, it was Trent Lott. Yeah, it was, was signed into law by Republican President George W. Bush. So again, you used to pass laws. As we dig into this case, I also want to tell you about the advocacy alignment in this case. Joining OK, Mitch McConnell in opposing campaign finance was the Republican Party. OK, the Democratic Party, the Libertarian Party, the AFL-CIO, the ACLU, the National Rifle Association, the National Right to Life Committee, Ron Paul, and just a gross stunt brought by one of the worst bad faith actors. I'm going to explain that in a second.

0:04:24 Thomas: Wow.

0:04:52 Thomas: They were all the ones who were against campaign finance reform.

0:04:54 Andrew: Were all against campaign finance reform.

0:04:57 Thomas: Didn't you say ACLU?

0:04:58 Andrew: The ACLU, yep, one of a list.

0:04:59 Thomas: So they want to be able to like spend money to, you know. So it's a bunch of people who want to be able to throw their money around to affect elections, I guess.

0:05:06 Andrew: Yeah, I think the ACLU's opposition here is a misguided interpretation of the First Amendment. And I suspect, I have not yet been to their website, I site suspect they probably changed their view on this over the years, uh, but no, they opposed, uh, they were on the side, they were, they were representing parties, this is not just filed amicus briefs, uh, these were all parties that joined on the same line as appellants along with Mitch McConnell, and one of the things that's fun at the Supreme Court, we almost always allied, lied over the first couple pages, but it lists who represents each of these parties.

And I mean, the individual lawyers, you can look up, and there are some of history's greatest monsters here from 20 years ago, seditionist, right? So Cleta Mitchell, we've talked about her at great length, represented the NRA in this case. My old partner, Bobby Birchfield, and Covington in Berlin represented the, the Republican Party, uh, and Ken Starr, yes, that Ken Starr, represented Moscow Mitch, um, I said there was a gross stunt, this is another representation, so there's a little bit of the sidebar here, but one of the things that McCain-Feingold did was close a loophole for, uh, rich people who had kids, right, you could make underage contributions, you know, right?

0:05:28 Thomas: Hmm wow hmm oh wow yep mm-hmm yes

0:06:20 Andrew: The guy that I had dubbed the stupidest, worst faith lawyer in America, you might remember this, pre-Trump, who of course later joined Trump's legal team, was ACLJ and right-wing evangelical lunatic, uh, founder, uh, Jay Sekulow, yeah. That, that guy, and he's still garbage, and in 2003 what he did was, uh, shanghaied a 14 year old girl from Georgia named Emily Eccles and got her to like make up some nonsense about wanting to spend her allowance money on, you know, donating to candidates and right, and that's why you hired Jay Sekulow, fellow, uh, lawyer, to America's dumbest and most right-wing institutions. Anyway,

0:06:37 Thomas: Huh sure so hold on, the argument was she can't vote but we ought to be able to let her spend money on elections then?

0:07:08 Andrew: Are you're going to restrict the free speech of a 14 year old girl, you monster, you.

0:07:13 Thomas: She should be able, able to vote then.

0:07:15 Andrew: Yeah, she should definitely be allowed to have freedom of political speech.

0:07:18 Thomas: Rich dad spend a billion dollars in her name?

0:07:20 Andrew: Yeah of course, it, and yeah, exactly, so So on the other side, equally interesting, super lawyer Ted Olson, we've talked about him, put a, put a pin in that, he was George W. Bush's Solicitor General. So he argued this on behalf of the conservative George W. Bush administration defending this law. He was joined by Clinton's Soliciter General, Seth Waxman, who represented McCain and Feingold, who intervened as defendants in this. So you have the current Republican Solicitor General, the immediately past Democratic Soliciter General, arguing in favor of the law's constitutionality.

0:07:21 Thomas: Yeah.

0:07:56 Thomas: What is it they're challenging? Because, Because, I mean, you mentioned that one loophole, but I thought we left this in decent shape in 1976. It was, you know, like a little bit flawed, but largely was fine. Was it just what you mentioned where like Reagan's FEC just interpreted stuff so badly that it ruined the law? Or did some other stuff come up?

0:08:14 Andrew: Here's what happened, right, 1976, those contributions that were subject to mandatory caps became known as hard money, everything else was called soft money, and so you might remember, kind of like at the fringes of your political awareness, the, like, discussion of raising soft money without coordinating, wink wink, with the candidate. So, under the existing election laws, contributions must be made with funds that are subject to the disclosure requirements and overall caps, that's the hard money. They defined the term "contribution" as interpreted by the FEC as only the gift or advance of anything of value, quote, "made by any person for the purpose of influencing any election for federal office," end of quote. Now, that's the statutory language, right? So that's not yet interpreted. But, but notice the word "federal" there. So, right? Donations made for influencing state or local elections, excluded by the law. And so, so the first kind of restrictions were non-federal money that, nevertheless, you could air, right, and say, "Oh, no, I'm, I'm trying to raise state awareness on abortion."

0:08:35 Thomas: Right.

0:09:21 Andrew: Abortion, right? And it's not like the voters are gonna be like, hmm, wonder I if I should take that into account in voting for this person for the Senate, was one aspect of soft money there, but was a much bigger, bigger loophole here, that, and was that what was defined as an expense on behalf of a candidate required you to use certain magic words, right, "Elect Thomas Smith" or vote against "Jane Doe," and that marked sort of the bright, the line that, that separated express advocacy from issue advocacy, and we're, gonna talk about that, kind, the in the second half of that, so, but your soft money comes in so long as it is not explicitly earmarked for the campaign of Thomas Smith, uh, you can do whatever you want with it.

So, right, the court notes a literal reading ofthe statute's definition ofcontribution would have required activities, get out the vote drives, right, to be, be funded with hard money. The FEC, Reagan's FEC, ruled that political parties could fund mixed purpose activities, including get out the vote drives and generic party advertising, right, vote Democratic, vote Republican, in part with soft money. In 1995 the FEC concluded that parties could also use soft money to help defray the costs of legislative advocacy media advertisements, even, even if the ads mentioned the name of a federal candidate, so long as they did not expressly advocate the candidate's election or defeat. I'm to give you an example of one of those in a minute of just how narrow this was.

So, OK, the national parties themselves, write, Democratic, the National Committee, Republican National Committee, transferred large amounts of their soft money to the state parties, which were then allowed to use a larger percentage of the soft money to finance these, quote, "mixed purpose activities" under FEC rules. So in 2000, for example, this is a 2003 case, the national parties diverted $280 million, more than half of their soft money, to the state parties.

0:09:27 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

0:10:27 Thomas: There you go. Yeah. Yeah.

0:11:21 Andrew: Not only were such soft money contributions designed to gain access to federal candidates, but they were in many cases solicited by the candidates themselves. Candidates often directed potential donors to party committees and tax exempt organizations that could legally accept soft money. For example, a federal legislator running for reelection solicited soft money from a supporter by, by advising him that even though he had already contributed the legal maximum to the campaign committee, he could still make an additional contribution to a joint program supporting federal, state and local candidates of his policy. And the Supreme Court dryly notes, quote, "such solicitations were not uncommon," end quote.

0:11:56 Thomas: So it sounds like to summarize, most of that is because of Reagan's FEC ruining it. It's it's making enough holes in the law via these interpretations that it becomes meaningless because you can do all these little gimmicks.

0:12:09 Andrew: Yep, let me give you the precise example of this, because this was, in my mind, this flows logically from the first, but this was divided into a second component of the McCain-Feingold bill, and those were what were called issue advocacy ads. So you could spend your soft money on issue advocacy ads. So, an example, could not say in your issue advocacy adds "vote for Thomas Smith." But what you could say is "Thomas Smith voted 12 times to restrict abortion.

Call Thomas Smith and tell him you oppose his extremist record. The foregoing has been paid for by the Committee to Protect Human Life." Or, right, I guess that would be a pro, pro choice. I could, right, mention your stances, right, say, but as long as I didn't say "vote against," I could, see what I'm doing is I want to mobilize people to persuade, you know, such and such, call Chuck Schumer and tell him, you know, to stop supporting gun control.

Well, Chuck Schumer's signature issue for his entire career has been gun control, that is not going to work, right, but nevertheless, we had a little wink and a nod, and in fact here's what the Supreme Court said in McConnell, quote, "while the distinction between issue and express advocacy seemed neat in theory, the two categories of advertisements proved functionally identical in important respects. Both were used to advocate the election of or defeat of clearly identified federal candidates even though so-called issue ads eschewed the use of magic words.

Little difference existed, for example, between an ad that urged viewers to vote against Jane Doe and one that condemned Jane Do's record on a particular issue before exhorting viewers to, quote, call Jane Do and tell her what you think, end of quote. Indeed, campaign professionals testified that the most effective campaign ads, like the most affective commercials for products such as Coca-Cola, should and did avoid the use of magic words."

0:13:56 Andrew: Moreover, the conclusion that such ads were specifically intended to affect election results was confirmed by the fact that almost all of them aired in the 60 days immediately preceding a federal election. Corporations and unions spent hundreds of millions of dollars of their general funds to pay for these ads, and those expenditures, like soft money donations to the political parties, were unregulated. Indeed, the ads were attractive to organizations and candidates precisely because they were beyond the reach of the law, enabling candidates and their parties to work closely with, quote, friendly interest groups, to sponsor these so-called issue ads when the candidates themselves were running out of money.

So McCain-Feingold did a bunch of different things, we're only going to focus on Title One and Title Two. Title One regulates soft money, eliminates soft money is the fair way of putting it, prohibits national party committees and their agents from soliciting, receiving, directing, or spending any soft money. Title Two, uh, prohibits corporations and labor unions from using their funds for communications that are intended to or have the effect of influencing the outcome of federal elections. OK, so in other words, they got rid of the it must be used to endorse an identifiable candidate, and they replace that with a communication targeted to the relevant electorate, defined as, in a presidential election, it can be received by 50,000 or more persons in the district or state that the candidate seeks to represent. So that's the issue in 2003, and the Supreme Court, there were a bunch of other stuff related to the rest of it, but basically the Supreme Court upheld McCain-Feingold, said yep, totally fine, no

0:14:07 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:15:33 Andrew: Problem banning soft money, no problem saying independent expenditures, that come on, right, if you're reaching 50,000 people, uh, we know that what you're doing is you're trying to influence the election, that's the whole point, here we want to make it harder for you to influence the election, that's 2003. Now we get to Citizens United, and Citizens United has the the benefit of two additional very conservative George W. Bush appointees to the Supreme Court, and the departure of, uh, the author of the McConnell decision, uh, Sandra Day O'Connor. And so political alignment, and, the right wing was now feeling their oats yeah. Feeling, yeah, their oats.

0:16:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:16:11 Thomas: Feeling their oats. I don't. Love when I learn a new phrase from you, feeling their oats, what does it mean exactly?

0:16:18 Andrew: Being getting ready to go experiment, give

0:16:21 Thomas: Oh, are they're like a horse that was fed a bunch of oats and they're like kicking in. No, I genuinely want it.

0:16:27 Andrew: The reference is to sowing your wild oats, which is a mythological sexual reference of, you know, you plant the wild oats and then the nymph shows up And so, you know, feeling your oats is, yeah, all right, I'm going to give that a shot. Right.

0:16:32 Thomas: Ah, sure. Uh huh. All right.

0:16:42 Andrew: We have the group Citizens United itself, yeah. What did Citizens United want to do? They made a, quote, movie with one of the most reprehensible human beings, Dick Morris. Boy, you don't see a lot of Dick Morris these days, and that's good. It was called Hillary the Movie. It was 73 minutes long and it, quote, focuses on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate record, her White House record during President Bill Clinton's presidency, her presidential bid, and includes express opinions on whether she would make a good president. That's how they describe it. They also had three advertisements that they wanted to air, and they wanted to air Hillary the Movie right before a whole bunch of state primaries in 2008. Um, here's how Citizens United concedes on the record below what Hillary the Movie is, quote: Hillary the Movie references the election and Senator Clinton's candidacy, and it takes a position on her character, qualifications, and fitness for office.

0:16:51 Thomas: Yeah.

0:17:37 Andrew: Dick Morris, one political commentator featured in the movie, has described the film as, quote, really giving people the flavor and understanding why she should not be president. After viewing the movie and examining the 73-page script at length, the court finds Mr. Morris's description to be accurate. The movie is susceptible of no other interpretation than to inform the electorate that Senator Clinton is unfit for office, and the United States would be a dangerous place in a President Hillary Clinton world, and that viewers should vote against her. The movie is thus the functional equivalent of express advocacy. And so Citizens, sorry, again, I cannot emphasize this in strong enough terms, these are not aggrieved parties that like run afoul of the law in is, they bring declaratory judgment actions and position themselves in front of conservative judicial elements in order to win their cases.

0:18:26 Andrew: And that's exactly what Citizens United did here. They came up with this movie. They specifically picked a time in which it would run afoul of McCain-Feingold. By the way, McCain-Feingold chugged along eight time. Six years here of working just fine.

And so Citizens United filed a lawsuit January 7th, 2008, saying that they had released the movie for public sale and exhibition, and then brought a lawsuit saying we want a declaratory judgment that we can air both this movie and our advertisements in favor of this movie, even though it would expressly run afoul of McCain Feingold and in particular, right, the amendments that say any electioneering communication is any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication which refers to a clearly identified candidate for federal office is made within 60 days before a general, special, or runoff election for the office sought by the candidate, or 30 days before any primary or preference election, or the convention or caucus of a political party that has the authority to nominate a candidate for the office sought by a candidate. For presidential candidates, the communication must also be capable of being received by 50,000 or more persons. So yeah, clearly this is designed to run afoul of

0:19:34 Thomas: Right. Yeah.

0:19:42 Andrew: Of that law.

0:19:42 Thomas: It's like the Scopes monkey trial or something where he just was like, yeah, arrest me for teaching evolution kind thing. He was trying to try the law. Right.

0:19:44 Andrew: Yes. Exactly, right. Um, and they had, I thought it was funny, there were two 10 second advertisements which were coded Weight and Pants, that's what the little ads were titled, and one 30 second ad called Questions. Uh That also they wanted to air in connection with the movie. And again, those advertisements, uh were, you know, not, hey, there's an interesting new political movie out about Senator, you know, Questions, right? Questions about her fitness for office. And so the district court for the District of Columbia was like, this could not be more obvious political speech of the type that McCain-Feingold meant to regulate.

And you are subject, declaring your rights, you may not air this within 30 days of the primary or 60 days of the general election. And then it went up to the Supreme Court, as is the hallmark of the John Roberts Court, this 2010 decision, now we have finally reached Citizens United, which explicitly overruled the McConnell decision from just seven years earlier. Basis for overruling that decision from seven years earlier is based on, what the Roberts Court describes as, the improper discrimination against corporate speakers in the context of free speech.

And I want to tell you, not just everything we read to you in part one, but the entirety of Supreme Court jurisprudence has always discriminated against corporate speakers in the context of any sort of speech, right, that corporate speech is less entitled to public protection than individual speech, or at least that was the case until 2010.

0:20:35 Thomas: Yeah.

0:21:28 Andrew: The shift in tone is almost impossible to overstate. So I'm going to read to you a little bit from the opinion. It begins with the notice that, yeah, corporations can actually get around most of this if they set up a political action committee. Why? That is thought of as a benefit, I don't really know, um, but the Supreme Court says, yeah, yeah, but think of, but how burdensome it is on these poor corporations to have to set up a political action.

0:21:43 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, to do a little extra work, yeah, oh,

0:21:55 Andrew: Quote, Section 441B is a ban on corporate speech, notwithstanding the fact that a PAC created by a corporation can still speak. Even if a PAC could somehow allow a corporation to speak, and it sometimes does not, the option to form PACs does not alleviate the First Amendment problems with Section 44 1B. PACs are burdensome alternatives, they are expensive to administer and subject to extensive regulations. Yeah, that's kind of the point. For example, every Pack must appoint a treasurer, forward donations to the treasurer promptly, keep detailed records, keep keep

0:22:23 Thomas: It's just the tiniest corporate violin, oh so oh man, a treasure, we gotta keep records, but I want to buy an election now oh so hard, we

0:22:33 Andrew: Of the identities and the person's making donations, yeah, I wonder why we'd want that. Preserve receipts for three years and file an organization statement and report changes to this information within 10 days. And that is just the beginning. PACs must file detailed monthly reports with the FEC. I swear to God, I am reading directly from the opinion, which are due at different times depending on the type of election that is about to occur.

0:22:57 Thomas: Just need the who's the artist Sarah McLaughlin or whatever with we need that music under this, did

0:23:02 Andrew: The eyes of the angels, yeah.

0:23:04 Thomas: Did you know the corporations used to have to write down which people were buying elections? And we stopped all that. With your help, we can put an end to the corporations.

0:23:14 Andrew: For less than the price of a cup of coffee, You

0:23:17 Thomas: Look at this poor, sad corporation filling out some paperwork. And it's just, it does the, it's in black and white and, you know, its hand hurts and stuff. But we can end all that if we let them just do whatever they want to.

0:23:24 Andrew: That is not more ridiculous than the sentence that actually follows in the opinion, which I will read to you, which is, quote, "PACs have to comply with these regulations just to speak," that might explain why fewer than 2,000 of the millions of corporations in this country have PACs, end of real quote, from a real Supreme Court opinion.

0:23:51 Thomas: In My America, every corporation, there's a chicken every pot and there's a Pack in every corporation's pot, actually, same, it's, they have their own pot because they're people, this is absurd. This is, I, wow, I knew this was a bad decision. I had no idea it was like this. This literally is indistinguishable from satire if you're trying to make fun of, Republicans, just filleting corporations, um like yeah this is John Oliver-esque

0:24:01 Andrew: Yep you could not do better than this that yeah It gets better. We have now set up, uh, can't, you can't force, uh, every corporation to have a PAC just to speak. How crazy. Then we selectively quote from Buckley versus Valeo. Remember, that's the 1976 opinion. That's two cases ago that upheld the contribution limits. But right, they did mention, as I told you, we have to be fair, that there are First Amendment issues. Right, let's, let's not pretend that there aren't.

Say, and they, and they selectively quote from that opinion to say, "A restriction on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached." For these reasons, political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it, whether by design or inadvertence, laws that burden political speech are subject to strict scrutiny, which requires that the government prove that the restriction furthers a compelling interest and is narrowly tailored to achieve that, that interest. Now, that does not state the law of Buckley versus Vallejo.

0:25:14 Andrew: You get strict scrutiny if you, because you can restrict speech all the time, think of time, place, and manner restrictions. Right, I can say you may not drive down with your electioneering, you, van at three in the morning down the street, that even

0:25:14 Thomas: Yeah sorry but what if I'm a corporation and the van is my corporate

0:25:29 Andrew: If you're a corporation, yeah, you can't do that. I am restricting the quantity of expression, that is a time period, I'm saying between you, midnight and 8 a.m., you can't do that. Time, place, and manner

0:25:39 Thomas: Right but what If I have an open, carrying a gun at the same, then it's fine, right? This episode has brought to by the Jordan Harbinger Show. The Jordan Harbingers Show features in-depth interviews with some of the world's most fascinating minds, like Neil deGrasse Tyson, perhaps Anderson Cooper, there's a million of, there's so many of them, check them all out. Podcast dives deeper than most interviewers, it's clear that Jordan really prepares for each one. Addition, every Friday, Jordan also releases a Feedback Friday episode with, in those episodes, he responds to listener questions, covering everything from conventional problems like leaving a dream job to doozies, someone escape an abusive relationship, relationship. So whether Jordan is conducting an interview or giving advice to a listener, you'll find something useful that you can apply to your own life in every single episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show. That could mean learning how to advice ask the right way, or it could just be discovering a slight mindset tweak that changes how you see the world.

0:25:40 Andrew: Yeah so

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0:26:46 Andrew: What they're really embedding, what really triggers the strict scrutiny provision is, quote, "which they've described as prohibited to," which is, just, that's not how English works, prohibited to, "are restrictions distinguishing among different speakers, allowing speech by some but not others," and you see where this is going, so discrimination on the basis of viewpoint, saying, yeah, Democrats can drive down the street and broadcast as much as they want, Republicans can't, of course that is forbidden by the First Amendment. "As instruments to censor, these categories are interrelated, speech restrictions based on the identity of the speaker are all too often simply a means to control content."

Again, that can be true, it is not when you ask, okay, so what's the group we're discriminating against, and the Supreme Court says, oh yeah, billionaire corporate speakers, right. But, quote, "by taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others, the government deprives the disadvantaged person or class the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker's voice. The government may not by these means deprive the public of the right and privilege to determine for itself what speech and speakers are worthy of consideration. The, the First Amended protects speech and speaker and the ideas that flow from each."

0:27:53 Thomas: Is insane everyone should have the right to political speech, no matter the color of their articles of incorporation, but it's everybody, everybody equal.

0:28:15 Andrew: Does the Supreme Court deal with the fact that this is the first time in history that the Supreme Court has ever said and ever announced a proposition like that, that there is an uninterrupted, uh, concern from our nation's inception with the role of money in politics, that state regulations go back to the 19th century, by not talking about it and by referencing the dissent, remember I read you the UAW opinion, that was 1957, and I told you, yeah, it drew three voices in dissent. This doesn't quote the majority opinion in any way, but does quote at length the dissent from the UAW decision. And then they sort of morph that into this soaring rhetoric about the importance of political speech.

"Political speech is indispensable to decision making in a democracy, and this is no less true when the speech comes, comes from a corporation rather than an individual," uh, that is then merged in with the notion in Buckley, right, that you may not draw distinctions based on who's doing the speaking. The majority then says, "This protection for speech is inconsistent with the anti-distortion rationale," that was in, and I'm going to talk about this earlier case, Austin versus Michigan Chamber of Commerce, that they also overruled, McConnell, right?

0:28:35 Thomas: Yep. Right.

0:29:33 Andrew: Decision, 2003, relied upon this Austin decision, 1990, and the Supreme Court in 2010, seven years later, was like, yeah, we're getting rid of both of those, don't worry about it. And both Austin and McConnell said that we want not to have corporations be able to spend unlimited money, because that would distort the views that are out there by allowing the wealthiest owners to have the loudest voices and, quote, quote, "give an unfair advantage in the political marketplace by using resources amassed in the economic marketplace."

0:30:09 Thomas: The reasoning that I was using.

0:30:10 Andrew: That was your point. Yeah. Describe this, again, by lying about what the earlier decision said. So they say, but Buckley, remember, that's the 76 decision that upheld caps. They say, But Buckley rejected the premise that the government has an interest in, quote, equalizing the relative ability of individuals and groups to influence the outcome come of elections, end of quote. That is not true. That rationale was held to be of subsidiary importance to the candidate's own right to self-expression, right, in that section of the opinion, but never rejected as a fundamental principle of first rank that has been consistent throughout our nation's history. So that's a lie. Buckley was specific in stating that, quote, the skyrocketing cost of political campaigns could not sustain the governmental prohibition.

0:30:11 Thomas: Yeah, totally.

0:30:58 Andrew: Yeah, again, that one limited aspect that that they overruled from the existing law, we, we talked about that at some length, so uh, they conclude the First Amendment's protections do not depend upon the speaker's financial ability to engage in public discussion. And then there is perhaps the most pernicious lie that is in this opinion. So, you know, we have parodic elements of, oh, the, the poor corporation, we have misrepresenting both the history and the legal precedent, and then we have this, uh, and, this was designed, well, I'll just read it for itself. It's referencing Austin, but you could use McConnell here as well.

Quote, "Austin's anti-distortion rationale," right, that's the Thomas principle, don't allow people who have amassed economic wealth to have disproportionate political wealth would produce the dangerous and unacceptable consequence that Congress could ban political speech of media corporations, see, McConnell dissent, by Clarence Thomas, quote, "The chilling endpoint of the court's reasoning is not difficult to foresee: outright regulation of the press." Now, this is the most ridiculous, because the group that wants to regulate the press is Clarence Thomas and the far right wing, that right, is the group right right now that is agitating for reducing the pleading standards and possibly overturning the New York Times v. Sullivan libel standards, right?

They want to make it easier for you to sue the press for saying bad things about a candidate, which is, by the way, the only real corporate political speech that matters, right, by saying, oh, but look, like, if you're targeting organizations like corporations, well, you know, CNN is a corporation, are you going to target them?

And the answer to that is throughout our nation's history, the Supreme Court has always, always differentiated between corporate speech, usually in the context of advertising, and the freedom of the press, right, I read to you at great length from those early opinions that said evincing a concern for the speech of corporations, at no point, at any point in time, until Clarence Thomas decided to start lying about it,

0:31:40 Thomas: It's already funny. Oh, oh yeah.

0:32:58 Andrew: Did anybody think or suggest or argue that corporate speech became corporate by virtue of the fact that, it was, yeah, well, you know, the New York Times is a, is a corporation. And in fact, the, the leading case on economic speech, still leading today, is a case called 44 Liquor Mart, and it deals with the difference between something that appears in the advertisement in the Times versus in the editorial page of the Time. So, in other words, there is no slippery slope, there is no, oh, but you know, media corporations are corporations, we know the difference, the Supreme Court is not an ass, they know the difference between well, yeah, that's a reference to a, yeah, there's a famous line from an opinion, or a dissent, I don't know, "the court is not a ass," so I thought I would try and use it here, um, every commercial decision, uh, dealing with commercial speech differentiates the press from corporations.

We get a little bit of an own goal, this was only 10 years ago, so it's hard to know what to make of this one. "Political speech is so ingrained in our culture that speakers find ways to circumvent campaign finance reform laws." Well, good point, not sure it means what you say it is, and, right, then there's a citation to McConnell, it's true, likely. Yeah, money is so pernicious that it flows through the cracks, that's why we need to keep coming back to the court because they keep finding exceptions, um, I don't know why that means why bother trying, but there we go.

0:33:37 Thomas: Well, yeah, they are. Oh, in this hypothetical there. Yeah. Nice.

0:34:24 Thomas: Yeah, is this the, like, let's not punish the responsible gun owners by restricting guns in any way, shape, or form, is that kind of the equivalent here?

0:34:25 Andrew: I guess, yeah, "our nation speech dynamic is changing, and informative voices should not have to circumvent onerous restrictions to exercise their First Amendment rights. Speakers have become adept at presenting citizens with sound bites, talking points, and unscripted messages that dominate the 24-hour news cycles. Corporations, like individuals, do not have monolithic reviews. On certain topics, corporations may possess valuable expertise, leaving them the best equipped to point out errors or fallacies in speech of all sorts, including the speech of candidates and elected officials." And again, I just want to point, out, this is in service of a restriction that says you can't air your multi-million dollar Hillary Clinton hit piece 30 days before the election. You want to air 31 days? Have the hell at it. But, right, but 30 days before the selection, you cannot air it.

0:34:31 Thomas: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, why, Is every conservative, awful Supreme Court decision basically, serve this as a Windies, like, they, they just go off and you're like, this is about this one little tiny restriction we're putting on something, and you're talking about how the world is going to end because corporations can't buy infinite speech at any time.

0:35:18 Andrew: Yeah, That that is what provides for the, backdrop of the American flag waving and you know, know, the, the soaring Lee Greenwood music, and whatever, that's, that's playing over this, we get this one, I, I don't really know what to make of this. "Rapid changes in technology and the creative dynamic inherent in the concept of free expression counsel against upholding a law that restricts political speech in certain media by certain speakers. Soon, however, it may be that Internet sources such as blogs and social networking websites will provide citizens with significant information about political candidates and issues." That well seems like dramatic understatement, thinking about 2016, but then we get this, beyond bonkers, "yet 441(b)," that's the section of McCain-Feingold, "would seem to ban a blog post expressly advocating the election or defeat of a candidate if that blog were created with corporate funds." Yes, that's such a super easy line to draw, right? Yeah, let Aunt Kathy

0:35:38 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What

0:36:27 Andrew: Go on Facebook and say vote Trump, or vote Biden, or whatever, but let's not have a corporate funded group flooding your inbox with vote Trump I, yeah,

0:36:33 Thomas: I think this is literally the definition of begging the question, Cause you're you're, arguing like, here's why corporations should be allowed to speak. Okay. Here's why they should be able to do whatever they want because there's this thing called blogs. And what if a corporation wrote one? That, that doesn't answer the question. You're just, just restating it.

0:36:55 Andrew: You are a hundred percent correct, that it is the question begging fallacy. I was good, just so flabbergasted at what an idiotic thing it was to say that I didn't notice the fallacy, so good, good work.

0:37:04 Thomas: Well, I feel like these people on the right are so dumb often that they just forget that people don't agree with them on this thing. Like, well, if we ban corporations from spending money on whatever, they won't, they won't be able to buy blog posts, and you're, why would, like, that, you think I agree with, why would, what, what do you think is happening in my mind that would make that a good argument?

0:37:23 Andrew: Yes, that's exactly right, and I just want to ride us out on this one. Um, 2010, the Roberts court was not oblivious to the fact that it was going to have to pave over recent Supreme Court history. Now that the court had lurched to the right, they, so, had to come up with yet another, other reason why stare decisis doesn't matter. And you see the, the, germ of what is now the court's stare decisus doctrine, which is anything we don't like, yeah, doesn't count, well, here's what they say, our, yeah, "precedent is to be respected unless the most convincing of reasons," unless, "demonstrates that adherence to it puts, puts us on a course that is sure error." Okay, so that sentence is true, in no 2010 they had to begin with that sentence, they don't anymore, right?

You read Dobbs and it does not say "we respect precedence unless adherence puts us on a course with sure error," but again, they get a shoehorn this in with, that's the actual law, so now we start working backwards, "workability," "the relevant factors in deciding whether to adhere to the principles of stare decisis include the antiquity of the precedent, the reliance interests at stake, decision, and was well reasoned." This is a shift away from quoting, and they do not quote Planned Parenthood versus Casey because they're trying to change the test, instead, they quote a bunch of cases you've never heard us talk about because these are not stare decisis cases.

0:37:48 Thomas: Doesn't matter, just say it was wrongly decided from the start, that's all you got to say.

0:38:42 Andrew: They are, but right? Like the most important thing the court had said in stare decisis at the time of this opinion was Planned Parenthood versus Casey, there was a deliberate reason that this opinion does not cite it. Court continues. "We have also examined whether experience has pointed up the precedent shortcomings." And again, citation to another case you haven't heard of. "These considerations counsel in favor of rejecting Austin and McConnell, which itself contravened this court's earlier precedence in Buckley." No, it didn't. "This court has not hesitated to overrule decisions offensive to the First Amendment. Stare decisis is a principle of policy and not a mechanical formula of adherence to the latest decision. So for the reasons stated above, it must be concluded that Austin was not well reasoned." And, uh, that's it. Uh, we don't, we don't like the the result that was reached seven years previously.

0:39:32 Andrew: So we're going to wipe it out, thirty-four years before that. And by the way, those results, which were the result of our nation's history until then, Evidencing right? A deep and abiding concern for keeping the role of corporations in buying our politics out of our politics, or at least minimizing them to the extent possible that dates back, as we said in part one, to the 19th century. So this originalist Supreme Court did not, there's no talk about whatsoever the history of laws. There's no talk whatsoever about British restrictions, about 13th century Saxony restrictions here, because they know those restrictions are everywhere in the laws. Um, they've got to invent a brand new protection, and that protection, again, you heard me read it multiple times, is "won't someone think of the poor corporations?"

0:39:42 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:40:30 Thomas: I mean, I just wanted to be like, did a corporation write this? Like, is, did a corporation become sentient and take over the corporation? The answer is actually yes. It actually is what happened. A corporation basically wrote this.

0:40:41 Andrew: And Let's go beyond that, right? Like, because we are talking about in an era in which, you corporations supposedly have strongly held religious beliefs, what, what we mean is the the strongly held beliefs, particularly of close corporations, right, of the wealthy billionaire that owns and controls said corporation, right?

0:40:57 Thomas: Yeah. On what all the workers in the corporation think. And then like, okay, well, I guess that'll control, you know, how the corporation spends money.

0:41:06 Andrew: It's worst than that, because they actually do take a poll of what the workers thinks. And that's called a union. And the union contributions are explicitly prohibited. So this is where we are now. If you gather together and, when you work at Hobby Lobby and you have unionized, and by God, you hate the fact that they are anti-abortion and the money that they funnel into politics, your abilities to counteract the voice of the CEO are sharply curtailed and will continue to be sharply curtailing both by federal law and by the Supreme Court. But if you own the corporation, everything goes. It is discrimination not to let the wealthy owner of a corporation essentially have two megaphones, right? The regular megaphone they get as a human being and the gigantic megaphone hooked up to a billion watt transmitter that they get from owning a successful corporation.

0:41:51 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:42:01 Thomas: It's like having your personal cell phone and your work cell phone. I got this personal megaphone and I have this enormous corporate megaphone that I get to just use for whatever I want. That's cool.

0:42:03 Andrew: Yeah, it Be wary of the soaring rhetoric that has been co-opted here. We are talking about a duplicative artificial entity, in my view. Right. Corporations have no rights that do not flow from the individuals themselves or not created by statute. Corporations absolutely, you have the right to be designated as recipients in contracts. They're right to a continuing existence, you know, all the things that you want to do with a corporation, fantastic, but and that's what Mitt Romney meant, I, again, I go on the global campaign to rehabilitate Mitt Romney, that's what he meant when he said corporations are people, my friends, that they are people in the sense that they are a person for purposes of statutory requirements that says, you you got to have a person authorized to, you know, uh, receive. So, well, yeah, that could be a corporation, right? Does not mean that they're, that they're a a person for purposes of civil rights, and it never has until the last, 15 years. Can't, I know we have a lot, a huge chunk of our audience that, you know, that's their adult life.

Um, I, I, I have to tell you, this is not normal, this is not the way it used to be, it is not the way to supposed to be, and it does not have to be this way, but right now, that's where we are.

0:42:32 Thomas: Sure. Yeah.

0:43:17 Thomas: All right. Well, what a breakdown. That is even worse than I thought. It really truly is. I mean, it's not like I was under the impression Citizens United was a great decision and it was even stupider and more ridiculous than I even thought, so thank you for the breakdown, glad we finally got to it, yeah.

0:43:27 Andrew: Yeah. About, it's about time, but yeah, no, this is one of these that, like, you some of your edgier, like, you libertarian curious friends may be like, we know Citizens United was actually about Yeah.

0:43:45 Thomas: Got a bad rap. Yeah.

0:43:46 Andrew: Right. We may get some pushback, and I'm curious what folks will want to say, but I think I've presented a pretty good case that historically we have always had a significant, compelling government interest in protecting the integrity of the elections process, and that this Supreme Court just stomped all over it.

0:43:47 Thomas: We will Wow. All right. Leave

0:44:05 Clip: Thank you for being a friend, yeah, travel down the road with me, say we started from the bottom now we're here girl,

0:44:14 Thomas: And now it's time to thank our our Hall of Famers, our top patrons on patreon.com/law. We are on a new quarter.

0:44:22 Clip: I love that new quarter smell.

0:44:25 Thomas: Just when you crack it open, it's just fresh quarter, love it. Right out of the box, this quarter.

0:44:30 Clip: Rich Corinthian leather, exactly.

0:44:33 Thomas: Oh, that's so great. Enjoying all the goodies. As I said last time, the extra Q&A that you definitely want to get on the Patreon to hear. An extra QAnA that Andrew took the time out of his vacation to record for us. What a nice gesture, Andrew. Go on Patreon and enjoy that. And of course, the ad-free episodes, the early episodes, all the good stuff. So I'll start us off. Thank you to tropetweeter. We got some new additions, by the way, in this when we cracked open our quarter, a fresh quarter box. New additions. Tropetweeter. TexasChainsawLawyer.com loves to sue cops and landlords.

0:44:58 Clip: Woo, nice.

0:45:08 Thomas: Patti B. Circumcision for the foreskin and circumspection for the aft skin. That's a weird one. Robert Whiteman, your friendly neighborhood union lawyer. Brit. Annette Balgord, the administrator general of Northern Sweden. Sweden, might that actually be real? Like, is that, are what is that I

0:45:24 Clip: That would be amazing if the Administrator General of Northern Sweden was a show listener I

0:45:26 Thomas: Don't know what that position is. It could mean that someone with a tremendous amount who owns Sweden, or nothing. Could be like a, yeah it just reminds me, Simpsons, of the, the Australia Simpsions one of the best ones, maybe my favorite one, like, I need to talk to my member of parliament. Oh, I remember. And it's just like the people right there. So who knows?

0:45:31 Clip: Yeah the third highest ranking official in all of Scandinavia. So

0:45:49 Thomas: Mr. Prime Minister.

0:45:49 Clip: We have we please bargain this down to a booting

0:45:52 Thomas: Yeah. Robert Reichel. Jason Young. Tom Paris did nothing wrong. Crap. Crap, I've got to think of something clever. Yeah, you didn't. Sorry. Praise Beetle Amchop. Trojan Horse News. A funny meme to share with Uncle Frank with real news snuck in the comments. Facebook On as TrojanHorseNews. That's interesting. I wonder if that works. Works. Does Andrew know about the end of episode outtakes? So, they've, these come back a little bit, the end-of-episode outt takes and it's because, uh, Lindsey Osterman taking on some of the editing, and she's a fan of the end episode out takes and, you know, I am too, sometimes, I used to do them just not as often. Yeah, there you go, Andrew, you have been duly informed that sometimes there are end of episode outtakes now.

0:46:11 Clip: Oh I

0:46:34 Thomas: Elsie, Voodoo Magic Swamp Lawyer, Hunter Kinsey, I continue to be a patron for the shout out to Kelly. Hi, Kelly.

0:46:32 Clip: Love it, hi, I

0:46:42 Thomas: Alex Boyer, Len Bogan, not a health ranger, Dear Old Dads patron, rooting for Eli's beleaguered nut and your wife swap Patreon goal. That is all stuff you would get and would be hilarious if you listened to Dear Old Dads.

0:46:41 Clip: Kelly and

0:46:56 Thomas: It's good stuff.

0:46:56 Clip: It is hilarious because I

0:46:58 Thomas: There you go. And Woodland underscore shadows. Check out my IG if interested in custom wire art. Oh, that's super cool. I bet it's great.

0:46:58 Clip: Do listen to

0:47:08 Thomas: Woodland underscore shadows on Insta there. Your turn, Andrew.

0:47:07 Clip: Meet and and a big thank you to everything. Important. You gotta fight for your right to ex parte. I've always loved that one, uh, next Sext, the CDC says, take legal advice from a podcast. Jeremy Ashinghurst, this will never not be funny. I'm fast at sex. And finally got a chance to show my big, juicy legal brain off at jury duty. Oh, well, congratulations. Michael Gross-Niklaus, Heather Peek, Tucson Live Show. Interesting. Interesting. Best damn tacos in the nation and delicious smoky mezcal to relax into. All right. We talked into that purple couch dot com. That's P.U.R.P.L. C.O.U.-C.H. dot com going through a divorce. Listen to assembled experts to to shift your mindset From Failed Marriage to Fresh Start. Loaf of Orange, Marlon the Corgi, Jamie, Comedian Aaron Trahan at Comedienne A.E.T. C-O-M-E-D-I-A-N-AET. Come to Madhouse Comedy Club in San Diego. Objection. Perry Mason has no relevance to this case.

0:47:29 Thomas: Yeah.

0:48:17 Clip: Overruled. Love that. Chaos and Grief took my voice for a while, but the sequel to Vortexes is coming. Laurel Starling. The five-second rule also applies to floor coke. Coke, that's a, that's a, that was God awful Hunter Biden movie, I did for um, God awful movies, yeah, oh shout

0:48:31 Thomas: Oh, yeah. What was that? Oh, yes. I listened to that. That was that was really funny. Andrew was great on that.

0:48:41 Clip: Out to JCMB Edmonton. Is the backup plan right? Uh-huh.

0:48:46 Thomas: Andrew, sorry that I shouldn't sneak stuff into the patron segments. But hey, that's why you got to listen to the patron segment news while we're recording that Hunter Biden might be, you know, indicted and charged with, with crimes, and, you know what that does to my worldview? Fucking nothing. Just don't okay darn I guess he committed crimes. Uh, no, no, whatever, it doesn't matter.

0:48:48 Clip: No that's fine it

0:49:05 Thomas: It's so weird. Okay, carry on

0:48:59 Clip: Didn't mean either yeah that's so weird, uh, you interrupted uh one of of the all-time great patron names, particularly in this quartile, a Streetcar Named Deez Nuts Inspired Zombie, Supports the Arlo Flying Circus Fund, fine, we make our own Supreme, we'll make our own Supreme Court with hookers and flapjacks, and Precious Little Cinnamon Buns, Cinnamon Buns Brisk Brave Brigadiers Brandished Broad Bright Blades, Blunderbusses and Bludgeons, Balancing Dr. Bone Spurs, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Steal Nuclear Secrets, and AtAtomicPenguin7 on Twitter's Patreon name has been scrubbed due to a scheduled Patreon donation as per USSS protocol. Well, that's a shame because at AtomicPenguin7 is a fantastic Twitter presence.

0:49:57 Clip: Thank you all so much. Remember, you get these recurring monthly shout-outs if you are a Hall of Fame patron at the $5 or higher level. And, you're the ones we love more than anybody else in the entire world. Yep. Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes the bar will eat you.

0:50:10 Thomas: That's absolutely true and now it's time for T3BE answer time. Let's see how this went. This was a real property thing with a bunch of words I didn't understand

0:50:27 Clip: That's that is the best way to describe this question. And this was a woman left a will which devised the residue of her estate to her two doctors in equal shares, morning doctor and evening doctor. The will has been probated. The woman's evening doctor sold his share to the morning doctor. And you narrowed this down instantly to the only two possible answers, which the morning doctor holds the property in fee tail or the morning doctor holds the property in fee simple. You were hamstrung by not knowing all of the vocabulary words here. So let's go through those.

0:50:59 Thomas: Think I knew fee simple did I know fee simple

0:51:02 Clip: You knew fee simple. That means you own all the sticks. That's exactly right. Yes, stick law. You did not know fee tail.

0:51:04 Thomas: Nice stick law, my specialty yeah I didn', fee

0:51:11 Clip: Fee tail is, you almost never see it, right?

0:51:11 Thomas: Tale only happens when a woman dies and leaves a will, two, or to two her morning and evening doctor. It's as obscure, your... Sorry,

0:51:18 Clip: It's no, it, it, is restriction, a, it's not all the sticks, um, it's, a form, uh, of, uh, by the way, to devise means to leave something to someone in your will, devise means to convey via will. So when you convey something in fee tail, uh, that restricts the sale or inheritance of the estate and prevents that person, uh, from, uh, transferring the property that should otherwise go to predetermined heirs. It requires a precise form of language. You use the words "to the heirs of his body." So when you leave something to Thomas Smith, you would say, "I devise to Thomas Smith and the heires of his buddy. And that would prevent you, Thomas Smith from selling out the property. It means that the property has to stay in the family.

0:52:05 Thomas: So it has to stay in the family. Okay.

0:52:11 Clip: That's exactly right.

0:52:12 Thomas: What if you adopt someone?

0:52:12 Clip: Yeah. I have no idea. They didn't have adoption in 13th century Saxony. So, you know, I feel like they probably did too.

0:52:17 Thomas: I feel like like they did. I think there's a lot of accidental adoption, I bet. Yeah.

0:52:24 Clip: I'm The other question you had was, what does it mean to say the will has been probated? And I think you kind of parsed that one out, which is to probate means that you have officially officially processed and guaranteed that the will is genuine. You've appointed an executor. Right, the stuff is happening. Right, so uh, very pleased to tell you, the sticks sticks always work. It's a d, um, absolutely nailed this one, just just crushed it.

0:52:35 Thomas: Yeah, okay, okay. I nailed this one, Andrew. Just absolutely clobbered this question. I'm so happy about it. Wow, and you know what? We can credit Andrew Torres's 20-part course on real estate state stick law. That is the stick. The sticks never fail. Go, go with the sticks. Sometimes I fail the sticks, like sometimes I'm not worthy of stick theory and I mess it up. But in this case, nailed it.

0:52:57 Clip: The sticks never fail, so. Yeah, well, in this case, you did not, so.

0:53:08 Thomas: Wow. That's super cool. I'm just killing this. I think 75% on this exam. That is why let's quit. Retiring the 75. I say that every time, but that was amazing. I win this week. Let's find out who got second place. Let's be real. Who got second placed in this week's D3B, Andrew? And I'll answer my own question because Andrew is eternally on a boat. Lots of people got it right. It must have been pretty easy. Take some of the wind out of my sails, but that's okay. I still got first place. That's right. And here's who got second place.

Thank you so much to everybody who played, tweeted it out. Great answers this week. Hard to choose, but I guess I'll go with at Yeager Von Kass, who says, I think I can get to the tail end of this T3B question. Question, it looks like the evening doctor sold his share for a simple fee to the morning doctor who now holds the title in fee simple with no restrictions attached to the tail end of his life, so answer D. Uh, something between a like a limerick, a rhyme, and a basic answer. I don't know, it seemed pretty poetic to me, uh, so I liked it. And thank you for playing at j-a-g-e-r-v-a n k-a s on Twitter. Give them a follow, enjoy your never-ending fame and fortune, absolutely guaranteed, because, uh, it's me.

0:53:14 Clip: All right.

0:54:25 Thomas: That's our show. Thanks so much for listening. I'm glad we finally got to that deep dive on Citizens United. It's, it was, it really truly was even worse than I knew. And, and, and that's what this show is for. Sometimes we're not mad enough about stuff because it's so complicated. We don't understand how terrible it was. And I like that this show helps us with that. So well done, Andrew. And thanks so much for listening, everybody. We'll see you very soon.

0:54:31 Clip: Yeah. I with you. Agree 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.

0:55:24 Clip: www.openargs.com. Be sure to join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash 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.

0:56:10 Andrew: Feeling their oats.