Advisory Ruminations

Accomplished attorney and longtime Jonah associate Shannen Coffin joins The Remnant for a deep dive ...

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Accomplished attorney and longtime Jonah associate Shannen Coffin joins The Remnant for a deep dive into the constitutionality of Biden’s vaccine mandate and the dysfunctional state of our federal government. Together, they explore the role each branch of government should play in enforcing such a mandate, Biden’s failure to diminish the COVID culture war, and whether the conservative legal movement could fall victim to the ideology of owning the libs. Obligatory references to Robert Bork are also included. To paraphrase Lionel Hutz, can you imagine a podcast without lawyers?

Show Notes:

–Shannen on partial-birth abortion

–Andy McCarthy on Biden’s vaccine mandate

–Charlie Cooke responds to Jonah

–Jonah responds to Charlie and Andy

–The latest Ruminant

–An Act Relative to Quarantine

–The Remnant with Kevin Kosar on congressional dysfunction

–David French on partisanship and the Supreme Court

–Never Trump, by Robert Saldin and Steve Tenis

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Comments (12)
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  1. Avatar photo
    CynthiaW

    I just got around to this. What a nice guest, and an extremely informative discussion. Do have Mr. Coffin come back to talk about Dick Cheney!

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  2. GregS

    The partial birth abortion ban was an appropriate use of the interstate commerce clause.
    OSHA is an inappropriate use of the interstate commerce clause.
    Hmm.
    This is motivated reasoning at its best.

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    Portland Isaiah

    This podcast is in your top five best. You should have Mr. Coffin on more often. He was great. Well done.

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    Kenton A. Hoover

    I forgot to bring this up the other day, but quarantine, back in the 1700s was something about external borders. The Federal government controlled the customs houses and all foreign trade, and thus could stop ships in the harbors. The Philadelphia yellow fever outbreak was related to people getting out of Haiti due to the unrest there (remember the Revolutions podcast episode that referenced this). There is also a solid argument that the Federal government could block passage from one state to another due to quarantine as a concept and the Federal government being the interstate body (though I don’t think that was quite settled then). Keep you from going to the local pub is a state police power thing, not a Federal thing (at that time — clearly now it is interstate commerce because Budweiser or pot brownies or something).

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    AC Kansas

    Thought the Vanity Fair piece was surprisingly balanced and fair.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

      Which only PROVES! — PROVES!!1!%! beyond the wisp of a shadow of a doubt's whiskers! — what cucks and traitors everyone at The Dispatch must therefore be!

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  6. Avatar photo
    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    A recap regarding Trump's "SCOTUS list" and its exclusivity:

    Trump, when asked in 2015 for the first time on camera about the types of people he would appoint to the SCOTUS, couldn't come up with any specific names except for his sister's — Maryanne Trump Berry, a Clinton appointee to the Third Circuit, before which she was a Reagan appointee to the District Court of New Jersey. By February 15, 2016, though, Trump claimed that he had only been "joking" in mentioning his sister.

    Link: https://ballotpedia.org/2016_presidential_candidates_on_the_death_of_Antonin_Scalia_and_the_Supreme_Court_vacancy

    Two days before, on February 13, 2016, at the ninth (!) GOP presidential primary debate, Trump was asked the same question. He'd clearly memorized two names (but not any more details about them, such as their current benches) in preparation for that question: Diane Wood and Bill Pryor, who are U.S. Circuit Judges on, respectively, the Seventh and Eleventh Circuits.

    Link: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-candidates-debate-greenville-south-carolina

    On May 18, 2016 — AFTER he'd secured enough delegates to ensure he'd get the nomination — Trump released a list of eleven names, including Wood & Pryor (but not, interestingly, Gorsuch). "The Trump campaign did not share how it settled on the names, but Mr. Trump has previously said that he was seeking guidance from conservative groups such as the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation."

    This list does NOT purport to be exclusive, however, instead saying that Trump "plan[ned] to use this list as a guide to nominate our next United States Supreme Court justices." Note the plural; this is no longer specifically just about the vacancy created by Justice Scalia's death.

    Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/19/us/politics/donald-trump-supreme-court-nominees.html

    On July 21, 2016, the runner-up in the delegate count, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), spoke at the 2016 GOP National Convention. Although he mentioned the Supreme Court nominations of the next POTUS as being of great importance, he doesn't explicitly endorse Trump — receiving boos and catcalls from the Trump faithful at the convention.

    link: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/full-text-ted-cruzs-2016-republican-national-convention/story?id=40768272

    But on September 23, 2016, Cruz did formally endorse Trump, via an announcement on Cruz' Facebook page. From that announcement:

    ===begin quote===

    I’ve made this decision for two reasons. First, last year, I promised to support the Republican nominee. And I intend to keep my word.

    Second, even though I have had areas of significant disagreement with our nominee, by any measure Hillary Clinton is wholly unacceptable — that’s why I have always been #NeverHillary.

    Six key policy differences inform my decision. First, and most important, the Supreme Court. For anyone concerned about the Bill of Rights — free speech, religious liberty, the Second Amendment — the Court hangs in the balance. I have spent my professional career fighting before the Court to defend the Constitution. We are only one justice away from losing our most basic rights, and the next president will appoint as many as four new justices. We know, without a doubt, that every Clinton appointee would be a left-wing ideologue. Trump, in contrast, has promised to appoint justices “in the mold of Scalia.”

    For some time, I have been seeking greater specificity on this issue, and today the Trump campaign provided that, releasing a very strong list of potential Supreme Court nominees — including Sen. Mike Lee, who would make an extraordinary justice — and making an explicit commitment to nominate only from that list. This commitment matters, and it provides a serious reason for voters to choose to support Trump.

    ===end quote===

    link: https://www.facebook.com/tedcruzpage/posts/this-election-is-unlike-any-other-in-our-nations-history-like-many-other-voters-/10154476728267464/

    In the simultaneous Trump press release announcing the list, written in Trump's voice, it said: “This list is definitive and I will choose only from it in picking future justices of the United States Supreme Court." Again, note the plural.

    Link: https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-race-and-ethnicity-courts-mike-lee-ted-cruz-0ceb808d22fa48638faa5eaaf281e635

    Contemporaneous news accounts credit VP nominee Mike Pence as the go-between in the negotiations between Cruz and Trump for Cruz' endorsement: "Trump’s vice presidential nominee Mike Pence played a key role in bringing Cruz into the fold. Pence and Cruz traded multiple messages, then spoke at length once on the phone and again in person, when Pence visited Capitol Hill a few weeks ago, a source close to Pence said."

    link: https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/23/politics/ted-cruz-endorses-donald-trump/index.html

    I became a fan of Ted Cruz way back in the early 2000s based on his handling, as Texas Solicitor General, of the federal redistricting legislation. Since January 6, 2021, though — when he spectacularly and deliberately violated his oath of office by making an objection to the electoral counting that is absolutely, positively foreclosed by the Electoral Count Act of 1887, Ted Cruz has been dead to me. I'll never support him for anything, ever.

    Nevertheless. he is entitled to considerable credit in doing the best that could be done in getting Trump to publicly commit to choosing SCOTUS appointees EXCLUSIVELY from the list fed to him by Leonard Leo, Ed Whelan, et al. He'd gotten Trump to commit to a specific list, and to commit to choose from it exclusively, and he had Pence as a potential witness to confirm the quid pro quo. (Neither Trump nor Pence ever challenged Cruz' version of these negotiations in Cruz' FB message.)

    Trump's word, of course, was meaningless. It has been all his life, whether given publicly or privately, orally or in writing.

    But Trump, in turn, was thrilled when the first great success of his administration was handed to him by the Senate GOP caucus' unanimous decision, in response to the Dems' announced plans to filibuster the Gorsuch nomination, to abolish the tiny vestige of the judicial filibuster — only for SCOTUS nominations — that had purportedly been left by Harry Reid & his Dem caucus' exercise of the nuclear option during Obama's presidency. Trump didn't really ever know or care about SCOTUS nominees, as evidenced by his entire history. But he adored the praise and success following "the list" — as expanded by subsequent "updated" lists to include Kavanaugh and Barrett — and for his entire term of office continued to delegate the entire judicial selection process to people who did indeed care, and who knew what they were doing in their efforts to ensure that Trump would not pick "another Souter."

    Making something appear to Trump to be in Trump's own best interests has always been the best, and often the only, way to actually influence what he says and does. This was that at its very most effective.

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      Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

      Erratum: I meant to write Diane Sykes, not Diane Wood. Both are Seventh Circuit Judges, and with the former currently serving as the Chief Judge. I particularly regret mixing them up, because it was notable (to me and others, anyway) that Judge Sykes is the ex-wife of Charlie Sykes, now at The Bulwark, who had already methodically torched his bridges with Trump in a 2015 interview on his radio show when Trump first mentioned his ex's name. I took this as confirmation that Trump had no clue on God's green earth who Judge Sykes or Judge Pryor were. Both Judges Sykes and Pryor were Bush-43 appointees, and Judge Pryor was particularly prominent as a Bush favorite, having been first appointed to the Eleventh Circuit in a very prominent and controversial recess appointment when the Dems were filibustering all of Dubya's circuit and district court appointees — with the recess appointment intended and perceived as a poke in the eye to Harry Reid et al.

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        Aylene Wright

        The connection to Charlie Sykes is really ... interesting? Ironic? Especially as the circumstances of the divorce were really nasty AFAIK. Anti-anti-Trumpers still mock Sykes as an adulterous hypocrite. I am sure Trump himself probably had no idea about it. Although not 100% sure, because it's actually the kind of gossip Trump used to traffic in. Pretty sure he was aware of the National Enquirer running hit pieces on Cruz supposedly having affairs, for example.

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    Rev Snow

    "...the Earl Warren of the next century..."

    While I cheered when I heard this bold calling out of a judicial activist, it doesn't really fit the template. That particular partisan hack was appointed by President Eisenhower, who later referred to that appointment as his biggest mistake. This was not some flunky carrying out the political program of the President or party who installed him.

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    Mary

    Hands down the best pod I have listened to so far on the vaccination “mandate”. Yesterday I got frustrated with AO tossing off “why is this now an emergency “ because, depending on where you live, it can feel like an emergency. I am not worried about getting COVID for me and my husband but I am very worried about anything happening that requires hospital care as that is just not available due to the unvaccinated. But stepping back I do realize this is hopefully a short term problem and won’t be solved by this mandate.

    I know many that won’t get vaccinated due to the fact that they simply cannot take even a single day off work for the risk of having side effects plus they’re living in fear of getting COVID as , even if young and healthy, that will result in unaffordable time off. I was happy with the inclusion of coverage of time off. However I had not considered the financial burden that will put on these smaller businesses with thin margins so thank you for that viewpoint.

    I really loved getting the view from someone who is not a pundit but lived the government service experience. It was honestly the most helpful conversation for me personally.

    Please invite Mr. Coffin back if we end up needing to examine events like this again.

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    Pastorfbt

    This is great stuff. You're perilously close to trespassing on AO's turf, though.

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