The SAVE Act Could Disenfranchise Millions of Voters. Democrats Must Stop It.

Transcript

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

0:00:00 Clip: You must never, ever give up or give in. You must keep the faith and keep your eyes on the prize. That is your calling. That is you mission. That is moral obligation. That is mandate. Get out there and do it. Get in the way. Change happens because people care. The people have the power to make this life free and beautiful. To make this live a wonderful adventure.

0:00:38 Clip: I still believe with all my heart, America can be a place where no child is left hungry, no community is left behind, and no one gets told they don't belong. Country is always worth it.

0:00:58 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1136. I always start that and I mess up. It's 1136. 1136 I'm Thomas. That's Matt. How you doing, Matt?

0:01:07 Matt: All right. Excited to talk about something I know nothing about today. Always a good place to go.

0:01:11 Thomas: Well, well that's, but do I know who, how are we going to do that?

0:01:15 Matt: We might need some help. I don't have anything.

0:01:17 Thomas: I don't know anything about anything, Matt. So how did you, that's not going to work. Think for one moment, Matt right. Let's, we're going to be speaking to Jenessa Seymour. She's been on SIO. Been on Serious Inquiries Only and Where There's Woke a number of times. Fun person to talk to. Very knowledgeable. I guess we're going do the usual things. It's Wednesday. Making a nice Wednesday appearance. Always appreciate seeing Matt on a Wednesday.

0:01:22 Matt: Anybody we can bring in on short notice? My pleasure.

0:01:38 Thomas: And also T3B, Thomas takes a bar exam, will still be later on. And Lydia is still going to swing around for those shout outs at the end. Like Wednesdays. They're really fun. It's a fun change up. The agenda. Excited for that. We're going to take our usual break. If you'd like to support the show and lose the ads, go to patreon .com slash law, where you can do all that. Of course, that's the best place to play Thomas takes the bar exam and get a shout out. So all good reasons. Right. After this break, we'll get to it. Jenessa, how are you doing today?

0:02:07 Jenessa: Standing.

0:02:10 Thomas: Don't know why we do greetings on podcasts anymore. On left podcasts, that should just be like, I don' t know. Like a neutral greetings. Greetings, fellow depressed anti -Trump person.

0:02:17 Jenessa: I heard Somebody described once the, hey, how are you? It's like neurotypical meowing. I don't really want to hear how you are. It's just acknowledgement, acknowledgement.

0:02:32 Matt: Man, I feel that. I feel

0:02:34 Thomas: And it also might mean you want food. So, yeah, I get it. I haven't eaten in nearly three minutes. On. Come Meow.

0:02:38 Matt: Exactly. Or just some attention. So, Jenessa, you have some kind of background in voting rights law. Where coming from?

0:02:48 Jenessa: So people might be familiar with me doing neuroscience psych statistics over on Serious Inquiries Only and where there's woke, so this might seem a little weird. That... used to say that was in a past life, but I said that recently and somebody thought I meant it literally. So I guess I should clarify.

0:03:07 Thomas: You're in the wrong crowd, like a wooey crowd that's like, oh, yeah. Yeah, I see that.

0:03:12 Jenessa: Yeah, I'm not talking about the 1800s. I'm just talking about my 20s. In my 30s now, I am a lawyer. Relatively new to the literally being a lawyer, but I've been working in a law office for a while now in disability rights. And Yeah, voting rights and I'm here, uh, my own personal capacity, not speaking on behalf of my organization. I wanted to talk about the SAVE Act because this is, uh. Scary.

0:03:39 Matt: Yeah, we've touched on it back in the fall before the election when they were trying to push it through. But I have not been paying attention since then. And I don't know kind of what's going on. We didn't have a lot of time to get into it when we did talk about it. But how did you come to voting rights? How did you get into that?

0:03:53 Jenessa: So actually it was I was doing neuroscience work, I was working with deaf people and blind people and a lot of different groups in my research. And when I was thinking about a career switch, it seemed kind of natural to transition to working these groups because a lot my research had just been like, hey, thanks for participating. I'm going to use you to further my career. And it was like, well. Maybe I can do a little giving back. That'd be nice. And, you know, have I ADD. I'm kind of part of the community as well. So it felt kind of natural. So when I was in law school, I sought out an internship at a disability rights law firm. And from there, I just transitioned right into a position in their voting rights department. That's always something I'd been passionate about. I've been there ever since. It's

0:04:42 Thomas: Can I just note the origin story of people on the left? Is always like experts like, well, I saw vulnerable groups of people. I wanted to help them. Or maybe I'm a member of that group. On the right, it's like, they got their start yelling at pregnant people trying to get an abortion. They were really good at that. They made a lot of people, ruined a lot people's days and lives. So then they transitioned to yelling at trans people and other marginalized groups. They Were really good that yelling. And now they yell just all the time for millions of dollars on a podcast. So that's their origin story. They're never like, oh, I worked with vulnerable Hitler youth and I just saw that they were so, they just, you know, they have a rough time. I wanted to work for their rights.

0:05:16 Matt: Or if you're Ed Martin, the DC US attorney, you can yell at people on a podcast and then become the US attorney. That's a new path that we can all enjoy now.

0:05:27 Thomas: But I love your origin story. It also reminds me that we because of the obsession over on Gavel Gavel, I am woefully late in editing an excellent recording we did about of the some of the conspiracy theories about how there's stolen votes. But, you know, it's sort of the blue and on version, you now, for the election. It was a great recording. I promise I will get it out soon. It's embarrassingly late. I can't believe I haven't. But look for that in a podcast store near you on Serious Inquiries only soon.

0:05:49 Jenessa: It happens. So I've been working in on voting rights. I've helping people file HAVA complaints, Help America Vote Act. I report with the Brennan Center for Justice where we surveyed early voting polling sites in New York for accessibility issues. And if I'm remembering the number correctly, I think it was 94 % of poll sites had an accessibility problem.

0:06:14 Jenessa: I've been doing a lot of work around that. Um, and sometime soon the, um, disability law and practice textbook will be the latest update will come out. And I wrote the chapter on voting rights and that. So, um. Know, maybe a year, five years from now, who knows where that's at publishing wise.

0:06:27 Matt: That was great. You mentioned the Help America Vote Act, and we're here to talk about the Safeguarding American Voting Act, SAVE Act, right? So I just want to make sure when we're talking about these two things that people know. The HAVA is the good one, and the SAVE is the bad one, just to be very clear about where we're coming from here. And SAVE, I think from what I can tell, saves people from having to vote. That seems to be the idea.

0:06:52 Matt: If you don't want to bother, you certainly have a good excuse now because they're going to make it much harder. But just for though, because I don't know anything about it, what is the Help

0:06:52 Jenessa: Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah, it's package of a of different provisions. It was passed shortly after the 2000 election. And the most notable piece for a lot of people is it got rid of those lever machines. We're not doing hanging chads ever again. Um, it also contains a lot of accessibility provisions. Uh, a lot laws say, oh, like polling places have to be physically accessible. Uh, help America vote act says the voting process also has to be accessible. And what does that mean? Hey, New York state who loves to keep. Making everybody vote with a pen on a piece of paper, you have to at least have one machine that people can vote on. So that way, if they can't hold a pen and mark a piece paper, they can still vote privately and independently. So it codifies privacy and independence as a voting right. Contains a big chunk that really helps with streamlining the system and also security in terms of voter registration process where states have to have an electronic statewide database and they have to share across states. So for example, if I'm registered in one county and then I go register in another county, those two counties communicate with one another and share that information. And you'll get like a little postcard at your new address that says, hey, we got a registration. If this person doesn't live here, you should probably tell someone. At And my old address, a postcard goes there that says, hey, we got a cancellation of registration. If you didn't mean to do that, you should probably call someone. So it really streamlined and smoothed out a lot of things. It includes a lot disability accessibility, and it provided funding to the states to update their voting machines so that you weren't stuck with those old lever machines. I liked them. They were cute, but they were not accessible.

0:08:57 Matt: Kind of sounds like what you're describing is a bill that's designed to help more people vote more easily. That sound right. So this was signed by George W. Bush in 2002. This is something Republicans wanted at the time.

0:09:10 Jenessa: Bipartisan. Everybody loved it. It had security and accessibility. Can't we all get on board? Hooray.

0:09:16 Matt: And then now 23 years later, they're trying to pass something that makes it ridiculously more difficult to vote. What's going on?

0:09:23 Jenessa: Mean, honestly, I think this is... It's marketed as preventing non -citizens from voting, which is not a real problem that we really have. It's not happening. There is no systemic voter fraud. There's probably like one guy who managed to vote pretending to be his neighbor in like one city ever.

0:09:44 Thomas: They were a Republican.

0:09:45 Jenessa: Yeah, like. Is not a thing. The provisions in the Help America Vote Act make that extremely difficult to pull off. It's just not happening. It is not something to worry about.

0:09:58 Thomas: It's so dumb. We won't dwell on it. Risk But the is like prison. The reward, one more meaningless vote in like, look, we should all vote. Yes, obviously. If I double my vote, it's nothing. It doesn't do anything. Why would I risk prison for that or whatever? You know, be convicted of a felony. It's insane.

0:10:01 Jenessa: It's a felony. Yeah. Yeah like theoretically you're one town council member. People do often win by like one whole vote but like not the president. That's not happening

0:10:26 Thomas: Going to jail for my town council member. Look, the comptroller? Maybe. We'll

0:10:34 Matt: Of course, the three of us and I think most people listening know that I think they know that it's not really that much of a problem. This is not a good faith bill, right?

0:10:39 Jenessa: It's, yeah. This is not real.

0:10:41 Matt: I mean, we're not helping America vote in this bill. That is not the purpose of it. There's a reason we already had that one.

0:10:48 Matt: So what's it going to do to voting law to actually change registration?

0:10:52 Jenessa: Not. No. what it's really going to do is disenfranchise a lot of women and people of color. That's think, honestly, that's the goal. If anyone's being honest about it, it's marketed as preventing some epidemic of undocumented voting. It's actually just disenfranchisement. And it really is targeted at women and and of low socioeconomic status. And that is wildly disproportionately people of color in this country.

0:11:21 Thomas: How So how is it gonna do that that

0:11:23 Jenessa: Basically, this is voter ID on steroids. It's more than just you need to show some ID. There are plenty of states that have some form of a voter ID law. And if anybody is international listening, that might not sound like the worst thing in the world. So you have to know that in the U .S., we do not get ID automatically. You do get a... I think it's free. You do get a birth certificate when you're born. They hand one to your parents. Other than that...

0:11:52 Thomas: Might not be free? Honestly, you might have to pay for that. I can't remember.

0:11:55 Jenessa: I mean, in the hospital, you pay like so much money to give birth in this country.

0:12:00 Thomas: That's true. Yeah.

0:12:01 Jenessa: So nothing's free. You photo ID is typically a driver's license and not everybody has one. And also it costs money. So like there's no such thing as like just a lot of countries have. You just get a government issued photo ID for free. We don't have that. So it is a big deal to require photo ID. Some states have that and they're like, some states are more flexible than others in what ID they're willing to accept. This would be very specifically, you need to prove you're a U .S. citizen. So they're going to do it on registration. And I think that's going to deceive people into thinking it's not that bad. Because, oh, it's just when you register.

0:12:44 Matt: Now, there is no federal voter registration. So how does this work? What are they forcing the states to do here?

0:12:48 Jenessa: Yeah. So what it gives is when you or re -register or change your address or change you name or change party registration. Any update to your registration. It's not a one time thing. You're going to have to present an ID that proves you are a citizen. So there's a couple of different IDs listed, but what it'll ultimately boil down to for most people, it's either going to be a passport, which of course you can't get unless you're a citizen, or a birth certificate, which would show you're born here, plus a photo ID. Off the bat, the Brennan Center for Justice estimates 21 .3 million voting age citizens. That's 9 .1 percent of voting age. Citizens do not have this idea on hand. Is 140 million American citizens don't have a passport. And then if it comes to your birth certificate plus a photo ID, if you either don't have a photo id or you don't happen to have your birth Certificate on you that could be you lost it that could Be your parents have it and they haven't given it to you any number of reasons You could have to go get a new one and that's not always the easiest process in the world then you got to layer on top of that, what if your birth certificate doesn't have the same name you have today? Changes their name all the time? Women who get married. 69 million American women have changed their name and their birth certificate will not have a matching name. So birth certificate plus photo ID is not going to prove you were born in the U .S. Now what? This is the part that's weird. They did just leave it up to the states how to resolve that question. So they say, here are the IDs you can present. If there's a discrepancy between IDs, states, you figure it out. The one hand, it makes tiniest the bit of sense because states also handle marriage. And so what a marriage license looks like in different states could be different. But also states are supposed to recognize marriages from other states and people move and get married to one state and then live in another state. And what if a state bans gay marriage? You're still supposed to another state's marriage, but then what? It's going to be a problem for a lot of people to figure out what ID do I need? It is not in the law. If you're a married woman, bring your birth certificate, your photo ID, your marriage license, and a prayer, I guess.

0:15:30 Jenessa: It's going to be a huge problem for a lot of people. And then every time you move, you're going to have to do it again.

0:15:36 Matt: And culturally, of course, absolutely, it's going to affect women overwhelmingly, and culturally women who change their names. But I'm also thinking about my Latino clients with two last names. And it's very common that people will stick with one of the last names, maybe you drop your father's name for whatever reason, or your mother's, or it's just easier, or that's just what you are known by professionally. And then you end up getting that on your naturalization certificate when you naturalize, and you end getting that maybe in your passport, or you don't get a passport. There are all kinds of scenarios that I've seen where people have a birth certificate that does not have the same name as the driver's license that they carry. So this is really broad ranging. This is potentially a lot of different kinds of people could be affected by this.

0:16:10 Jenessa: Yeah, yeah. I think the focus has been on married women just because it's such a huge demographic, but absolutely. I had that thought in my head for sure. Hispanic last names are often not treated very well in the US. About any name with character differences. If you get a real stickler in front of you, especially somebody who's intentionally trying to disenfranchise somebody, oh, there's no tilde over that N. Oh, might not be the same name. Sometimes people get that strict. What about a middle name? Oh, the middle name.

0:16:43 Thomas: A great Nate Bargatze bit about that. The airport guy being like, this doesn't match. It's like it's Nathan and Nathaniel or whatever. It does, though. You see how it matches.

0:16:55 Jenessa: Yeah, they leave it up to the states what to do if it doesn'T match. And so what, yeah. What does Nathan do? Like if run into somebody who's going to really be that big a stickler, it's a huge problem.

0:17:07 Thomas: Maybe someone's a stickler based on who they're looking at and what they think about that person.

0:17:12 Matt: That's a pretty serious problem just in and of itself.

0:17:17 Jenessa: First of all, it's going to make your own registration extremely difficult. Just what if you don't have those documents? Let's say you're a person who you just have. There you go. You have a passport. It's one document. Easy. You still are going to have trouble with mail in registration or online registration. It explicitly says in the law, oh, you can still mail in register. You're just going to to the board of elections and show your ID. They're not going to let you send, not that you want to mail a photocopy of your passport, but they're not gonna allow that either. You're gonna have to go one way or the other, have an in -person errand to run, which

0:18:01 Matt: Obviously this is all targeted to federal elections, and and local governments can do whatever they want, more or less, with their registrations within the law. So how are we going to do this if you have a ballot ballot that has both?

0:18:13 Jenessa: Rule is if there is any federal contest on the ballot, that is a federal election. So even though there's state contests, you're going to have to follow the federal rules. So New York, for example, we're kind of in a big fight about it right now to try to move everything to the even years and make everything be, in that sense, federal elections and following that rule. But we've got all kinds of stuff where... The village elections are happening in March on odd years and the school elections are in May every year. And then the state races are currently mostly but not all happening on odd year. So we do sometimes have state only elections. And in theory, we could for those state only ballots. Have people be able to register for that. The problem is the Help America Vote Act is going to require everybody get into this database. So I know that a state is going letting you register and be eligible without that. We do actually have an ongoing case in New York right now where New York City is one of many municipalities that's now allowing non -citizens to vote only in their municipal elections. With the idea being, you know, not talking about, you

0:19:48 Jenessa: Maybe you should be able to vote on the school budget, even if you're not a citizen yet. So green card holders get to vote. On the water budget and the school

0:19:58 Thomas: The human beings who live in that place and are affected by things that affect human beings get to have a say in it that's good

0:20:03 Matt: That's radical.

0:20:04 Jenessa: Kind of makes sense, right? So certain municipalities have been doing that for their municipal elections. And it's the at New York Court of Appeals, our highest court. I think we're the only state now that doesn't call it the Supreme Court.

0:20:18 Matt: So annoying.

0:20:18 Jenessa: I know. I'm sorry.

0:20:19 Matt: Please stop doing that.

0:20:20 Jenessa: I apologize on behalf of my state. So we have that case going on right now about, well, hang on. How can you? Let them do that when the state constitution says you have to be a citizen and there's a big fight about whether that's the minimum requirement or the maximum requirement and what it applies to and it's it's interesting um it is confusion because if you're registered in this system how do you get into that system and how do keep this clear um not causing confusion in terms of who's eligible it's just in terms yeah if you have a bill like this that is setting people up where you have to get into the national voter registration database I guess we'd have to keep a separate state system for state elections that's so inefficient and ineffective.

0:21:14 Jenessa: I mean, it would truly just dismantle things to try to do it that way.

0:21:14 Matt: And that's a feature, not a bug, I assume. Yeah, so, yeah. And then also, how are you supposed to register anybody? You can't have that supermarket table outside the supermarket, right?

0:21:22 Jenessa: For sure. No. No, that's like half my job is I just sit in the park and talk to people who, you either know, want to vote or just really want to talk to someone. And I get a lot of people registered that way. And nobody's walking through the park with their birth certificate in their pocket. Like do walk around knowing their last four of their social or having their driver's license so they could put their driver'S license ID or in New York. You could skip both of those. And then just when you show up at the poll site, you're going to have to provide some evidence of where you live. You could do like your electric bill plus a letter that was mailed to you. It'd be very weird if you were paying someone else's electric bill. So that's like proof you

0:22:13 Thomas: Don't kink shame. I don't know. Yeah.

0:22:18 Jenessa: So there's lots of ways to prove where you live that can easily prevent voter fraud that do not require these type of IDs. And that's how we do it right now. I even imagine how I know I just couldn't hold a voter registration drive, period. That'd be the end of it.

0:22:36 Matt: Again, feature, not a bug. Seems pretty clear what they're going for here. I guess, so that takes me to obviously three to five million people who voted illegally that lost Donald Trump the popular vote. We all know that that was a real problem for him. I assume, yeah, right.

0:22:50 Thomas: For some reason, we're too lazy to do that again in 2020, you know, we could have used them.

0:22:53 Jenessa: So weird.

0:22:53 Matt: That was a lot of work.

0:22:55 Jenessa: So strange.

0:22:56 Matt: And it didn't even work. But, you know, obviously we have to punish those three to five million people. So I assume that there's some pretty strict penalties built in on top of everything else. There have to be, right? That's how these things work.

0:23:06 Jenessa: OK, so here's the thing is it's already a felony to commit like any of these different forms of voter fraud. There's certain little misdemeanor ones in there. But for the most part, yeah, if you intentionally try to vote knowing you're not allowed to or help somebody else do it. Yeah, it's a crime and you can't be doing that. They propose to add in to the existing criminal penalties. Is this. Registering an applicant to vote in an election for federal office who fails to present documentary proof of United States citizenship.

0:23:48 Matt: So it's on the registrar, person who's taking the registration.

0:23:50 Jenessa: Yeah, it would be a crime to like have the voter registration drive. It does have an intent provision. So you have to be like if you go read the law, this subparagraph would be added to it says you'd be doing that while knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds or attempts to deprive or defraud. The residence of a state of a fair and impartially conducted election process by yada, yada yada including registering someone without this in theory knowingly and willfully deprive or defraud that should protect you but like at the end of the day If you know they need this ID to register and you register them without the ID, you know that's not a valid registration. It critically does not say registering someone who fails to present that who later turns out not to be a citizen. They could turn out to be a citizen, but you just registered them without it. And you like knowingly meant to make this not a fair and impartial election. Like I would not touch a voter registration without a passport or a birth certificate and an ID right now. Not right now, once this passes, if this passes. It's by up to five years in jail. Like that is a big deal.

0:25:22 Matt: That's hard enough to get people to volunteer for these things anyway, right, to work on these election drives.

0:25:24 Thomas: And we so what? Phase What is this in right now? Oh,

0:25:31 Jenessa: So right now it's in the committee in the House, like whatever committee is looking at this. Last time it was in the house, it passed the house and then it died in the Senate shortly before the session ended. So it's right back again in the hasn't moved anywhere in the house yet. So fingers crossed, like there is still plenty of time to kill this thing. Last time when it passed the house. Passed with five Democrats voting yes, and they are all still in Congress. Yeah, I know. And 10 Democrats and four Republicans didn't vote as it's not an abstain. They just like, I don't know, they just weren't there or like what happened, but it was otherwise straight party line.

0:26:05 Thomas: Come on.

0:26:18 Matt: Clearly, they're not fans of voting, obviously. Pretty obvious from this. The Democrats, I hope, would filibuster this. This seems really bad.

0:26:29 Thomas: God, I hope so.

0:26:30 Jenessa: So that's the thing, is I would have to imagine, yes, certainly in the Senate, the Democrats are going to have, there's no way you're going to get enough Democrats to beat this filibuster. I just always have in the back of my head, that filibaster can die at any time, right? Like, I hope Republicans in the that bad that they will kill the filibbuster, but Trump is pushing this so hard. So beating this in the House right now, this is the smallest margin in the house since 1931. We can kill this bill. It does not have to ever get to the Senate to ask that question, especially those five Dems who voted yes. I mean, come on, they are winnable. Want, I can read their names off if people, yes.

0:26:46 Thomas: Yeah please yeah like Arya Stark yeah well

0:27:17 Matt: We love to name.

0:27:18 Jenessa: All right, so apologies, I guess, if I pronounced their names wrong. Henry Queller of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Jared Golden of Maine, Vicente Gonzalez Jr. of Texas and Marie Glusenkamp Perez of Washington.

0:27:36 Thomas: I like that it's no one I've ever heard of so that you know yeah

0:27:39 Jenessa: Yeah. So if your representative, please call them and ask them. What happened? Stop it. Don't do it. There's also 10 Democrats who didn't vote last time. Post it. I can post it in the Facebook group what the roll call was. Even if you know your rep is going to vote no, tell them to go talk to these five people and slap them upside the head. What did they do? This doesn't have to ever get to the Senate. This can be stopped.

0:28:01 Thomas: Great

0:28:07 Matt: This matters. This is important. I understand, too, that this allows DHS to access these records to just provide one more way to verify immigration status and also to see if anybody's ever unlawfully voted. Is some kind of provision about this?

0:28:09 Thomas: Message but

0:28:22 Jenessa: Part of me thinks it's just a scare tactic. But on the other hand, when you have municipalities who let non -citizens vote in municipal elections, in theory, these people could end up in the voter registration database. And now it's saying like, yeah, ICE gets to take a look at this. I don't fully understand this language. I think you might understand it better than me. Basically, it's... saying the Secretary of Homeland Security would now have authority to initiate removal proceedings based on finding a unlawfully registered immigrant in this database.

0:28:59 Matt: Yeah, I mean, it would count as a false claim to citizenship if you're registering, just stepping up and doing it, knowing you're supposed to be a citizen. So potentially that's grounds for denial of residency, naturalization, and deportability potentially. So there's a lot there. Yeah, just one more way to get people. This is terrible. This really should never pass. I knew it was bad, but ugh.

0:29:19 Jenessa: Like this is very intentional. They don't want women voting. They do not want people of color voting. The do not poor people voting. Do not want anybody voting. If can afford a passport, this will not bother you.

0:29:33 Matt: It's still annoying if you have to show up in person.

0:29:35 Jenessa: It is still annoying!

0:29:36 Matt: It's just one more barrier, potentially. Wow. Well, I understand it a lot better now, so I really appreciate this.

0:29:42 Thomas: Yeah, Jenessa, thanks so much for taking the time. And we might be hearing from you again in the very near future on the show. So we really appreciate it. Call those members of the House and harass them, please. I'm Get it done, everyone. All right. Thanks so much. And now we'll take that quick break and then bring on Heather for Thomas takes the bar exam.

0:29:49 Jenessa: Sounds good.

0:29:56 Matt: Make these people vote.

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0:31:39 Clip: Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes the bar will eat you.

0:31:45 Thomas: Heather, Heather, how you doing?

0:31:47 Heather: Pretty good. I have not had any axe -related incidents since our last conversation, so I'm injury -free. How are you? You

0:31:53 Thomas: You mean no accidents? Doing

0:32:00 Heather: Here what about what about where you are yeah

0:32:04 Thomas: For once, I'm feeling pretty confident about a question, which I think will mean I got it wrong. Like, I rarely feel confidence and I shouldn't. And the universe tends to remind me that I should never feel confidence when it comes to the bar. So I'm thinking I must have gotten this one wrong. So let's find out. Was our question?

0:32:07 Heather: All this was about our friend oscar um who's the owner of an axe throwing pub called the hops and hatchets and he has a friend don who's always on trying to help him and she was trying to point out to him that having axes laying around uh is a danger and so to try to help them she thought she would teach him a lesson by an axe, swinging it around behind his back and saying, if you move an inch, you're toast. And although he didn't suffer any harm of any kind, we're trying to figure out that if he sues Don, what the result was going to be. Is it going to Be A, Oscar will not recover because he suffered no physical harm? Oscar Will Not Recover Because Don Was Joking? C, Oscar Will Recover because Don Was Negligent? Or D, Oscar We'll Recover? Because he was afraid Don Don would hit him with the ax. You identified this as a torts question, and you were right on it's torts because there was no criminal prosecution involved. Then you were also spot on about identifying that it's an intentional torts questions versus a negligence question. You talked a lot about the intent element of it, which was spot on. That's exactly it. And you really navigated around that negligence portion, because this is kind of what the the question was trying to do part of it was trying to kind of get people to to narrow down effectively are we in the intentional towards section are we negligence and you really navigated really well around that

0:33:40 Thomas: Now I see it, what question was doing, because I do feel like it's kind of in of a gray area because the thing she was doing was kind of reckless. And so it's like seems kind of negligent. But then I think at the last minute, I kind of recognize, well, if her intent was to teach him a lesson, then actually it is an intent thing. And so is that kind of what you're talking about?

0:33:59 Heather: And that's exactly it yeah because anytime you see in a fact pattern this is a really common fact pattern where it's like so and so decided to teach so and so a lesson it's every time you're like oh

0:34:07 Thomas: We've had that a few times. Yeah. Never teach. Oh, my gosh. Are you an Arrested Development fan? I forget if I've asked this.

0:34:10 Heather: And you're like oh no I haven't seen it

0:34:15 Thomas: Oh my God. Okay. Well, I'm going to teach you a lesson with an axe.

0:34:15 Heather: It sounds like I'm missing out. Yeah.

0:34:20 Thomas: No. No. Yes. That's why you never teach lessons is what I am would saying from that. And everyone else but Heather can remember how funny that episode was.

0:34:31 Heather: And that's anytime you see this in the fact pattern, you can almost guarantee almost, uh, cause the bar will always make a liar out of me. And when I say that kind of stuff, um, it will, it's almost guaranteed to be an intentional torts question. For exactly kind of the reason that you identified because there's someone intending to do something. Um. And almost the opposite of intention to do something in tort's world on the bar is negligence. So you're kind of, oh, this is an intentional tort question. And that's how we eliminate the answer choice C when it says he will recover because Zahn was negligent. No, she wasn't. Like you said, she decided to teach him a lesson. She decided. And so C is out. And then we're looking at A, B, and D. And you were right to think through kind of we have a couple of intentional torts that we kind of go through. Like, you were We're saying assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and our other one tends to be false imprisonment when we're thinking about harms to people.

0:35:27 Thomas: Yeah. Because she said you can't move an inch, which is kind of, you know, like false imprisonment ish thing.

0:35:33 Heather: It could be like, oh, is she confined, right?

0:35:35 Thomas: He can't remove.

0:35:36 Heather: We know that usually it's within a bounded area without a reasonable means of escape. That's not, yeah.

0:35:40 Thomas: So she needed a few more axes just to cover all the like escape routes with axes. And then it's okay gotcha oh

0:35:44 Heather: Boy, did she, yeah, and in this case. They were testing here to narrow the field a little bit more was assault versus battery. And a lot of times what will happen, and this is something I learned much later in life. I wish I had known this earlier. Lot of time testers, whether it's your teacher, your professor, or any kind of standardized test creator, is a lot lot of times they'll test kind of the narrow or things that are similar. And this is not uncommon in the bar exam. So because the salt and battery are similar in a lot of ways, they can get tested on the multiple choice. So any of those times you see topics that are kind of similar and you're like, oh, what are the difference? A lot of things you'll get a question or two that will test the difference on those things because, and that's also how you know that the testers are doing their job. Testing you on those kind of nuances between things that Are similar. We can talk talk about that a little bit. You actually did that. I heard

0:36:42 Thomas: I keep forgetting there's like civil assault and battery that we could be talking about but I guess it didn't really matter

0:36:47 Heather: But you also did a great job of explaining the difference between assault and battery as you were walking through the answer choices. I was like, oh, wow, this is great.

0:36:54 Thomas: We've had it a few times I do remember it fortunately finally only took like eight years you know and I finally I remember I

0:37:03 Heather: I can walk through it a little bit again, too, which is that is harmful or offensive contact with a plaintiff's person. And then with the intent to cause that contact, because anytime you've got an intentional tort, is always intent. And with assault, we're looking at an intentional act by the defendant that causes the plaintiff to anticipate the immediate harmful or offensive contact to the plaintiff's person. And a lot of times what we're working at, for example, with assault is that words alone, not enough, but words plus action can get us to assault. Unlike with battery, contact is not required. And you did such a good job explaining the walking down the street scenario, right? So walking downthe street, if you are afraid of something or you see something coming that can be assault but uh is when you actually get hit and that's kind of part of the difference is yeah

0:37:48 Thomas: Sure if I said exactly a street, but maybe am forgetting? Did I say that? Well, anyway, I I did have that difference handy. So however it was.

0:37:56 Heather: Oh going towards oh someone and then scaring them versus battery was hitting somebody yeah the

0:38:01 Thomas: Yeah, that basic distinction. I didn't learn early in O .A. times and have retained it.

0:38:08 Heather: Way that I refer to my husband as I tell him was that in the bh was it before heather times or was that after was

0:38:15 Thomas: This was in the B .H., but But also probably in the in what's the during how the D .H. during other times.

0:38:21 Heather: That the age. My husband looks at me and goes, he just shakes his head like, really? Yes, this is the 20 years we've been doing this. So here, answer choice A said, Oscar will not recover because he suffered no physical harm. And you were saying this was an easy elimination. Why did you think this was easy to eliminate?

0:38:39 Thomas: Because I just don't think that's the only way that you recover. I mean, even there's a million reasons, but just out the gate. I mean I don't think if the only, you could recover against someone for anything like this was physical harm, then obviously that would, like I brought up, I mean you don't want to be able to just threaten someone with a gun, like a loaded gun, scare the hell out of them. But you didn't shoot him, well, free to go, nothing, you know, no problem there. Yeah.

0:39:01 Heather: Exactly. That would be bad.

0:39:02 Thomas: But also in that distinction between assault and battery, I even was thinking of that too, which is like you can have assault without the physical harm.

0:39:09 Heather: Exactly it. And that's exactly how we eliminate A. A is out, C is out. And now we're down to B and D. Oscar will not recover because Don was joking. Love this answer choice. We really think we're just going to let people get away with being like, just joking? Like in your answer choice, like I waved around a gun and then I'm just like, Just kidding.

0:39:22 Thomas: Yeah well again and again, I I did think like it might have been a harder question if she had just been saying she was swinging an axe around which, that would be you're just joking. This is not, you're not joking about the swinging an ax around, that's actually happening, that's the thing that's happening, um, if you tell a knock knock joke while you're punching someone, you can be like, ha, just joking, knock knock, who's there, punch it, was a joke.

0:39:45 Heather: Just just... Exactly. And even the rule for assault tells us that words by themselves don't meet the requirement for assault. But, right, words and conduct, they do get us there. And that's part of how this answer choice is wrong, right, because like you said, it's a much more complicated question, right and also doesn't meet the definition for assault if she doesn't, if she's not holding that ax, right. A bar that has a bunch of rubber duckies instead set of axes, right? Different, very different scenario. So A, and C are out. And so then we've got to talk about D, right, so D is our correct answer choice, and you were right. Now you're on a hot streak.

0:40:28 Thomas: Now my confidence has been rewarded, this is a bad bad idea universe, I don't know what you were thinking. Well,

0:40:33 Heather: D, Oscar will recover because he was afraid that Dawn would hit him with the axe. Oscar did have that reasonable apprehension, right. He hears the swing of the axe, and also Dawn saying, if you move an inch, you're toast. That again, that's words and conduct together and it satisfies this requirement. And also that immediacy is real, right? Dawn's standing right there. She's holding the ax. She saying what she's going to do. And Um, so we're exactly in that scenario for assault and that's how we get to D right. We also have, um, friend Dawn, we also have her intent, right. She decided to teach him a lesson. Um. And so that's how we got to where we are. And D is our correct answer choice. You yes good job so now we've got you on what was it now

0:41:07 Thomas: Nailed it. I cut right through that one, I dunno, I a week to think. But I forgot. I didn't try to think of any more puns.

0:41:18 Heather: You axed out all the wrong answer choices

0:41:19 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, still, I'm so, I'm not getting nothing, coming up blank. That's, that'll, that'll do it. Good enough.

0:41:26 Thomas: Right. Well, yeah, nailed it. Haven't said my score in a minute. I seem to be at 63% ish, I'm at 36 of 57, so solid getting into passing territory almost wow good stuff all

0:41:38 Heather: Work nice work you're doing great and I just have to say you're also doing great, especially in light of the fact that the bar exam in California has had massive, massive chaos, so if you're dealing with a bar exam going on around us right now with a bar exam. So kudos to you.

0:41:53 Thomas: Right, well, we'll have to uh find out who else is doing great on the uh on the on the web webs on the interwebs.

0:42:00 Heather: Interwebs. Yay.

0:42:01 Thomas: Right, Heather, as we look to the interwebs for the winners, I'm seeing just a ton of participation this week, which is so much fun. Everywhere, across every site, Blue Sky, Reddit, Patreon, LinkedIn. No, I don't know. Don't really check LinkedIn, but that would be kind of funny if they did. It'd probably be one of the less weird things going on there, there. Start us off with the blue sky winners. People really heeded my call last week because we've got a ton of blue sky answers and they're pretty much all right. Pretty much everyone got this one right. It was another one of those ones that I don't get to feel any sense of pride or accomplishment over. So it was very easy.

0:42:14 Heather: It got professional. I'm just kidding.

0:42:37 Thomas: Here's a good one from PL.BSky.Social, P-I-E-L-L. Well, I'm going with D because I vaguely recall some prank YouTubers getting sued for doing something similar. Pretty sure it's just a prank, bro, is not a good legal defense.

0:42:53 Thomas: Yeah, that's our blue sky winner. We had quite a few great answers over there. Thank you for playing. And, Heather, why don't you take Reddit for us?

0:42:59 Heather: We also had a lot of really great participation on Reddit, a lot really good back and forth discussion. And the teacher in me loves the back and forth discussion and the explaining and helping other people out. Love that. So my chosen answer is from Chaya Shida, who says, I think the answer is D. Negligence sounds like it's the result of inaction versus the act of doing something wrong. So not C. Joking isn't upheld in the courts. I don't think it's just a joke defense. Otherwise, we'd have heard about it by now in the Trump lawsuits. So And I'm pretty sure you can sue even if you weren't physically harmed, which results in the emotional distress judgments. So not B. And that's correct. That's a really great way to get to the right answer, which was D. And then also really great job talking it out. I also wanted to give a really good shout out to Theo Caro, who also did a really As a teacher, I'm very much like, don't just jump to the right answer, but explain how you're thinking. Because a lot of what you do as a lawyer is explain your thinking to other people. So the more that you can kind of talk your way, it's almost like talking your way through a math problem, right? It's the same way. So I love seeing that. Great job, everybody. Hooray. It's a good job.

0:44:07 Thomas: Another thing you do is just send astronomical bills. So I've worked on that. I just started sending out random practice bills to Heather, and she says they've been coming out pretty well. It's a skill. You know, it takes practice to be that shameless and to send bills for just truly astronomical amounts of money. It's, it's all right. It's not easy. Cuts against the grain a little bit for anyone with, you know, with a heart, but, uh, but I'm working on it. So yeah, we're all around improvement on being a lawyer. So, uh, Patreon had great answers. There's too many. I could, I wish I could read them all. Going to go with one and a tag along here because I think I threw some people off a little bit, or people who are non-lawyers also had my issue, which is I forgot that like civil assault was like, I forgot the tort could be a tort as well. I was like, oh, well, it has to be criminal to be assault and battery. And I just completely forgot that you can have like the tort of assault and or battery. And I think som other people did as well, but they talked through it in the same way. So Fireball Old Fashions. Oh, God, that's the worst. That's the worst. I didn't process how disgusting your name is. I'm so sorry. That was, I don't know if I might have to bleep that out on the show. The old fashioned is such a delicious drink, then to, and then to do that to it is just gross. Anyway.

0:45:16 Heather: That's a criminal crime, not a tortious.

0:45:18 Thomas: I'll be suing you for civil and criminal assault on my taste buds. Say, oh, I think I know this one. I don't think this is criminal law, but I remember that someone who feels a reasonable threat from another's actions is the victim of assault. This question is torts, though, but the above distinction makes me think that there is a real action that took place here. A reasonable person would think someone swinging an axe and saying, if you move an inch, you're toast, is a reasonable threat regardless of the intention. I don't think there has to be a realized physical harm for the threat to be reasonable. For criminal law, that's the difference in assault and battery. I think that means Oscar will recover some sort of emotional damage, which narrows the answers to C and D. C doesn't fit because Dawn was not negligent. Her actions were intentional. So the answer is D. D, Oscar had a reasonable belief Don would hit him with the axe and recover. Yeah, that's pretty much, pretty much exactly it. And then I'll be damned if I can't be frank with you. It said, interesting reading other patrons' distinction on a possible tort of assault versus tort of negligence. Is the law in the US that she deliberately assaulted him or did she carelessly cause him trauma? I guess I'll have to tune in Wednesday to find out. So someone put it very simply. Lisa Redmond said, D, this is a classic case of the tort of assault. There you go. My answer is that.

0:46:30 Thomas: Done, everyone. Thank you so much. Solid participation all around. Wrap it up. And Heather, after this break, we'll get the question that folks can chime in on this time.

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0:46:40 Heather: All right. Yeah,

0:48:14 Thomas: Right, Heather, let's have question 62.

0:48:17 Heather: Which of the following questions is most likely to be disallowed in response to an objection that it is leading?

0:48:24 Thomas: Holy crap. That's it? A one sentence question. That's so, I don't think in all my time I've ever had a question so short. They're usually trying to kill your time, you know, 'cause there's a pretty, strict time limit on this thing. OK, one sentence. Got it.

0:48:36 Heather: On direct examination of the victim, a six-year-old girl, the prosecutor asks, Did the defendant hit you there? On direct examination of an eyewitness to an accident, plaintiff's counsel asks, Was it red when the defendant sped through the intersection?

0:48:52 Heather: On direct examination, counsel asks her own client, You live at 221 Baker Street, correct? D, cross-examination of an expert witness, counsel asks, isn't it true that psychiatrists routinely prescribe medication for people suffering with depression?

0:49:08 Thomas: This, I was thinking this would be a piece of cake. But yeah, these are all, these are all very. OK, this is going to be interesting. OK, so I like that it's most likely to, because I can imagine. I do think that there's a little bit of question leading on basic stuff, like based on, you know, gavel, gavel. And actually, you Know, he's watching a lot of court stuff we've this, you live at 221B Baker Street, correct? That, I think that like might kind of technically be leading, but I think the judge isn't going to bother with it when it's just like basic crap like that. It's just like, all right, get it going, you know, kind of thing, get through the, get through the trial. So I do like that it's most likely to be disallowed, because that could mean that that's technically, maybe technically leading, but not enough that the judge is going to care, which I think is, is interesting, or I'm making all that up. I don't know. So let's see, leading. So with leading would be that you're, testimony to kind of go where you want it to, rather asking more open-ended questions. But where's the line there? Because these all seemed a little bit sort of leady. Right. A, on direct examination, a six-year-old girl, prosecutor asked, asks, did the defendant hit you there? It doesn't seem very leading. That seems like, did they hit you? Like it's a yes or no question. And it's, I, this seems difficult without context, 'cause like if the prior question was, what did the defendant do? And then the six-year-old girl was like, he hit me, then you asked, did he hit you there? And you're like, you know, like, like that, that feels like not as leady as like, say, just on the stand. First question, did the defendant hit you there? You know, like that would be more leading. I feel like the context matters, but we don't get any. So, A, I'm going to say like, I'm leaning not so much toward A. I guess you could say, where did the defendant hit you, or did the defendant hit your first? Well, again, we don't know if that's in the previous questions. Maybe you're supposed to say like, indicate where, I don't know. Okay, so A, I'm like kind of mixed, I'm not sure. This is trickier than I thought it was going to be. B, on direct examination of an eyewitness to an accident, counsel asks, was it red when the defendant sped through the intersection? Section, that strikes me as, not, think of this as not a good question, but I don't think of it as leading. I think this is like, it's either compound or whatever, or you're asking someone to come to a conclusion that they can't come to. So it's like, hey, was the light red when he was murdering the guy over there? And it's kind of, I don't know, is that leading, or is that a different objection where it's like, you're asking to state a, there's one where it's like asking to state a conclusion that they can't come to or something. There's something like that. Gosh, dang it. This is, we do this so rarely that I'm realizing like this is trickier than I thought. B, I guess in my mind, B is a problem, but I feel like it's a different objection than leading. It's more about like sneaking something in, you know, that feels like what's happening there. If I'm interpreting this correctly, it feels like, was the light red, would've been a fine question. That's not like, oh, you're leading them to the light being, no, I think, was the light red when the defendant's car was through the intersection, you know, it's like that. Rather, I think this is a problem, but not leading, I'm pretty sure. So I think not B. B, C, on direct examination, counsel asks her own client, you live at 221B Baker Street, correct? Feels to me, like I said in the beginning, I think it's like, I think it is leading, but maybe technically, but that does not matter. Like, I really cannot imagine, it says counsel asks her own client. Like, I just, I cannot imagine that that is going to be objected to. You ask, you live at 221B Baker Street, correct? And the client's like, yep. And then the other side's like, objection. You know, the judge would be like, shut the, come on, like, are you kidding me? You're going to object to that. I think this could be like technically leading, but it's, I really doubt that it would be disallowed. I mean, that just seems crazy to me. D, on cross-examination of an expert witness, counsel asks, that's cross-examination. Examination, isn't it true that psychiatrists routinely prescribe medication for people suffering with depression, kind of think I'm leaning toward that one, which is interesting because the other three are direct examination and this one is cross-examination, and would think that leading would happen more on direct, maybe because like, like cross-examination, it feels like you're not going to like lead the other side's witness into something, like that seems harder to do. I feel like leading normally comes up when it's like the witness is on the counsel's side that's asking the question and they're like trying to lead them to something. I don't know if that's like, it can't happen on cross-examination. But this one seems like the most leading to me, I think, because it's an expert witness and you're asking, hey, isn't it true that psychiatrists routinely prescribe medication for people suffering with depression? I think there's a lot in there. I think this is the leading question. I think this is trying to get like that interview soundbite, you know, like you're trying to do this. You're trying to get the psychiatrist to say something, or I guess we don't even know if it's a psychiatrist, but it's an expert witness. We're trying to get the expert witness to say something that kind of sounds how we want it to sound for the sake of the trial. Yeah, I think, I think I'm strongly leaning toward D. I think D is going to be my final. If I, if I'm wrong, okay, if I'm wrong, how am I wrong? I mean, A, A, did the defendant hit you there? I feel like, again, I really feel like that depends on the context, which again, is, again, I know we don't have any context. I'm trying to think of how to answer, but like I could imagine it when I'm trying to figure out how a different answer could be correct. I could imagine this being leading if it was like out of nowhere, like you just totally got on this question thread about hitting that doesn't even, part of the thing. I don't know, I would see there's a chance I'm wrong on B. Like maybe B could be considered leading because I'm pretty sure B is a bad question. Question, so I think that's going to be my second choice, just in case that is the problem there, um, I mean I think C is an attractive second answer because maybe it is technically leading too, but like that's just so basic, that's not gonna, there's no way anyone's gonna object to that, like that would be, be silly. So I'm going to go with final answer D, second chance answer B, just in case there. But I feel pretty good about this one. So we'll see how I end up being wrong. But yeah, final answer, D, second chance answer, B. Right. If you'd like to play along, you apparently know how to keep up the good work. Reddit.com slash r slash open args. Blue sky, just find opening open args on the question and then quote skeet it. Most importantly, patreon.com/law. That's where you can go. Those are the most valuable winners. All right, Heather. Well, don't lead any witnesses on the way out the door. I don't, I don't know. How's it? Thanks, another fun question. And I guess we'll, we'll figure out what the answer to this is next week, huh?

0:55:26 Heather: Guess we will. We'll like, like definitely find the answer to the question for next week, won't we, Thomas?

0:55:36 Thomas: Next week we'll find that I got it right and was very brilliant about it. Correct. Objection.

0:55:50 Heather: So funny, because one of my favorite games before I ended up even going to law school or thinking about it was Ace Attorney games. I just keep thinking of him being like, objection!

0:55:57 Thomas: What is that?

0:55:58 Heather: Oh, there's a whole group of games for the Nintendo DS called Ace Attorney. They're super fun.

0:56:06 Thomas: Oh my God. How have I never heard about this before?

0:56:09 Heather: Kind of cool because they're like crime, really heavily story-driven, and they're mystery ones.

0:56:14 Thomas: Okay. Okay. Have we unlocked the story of how you became an attorney? No, wait, we specifically did that story, I thought, when we first came on. And I don't remember mention of a Nintendo DS game.

0:56:23 Heather: Ace attorney. Yeah. It's good. So if you, 'cause you know, with all your free time and of what it is, is part of it takes place in a courtroom. And part of you do as this like new lawyer is that you like yell objection really loud. And it's a Japanese game. So it's like very like kind of part of, it's the kind of anime, you know? So it was like, yeah.

0:56:42 Thomas: Attorney Bobson Dugnut. Yeah, awesome. I have to check that out now. Delightful.

0:56:48 Heather: It was really fun.

0:56:49 Clip: Thank you for being, say we started from the bottom, now we're here, girl.

0:56:58 Thomas: The only Thing left to do is thank our patrons At patreon .com slash law for making the show Happen. Love you so much And Lydia's here Taking time.

0:57:06 Lydia: I don't know, I'm sneaking

0:57:07 Thomas: Oh, a dolphin's Here. Oh It's

0:57:07 Lydia: In. Oh, don't even get me started on marine life. I will talk about my aquarium this entire time.

0:57:15 Thomas: Not the time or place

0:57:17 Lydia: I'm very excited about my frog, folks.

0:57:20 Thomas: You're right. And I'll start with the newbies here. Thank you to LawyerGAL. That's a, you know, that's exactly the type of gal that we hope listens to the show. John Alusik, Suzanne Tribble, Elizabeth Ransom, Kieran Caterina, and Kreesti. Thank you so much. New patrons. We hope you enjoy not the ads. And also all the other stuff.

0:57:42 Lydia: If you're at that lot awful movies tier and higher, I just scheduled this month's lot awful movie. And it's gonna be very exciting, folks. Very

0:57:52 Thomas: Right. And now we've got to thank our Hall of Famers, our all time greats. These are the folks who pledge at that five dollar level and above for at least a month. They are the very best. The cream of the crop. And Lydia, why don't you take that easy, real easy first one? That was super basic and readable first one.

0:58:08 Lydia: You ready? Is a weapon. Hope is skill. Hope as a plant you can care for or kill. Hope a discipline, something you choose. Hard to stop looking for. Easy to lose. Hope isn't...

0:58:16 Thomas: A rap song or something?

0:58:17 Lydia: Boom. No, I don't know. I just did it.

0:58:19 Thomas: You had me convinced that that was like, hope you don't ever let it go. Yeah.

0:58:21 Lydia: Thank you. Yeah. Like, like Eminem, like lose yourself. Exactly. I have my hoodie up.

0:58:28 Thomas: Or you're being possessed. I don't know what was happening, but okay. You just really want to get through it.

0:58:30 Lydia: Just, you know, send all the ad copy my way folks. I can do it.

0:58:36 Thomas: No, that was insane. I don't think anyone would want to hear it. Yeah, I've been a bad way. Was quite alarming.

0:58:45 Lydia: I'm the medical disclaimer for commercials. Casey Kahn. Democracy cannot survive unregulated capitalism. Harvey Birdman, attorney at law. James H. Raw earth is not safe for human consumption. Sionitus. Disappointed in the number of business capitulating to fascism. Aren't we all? Tim Ward, Fourth Circuit attorney, reluctantly changing her font. Font and gender are different things. Apprentice of Adventure. Vehicular Man's Laughter's topical car references are running on empty, so the preference for the Lydia edit stays for now. Seems like for always, because this hasn't changed in a while. So, you know,

0:59:23 Thomas: If he never updates it, I guess that's forever.

0:59:25 Lydia: Going to keep staying. Still rooting for the Hamburgers to deliver more timely justice than the current system. Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer. Nick Fish. Valus Taurk. Valus. I don't know.

0:59:45 Thomas: How high are you right now?

0:59:48 Lydia: A Negative Phenomenon. Cavalri. Irregardless of anything, Ovechkin is only eight goals from the record. Hon, do you have an update?

0:59:55 Thomas: I think that's, yeah, I think it's,

0:59:56 Lydia: Is that right? All right. There we go.

0:59:56 Thomas: That's the last number I heard. Man, if he had like, you know, two four goal games or Four goal game. And then another four goal at the Sharks, which honestly is kind of, you

1:00:04 Lydia: At the Shanks. Yeah. (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Ex Parte). Jaysank. Excuse me. I believe I was told we can't have gun control to prevent tyranny. It is by the juice of Sappho that thoughts acquire speed. The lips acquire stains. The stains become a warning. I don't know what that is, but that is very, I'm going to be thinking about that for a while, I think.

1:00:27 Thomas: I, yeah, maybe that's Dune. I don't know. I know Dune has a bunch of those like mantras that the different ones say. I do not know. No idea.

1:00:30 Lydia: I don't know that. Yeah. All I know is that I got it wrong when we talked about it on Gavelpod.

1:00:39 Thomas: It was nice of you to say we. I got it wrong. You got it right.

1:00:42 Lydia: I couldn't tell you what the word is anymore.

1:00:45 Thomas: But is it really getting it right when you just say the only sci -fi you have ever heard of because it recently was a movie?

1:00:52 Lydia: Okay. That's a little unfair. Look, I finally changed my name. For real. Legally. E.T. And your turn.

1:01:03 Thomas: You just going to skip those other characters, huh?

1:01:05 Lydia: It's ET. We have been saying ET this entire time, so that's what I'm sticking with.

1:01:09 Thomas: Maybe it's an emoji.

1:01:13 Lydia: Oh, my God. Oh my God, oh dang.

1:01:14 Thomas: Emojis come in. We've doctored the patron

1:01:18 Lydia: We've doctored it.

1:01:18 Thomas: Shout out. That's a joke. If anybody gets that, they're going to have a lot of fun. We're now being sued again. It's happening again. We'll be back in court system for doctoring the patron. Shout out.

1:01:26 Lydia: Is a conspiracy. Yeah. What kind of emoji is it? Is it a sarcastic meant to demonstrate irony? Upside down. Smiley face emoji.

1:01:41 Thomas: Face.

1:01:42 Lydia: OK. E.T. Wink.

1:01:44 Thomas: Interesting.

1:01:45 Lydia: There you go.

1:01:47 Thomas: Thank you to Thomas Freeman, Cajunkilla. Fraud Fishy Hates Everything. Chris Simpson. Love the extra episodes. Gun owning liberal who knows that root cause mitigation and gun control are both important. Control works, see Australia. Oh, we're still missing Arthur. I don't.

1:02:01 Lydia: Well, we got so we got a gun control one in my half.

1:02:04 Thomas: Yeah, but that doesn't make sense. Where did the other one go?

1:02:07 Lydia: Know, but there's no sandwich. The sandwich is

1:02:09 Thomas: We're missing the sandwich. It's Mark Schultz.

1:02:09 Lydia: Gone. No. Open face.

1:02:16 Thomas: Isn't a tostada, the shell on the bottom and then all the crap on the top?

1:02:19 Lydia: Yeah. Okay.

1:02:20 Thomas: Thank you. Mark Shultz, the Cincinnati Kid.

1:02:20 Lydia: You're right. Yes. Okay Yes

1:02:23 Thomas: Bob Loblaw's Law.... Podcast. I'm just trying to bring some culture to our show. Philly Basement Bar is back open and isn't taking the shit lying down. Elect Thomas Smith President, American Honkytonk Bar Association. Cate, Philip, You Think the Mice Are Bad, Michael Bae spent hundreds of millions making his formers trans.

1:02:45 Thomas: All right. Hors d'oeuvres in the court before we report. All right. Thank you, top patrons. So much fun. Yeah, thanks for hopping on.

1:03:05 Lydia: Love it. Hey, this is like one of my favorite parts of the week, I love it truly, and I'm not even saying that because I got to like mention my aquarium, like I truly mean that

1:03:18 Thomas: And we'll let you know if we need you again for this. You know, if there's a call if we ever want to do this again.

1:03:28 Lydia: Yeah, but don't wait by the phone. Okay. Got it.

1:03:30 Thomas: Right. Thanks, everyone, for listening. Thanks, Jenessa, so much for popping in for that really excellent mini OA breakdown. And Matt, of course, as well. And Heather, as always. And participate in that T3B. It was so much participation this week. We really appreciated it. So keep that up. And we'll see you for Rapid Response Friday.

1:03:36 Lydia: A blast.

1:03:49 Clip: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.

1:04:07 Thomas: I might be back. Hello.

1:04:08 Jenessa: Did we lose you?

1:04:09 Matt: We're having a really interesting conversation.

1:04:13 Thomas: I've haven't eaten in nearly three minutes. On. Come Meow.

1:04:16 Lydia: Just scheduled this month's lot awful movie. It's gonna be very exciting, folks. Very voice maybe you haven't heard in a while on the show. Will be making a comeback.

1:04:27 Thomas: Right. Andrew's back.

1:04:36 Lydia: No.

1:04:35 Thomas: Popular