>>  Welcome to another episode of the Cross Examiner Rocket Docket, where you are the judge here. We brief you on the news of the day so that you can issue a ruling. Get ready to hear the arguments because court is now in session.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the Cross examiner podcast. I am your host, the cross Examiner. I am an attorney, I am an atheist, and I’m alarmed. I’m alarmed by the massive amount of misinformation that is powering a rise of christian nationalism in our country. Today is a rocket doc episode. These are unscripted reactions to news, and as you may have heard as of approximately 23 minutes ago, Biden has dropped out of the race. So we’re going to talk about what that means today for christian nationalism in the United States and what we can do to try to push back at this moment in history that is fairly unique, and we’ll talk about how unique it is. Like I said, these are unscripted rocket docket episodes. I’m just going to be going off the cuff. I have some contacts that are continuing to text me. I’m going bring you up to speed on what they told me, 749 this morning. Somebody, said that they’ve, heard Biden’s going to be dropping out today, which proved to be true. They importantly said he won’t endorse Harris, but rather have Harris pick among three candidates to run his vp. That sounds like that is also accurate from this contact. Later, when we were talking about what is going to happen, the contact, I don’t want to say exactly what they said, but basically there’s a couple of issues. So let’s talk about these issues. One, is Kamala Harris going to take over? It seems like the best choice for several reasons. One, she is the only one that has any legal right to the $100 million plus already raised by the Biden Harris campaign. That in and of itself seems to argue for. Let’s get on board with her. She’s got the war chest. What would happen if she’s not the nominee to that money? I don’t know. People donated it to a particular cause, I am sure. Well, let me say, I am fairly confident that the people who set up those donation sites had some sort of disclaimer in the fine print. You know, when you go to a site and you agree to do something, there’s sort of terms and conditions to what you’re doing. You’re giving them money in exchange for them using that money to try to get Biden Harris elected. There’s got to be some fine print somewhere that says, what if either of them is unable to complete the campaign due to death, infirmity, dropping out, all of those sorts of things, whatever those terms are, would apply. Assuming there’s terms about Biden dropping out but Kamala staying in, or either one of them dropping out, I doubt that the terms would say the money goes back to the donors, because that would be very hard to do. it could be that the terms would say that the money goes to the DNC. It could be that if Biden drops out, it goes to Harris. It could be if Harris drops out, it goes, still stays with Biden. if both drop out, DNC would be my guess, but they may return them, since in these days, we’ve got electronic transactions. But it would be a real pain in the ass to reverse all of those donations for 100 million. So that’s the first issue, is she’s got the money, she’s got the war chest. So that’s important. The other thing that this person pointed out was, two factors going against her as just not for the money, but one. this person’s claiming that the belief in the DNC is that she is no more popular than Biden, which may be true. I haven’t seen the polling on that. I believe that she is more popular than Biden. The last few polls I remember hearing about, were discussed on pod save America, the podcast. I recommend it. It’s run by a bunch of ex Obama people, and they are very insiders, and they know how to read polls. And they said Harris, was polling at least three, if not four points ahead of Biden. But that. That is an issue. but that is compared to Biden. Now, post debate disaster, Harris is an ex prosecutor, and if, you know, prosecutors, they think on their feet, and they’re great in debates. So this is why Trump has been terrified of Biden dropping out. Ever since that debate, it’s been a careful what you wish for moment. In fact, everybody knows I love Broadway musicals. All I’m thinking about right now is into the woods, where everybody gets what they wish at the end of act one, and act two is just, hey, how do you deal with getting your wish?

>> <name></name>: How can you know what you want till you get what you want and you see if you like it?

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: What I know, all I know is.

>> <name></name>: I never wish what I want most for the reason is to know what I want.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Well, Trump got his wish. He demolished Joe Biden in that debate, and, now he has to deal with the consequences. And he has not been writing him on that debate, if you notice, no comment about how I destroyed him. He’s incompetent, he should drop out. Nope, just I’m awesome. That’s all he’s been saying. Because he knows anybody other than Biden is pulling ahead of Biden and will give him a run for the money. So the best play right now, I think, if you stay in the Harris camp, is for Harris to quickly assume the mantle and immediately challenge Trump to a debate, a series of debates, and she will absolutely thrash him. You want to talk about a prosecutor going up against a convicted felon and owning him on the facts? Everything. You were screaming on debate night when you were watching the debate and you were saying, why isn’t Biden saying, xdev, Kamala will be ahead of you and be saying it before you even think of it? That’s the type of prosecutor she is. Okay, so that’s first. That’s the first sort of issue directly related to Kamala. Number two, and this is also a big issue that we need to talk about today, is if the party just says, okay, we’re sticking with Kamala. She’s the presidential nominee. Will the party faithful, Beverly, disgruntled that there wasn’t a more democratic process? Will they view that as the party elite have deemed Harris to be the nominee without any discussion? They can do that. I think. I think they can do that because she’s on the ticket already. And they could just say, well, she’s a ticket. She’s going to pick a nominee and we’re going to go with it. The alternative would be to have an open convention. I’ve heard a lot of commentators already in the. It’s been 29 minutes, but I’ve. I’ve heard a lot of commentators. I’ve been flicking back and forth to see how all the channels are taking this. Fox is very skeptical that this is a good thing. By the way, I’ve heard a lot of commentators say that that would be, suicidal for the DNC to do an open convention where they don’t have a nominee at that point. I’m not convinced entirely of that, although I’m leaning in that direction. I think you need time to let the country get to know Kamala in the spotlight. She needs to be the front leader. Everybody needs to get out and say she’s awesome. She needs to challenge him to a debate. She needs to start doing events and appearing on all of the talk shows, all of the news clips, so people can hear her talk about how horrible Donald Trump is. Which Biden would never do. I do think with somebody like Trump, you need to go negative. I say he would never do it. He would do it in a very, careful and measured way. I think Harris would be more direct. I think she would have no problem to say, this man’s been convicted in a free and fair trial that his lawyers were, given every opportunity to object to. They helped pick the jurors, all of that, and he was convicted of over 30 felonies. What more do you want? If you think that this is a, frame job by the Justice Department, you need to explain Hunter Biden’s conviction and Menendez conviction, and all the Democrats that are getting convicted by the feds, the same federal department. Like, she could go on that rant, in a way, much better than I could. Very point, very pointed, very short, very sound clippy so that anybody who’s listening to her for more than 10 seconds gets a real taste for how intelligent she is, how quick on her feet she is, and how decisive she is, even before you get to policies of compassion and you talk about Dobbs ruining Roe v. Wade. So, I think that, yes, it would be better if we just get on board with Harris. She’s not necessarily the best candidate. I think maybe there’s some others that might be better, but it would take too long to find them. That’s the problem this close to the election. It’s July 21 right now, at 02:32 p.m. and it’s funny that the time matters. We’re this close to November, so that’s. That’s sort of. .2 and then, let’s see. I’m getting this information as I do the show. I apologize. so some insiders are favoring an open convention. groups of Democrats are making plans for all scenarios and vetting other governors and senators right now. And the reason they’re vetting them, according to this source, is that either they’re going to be the VP for Harris, or there will be an open convention. And we want a good, quality, stable, of candidates for that convention. And this was said even before they knew, that Biden was dropping out. So this has never happened before like this. This is uncharted territory. It is history in the making. You should definitely pay attention. Books will be written about this. People will go to school and get their PhD thesis granted because they study the history of this, the underlying causes. They will, from a political standpoint, perspective, be studying the polling data, running into this decision, and then running up to the election. It will be, it will be a major source of analysis, moving forward for decades to come. So politically, that’s where we are. Oh, I just got something new. okay, I’ve got a copy of Biden’s letter. He wrote a letter resigning. I am going to read it right now. my fellow Americans, over the past three and a half years, we have made great progress as a nation. I can’t disagree with that. That is absolutely, absolutely true. Inflation went up. That’s the only bad thing. And you can say he inherited an economy that caused that. We had tariffs out the wazoo because of Trump. We had a pandemic. We had false, inflation where people, companies used the pandemic as an excuse to raise prices. You can look at, graphs and charts, which, again, this will be written about where the inflation and cost of living goes up by x and the cost of products across the board for various industries, especially dining and retail, go up by x times three. So it wasn’t inflation as a result of a, cost of living increase directly. The increase in prices happened in a disconnected way. But the real telling stat is when prices went up by x times three. you would expect if it was to cost of living, if it was just because the cost of goods was going up, so the increased cost had to be passed on to consumers. You would expect to see a flat graph on the change in profits for those companies, for mcdonalds or yum, foods or whoever owns all of those things. And, target and Walmart would see flatdenne. They showed record profits. While we were going through inflation. Their profits increased by more than the cost of living. That’s the telling stat that you should be thinking of. So, yes, Biden have an inflationary increase. Then he brought it down. Meanwhile, he created a million plus jobs. He, lowered unemployment by a massive amount. He lowered gas prices. The interest rates are great. Confidence, in the economy is huge. gross domestic product is through the roof. All of these metrics are very, very good. If you remember, six months ago, a year ago, somewhere in that range, people were talking about we might be heading for another recession. Look at this inflation. And now where are those people? Nowhere. Because they realize the inflation was m corporate profit taking and that Biden handled the situation. Now, to be clear, I am speaking in a political sense right now. I am a person who believes that the president has the ability to affect the economy in short bursts, but the economy will self correct very quickly if Trump gets elected. The economy does something, and then within a week, or two after people have digested the news, it sort of levels back out to where it was before. If a president gets on and says, hey, we’re doing away with the income tax, that would really affect the economy for a short time, until, reality sets back in and you realize Congress isn’t in with it, all that stuff. So a president is steering the cruise ship. It’s very hard to make the economy make short, quick turns. So I don’t credit Biden like, economically, with having some sort of amazing thing that any, this one cool trick that any president could use to fix an economy. But what I do know is by being there, he led confidence with the rest of the world to do business with us. He gave confidence to business leaders that we would have a stable environment. I have worked in, in the business world since I graduated from college, and if there is one thing that, and I have owned my own companies, I have worked closely with the owners of private companies, and I have worked for publicly traded, very large companies. I currently work for a company that’s got 15,000, employees around the world. It does 3 billion a year. I’ve seen it all. Every business owner and every sort of VP c suite type of person wants one thing and one thing above all else, and that is predictability. If I know that things are not going to change drastically for me, then I know that any decision I make right now will be in my hands. If I decide to raise my prices, it’s on me. If I decide to, release a new product in this quarter, it’s on me. It’s not going to just get slammed by some crazy regulation change or some crazy tariff or a skirmish, between first world nations in a kinetic war. None of that’s going to happen. I’m happy. So that’s one of the areas where I credit Biden practically, in addition to politically. The other area that I credit Biden m practically, is he hires people who know what the fuck they’re doing. He’s not running. On top of a book that’s 900 pages called project 2025, that will utterly destroy the economy of the United States. Project 2025, which we need to do a whole episode on, will induce massive deregulation. It will make the tax cuts for the rich. That Trump did, this is Trump’s one crowning achievement, was giving a trillion dollar tax cut to the ultra wealthy in this country, while doing nothing for his supporters who were out there in the street wearing their MAGA hats and. And tampon bandages. Tampon, excuse me, maxi pad, bandages on their ears. For some cultish reason, he did nothing for them, but they vote for him because reasons, right? So he. That’s the one thing that he did, was give a giant tax cut to the super wealthy and not pay for it, which is why Biden inherited a bad economy. Because if you. You give a trillion dollar tax cut, we are now short $1 trillion, and we have no money to spend on the programs we have been using to keep the company going. Company, country. Yeah, I made that mistake. That’s a freudian slip. So sorry. I have to catch up with where I was. I’m getting another thing. I was reading Biden’s letter. So, anyway, that’s where I give credit, direct credit to Biden. Otherwise, the arguments I’m making for Biden, having this political advantage is really just a political thing. It’s like, you know, that’s the question of, are you better now than you were four years ago? Here’s all the metrics that show you should be. The problem is, do I feel it? The guy in the street may hear all of these things, but if he’s having a hard time, he may not feel like it. Or if he’s been brainwashed by Trumpville, he may not feel like it. Let’s continue. I read. I read one sentence. continuing with Biden’s letter. Today, America has the strongest economy in the world. That, again, this is what we were talking about. I agree with that. It is amazing. one might look at China and say their economy is outdoing us. And it was. Until recently. China has really hit a snag, and it’s not because of Trump. It’s in spite of Trump. So let’s continue here. We’ve made historic investments in rebuilding our nation and lowering prescription drug costs for seniors. It’s one of his best talking points. And in expanding affordable health care to a record number of Americans, we’ve provided critically needed care to a million veterans exposed to toxic substances. Again, this man is a passionate, good man. He loves the armed services. He loved his son, who was in the armed services and whom he lost. He tries to take care of veterans instead of Trump, who calls them suckers and losers when they die. we passed the first gun safety law in 30 years, appointed the first african american woman to the Supreme Court, and passed the most significant climate. Climate change, excuse me, climate legislation in the history of the world. America has never been better positioned to lead than we are today. I know none of this could have been done without you. The american people. Together, we overcame a once in a century pandemic and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Thank you, Trump. We protected and preserved our democracy, and we revitalized and strengthened our alliances around the world. It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your president. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term. M I will speak to the nation later this week in more detail about my decision. For now, let me express my deepest gratitude to all those who have worked so hard to see me reelected. I want to thank Vice President Kamala Harris for being an extraordinary partner in all this work. And let me express my heartfelt appreciation to the american people for the faith and trust you have placed in me. I believe today what I always have, that there is nothing America can’t do when we do it together. We just have to remember we are the United States of America. Sign Joe Biden. an excellent letter. I agree with him. Importantly, I think, my contact here was right. He did not endorse, Kamala directly, which is, I think, the proper thing to do in such a letter. That’s a letter to the entire country. As president, you don’t need to worry about who’s going to be running later. You just let the country know. And keep in mind, you are the president of everybody, every single American, whether they’re wearing a mAGA hat or they’re a blue anon left wing nut job, all of them are your people. So he is telling them, hey, for the good of the country, I’m sitting down. But importantly, at the end there, he said, we. We do it best when we do it together, united. So he’s the one talking about unity, unlike Trump, who promised to talk about unity at the RNC. And then when he gave a speech, couldn’t hold it together, he, he proved yet again that the first 30 minutes, an hour, however long he was on the teleprompter is what I like to call the hostage videos for Trump. When he’s reading something, and you can tell he’s just reading it and he’s bored by it, and he’s being made to say something that he doesn’t want to say, that is, that is hostage video trump. And then he gets off, he decides, fuck it, I’m Trump. I can do whatever I want. And he starts rambling. And apparently the thing that he thinks people need to know the most, about his candidacy, based on how he was speaking at the end of his speech when he went off script, is that he’s really good at golf. He. That’s the number one thing he wants you to know about him. he did not mention at the convention anything to do with Dobbs loss of abortion rights for women. He did not mention Joe Biden dropping out. He did not mention pretty much anything. He didn’t mention project 2025 either, even though they all work for him. So, this is where we are. What’s next? So we have, the potential for an open convention. If that happens, then we are going to see jockeying like you’ve never seen before. But it’s not impossible. Think of places, like England, right? If they have, the government collapses, which is not a horrible thing. That’s what happens in parliament when they can’t have. Get a vote of confidence passed, right? So let’s say they have this big initiative, the majority party, which now is the Labour party. Another great sign for us is that, the right, which had been ruling and for 14 years in Great Britain, has been rejected by the voters there and the left has taken power there. That to some degree is a rejection of fascism. But to a greater degree in England, I believe it’s a reaction to people waking up to the fact that, yeah, they really did Brexit and shot themselves in the foot because the. The Conservatives lied to them and now their country is falling to shit. So that’s, you know, take it for what you want. Also, in France, we had the prediction of this massive right wing victory. Fascism was coming to a rise of power. Nothing like that. It was way short of that. So we have some positive indications around the world that when people really group together and are informed about the fascist tendencies or the. The ultra rich taxation, plan tendencies of their leadership, they will reject it. So that needs to be the message. I think we can have a polite, quick debate. The reason I was talking about England is if that government collapses, to say that the left is ruling now and they do this big initiative and it fails to pass, that might either trigger or cause somebody to call for a vote of no confidence. And if that vote, if they cannot get past that vote, elections are triggered right then and there. And they have, I think it’s five weeks, maybe six weeks. and somebody correct me on that in the comments to run another election. So people in Europe are very used to being aware of who the politicians are that are already in the mix. At any given point, they might be running. Right. And, we can do that here. We can get people out there, get people to listen, the sooner the better, in my opinion, to get people on board on the Harris train. So if we do an open convention, then the delegates which have already been pledged to the Biden Harris campaign, I believe the DNC can free those up. So you’ve had delegates, you voted in your primary for the Biden Harris ticket. You voted for Biden individually, and you voted, I believe, for Harris individually. Depending on your state, how your ballots work, that commits delegates usually to go and, vote for them at a convention. If Biden drops out, at least the Biden delegates are now released, and they can vote for whomever they want. And you have to convince them to support you. That’s a tricky thing. That’s the thing. That’s. I mean, this hasn’t happened in my lifetime that I can think of that a. At least a sitting nominated president that has already been, won a primary has then dropped out of the race. So, I’ll have to read some history books to see when it last happened and find out what happened there. But it is basically uncharted territory. That can be done. It can be done well, but it will require a cooperation. And that’s the problem in politics, right, is the famous saying is you can get anything done you want. You can accomplish anything you want in the world as long as you don’t care who gets credit. Well, that runs directly, head on into the idea of politics, which is all about getting credit, even if you didn’t do the thing that you’re taking credit for. see, for example, Boebert and Bachmann and all of those people who forever have been taking credit for the effects of bills, they voted against. They vote against a funding bill, and then they go back. When it passes, they go back to their district and say, hey, I got you all this money. And then their opponent says, yeah, but you voted against it. It doesn’t matter. I got it. So, yeah, we can do anything we want. If we don’t care who gets credit, that’s going to run straight into each individual actor, right? Kamala Harris, Buttigieg. who knows who else is in the mix for, vp and president? But they all live their own lives like we all do, and they all have their own vision, and this is why Biden took so long to drop out. Everybody that can be elected to that level of office has an ego. They think they’re the shit. You don’t go through and do that unless you want it, you’re hungry for it, and you think you’re the, you’re the shit. That’s the problem is this is a time where we need them to drop some of that and come together and have a polite debate, which we’ve seen that happen before. We’ve seen sort of polite debates before. So hopefully they can do that. I think the better option would be for the DNC to have some quick action on the part of the leadership, the donors and the lawyers to figure out, yes, she’s got the money. Let’s just say it’s her and it’s still her campaign and she’s just going to replace a vp and have her out there tomorrow or this week stumping, for the election. More to come. Thank you for listening to me. I just wanted to get this news out here. Let’s check the latest news. let’s see. CNN is basically saying, this is the first time that a president has dropped out of election in, quote, unquote, decades. That’s not helping me very much. Let’s see what Fox is saying currently. They were not too ecstatic, last time. Fox, news headline is Biden pushed out, everybody else’s. Biden drops out. Fox, of course Biden pushed out. they now have, they now say, Biden endorses Kamala Harris. That is brand new news. all right, Biden tweeted. So again, as I said, he wrote a letter to the country as president. And then personally he tweeted, my fellow Democrats, I’ve decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on the duties of the president for the remainder of my terminal. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my vice president. He tweeted, that’s not exactly an endorsement. Interesting. Trump is now saying, quote, crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for president and is certainly not fit to serve and never Washington. He said on a truth social post, he only attained the position of president by lies, fake news, and not leaving his basement. those around him, including his doctor and the media, knew that he wasn’t capable of being president. And he wasn’t. And now look what he’s done to our country. With millions of people coming across the border totally unchecked and unvetted, many from prisons, mental institutions, and record numbers of terrorists. Trump added, we will suffer greatly because of his presidency, but we will remedy the damage he has done very quickly make America great again. So Trump is still running against Biden. That’s what, that’s what that means. Trump wants to run against Biden. So he is going to slam Biden. And by this tweet, this met m, this truth social post, he is indicating, I am going to keep slamming the Biden campaign and I’m going to slam those who enabled Biden. He’s going to probably, depict him as a doddering, old, senile man that the Democrats foisted upon you. So it’s the Democrats who caused the problems under Biden’s, the Biden, presidency. And that’s ignoring all the lies in there. Millions of people crossing the border that are coming from prisons and mental institutions. No proof has been ever offered for that by Trump, because he knows that is the second that he does, he will be called on it. Recall all of his claims about the election being stolen. Recall all of the lawsuits he filed, 60 something on the merits, 70 something total. None of them actually proved anything. In fact, I think one, one of them actually did find one case of one person having, having done something wrong with the election. and I don’t remember they were Democrat or Republican, but, but the irony there is one Democrat may have been found guilty of a false ballot or something. Meanwhile, we had news stories about all the Republicans engineering this false election stuff. All of the trials said there was nothing because Trump’s team never presented any evidence. They tell you one thing on stage and on true social and on Fox News, then they go to court where they could go to prison if they lie and they don’t introduce any evidence, and then the case gets thrown out. And then what do they do? They turn around and they say, these judges are not listening to me. They know what they did. They were very respectful. They didn’t lie. They just didn’t introduce evidence. And then they lied to their public. Again, this is why we have this podcast. You need to know what’s going on with these people, right? It’s not hidden. I’m not telling you anything new. I just want you to be able to talk to other people and say, this is why he’s lying to you. So, yes, Trump looks like, at least in the immediate reaction, his instinct, his political instinct, is to keep running against Joe Biden and blame Democrats. The, they, the, the shadowy figure boogie monster that he has tried to paint of the Democrats as being responsible for a, horrible man being in the White House when, when nothing could be further from the truth. so that’s where we stand right now. It is, it’s been about a half, almost an hour since he announced. I’m sure we’ll talk about this more up. let’s talk why this matters for christian nationalism. I hope it’s obvious. we will do a whole episode on Project 2025. Project 2025, as part of it, has an entire arc, that wants to do away with the separation of church and state. And while Trump has said publicly, I don’t know anything about tragic 2025, I don’t know who wrote it. When you look at the names on the sheet of who wrote this thing, 190 of them, the last I saw, worked for Trump. And they. They know, hey, we get elected, this is what we’re going to do. And he knows it too, but he is trying to distance himself because the details have started coming out and it’s terrifying. So I am working on getting an interview. I’ve been talking with Freedom from Religion foundation. You may remember I interviewed Ryan Jane last year. he is their sort of expert, from what I hear, on the separation of church issues, church and separation of church and state issues in project 2025. I’m hoping to get him on quickly to talk about this because it’s more relevant than ever, because we have a real shot now to, expose this information and making a talking point in this campaign to try to get Donald Trump resigned to the dustbin of history as a fascinating side moan of an. Of a side note of an almost Hitler, that’s where he belongs, and that’s where we should keep him. And hopefully, Kamala Harris or whoever is the nominee will be able to kick some ass and show people how a vigorous campaign should be run. So more to come. Thank you for tuning in. Talk to you later. Bye bye.

>> <name></name>: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Cross Examiner Rocket Docket. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider liking and subscribing. Subscribing. We’ll see you soon.

Welcome to the Cross examiner podcast, the Internet’s courtroom in the case of rationality versus religion. Here, our host uses his experience as both an attorney and an atheist to put religion on trial. We solemnly swear that it is the most informative, educational, and entertaining jury duty you will ever do. And now it’s time for the cross examiner.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the Cross examiner podcast. I am your host, the cross examiner. I am an attorney, I am an atheist, and I am alarmed. I’m alarmed by the rise of christian nationalism in the United States. But more importantly, I’m alarmed by the massive amount of misinformation that is powering that rise. This is part two of my discussion with godless engineer. I hope you enjoyed part one. We talked about him, his journey from, being raised as a, in the south as part of a religious family, to discovering, through attempting to defend his belief, discovering that he no longer believed in what he does now to advocate for a secular country. Today, we’re going to be delving into a little bit of a specialty, for him, which is the topic of mythicism. What is it? What is the evidence that might support that position? That’s what we’re going to discuss. Excuse me. That’s what we’re going to discuss now. So I hope you enjoy part two of my interview with godless engineer. Now, I know it’s been a while. How do you have a few more minutes? Because there’s a topic I’d like to get to that you’re sort of focused on, that my audience is really probably not that familiar with. so, if you don’t mind, I will ask, you about mythicism, because I know that’s one of your focuses. So, first off, what is mythicism?

>> Godless Engineer/John: well, so mythicism is, specifically the context that is talked about, now is, Jesus mythicism. And that’s where, you don’t believe that Jesus was a real historical person, that he was this sort, of messiah figure that was, I guess, for the lack of a better way to describe it, invented by early Jews and jewish Christians. but it was, it’s more. I guess it’s more accurately described, as being, interpreted out of existing jewish scriptures as, this Jesus figure or this messiah figure that did certain things. And then, this new form of Judaism sprung forth that eventually turned into christianity. And so, Chris, christianity didn’t need a physical person, named Jesus to do anything. It was just the mere belief in the messiah that sort of started christianity gotcha.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah. And people, I have found, are shocked when they hear this sort of line of thought. I’m not going to call it an argument. I’m just going to sort of say a line of thought because I don’t know exactly what your position is. I don’t even know what my position is because I haven’t done enough reading to actually hold a position, which, is one of the lessons we all teach is it’s not that it’s true or it’s false. It can also be, I don’t know. And I don’t know. But I am open to the idea that, yes, there was no human named Jesus. There was no actual individual. There was an itinerant rabbi who walked around and said, be nice to each other. Right. I’m willing to concede that for the sake of having a conversation. So if somebody calls into the atheist experience when I’m hosting, I don’t go into the, well, you don’t even know if Jesus was real. We don’t have any evidence. We have no eyewitnesses. The gospels were written 30 to 90 years after he died, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I can go to that as far as reliability, but I don’t actually have, I haven’t done the studies or read the arguments as to why it’s a plausible case that he is a historical figure. And for my audience, think of, Robin Hood and King Arthur, or even more recently, stories about known figures like, George Washington saying, oh, I cannot tell a lie, I cut down the cherry tree. Well, we know George Washington existed, so we’re not a mythicist about him. But that story was apocryphal. That didn’t happen in his lifetime. There were a bunch of stories about things that never even happened to him. So, when you think of Robin Hood and King Arthur and those sorts of figures, that sort of, I think if I’m understanding the position more in line with mythicism of there wasn’t one figure. There was folklore, and folklore became a story, and then that story became, over time, taken to be literal, when maybe it was never originally intended to be literal. am I on the right path here? Is that sort of the theory?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Well, kind of with the exception that folklore kind of comes later in the development of Christianity, because, from what we can tell the early jewish christians what they were expecting, ah, as a messiah varied. So there were some jews that expected a military messiah to come in and conquer and free Jerusalem from m roman rule or, just any of the oppressors that were there. And so there was definitely an expectation of a military messiah, but then there’s also this expectation of a dying and rising savior that was going to provide everlasting life to those that believed in him and all that kind of stuff. So they, what they did was they reinterpreted or what’s called in scholarship called creating, peshers, peshurim. is this, reinterpreting, ah, of Old Testament scripture in order to illuminate, information, about this coming messiah that they were expecting? And so interesting. Yeah.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: In the reinterpretation, as far as literally, the words of the original text have not changed or the original, let’s say oral tradition or whatever it may be, but we are going to reinterpret it. Like, literally reinterpret. Like we, vocabulary level think that the words are different, or reinterpret, as in we believe the point of the story is different than we had said before. Like, where is the interpretation taken?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah, it’s the latter that you mentioned, because, And a good example of this is Isaiah 52 and 53. because the original intent of those chapters is to talk about Israel, like the nation, or the people group, but later jewish and jewish christian believers, they reinterpreted those, scriptures to be, talking about the Messiah. So, like when he’s talking about Israel or talking about, you know, being punished or whatever, in Isaiah 53, they’re taking that as meaning, oh, well, this is God, because they believe that scripture was inspired by God. This is God talking about the Messiah that is to come. And, so they were reinterpreting, various scriptures. There’s all over the place, there’s. There’s scriptures that they interpret as being about the Messiah. Some of the scriptures, directly sort of allude to them being about the Messiah. And others, they’re, changing the interpretation that they once had to better fit a messiah reading of it. And so what they did was they did these things in order to explain things that were going on. Like in the first century BcE. Like there was this one, and I can’t, I can’t remember which, which guy it was, but there was somebody in like the first century bce that they felt was the messiah, but then he died. And what we find is that Jews then came up with this dying and rising, messiah idea. and this is, so, the, the dying and rising part was actually a syncretization with, mystery cults. That were in the area that, definitely influenced the Jews. and so basically, these mystery cults would be things like, zoroastrianism, the ISis and Osiris cult, the nana cult. and, there’s a lot of different, missionary cults that were around at that time. One of the key aspects of a mystery cult is the fact that their supposed savior in, each one of these mystery cults, dies, resurrects, and then provides eternal life, for their adherents. And typically, you’re inducted into the faith, through, like, a baptism, a, sort of symbolic death and rebirth. That rebirths, you into this, you know, eternal, everlasting life that you have through the savior. The savior is the one that brokers all of this. There’s even communal meals that are shared, like the last supper, as dictated by the gospels, and everything like that. And so, I mean, what we basically have here is a yemenite, a, jewish version of mystery cults. All other mystery cults, all of them have fictional saviors, at the core of them that all this teaching is centered around. And what we find in Judaism, or Christianity, is that the Jews took Judaism and mixed in a whole bunch of different concepts that they got from these other mystery cults in order to create this christian religion. So that’s where. That’s where we’re at when Paul is writing. Paul is our earliest indication of any kind of Jesus. There’s no, absolutely clear, passages in Paul that state that Jesus was a human that walked on earth. And all this other stuff, what we get are they.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: I’m going to jump and explain for my audience, who may not be familiar with Paul. Paul never places Jesus on earth. Paul, implies throughout his writings that Jesus is a spirit and is in heaven with the father and all of those sorts of things. And this is important because Paul is sort of the founder of the church, that he is the first one talking about Jesus. He is Saul, if I recall correctly, that has his conversion on the road to Damascus because of these events. And when you read it, it really does feel sort of trippy, like, you know, he’s having these experiences. He’s not having a conversation with a guy next to him. so that’s Paul. And it’s the earliest documentation we have in this space talking about Jesus, if I understand correctly.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Okay.

>> Godless Engineer/John: And Paul. Paul does have some verses that a lot of people like to say.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Specifically,

>> Godless Engineer/John: has, Paul specifically stating that Jesus was like a human regular human person. But that, I feel like those verses require a lot of, additional, like, interpretation laid upon them that doesn’t exist within the text. And, so there are verses in Paul that people regularly point to that say, oh, this proves that Jesus was a historical person. But, Paul only ever tells us that he gets his information either directly from Jesus, like through a vision or revelation, or from the scriptures. And so all the information that he gets is technically, quote unquote, from God. And so given that, it kind of makes it a lot more vague, like, where is he getting this information from? And you know, it. I’m sure that there might be people talking about very specific verses. but I’ve covered those in various videos on my channel. So if you’re really interested in it, you can go and you can, look up videos of mine that talk about the specific verses. But, essentially they’re all just way too vague to actually come to a conclusion that, yes, Paul definitely meant Jesus as a historical person.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right?

>> Godless Engineer/John: And so that’s when folklore starts, creeping in, because it’s after the religion or this belief system initially forms that. Then they decide to make like, earthly tales about him. And this is similar to the ISIS and Osiris cult because one of the prime components of a mystery religion is that there are earthly tales that are told to the outside masses, like the uninitiated. Right. So they have earthly tales that are told, to the public. But then once you’re inducted into the religion, the cult, you are told the secret mysteries of the cult. And the secret mysteries of the cult is that all of this stuff took place in a heavenly realm. and it was all a divine sort of situation where all of this death and dying and rising, was, occurring. And so we don’t get that explicitly from anything in like, Paul’s documentation or any other documentation. but what we do have is Paul using, the verbiage of mystery cults, talking about how, you know, the teachings of Christianity are the mysteries and all. So he uses all the language of a mystery cult. And there’s no reason to think, at least in my opinion, that the jewish mystery cult differed so wildly from like the IsIS and Osiris cult or other mystery cults, at the time, as to having a real figure that started it.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah. And you’ve got a, For people who are listening to this and thinking, well, that’s crazy. That’s not what my church told me, or that’s not the story I know, I’ve got two sort of observations and maybe a question here. First, this happens all the time. And it’s not just two, thousand, 3000 years ago. Look at Scientology. Scientology is a mystery cult. What they tell the outside world is different than what you were told once you got into the inside circle and you were then told about project, ah, Phaeton and ot levels, and, that there’s an otherworldly being that was planting hydrogen bombs on a certain planet and killing billions of species. And all of this sort of stuff, all this crazy stuff comes out once you’re on the inside circle. I’m not saying that they’re necessarily a missile cult, but it’s the same pattern of human behavior. There’s something in human psychology that creates these situations where there are groups, they have sort of what they recognize are unpopular beliefs that are hard to sell. So they create a front, they create a symbolic story that they use to introduce these concepts to the wider world. And then when somebody has sort of committed themselves and made a life change, then they will come in and say, well, what’s actually going on? I’m glad you’re on the inside now, because what’s actually going on is this. And you as a human might feel betrayed, but you also might feel privileged. Plus, you’ve already made this, usually some sort of objective commitment to the organization. And once humans do that, they are less likely to retreat from that stance. Once they have openly and publicly said, I am committed to this, then, to hear something that’s a little crazy might, not be enough to force you to leave. And then that’s how the membership grows. And the fact that it happens today, the fact that we have documentation of it happening in the time that all of these religions were bubbling in the Middle east, including Judaism. And then eventually Christianity is taken by somebody. And I’m getting to my question, is taken by somebody as me as like. Yes, that raises a lot of questions. I start applying Occam’s razor, right? Like, what’s the simpler solution here? Christianity, is just another one of these examples, or. No, no, Christianity was the one that was right. It’s, it looks, smells, walks, talks like a duck, but it’s actually a fox. And that’s where I think I, where I come in when I start hearing these stories. And first of all, I guess, what do you, this is the question, what do you say to people? And this is an argument that I’ve heard who say, well, yes, there were other false religions around at the time that were mystery cults that have these elements of Christianity, the dying rising again, granting eternal life, baptisms, born of a virgin, the whole mystery elements of it. But those were just created in humanity by Satan to confuse, to sow confusion. That’s the answer I’ve usually heard from religious people. What is your response to that?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Well, oddly enough, that’s one of the oldest apologetics about how similar Christianity is to, other, like, I guess, pagan religions that teach the same thing about their own personal saviors. tip, I mean, if somebody, you know, said that to me, I’d be like, well, you know, I don’t believe in Satan either, so, Satan didn’t. Right plant anything like, I, that’s not a compelling, like you. Now, in order to make that work, you have to prove that Satan exists, and so you’re going to have to prove some kind of magical aspect to reality. So there’s, it piles on a whole lot of, onto your whole hypothesis that, oh, this was something that was done maliciously by a malevolent force in order to confuse people about it. I’m like, I don’t believe in magic, so I don’t think that’s likely. And that’s a good, yeah, well.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: I’m reminded of people who threaten me with hell as an atheist, like God, you know, Satan is going to kill you or Satan is going to torture you in hell. And I’m like, that’s like telling me I should be afraid of Sauron and the lord of the Rings. Like, I don’t believe that either. And people view that as being malicious or a mean or a mocking answer, but it’s not. It’s, I’m trying to convey to somebody my state of mind that threatening me with hell or threatening me with Satan because you have so little evidence for it, that is none. it carries as much weight as, as Lord Voldemort is going to come get me. So, yeah, in that same space.

>> Godless Engineer/John: I’m really glad that you brought up Occam’s razor, just a little bit ago because a lot of people misunderstand or misapply Occam’s razor because, it, at its heart, it is, you know, the simple, the simpler explanation is most likely correct. I mean, that’s a pretty good way of putting it. Putting it. But in this particular context, as far as, like, comparing different hypotheses for, like, historical figures and whatnot, what you’re really looking for is the hypothesis with the least amount of ad hoc or unsupported claims that are needed in order to make the argument work or to make the hypothesis work.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: So like to clarify for everybody that is the actual, like that’s how you properly structure Occam’s razor. The argument with the least, assumptions, or the argument with the least undefined moving parts, or however you want to put it. But yeah, the more complex the argument has to be in the unknown areas, the more troublesome it should be to you to accept it.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Right. And typically that’s the, the kind of thing that’s brought up like against me as far as like, oh, well, your hypothesis, mythicism is far too complex, when compared to just assuming a person existed, that started the religion. And it’s only simpler if you discount the fact that you’re having to presume or ad hoc, you know, say that there was a guy that existed. And once you actually start trying to prove that a guy existed, you’ll find that it’s a lot harder to definitely say. Because like, you know, if we take let’s say Alexander the Great, right? We take Alexander the Great. We have so many different things in history that actually point to the fact that Alexander the Great existed. We have coins minted in his visage. We have you know, statues that supposedly depict him. There are historical events that could have only happened if, Alexander the great, was a, a ruler or a king that did certain things.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: we have very nice correspondents talking about him. We have all that stuff.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah. And so like if you compare that to what we have for Jesus, we literally only have Paul writing vaguely about Jesus. And the only way that Paul got his information about Jesus was from the resurrected Jesus. So, you know, divine or, you know, this magical version of Jesus. And so like you can’t really compare Jesus, like the evidence we have for Jesus to other historical figures because other historical figures that we know are historical actually have evidence of, for them existing. So like if we were to presume Alexander the great existed, that’s because we have evidence to support it. But if you’re going to just presume that a guy existed because we have gospels or you know, you’ve always been taught that there was a guy at the beginning of it, then you’re, you’re just ad hoc assuming that particular point.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah. And I wanted to, I’ve been thinking about this question for a while and I’m glad we got to this point because this is kind of, to me, the core issue or a core issue as to why people feel betrayed, by religion, when they deconvert. And that is, we can all look at this, right, and say, okay, we see this pattern of human behavior before the Jesus story. The Jesus story either is another one that fits the exact same pattern, or this one’s different because there was actually a guy. And to be clear, in mythicism, we’re not even addressing Jesus’s supposed divinity. We’re literally just adding the. The presumption that there was a human being that did at least some of this or inspired this. Right? So it’s not a huge leap to say that there was a human being, but it is a leap, right? Because in every other story, there doesn’t need to be a human being. Now, we have one that fits all of those other stories. Yet for this one, we want to special plead it and say, well, in this case, I need it to be a human being. So my question is, the angry atheist side, or the people get frustrated when they’re deconverted, is if you are taking a Bible study class in church, none of this, and I’m not even talking about the mythicism, but mythicism included. But none of the fallibility, anonymous nature, the hearsay elements of the gospels is taught. None of the history of these other religions that were bubbling up at the same time is taught. None of these questions about the historicity of Jesus is taught. It’s literally, you go to Bible study class. Okay, let’s open up to Matthew, verse one, and we’ll just start with the story of Jesus. And that’s it. that frustrates me to no end. I think it’s misleading. I think it’s unfair. It goes back to what I talked to earlier, which is people in power. And this is a theme of my podcast. My listeners will know would get sick of me hearing this. People in power will lie to you, possibly by giving you half truths, in order to get you to do what they want. And this is another case of it. Why is it that we don’t start Bible study class with, okay, how. How was this book put together? I cannot. I cannot picture a Bible study class run by a church that starts with, okay, we don’t have any originals. We have translations of copies of copies of translations of people who were. Who were not eyewitnesses, etcetera, like, really setting the tone as opposed to any other book. we sat down and we said, let’s study Washington’s diary or something like that as a class or Lincoln’s papers. You would start with how we know that these are Lincoln’s papers and what was the context of the writing that he was doing at the time, and then read biographies about the man to then understand what he was writing about. In, in church, you are told there was a guy named Jesus. And when you go to study the Bible, you study mostly the gospels, unless you are going to seminary school. And it is not an uncommon story for people to go to seminary school, be exposed to the information that you are giving us here and other information, and lose their faith. And I think the church knows that. Has that been your experience, that people hear this information and they ask, well, why wasn’t I told this? Or maybe more likely that can’t be true. My church would have told me, yeah.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Well, so I guess I don’t get that reaction necessarily, like, oh, my church would have told me this because in my experience, churches, they don’t like to teach critical thinking skills, like, as far as the religious faith goes, because critical thinking is caustic to religious faith. And so they’re, they’re not, they’re obviously not going to tell anybody. But typically, I guess the response that I get, is just pretty much like canned responses that they get from their pastor. Like, you know, that you’ll have your pet. the pastor will speak about the historical reliability about the gospels, and they’ll talk about how, oh, well, the gospel. Luke starts out and he says that, you know, I am a historian, and I’ve collected these and I’ve read all these different sources and everything like that, and they either fail to or on purpose. They do it on purpose to hide it. But the fact that the very beginning of Luke reads as if somebody is trying to impersonate a historian, but they don’t actually do the things that ancient historians do because, like, if we, we were talking about Alexander the Great, if we look at arians account of Alexander the Great’s life, he has whole sections where he discusses his sources and he talks about why they’re good sources and all that kind of stuff. And you’re not going to get, like a pastor explaining how, well, yeah, Luke, very beginning of Luke. He tries to be a historian here, but this differs from how other historians do it. But don’t worry, this is all, very historical.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Like, I mean, or more honestly, hey, here are all these problems. What do you students think? Like, you know, like, it’s not even, it’s not even an honest, teaching. It’s, it’s Bible study is not the study of the Bible. It is a lecture. And you are told that it, you’re all operating under the presumption that it’s true. And you don’t go anywhere near any reasonable method to assess its source, much less its veracity.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah. You know, I can only imagine that people that decide to go into seminary, I’ve heard at least some people say that they are just, totally taken by surprise at, you know, what they learn in seminary versus what they’re taught and what they do teach, you know, in their churches.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Talk about mystery cult, right?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: You’re sold this public story. You go to seminary school and you realize, oh, shit, this is, this is built on a pile of sticks. There’s, there’s no substance here, right?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Because, like, in churches, you’re not going to hear the pastor explain, the complex theology of Paul and how Paul thinks of Jesus as a pre existent angelic being, right? Like, it’s literally in Paul’s epistles, but you’re not going to hear, you know, the pastor talk about how Jesus is a pre existent angel. at least not in the way that, you know, you’re, you’re looking at explaining how, you know, Paul considered Jesus to be more angelic than, you know, human and, and all that. Like, you’re not going to, I don’t see a pastor, like, explaining that kind of aspect to it. Although I don’t, I don’t think that that would really affect too many believers if they’re like, oh, he’s a pre existent angelic being. It’s like, oh, yeah, sure, John one, one directly says this and all this other stuff. So, I mean, the, you’re talking about an audience that’s already primed to believe in magical things, and so adding more magical things to it is probably not going to affect them.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: But if you take it in totality. Right. We go to Bible study class and I raise my hand and I say, I’ve got this teaching, Bible, and, before the gospels, it says, we don’t know who actually wrote the gospels, but we’re pretty sure it wasn’t Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It was only attributed to those people out of a called church tradition. The pastor is going to be like, ignore that. We’re starting on page two. Like, they, they don’t even get to that level. It’s not, it’s not the, was Jesus a vision or an angelic presence to Paul? It’s literally, they ignore the fact. Let’s put it this way. I’ve had very, very, very close, dear friends who were Christian, where during the course of a conversation, I have, as an aside, in an attempt to start, my main point mentioned, well, because we don’t know who wrote the gospels. And they would stop me and say, what are you talking about? Of course we know who writes the gospels. It was Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And I’m like, I think you’ll find this, that, and the. And they would, like, mock me for not, like, not understanding that the name’s right on the book. What are you questioning about? And it. The first time it happened, I was so taken aback that I sort of backed down. I said, well, maybe I’m wrong. I’ll need to go look. But sure enough, when I went and read the academics on, I’m like, oh, yeah, I was right. We have no idea. So if you tie this into what you’re talking about, the mythicism, the. The, the cloud of uncertainty and ignorance, and just. We don’t know where any of this came from. It’s. It’s overwhelming to somebody like me, who is not yet convinced. Like, if I’m exposed to this information about the ignorance we have about any of this, then my main question is, how can anybody draw a conclusion based off this information? It seems like you said, the occam’s razor, the simplest solution seems to be it’s just another religion that was bubbling up at the time, and it just sort of took hold.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Oh, yeah, definitely. And, I’ve actually been memed on Twitter, for saying statements like, jesus was probably not even crucified. like, we don’t have evidence for that. Yeah, he was even crucified.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: The Romans were meticulous records keepers, and we don’t have any records.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Right. Well, and, I mean, Christians, they will always present the lamest arguments for it and mock me because I’m like, you know, Jesus probably wasn’t crucified. And they’ll be like, we have four gospels that say it. Okay? That doesn’t prove that he was, or.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: And that goes to the point I was just making. I’m sorry. But, you know, that’s the whole point is the church knows that information’s coming, so they choose to skip over the fact that we, again, do not know who wrote the gospels. They were written generations after the events depicted. They were not eyewitnesses. some of them say that they had access to someone who might have been an eyewitness to some of the events, but that’s hearsay, and we don’t because we don’t have the originals, we don’t know how reliable that information is. There could have been a hundred copies before the first copy. We have, like, it’s so shaky, like, I could not introduce the gospels at trial as evidence to support the claim that Jesus existed because it’s, there’s no chain of custody. There’s no, it’s all hearsay. There is something in the rules of evidence about his ancient, documents, but it usually has to do with businesses having documents that are older than 20 years. That’s an ancient document in trial. We’re not talking about that. But I could not introduce the gospels as somebody, have somebody sit on the stand and say, what does it say in this book as an argument for this book is true. We know that as a, as a society, the federal rules of evidence in the United States have developed since the magna Carta 8900 years ago, and they have developed through our experience of what’s reliable and what’s not. And it’s so unreliable that we don’t allow that sort of, that sort of evidence for multiple reasons. Yet, as you, as you experience, people will cite it as the evidence. The book is the evidence, not the book is the claim. That’s got to be frustrating for you to put this much effort into putting this message out and get that answer back. What is, what is it? Where’s your mind go when you hear that?

>> Godless Engineer/John: I, mean, I guess I just start laughing. and I don’t mean it in, like, in disrespect, but it’s just kind of laughable that some. That, that somebody would hear me say what I’m saying and act like I don’t. Like I haven’t read the gospels or I don’t know, the basic, like, folklore story of this Jesus that’s contained in the Bible. Like, I feel, I feel like anybody can just assume, like, if I, if I’m saying, oh, Jesus wasn’t crucified, that I, at least know the story says that he was crucified. I’m saying that that didn’t happen as a matter of history. But, you know, they, they have been taught to just take the gospels at face value and that they are eyewitness accounts and all of that. I actually had somebody also say, well, we have pieces of the Holy Cross.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right, right. I talked about this, gosh, I don’t even remember when, but there was a, there was a, I was going, I was going through the definition of sacred. I think it was in one of my maybe it was the two and a half hours I recorded yesterday, and that’s the example I gave, is we have churches that will trot out this thing and say, this is a piece of the cross that Jesus was crucified on. And people will cite that as evidence, like, oh, well, we have this information. It’s almost like Indiana Jones and the last crusade was a documentary.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah. Wow. Oh, man. All right, so where do you stand? Like, after your analysis, I know we’re way over time. I appreciate it. I have one more question for you. After all your analysis of the mythicism discussion, where do you stand? Are you convinced that there was a human named Jesus, or are you convinced that there was not, or do you not know?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Well, so I’m very convinced by the mythicist arguments and the hypothesis in general. So I think that the likelihood that Jesus was a real historical figure is, pretty low. but I think that if we found new evidence, it could totally overcome whatever prior probabilities that we have about Jesus’s existence. Because right now, the prior probability sits at, you know, just another mystery cult with a fictional savior figure that the cult was built around and all this other mythology that was layered on top of it, you know, for the cult. And so that’s like, that’s the prior probability. Now, does that mean that there’s not evidence or that we can’t find evidence that would say, oh, yes, Christianity is the lone exception that has a real historical figure at the center of it. Obviously, with an. With good enough evidence, you can definitely overturn, like, the prior probability of it. And so right now, as the evidence stands, I feel like it’s far more plausible that Jesus was just another, was, the figure of just another mystery cult. It was just that this mystery cult was jewish, and later we called it Christianity.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right.

>> Godless Engineer/John: And so that’s where. That’s where I stand. I’m more convinced by the mythicist hypothesis than I am a historicist one.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. It’s such an interesting conversation. I remember the first time I heard people present this as a theory, as a hypothesis, I guess I should say. And, it, even as somebody who was not raised to be a Christian and was not christian at the time I was an atheist, it sort of blew my mind. It was like, yet another example of even I had been culturally influenced to assume that the default position was Jesus existed. There was historical evidence for it, et cetera, et cetera. And that somebody had to raise their hand and show me, actually, we don’t know that for sure. And when you actually look at it, it looks a lot like everything else that was sort of we, we say is made up. It blew my mind. So I’m glad that there are people like you out there sort of making this observation, because in the end, the observation is not necessarily going to convince somebody to not be christian, but it will put information, true and accurate information combined with good reasoning, out into the zeitgeist of the country. The more you repeat it, the more that we talk about it and what that can do. And people that are my listeners will know that. This is my theme is I’m not trying to teach people or instruct people or argue people out of believing in Christianity. My main focus is just to try to get them to moderate their behavior, because we. Ever since January 6, I’ve been very concerned about christian nationalism and people using religion to convince the masses to do things that are bad for me, bad for my friends, and against their own self interest. And the more you can put out into the Internet, into the blogosphere, into the cosmos, these sorts of data points, you’re going to affect people, you’re going to cause them to moderate that, to be slightly less convinced of the surety of their position, and that’s a good thing. If everybody in the world was less so cocksure that they were right about their God, I think we would be in a lot better place. I don’t know if that’s your goal. if you’ve ever. Have you ever convinced anybody using this argument that, oh, well, I’m not a Christian anymore, or do you, do you do this for this sort of, this effect of, let’s just add some more information out there to make people less likely to be extreme.

>> Godless Engineer/John: well, so I guess my interest in the topic is more. More, kind of just interest in history, like knowing, you know, how Christianity actually arose and all that kind of stuff. that’s, I guess, where my interest lies. I don’t think that, you know, that the mythicism topic should necessarily affect anybody’s faith. or should it also not be used as, like, an argument against Christianity? Because I feel like, when you’re arguing against Christianity or against, like, christian nationalism, I feel like, you know, more or less attacking the claims of Christianity, not even touching on, like, whether or not Jesus existed. I think that typically, that’s going to be way too far, for a lot of religious people.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right?

>> Godless Engineer/John: So, like, if you’re, if you’re really looking to, combat, you know, common Christians or somebody that’s not trying to have a discussion about christian origins and where Christianity came from. I think that, you know, attacking more of the resurrection or, any of those other things or like, the idea that morality can be found in the Bible and all this other stuff, like, I feel like attacking those particular points is probably going to get you farther along than bringing up like, whether or not Jesus existed. and that’s just because of how it’s taught in churches and how generally religious people are. if you go as far as to say, well, Jesus didn’t even exist, then I feel like they’re probably going to just shut down, probably a bit harder or more so, than saying, well, I don’t believe Jesus resurrected from the dead. I feel like they’re more used to people rejecting the resurrection claims and they are rejecting Jesus, the person in general.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah.

>> Godless Engineer/John: And so, like, I haven’t met anybody where like, the whole mythicist topic or argument has caused them to disbelieve, but I have met people that were historicists and then saw like, actually read the literature about mythicism and was like, this is actually a reasonable position to take.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Or like, there’s, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this position, even if they still disagree with it. They’re like, well, this is, you know, this could be the case. And so, like, I’ve seen people soften on it a little bit, but they really have to get past that dogmatic hold that typically Christianity takes on a person. if they’re not already past that, then, you know, it’s, it’s kind of like a non starter for a conversation.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah, I agree. I, when I, especially when I take calls on the atheist experience, I don’t even bring up a lot of this stuff. It’s just in, sitting there in my mental toolbox in case I need it. If somebody comes back, comes in and says, so you and I both been on these shows. You know, the typical question is, tell us what you believe, and more importantly, why do you believe it? If they come back with the why and it is because Jesus was a real figure and we have evidence of that, then that’s an open conversation. Right. Let’s, let’s go to town on that. But typically you’re right, it’s going to be, I, believe in God because I was raised that way, or I believe in God because I’m afraid of hell or all these other reasons to then say, let’s have a conversation about that. Is that a good reason to believe in something and the mythicism doesn’t come up to it. But I still, I’m very happy that you’re putting that content out, because I do think that when people stumble upon it and they see that, not just me sort of mentioning it, like, I’ve heard about this, but people like you who have dove into it, have read the documents, understand the arguments, and can sort of have a very informed conversation about it, it is going to, as you said, soften people here and there. People who are exposed to information will soften their views and be less extreme if they’re willing to have the smallest iota of an open mind and realize maybe I’m nothing, 100%, right, all the time. Maybe there are aspects of what I believe that maybe aren’t true, and I need to back into that more moderated view. And finally, I wanted to congratulate you on a point you made that I found very ironic that we’ve done a long discussion here on mythicism, and at the end you said, but I could be exposed to new information and it could change everything. We could come up with new evidence, right? we could find correspondence court, you know, correspondence from. Hey, I, it’s Magi. I, I, Margie, I should say, I was at this supper and this guy named Jesus showed up and he turned loaves into fishes into a whole bunch of food. And, and, I wrote my cousin about it, and here’s her letter back to me about her experience, which we could find all this correspondence, we could find all sorts of stuff that, like, wow, okay, maybe there really was this Jesus guy and you were open to that possibility. That’s my point. I was reminded the minute you said that of, a debate that Ken ham was in against Bill Nye, the science guy. And the moderator said, what would change your mind? And, Bill Nye’s one word answer was evidence. And, Ken ham, the apologist’s answer was nothing. And I think that that speaks volume. So I’m very glad that you, you are in the camp of, hey, I might be wrong.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think that, you know, mythicism is definitely falsifiable. You can provide evidence that definitely shows that Jesus was a historical figure against all of the other evidence that we have that’s going to trumpet, you know, no pun intended there. but, you know, it’s, it’s going to overwrite, you know, that prior probability and all it takes is good evidence. And the problem is, is that just haven’t seen that evidence yet.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah.

>> Godless Engineer/John: And so I’m just. I’m not. I’m not solidly convinced that he was a historical figure, but, like, I guess I go. Whenever I describe my position, I just say, I think that it’s, you know, more than likely he did not exist, which Lee, I feel, is, that kind of wording leaves it open to, you know, being proved wrong in the future. And I usually try to leave myself open to being proved wrong or for our knowledge, about, you know, either history or physics or, you know, reality in general, that knowledge to be, like, reversed or overturned and, some new piece of knowledge to sit in its place. And so I’m always open to, you know, new ideas or new ways of, you know, viewing the world. And so as long as. As long as the evidence is there to support it, then I’m more than likely going to be convinced by it.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: That’s great. That’s. That’s. If everybody had that attitude, the world would be a better place. So thank you so much for your time. I know we’re way over. You’ve been very generous. as a reminder, people can find you, as you said, pretty much everywhere. Facebook is a, huge, page that you have, but you can just google godless engineer and find you, anywhere. Same way with me, if you go to www. dot thecrossexammer.net, that’s the best way to find me. But you can just google the cross examiner podcast, and you’ll find me as well. again, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. I hope that everybody was fascinated by the topics that you brought up and your story of what you do. I got to tell you, you’re one of those people that’s just consistently out there. I’ve gone and watched a lot of your content over the years. As I told you when we. When we met on the 8th experience, I’m a big fan, and I feel really thankful, that you were. You were willing to come on my show. So thank you.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Oh, thank you for having me. I always, always love talking about all the topics that we talked about today. I could. I could yap my head off, like, for hours about it, so.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yep, same here. All right, well, great. I guess we’ll call it there and we’ll say see you later.

>> Godless Engineer/John: All right, bye bye bye, heathens.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: And there we have it. That’s the end of the second part of my interview. With godless engineer. I appreciate you listening. I hope you found him as interesting and as well informed as I do. Please do visit all of the channels he discussed in the show. You can just google godless engineer and you’ll find him. He’s been everywhere for a very long time. I really do want to thank him for all the time. He was very generous with his time, and I hope that you do. Visit his channel, give him a like and subscribe. And, please stay tuned on my channel. You can, you can always like and subscribe here if you want. You notice that I do not monetize, any of this right now. This is my advocacy. I’m trying to help save the country, basically, in one tiny, tiny part of it, by arming you with information like you’ve heard over the last two days that will help you push back against misinformation. So please, like, subscribe, visit my site @ thecrossexaminer.net and, until next time, I hope you have a good one. Bye bye.

 This has been the cross examiner podcast, the Internet’s courtroom in the case of rationality versus religion. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider subscribing. See you soon.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Welcome to the Cross examiner podcast, the Internet’s courtroom in the case of rationality versus religion. Here, our host uses his experience as both an attorney and an atheist to put religion on trial. We solemnly swear that it is the most informative, educational, and entertaining jury duty you will ever do. And now it’s time for the cross examiner. Welcome, welcome welcome to the Cross examiner podcast. I am your host, the cross examiner. I am an attorney, I am an atheist, and I am alarmed. I’m alarmed by the massive amount of misinformation that is powering the rise of christian nationalism in the United States. Today, I’ve got a special treat. Some, of you may be familiar with my guest today. Today known as godless engineer. I met him due to my work on the atheist experience. I host the, atheist experience and other shows for the ACA, and I found him to be an absolute delight to speak with. And, we decided to get together and have a conversation today to get to know him and to discuss sort of topics that are of interest to him. I hope you’ll find him as interesting and enlightening as I do. So, without any further ado, here is the first part of my interview with godless engineer. So welcome, godless engineer. Thanks so much for joining us, aka John. How are you doing today?

>> Godless Engineer/John: I’m doing pretty good. You know, it’s a Saturday, so there’s been no work, so, you know, I don’t have that stress. But, you know, just been playing video games. That’s usually how I relax.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: What are you playing these days right now?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Destiny. my wife. we play that a good bit, and then I’ve been trying to play through elden ring. I’ve had it since it came out, but it’s one of those games where it’s like you’ve really got to be dedicated to playing it.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah, a friend actually gifted it to me when it first came out, and it has also sat on the shelf while I have played other things. So I feel you very much there. well, I wanted to introduce you to my audience specifically because I think they’d be fascinating to know what you’re doing on your channel and know your background. so first of all, I guess we should say, where can people find you?

>> Godless Engineer/John: well, they can find me normally on, YouTube, just godless engineer. I believe it’s just YouTube.com godless engineer. I actually had it for so long that it was back before they started doing the different kinds of URL’s for different channels. yeah. So it’s just godless engineer here. I’ve also got a fairly substantial, I guess, Facebook page. and it’s just got, you go there by godless engineering is how it is on Facebook. and I think I’ve got like, 100, I think 140,000 people that still like the page there. It’s up there, yeah. and so, you know, I post there. Usually, I try to post there at least once a day. I’m kind of, I’ve been slapped on the wrist, I think, three times in the past year. And so they’re like, we’re restricting your account, like, organically for a while. And so I think that I just have to wait for some of those violations, I guess you could say, to fall off before they’ll allow me to really get, anywhere. Because I used to post and, you know, stuff would, would get, really popular kind of quick, but now it kind of gets stuck in a hole unless it’s, like, incredibly popular.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: So, that’s the infamous, Facebook jail.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s like, it literally is a shadow ban right now because, like, if I look at my account, it says everything’s fine. But then, like, if you get to a certain page, it’s like, well, you’ve had too many violations, so we’re restricting your organic reach. And it’s like, oh, thanks.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right.

>> Godless Engineer/John: but, anyways, ah, so that’s, those two places are normally where you can find me. I’m also on tick tock, but, you know, that’s either going away or something like this year. I don’t know what the status of that is, but, there’s that. and then, I’m on. I mainly, have been posting on threads, which I’m just godless engineer over there. Oh, Instagram. Just all the social media is like, I’m just godless engineer.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Well, you’re everywhere. And, I could probably take a few notes from you on how to expand the reach of your message, but I got to know you by seeing, you appear on, programs for the atheist community of Austin. So, talk even, and atheist experience and all of that sort of stuff. So you can also find John over there as he hosts as the godless engineer. But I guess we should also answer the question of now that people know where to find you, why should they find you? So what is your presence all about? What are you advocating for?

>> Godless Engineer/John: well, mostly I do content, that’s centered around either atheism, or, like politics as far as like ah, religion, in society, religion and politics and everything like that goes. And then also science, where science kind of intersects with religion. and so like content in the science realm would be you know, a lot of like origins of the earth kind of thing like what we’re, you know, where did earth come from? evolution or in human origins and all that. I also really like to discuss history, as far as like christian origins goes. like history of Christianity, historical reliability of like the gospels and just the Bible in general. I’m pretty involved in talking about that. but I mean, over on my channel I mostly stick to things that I really know, pretty well. And I would say that that includes, you know, talking about, I guess, atheism, and whether or not God exists. And then also the historical reliability of Christianity. And those are my two main topics. But I also don’t shy away from any of the scientific topics or the political topics.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right, right. Yeah. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to introduce you to everybody in my audience, that you, you’re you cover a lot of ground, but you also cover things that my audience tends to be interested in, which is christian, the intersection of religion and government in the United States specifically. So the rise of christian nationalism. But you also have this expertise of having done some deep dives into the science aspect where my expertise is lacking in that area. Like I know the basics of physics and cosmology and all that stuff. But I remember just this week, I think it was the atheist experience, if I recall correctly. And you got a call from somebody making a argument from complexity regarding DNA, and you took them to school, even though they were a chemist. You had the numbers and facts and figures at your fingertips and it blew me away. So I highly recommend people go take a look at that because there is a, ah, brand of apologetics in Christianity where people will throw facts and figures at you. It’s not quite a gish gallop, it’s more of a I know more than you type of thing from a science perspective. And you seem very well armed to push back against that. Did I remember that call correctly?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Oh, yeah. I mean, it was basically an argument from like big or small numbers. And they typically will just only focus on the big or small number without actually taking into account like the, the field of statistics or mathematics or anything of that nature. And that’s typically what you find with a lot of creationists is that they’ll, only give you half of the equation. I guess, they’ll only reveal to you what they want you to know. That seems to support their conclusion. And once, you actually take in the entire context, which is, I guess, typical of most apologetics. Once you’ve taken the entire context of whatever you’re talking about, you realize how flawed their arguments are.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Gotcha. Gotcha. I remember in the call, I was, sort of shouting at the screen, about answers, and you were giving them the same information right away, like, it seems fairly obvious once you are exposed to those arguments. For example, hey, how did life come about? You’ve got this primordial soup of the ocean. What are the odds that, we would get a strand of rna or just a molecule that could self replicate? And I’m sitting here thinking in my head, what’s your denominator? Like, how many times do molecules or atoms bump into one another in that over every second? And then you were sort of talking about the exact same thing. So I was glad to hear you sort of take him to task. And the result of that was, he admitted, oh, I need to go away and think about this. Like, you just gave me, actually, information. He couldn’t cite any numbers. He just came in and just said, well, everything’s really big. Like you said, the argument from big numbers. So I was really impressed with that. Thank you for demonstrating how to handle that situation.

>> Godless Engineer/John: yeah, m I’m glad. normally, whenever I talk about very, I guess, mathematic, mathematically heavy, or scientifically heavy sort of topics, I usually make a mistake or two. So I was totally expecting the chat to read me over one thing that I got wrong or I said wrong. but I mean, that’s pretty much, I guess, sort of the. The name of the game, you know, for, anybody that does any kind of content, like on YouTube, specifically in the realm of science and all that, you get people that nitpick one thing or another, instead of looking at, like, you know, the. The main picture or the. The main argument that you’re trying to make, and they. They’re just like, well, let me nitpick here and there. I was expecting that. So I’m glad that I didn’t exactly, you know, allow that to happen. Maybe there’s people in the comments that are correcting me on something.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: I don’t know. I didn’t go back and, look, that’s a good idea. That’s a good idea, but let’s, let’s talk about that. That’s an interesting observation because it’s something that I felt as well, and it’s somewhat unique to this particular subject matter, sort of debating or having dialogue with people who oppose your views on a particular proposition here. The proposition is that a God exists, but also it’s live television, so to speak. Right. You’re, you are live streaming a conversation where you’re, making these assertions and trying to defend your position. And you and I have both had that experience of you’re on the phone with somebody who, and they are, they’re making these claims. And in order to push back, you have to sort of dig deep into the brain and try to remember some biology, try to remember some chemistry, try to remember some physics and say, and then, and then you are so careful that you don’t want to come out and give the other side ammunition by being obviously wrong, that I will, at least for me, I will couch it in, well, I seem to recall x. Correct me if I’m wrong, but why? Just so that if you don’t remember the exact number or the exact experiment or whatever it may be, the, callers or the theists on the other side won’t, like, do a victory lap and say, see these idiotic atheists, you sort of feel, I sort of feel the pressure of representing a side of the argument, so to speak. Do you have that, that sensation?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah, but I, I guess I kind of use that to my own maybe sarcastic me, ends, I guess, because in that, in the call that you’re talking about, on the atheist experience, I actually, I was like, hey, let’s just do a quick search real quick. And I slowly, like, read out, like Google search that I was doing to get the numbers for.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: I remember that.

>> Godless Engineer/John: How many planets, you know, are in not only the, just the Milky Way galaxy, but in the universe in general, and then compare that to these numbers that he’s throwing out. And, you know, it’s just, I like using that for, I guess maybe a comedic effect, because it’s like, it’s easy to just say, you could just google this, you know, and I obviously don’t have this knowledge just like, you know, banked in my head to be able to pull out whenever I need it, because I have Google or, you know, I have the ability to just quickly look up things so I don’t need to, like, waste space, you know, in, you know, things that I keep at the forefront of my mind, right. I could just google it. So it’s easy to say, oh, just go and google it. But it’s funnier if I’m like, here, I’ll do it for you. Let me google that.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: I was. It was. I mean, I, that moment was like chef’s kiss. Perfect. Because he’s sitting here for a decent amount of time. I don’t want to exaggerate, but it was on screen time. Screen always makes things feel longer. But it was a long amount of time of him making abstract arguments, and you had to back him into a corner to say, okay, so what is your denominator or what numbers are we dealing with? Because you’re talking about statistics and probability. You need to know a numerator and denominator. So he didn’t know. So you literally were like, let’s google it together. How? And you read out the query how many planets are in the galaxy? And then you did the math and gave him a number, and there was like dead air for like 3 seconds while he was like, he didn’t know what to do with that. Like, it had never crossed his mind that instead of getting on the air and arguing that, well, it’s just a really big number, so the odds are really crazily big that one could actually attempt to do the math. Of course, there’s a lot of estimating, but you could at least attempt, and I think you demonstrated that to him, and he sort of had to go away and say, well, I’ll come back later, which is, I mean, I respect that. That’s a good answer. He didn’t try to bluff, but it was, it was a very good demonstration for the caller and for the listeners of, hey, it took me 10 seconds to come up with this. You could have done that before you even called us.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Right? Yeah. And, it amazes me that, so many people, especially somebody who claims to be like a, ah, chemical engineer, is what he said that he was. It’s just amazing to me that somebody that would go through the, the rigorous, you know, work of becoming an engineer of any kind. But whenever he comes across these arguments, he doesn’t think, oh, well, how likely actually is it? Like, think about it in a more statistical kind of mindset, because even for my computer engineering degree, which I’ve got two degrees, I’ve got, which you can, you can’t really see over back my head, but I’ve got my degree up there, but I’ve got a computer engineering degree. And a software engineering degree for my computer engineering degree. that’s the bachelor’s, that I have. And you have to take statistics. Like, that’s one of the things, at least, that I took. Maybe. Maybe that was, more of a math elective. Not everybody had to take it, but, I mean, at least in my engineering experience, like, statistics is an important part of, like, just engineering in general. So you would think that somebody would. Would think to do that. But, sometimes people need to be reminded, and just showing how easily it is done, I think, is a really good demonstration of what people should be doing before they think that they have, like, a gotcha. You know, it’s like, okay, well, let me. Let me think out how would they respond to this? And, I think that more apologists need to start doing that.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: I agree. I agree. And it speaks to something I’ve wondered about a long time, for a long time. And it goes to evolution, it goes to abiogenesis. It goes to, fine tuning arguments. It goes to a lot of things. And that is, people will come at this with just the end number. Like you said, it’s an argument from large numbers. But the underlying, I think, interesting point that I see in the theistic, or, not skeptical audience is that they seem to have missed the part of math where a whole bunch of little things can add up to a big thing. And that’s sort of this. This permeating theme. And I haven’t really been able to wrap my head around it and vocalize it in a. In a concrete manner to sort of identify the issue. But when you look at their objection to evolution, they are. They’re all willing to say, yeah, well, things change all the time. Yeah, yeah. The allele frequency in a population will change, but not to the point of creating a whole new species. Like, they can’t imagine that a tiny little change every generation, over a million generations, would add up to a big number. Or that in this case, where we’re talking about, abiogenesis or evolution or the origins of life, we’re talking about, what are the odds that this molecule would self form? Well, we, you know, if there’s a ten to the 70th, interactions, and the odds of it are ten to the 69th, it’s not going to happen. Well, that’s still a really big number that you’re left over with. Even though they’re both big numbers, the space you have for it to happen is a large number. And I think there’s a general. There’s a book called enumeracy that talks about this, about there’s a lack of sort of math skills in the population of the world. And I’m wondering if, that plays into the types of calls you got. But to your point, he was a. Claimed to be a chemical engineer. All they do all day long is math. So, I don’t know where that leaves us with him.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Well, yeah, and the thing with evolution, and them not understanding how small changes over a long period of time can add up to big changes, like morphological changes. I think that a lot of them have this concept of evolution as either sort of pokemon evolution, or they. They think of literally one species giving birth to a totally morphologically different species. Yeah.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: If we descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Right, right. Yeah, yeah. They can’t. It seems like they can’t grasp, grasp, like, small changes in organisms where they’re not so different, you know, from the predecessors. But then on down the line, they become so different that, like, they wouldn’t be able to interbreed. Like, ring species is a good example that, like, they. They. They can’t understand how that is an example of evolution. But the fact that you can take one species, put it in different environments, and then they adapt to those environments, and once they adapt for long enough, they get, to a point where they can’t breed. Like, both populations wouldn’t be able to breed with each other, but they can breed between, you know, you know, the steps that they go through right within their own populations. And so, like, they just. They can’t.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: For the listeners who may not know a ring species, typically the way I envision it is you imagine a very large lake, and you’ve got species a at 09:00 and then you’ve got different species around the lake in a clock pattern. And any given species can interact with and reproduce with the species that are adjacent to it on the lake. But if you move far enough away, for example, across the opposite side of the lake, those species can’t reproduce. And we find that today. And the only explanation that anybody’s ever posited that actually explains it and makes predictions about it that are accurate is evolution.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah. And, another important thing for anybody that’s really concerned with having these kinds of conversations with, anybody, typically they expect, organisms to break what’s called the law of monophyll. And that’s, basically, you can organize organisms into these different clades that are pretty much morphologically descriptive, like, of a group of organisms. And, you know, you’re talking about, like, canines, are part of a clade. And whenever we talk about evolution, we’re not talking about like, a canine clade branching off into the feline, right? That’s what, creationists, expect. But anytime an organism evolves, still going to be part of the clade. So no matter what dogs change into in the future, they’re still going to be part of the canine clade. There will probably be other clades that we could probably, that we could organize them around in the future, but they’re still all going to be part of that one clade. And that’s one thing that creationists don’t understand either, is the fact that the law of monophile II prevents a lot of their arguments from being, I guess, reasonable.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah, I’m going to, when I edit this right now, I’m going to put up a picture of Kirk Cameron’s crocoduck to demonstrate what they think can happen. And so for people who are listening, Kirk Cameron of eighties tv fame partnered up with Roy Comfort, who was an australian Christian, apologist who runs a program called the way of the Master. And they went on a tour talking about how horrible, scientists, and atheists are and how great Christianity is. And they got into a series of debates. And what they kept repeating over and over again was, if evolution is true, where is the crocoduck? And he would literally hold up a poster that had a picture that was, obviously photographed, photoshopped, half crocodile, half duck.

>> Ray Comfort: Now, what I’m about to show you does not exist. These were actually created by our graphic artists. But I, want you to keep your eye out for this, because this is what evolutionists have been searching for for hundreds of years. All right? And if you find one of these, you could become rich and famous. So here’s some transitional forms. This is called the crocoduck. Can you see this?

>> Ray Comfort: Crocodile and a duck. All, Right, let’s try another one. This is the bullfrog. Half bull, half frog, or of course, the sheepdog.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: And the famous video of him doing that had the audience just laughing at him because the audience knew enough to know, well, that’s ridiculous. Nobody’s claiming that that should happen. And evolution doesn’t predict that will happen. But here he was making money, and to this day, it still makes a lot of money off of christians who follow him, makes movies. him saving Christmas was the last one he made, putting, this stuff out there and to the point of why you do what you do and why I do what I do. They still say stuff like that. They’ve been corrected on it. Roy comfort has been corrected on evolution a hundred times on air. We have evidence of it. And yet he still will repeat the same misleading or false information. Which leads one to ask, are you, are you lying or just incompetent? And, but yeah, when you, when you start talking about that, my, the crocoduck just sprang to mind immediately.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah. you know, I’m actually a featured antagonist on one of Ray comfort’s quote unquote, movies.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Oh, really?

>> Godless Engineer/John: yeah. yeah. If anybody really wants to see it, it’s it’s on the living Waters channel on YouTube. And it’s called the amazing agent atheist. And basically, yeah, he, he pits me against another atheist that he interviewed. And like, I’m the horrible atheist, the other guy’s the good atheist. And like, the interview that I had with Ray comfort, I’ve actually got a couple of analysis videos on my channel, kind, of describing how he changed things a little bit in the interview to make me look worse. And but in our interview was fine. Like, I was, I was perfectly like, respectful to him and everything. Like, I wasn’t mean, to him or anything like that. But I think the problem was, was that after he interviewed me, he went and he looked at my channel and I had done a video, responding to like one of his, it was like, what was it? He had like a booklet that he was putting out there and I, or something. And so I was criticizing it and then I panted mimed, what I, how I characterize like prayer, and worshiping Jesus as, fellating Jesus. And so I pantomimed fellating Jesus. And apparently that, that just nearly made him vomit. And so, like, I’m pretty honored that I almost made him vomit. Vomit. But at the same time, I just, I find that it’s really weird that he would demonize me for, you know, the interview that I gave him just because I have other content that I wasn’t doing to him.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right.

>> Godless Engineer/John: you know, exactly like not to his face or anything.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right.

>> Godless Engineer/John: But I was doing it for my audience because I cultivated a certain kind of audience and. Right. M. I mean, that’s just how my mind works. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know what else to say about it.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: well, I mean, I had no idea that you had that interaction with ray comfort. When I brought him up, it just sort of naturally came up. So now I have to go. Go watch that if I can stomach. Ray comfort. again, I haven’t had to deal with him in about ten years, so, he’s still out doing his thing. I have, I see him pop up every once in a while. So that’s a great segue into why you do what you do. Right. We’ve got people out there like Ray comfort, and others who are better at it out there arguing, not only that there is a God, but that the God is a christian God, like the yahweh God, and that Jesus is the way to salvation. And then finally the latest step over the last ten years has been, and we need to change the United States into a christian nation. That’s sort of where we’ve ended up. Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s sort of what inspires me to do what I’m doing. is, is that a concern of yours? The rise of christian nationalism? Is that something you address on your channel?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Oh yeah. I mean, so on my channel, typically every week I do a live stream on Fridays. I’ve actually had to shift that, when we’re recording this, I’m actually going to be doing one tonight, of this recording. but typically what I’ll have is like a sort of a news segment that I kind of do at the very beginning of that where I highlight like christian nationalist news or anything along those lines. I’ve even had like little segments where I highlight somebody who’s like, you know, influencing politicians. He’s not in the limelight himself necessarily, but he, like him and his ideas are influencing people, that are like in the national I guess discussion over this, and so, you know, I’ll highlight those things. I’ve done several videos where I respond to people that are just blatantly lying about like the founding of our country and well, the United States, of America. And so yeah, it’s definitely a concern of mine, and I’ve been concerned about it, ever since I started doing like the godless engineer thing, which has been about twelve years now.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Wow.

>> Godless Engineer/John: I believe, yeah. and so, it’s a pretty big concern. but I guess my concerns initially came about because like I grew up and I had never encountered like somebody that didn’t believe, and it was always portrayed to me that if you don’t believe in a God, then you’re evil or bad or that’s just a bad thing to be. Right. And so I’ve always tried to, I guess, be sort of like a beacon in the fog or, you know, something like that, for people that are either doubting or have never thought to doubt what they believe. And so I’ve, I’ve always tried to make sure that I craft, like, either memes or videos so that I can teach my audience in a way that they’ll remember, like, you know, teach them about good arguments against God’s existence, trying to use, my own kind of brand of humor and everything like that, because I know I find it easy to remember things whenever it, you know, entertains me. And so I try to do that for people. I try to find interesting videos, where I can cover a certain topic and I present my own, like, arguments against them or try to present reasons why they are wrong about things, but, you know, with my own kind of comedic flavor. And, you know, that’s kind of where I’ve really focused, is just trying to, you know, add my voice to the plethora of voices out there that are having this discussion, about God and religion and all of that. And I guess sort of, attacking that first. And, I mean, that’s where I started off at. And then once 2015, 2016 rolled around and we started seeing more and more and more and more christian nationalism creep in, that became more of a focus, at least than it was before, because now we have politicians that are saying the things that, you know, these crazy apologists were saying just like five years prior to that. And so now you have people that are just full blown. They’re advocating for theocracies, and, you know, they want to force, people to be a christian. They want to force other religions out of the country. They want to force women, ah, to stay in the kitchen. They want to force people, to adhere to their own particular status quo. And, they’re using religion in order to do that. And a, lot of times they’re, they’re abusing people’s religious sensibilities in order to convince them that they should also want these things. And so that’s why I try to do content, where I point out, you know, christian nationalists that are saying crazy, wacky things, it’s to raise awareness that these are things that are being said and that, and I typically try to provide good counterarguments or good counter, information that shows why they’re wrong about these things. Like, for tonight’s show, there’s this guy that’s actually drawing an analogy between how the constitution was written and the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. Like, apparently those things are analogous to each other. And so now I’m rolling my eyes.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Trying to think, okay, so is, is the war that we fought to win the constitution? Is that the passion? I’ll be eager to hear what you cover because that’s kind of out there. You’re right.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah. well apparently the passion part happened prior to the writing of the constitution.

>> Godless Engineer/John: So that I guess that would be the revolutionary war and writing like that leading up to 1787. and then he portrays the writing of the constitution as happening in three days, which is similar to Jesus’s three days in the tomb that apparently they’re getting.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Okay.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah, they locked themselves in, ah, what he calls a tomb for three days and then came out on the other side with the constitution totally not informing the audience that oh well, there was three months of like debating, right, and crafting of, I believe it was 23 articles. And then this period of time he’s talking about is when they whittled it down from 23 to seven. And that was in a time span of less than four days. But then when you consider Jesus wasn’t even in the tomb, like you know, supposedly in the gospels for like a little more than a day and a half. So like none of it makes sense.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: I know there was a, you probably familiar with it. There was a channel years ago, he’s still doing, he’s changed his format called Mister Deity. and he would do these shorts where he would have three people be him playing God and Jesse, who was Jesus? And I forget the name of who was the holy spirit. But there were, there’s one episode where they’re talking to Jesus about how he needs to go down and get crucified. And Jesus is really not into this. He’s like, no, no, no. And he’s like, yeah, but three days dead, he’s like, you know, go in on a Friday night, we’ll get you out Sunday morning. It’s a quick, I don’t know, 26 hours. That’s exactly what happened. So, oh that’s great. I we laugh about it, but I’m glad you’re covering it because ten years ago or more, if somebody like that had gotten up on a stage and gave a speech like that, it would have been a big fat. So what are you, are you like, what’s your point? And who the hell is going to listen to this? And now I realize how naive I was back then because I know that people will listen to it. They will sit there and listen they will nod their head and go, oh, my gosh. The parallels are stunning. The only explanation is that this is a God inspired country, because look at the numbers. They’re all the same numbers that this guy came up with. So, thank you for covering it. Sometimes I do those episodes, and I sort of sell it as I watched this, so you don’t have to.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah. And, I mean, the. The christian nationalist narrative is, rapidly changing, and it’s. It’s rapidly, I, would say, evolving into, like, more and more crazy things because, like, another. Another story that I read, the other day was, a liberty university guy who was quoting, Jerry Falwell, like, the senior, and basically saying how the separation of church and state is alive from the devil to prevent christians from inserting their christian doctrines into law. And that was said back in the seventies or the eighties. And so, it’s crazy how we’ve gotten to this point where the crazy things that people didn’t really put a lot of stock in before, they’re now coming back around and it’s like, oh, okay, well, yeah, it’s a lie from the devil, because you have so many politicians now that, that claim that the separation of church and state just isn’t in the first Amendment.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Correct.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Clearly is. And, so this kind of thing has been years and years in the making.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah, yeah. So my background is, I’m an attorney. For those of you who may be viewing this elsewhere, that’s. That’s my background and my distinct memory of the first time I heard that argument that, oh, the constitution doesn’t contain the phrase separation of church and state, which then gets mutated into, there is no separation of church and state in the constitution. Was Michelle Bachmann back when this was like, 2012 or something like that, when she’s in the mix for being candidate for vp or president or something like that. And she was speaking in front of a group of students that were law students. She was at a law school, and she then said, separation of church and state isn’t in the constitution. And the entire class just laughed at her. And she had this embarrassed look on her face like, whoa, did I say something funny? She had obviously just been told this as if it means anything, because this is something that I observe all the time on my channel, is the way that a lot of christian nationalists will get by with what they say or justify what they say is they will tell you something that is true and then leave a whole bunch of information out. It is true. The phrase separation of church and state does not exist in the constitution at all. She’s absolutely right. But neither does the phrase fair trial, things right to privacy, and all of these other rights that we all agree are enumerated in the Constitution, even though they don’t use these shorthand phrases, they exist in the constitution. I don’t think she understood that. I think she literally thought that it was a brilliant point to point out that the words separation of church and state don’t exist in the constitution, and then she got laughed at. Unfortunately, she’s a better politician than we are, because she realizes her job is not to convince those law students. It’s not to convince me or you. It’s to win a few people who might have been in the middle and really never paid attention in school and kind of go to church, and they know about God, and God is good, and Jesus is good. That’s what I’ve been told. And, oh, wow. There’s no separation of the church and state. I heard this thing that Jerry Falwell told me the other day that somebody said about what you just said, that. That it’s a lie as well. I guess it’s just a liberal lie, and that’s how it works. They have no problem putting half truths out there, because they know that if you repeat it long enough, the middle one or 2% of the country that could lean either way might lean to their side, and that’s all they need to take over the country.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah, they’re. They’re definitely not trying to convince more educated people, because they. More educated people are going to understand how wrong they are. So they’re definitely speaking to somebody that is not educated, at least in the area that they’re trying to swing them. and I guess in this case, it would be education and, like, us history or us law.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah. Yeah. Well, let’s talk about education and background for a bit. we know what you do and where your interests are, but where did it come from? So, if you’re comfortable, do you mind, explaining to my listeners what your journey was? Were you. Were you raised in a religious household? How did you come to realize that you would use the word atheist to describe yourself?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah, I mean, that’s a. That’s a good question. so I grew up. Yeah. so, I grew up catholic, a very catholic family. My mom would later leave, catholicism for a different denomination, but my. My dad’s family remained catholic, and, so I grew. I grew up catholic, and it was just kind of, like, automatically assumed, like, God exists, Jesus is a son. I went to catholic school until about the fourth grade, fifth grade, I started going to public school. and so I wasn’t like, deeply religious. I was religious, but, you know, in the sense that, like, oh, I know I’m supposed to go to church on Sundays, and we go to church on Sundays until like, you know, family dramas happened and we left the catholic church. And then it was kind of like, we go every once in a while kind of thing. So it got lax there for a little bit. And then I would go in and out of being deeply religious or trying to be deeply religious, but that was because I felt like that’s what I had to do. Like, oh, this is a point in my life where I’m just lacking this whole religiosity aspect. Like, I’ve always been told that I need to be, like, religious, I need to go to church. Like, I just thought that’s what you were supposed to do. And so, like, I, I never considered the idea of not believing, you know, and, it had always been portrayed to me as a bad thing, you know, to not be christian.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: And who portrayed that to you? Was that mostly in your family or was that sort of the, the catholic church that you were exposed to?

>> Godless Engineer/John: I mean, some, some in my family, I guess, we really didn’t talk about that particular aspect too much. It was more, I guess, the society that I grew up in because I, I live in north Alabama, you know, the asshole of the Bible bell. And around here, like, church is pretty important to, like, everybody. And so, like, portraying people as godless, godless heathens or, pagan, wicca, like those things I kind of grew up around. And people regularly look down on people that, that were part of, those other religions or not. No religion at all. And so it’s just kind of portrayed to me just in general as, you know, if you don’t believe in God, then you’re not a good person or something. And so I just kind of believe that. And so for the longest time, you know, I didn’t question my beliefs. You know, I actually regularly felt pretty guilty because I wasn’t going to church more or I wasn’t, I guess, maybe dedicating my life more to God or Jesus or something like that. And so, like I said, I would bounce in and out of being deeply, deeply religious. And like one particular time I was bouncing in and out of it and I was pretty unsure. I, had a friend, who, after a church softball game, actually you know, I confided in him and he was like, well, you’re not really a Christian if you don’t believe in the Bible from COVID to cover, like, as the inherent truth of God.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Wow. And, and he was, do you know if he was Catholic or nothing?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Oh, no, he was a Baptist. I think he’s non denominational now. He actually runs like a faith healing sort of ministry out of Florida, the last time I looked him up. It’s kind of crazy stuff. but, he basically said, you’re not really a Christian if you don’t believe it. it’s the inerrant word of God from COVID to cover. And I’m like, well, then I guess I can’t be Christian because there’s no way that I can believe in everything that is in the Bible, like as inerrant word of God kind of thing. Right. Right. Then I had to figure out what I did believe. And so I spent a long time really trying to figure out what I believed, why I believed it, what my reasons were for believing in certain things. And so I spent a lot of that time either listening to, like, lectures, either from atheists or religious people, or listening to debates. And I felt like I got a lot out of debates. And I guess that’s maybe why I really like debates or like the call in shows stuff that I do, because I really get, I feel like with debates, you really get to see both sides sort of pitted against each other. As long, as long as you have two, two people that are, you know, I guess, knowledgeable in the area and can have a good debate where both I, where both sides are kind of fleshed out and you in the audience can compare which ones are more compelling to you. I feel like that can really help you make a decision. At least it helped me make a decision. I came out, of that not believing in a God. And I have to say the hardest thing for me was actually admitting that I was an atheist because it had been drilled into me for so long that, if you don’t believe in God, then you’re a bad person or you’re going to be a bad person or something like that. And so the hardest thing for me to do was admit that I no longer believed in God. And then after I was comfortable admitting that, like, it’s, I guess it was, it was, it was like my eyes were opened to, like, how much religion, you know, penetrates our society and how important it is to, like a lot of societal things because, and I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, but, for me, like, as soon as I say that I’m an atheist to somebody, like, new that I, I’m just now meeting or something like that in my local area, they go from, like, faintly, religious to, like, uber super religious, like, really quick, like, as if, like their entire, like, their entire life they’ve done nothing but, like, praise God and Jesus and all that kind of stuff. And, like, it doesn’t matter. Like, before then, you know, they were doing all this weird, crazy stuff, m you know, with me, and then it’s all of a sudden, oh, yeah, I’m an atheist. It’s like, oh, how can you be an atheist not believing God? Why are you such a bad person? Kind of thing? And, you know, they just get immediately, like, uber religious. And it. That’s a, that’s a curious reaction.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: it really is. I have not encountered it as much, but I think it’s probably because I am much more reserved around, like, people that I know I’m very open with about, but I don’t. It doesn’t tend to come up too much in, in my particular community, probably because I’m fairly old and my kids are getting grown up and I’m not meeting a lot of new people. You know, it doesn’t, you know, and I’m kind of, you know, I’m used to being, you know, sort of not political, but, you know, that polite rule of don’t bring up, you know, religion, taxes and salary and all that stuff in conversation. But I have, on occasion, had people, even my own family members once. I sort of talk about an issue. If they ask me about it, you can see them sort of questioning, like, they want to know what you like, really, because in their head, they’ve been told, just like you, that atheism equals bad. That’s all I’ve been raised to believe for the vast majority of Americans is, the word atheist is synonymous with bad. In fact, I’ve heard people call. People call me an atheist. Ah, communist, and even an atheist muslim, if you can believe it, because all three of those words are just synonyms for bad in the, let’s call it christian nationalist or MAGA crowd these days. So they just throw them out there without really thinking about what they. What they mean. And I’ve had to, had lengthy conversations with friends and family to explain the subtleties of language and what I truly believe and sort of say, well, so it’s not the label that matters. It’s what you actually are what propositions you’re making, etcetera. to the point that just yesterday I sat down to record an episode that was just an explainer episode to say, okay, I have found that as an attorney and as somebody who is interested in conversations and debates specifically about religion, you don’t get very far unless you define terms. You just don’t. And that’s the nature of human interaction. It’s the problem with human language. So let’s define terms. And I started talking, I had an outline of just some terms I wanted to explain, and I looked up and it had been two and a half hours of me talking and it’s like, it’s practically unusable. Right. I’m not going to put out a two and a half hour episode where I just talk about, you know, the mind body problem and all of these things that come up when you start talking about beliefs and, confidence levels and evidence and all of that sort of stuff. But you have to, if you really want to convince somebody that you’re not Satan, you have to say, in short, I just answer the question, do you believe in God? With I’m not convinced, and you can even add comma. Yet. I found that sort of puts people at ease. It’s almost like in the seventies when people would say, I’m not an atheist and I’m an agnostic, and people still do that today. But back then that was like the pat answer, I’m not an atheist, I’m an agnostic, when really they were an atheist. Because if you lack a belief in God, that’s kind of the definition. But if you say, I haven’t been convinced that there’s a God yet, that sort of, I’ve seen people sort of visibly relax and be like, oh, so you’re not saying that there is no God. I’m like, no, that would be a positive claim that I’d have to support with evidence and argument, and I’m not prepared to do that at this time. Like, there might be gods out there that I haven’t been proposed to me, and you might be able to give me some evidence that God might come down and just write it on my heart. But until now, nobody has convinced me that there’s a God. But I’m open to new information, and that’s a lot of words. That is a long conversation to have to put somebody at ease. And that is what the christian nationalists and the MAGA hats depend upon, that we’re not going to have those conversations, that we’re just going to hear atheist, you’re going to think bad and then you’re going to vote for the God fearing whomever is on the ballot. So I’m glad that you’re out there having those conversations as well. I, sorry you had to go through that. Growing up. How did you handle that transition you were talking about, you know, coming to accept the fact that it was okay to use the label atheist? Did you, did you go through an angry atheist phase like a lot of people do, or did you, did you transition right away into this sort of advocacy that you’re doing?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Well, I mean, I guess I did go through kind of a, ah, angry atheist kind of phase. you know, just I guess, generating like, images or memes, for shock value maybe. and even when I started doing videos, I wasn’t afraid to really put like my thoughts out there and, you know, growing up in the south and everything like that and around, especially around my family, like, you know, even though my family’s like religious, like they love to throw out curse words. And so, you know, some of my brand is, is how I just simply don’t hold back on, like using a full range, I guess, of the english vocabulary and you know, whenever, when I did become okay with you know, using the label atheist and explaining to people, you know what I mean when I say that I don’t believe in goddess. some of my family members, they took offense to it and they took offense to it because like, on Facebook, I was very open and out about it. Like I wasn’t, I’d spent my entire life being shy, you know, of putting my own opinion out there.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yes, that’s a great way of saying it. I think that, I’m sorry to interrupt, but a lot of people, especially in the south, go through that exact experience, so I’m glad you use that word. I’ve never, it’s never clicked before. But being shy in the context of this religion, even your personally, but, yeah, okay, I’m sorry, go ahead. But that really spoke to me.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah, well, I mean, that’s, that’s what I felt was very, very shy about putting my opinion out there, especially opinions on religion and everything. And so I guess I just kind of decided that I wasn’t going to be that way anymore. Like I, you know, I, I’m secure in my convictions about what I don’t believe in and what I do believe in. And, you know, I’m just going to be confident about it because I feel I feel like there’s a lot of people out there that aren’t confident, like, in that kind of way. So I wanted to be like somebody that people could look up to and be like, oh, well, you know, you know, if that redneck can get up there and he can, you know, be confident about this, so can I sort of, you know, kind of inspiring people to be more confident about not believing in goddess. And so, but with that in mind, like, my family didn’t take too kindly to it. And so that’s how godless engineer actually got spun up was because, you know, I had liked and followed some, like, like, Facebook church pages and whatnot. This one church, page put up something about describing Jesus. And I described Jesus as a mental crutch or something like that. Or, a crutch for the weak minded, I think maybe is what I said. And that really rubbed some of my family members the wrong way, and they unfriended me. And then I had somebody that was like, hey, I get it. You don’t believe anymore, but, you know, you’re chasing people away. Maybe not do that. And so, like, at that point, I was kind of, I guess, in the position of, well, I don’t want to not say anything, but I also want to, you know, stay true to what I had set out to, you know, accomplish. And so that’s why I created the godless engineer page and then to keep peace in the family and amongst friends. I didn’t exactly, I wasn’t as blatant on my personal profile, so I kept it on the, on the ge page, and I only, I would only randomly mention things like on my, on my personal profile. And, that seemed to calm things down, a little bit. But, you know, as time went on, you know, things, you know, I have.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: A question for you at that point. Sorry. so the question I have, sorry to interrupt, is the other side, quote, unquote, is not shy, right? They, they’re the ones wearing the crosses around their neck. They’re the ones with movies about, how evil atheist professors are when they teach, evolution. They’re the ones preaching every day in church that they, that everybody that doesn’t believe what they believe is evil and a sinner and is going to go to hell. Right. They are not shy at all. but they demand shyness of you. How does that make you feel?

>> Godless Engineer/John: I mean, it, it definitely turns on that, that anger part, you know, of, I guess, the angry atheist face. you know, people expected me to shy away from, you know, adding my opinion to the mix. I think that generally that, that angers me. Even, even today, I think I feel like I’ve actually been through therapy and you know, I feel like I have better ways of expressing like my anger now, which people that watch like the the Cullen shows that I do, maybe they would disagree with me, but I feel like I have better ways of expressing my anger, on occasion. And so, I mean, I just express it differently now, but it’s definitely, anger, when people expect me to just sort of sit there quietly and I quote unquote, let the adults talk, you know, about things. I actually had that happen to me, the other day. I was on a, I was watching this guy’s TikTok live and I was commenting and this actually goes back to your definitions thing. I was asking them to define what beauty is and like the criteria for considering something beautiful. And in the call they said oh, we don’t have to define what beauty is. Everybody knows what beauty is, so we don’t have to define it. And I’m just sitting here like, wow, how can, how do you have a conversation about beauty and how it proves that God exists if you’re not going to define what you mean by beauty or give me some kind of criteria to identify something as beautiful? and it would have to be in an ah, absolute or objective way that you would be able to identify something as beautiful. But they were just going with this sort of intuitive notion, of beauty, which is, would be subjective by nature, which I felt like that couldn’t be what they were talking about. But all this to get around to say that eventually got to the part where they were like, have you ever studied any kind of philosophy or anything like that? Like I know you’re an engineer, but have you studied philosophy? And I’m, I’m like, I mean I’ve been having these discussions for twelve years or more. I’ve heard the argument of beauty many times over. Like I don’t have to have a degree in philosophy in order to have the conversation. And so, but that really did sort of anger me a bit to be treated like, oh, you’re not good enough to have this conversation or you’re not educated enough to have any kind of philosophical conversation. And you know, you have christians now that do that. But you know, when I was coming out of Christianity and everything, people really, or at least, in my perspective, I wasn’t, I guess I wasn’t enlightened to the more apologetic side of Christianity.

>> Godless Engineer/John: That was something that I discovered, as I was losing like my religion or my faith, as I was losing it, that’s when I discovered the more apologetic side to the discussion. Because prior to that I just had no experience with people that were like pushing back on different religious ideas. Like I don’t know if it was maybe similar to where, where you are, but around here, like everybody just automatically knew each other, believed in God and Jesus. We were all christian and we really didn’t discuss it any further than that. Like, oh, well, what church do you go to? And, you know, people. Yeah, blah, blah, blah church, you know, kind of thing. And like, nobody, nobody had serious discussions on theology or philosophy or anything like that. And maybe that’s just because, you know, I’m in north Alabama, but you know, that was like a totally new side of things that I had just never seen before. And so, like, whenever somebody expects me to just shy away and be quiet about, you know, the ideas that I have, I mean, it really does sort of, you know, anger me and, and depending on the situation, I can blow my top about it. But I typically try to, I guess, respond in a very strong way that, my goal is to show, anybody that’s watching to not allow somebody to shame, you into silence, just because either you’re not professionally trained or anything like that. But just the fact that you’re in the conversation, in not allowing them to shame you into, you know, sulking away and not having the conversation again, that makes me more mad when people do that. That’s why, like on the call that we were talking about earlier, I’m so glad that the person called in, but also didn’t, take like me bringing up counterpoints as getting them to stop, like, you know, saying anything, but rather to reconsider what they were that to reconsider their position and what they were saying. And I’m glad that was kind of the result was like, well, I’m gonna have to go back and think about that. Like, that’s always my goal is to get people to critically think about their position and to critically consider the counter arguments and all that kind of stuff. And when, if somebody’s goal is just to shame somebody into silence, like, I feel like that’s not the way to have the conversation. And like I said, it makes me angry.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah, I had, similar experiences to you. Not here. I live currently sort of in between Washington and Baltimore. But I was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, and my mother’s whole side of the family is from Texas, so I do have a lot of exposure to the south. And you’re right, the question is always, what church do you belong to? Nothing. You know, are you christian? It was just presumed that you went, that, a, you were christian, b, you went to church. And that was just sort of a how’s that weather going today? Type of conversation. It was just something you said to start a conversation and make small talk. And it always. I always found it funny because when I grew up, my, my family was not religious, but my mother did take us to church occasionally. But that’s, that’s about it. I went to a school that was religious school, but just because it was a private school that my parents managed to get me into, because South Carolina schools in the seventies were crap, but that was it. And then people would just presume that I knew all of this stuff and I didn’t. I didn’t know how to take communion, I didn’t know when to kneel, when to pray, and how to sing psalms and all of that sort of stuff. So when I would go to these events, it was very awkward for me. And there was just this presumption that you would know, and it sort of permeated society. I felt very different, a very different vibe when I moved up here. This was in 19, 83, 84 that my father retired from the navy. We moved up here to DC area because he was going to be a contractor. Very different culture. Very, very, very diverse culture. And I never, ever felt, anybody making that presumption or even bringing the topic up. It just wasn’t something that was done. so I think I sort of escaped a bit. But I can relate to that sort of sense of shyness from back when I was in South Carolina, where it was, oh, I’m just. I’m the minority. I’m supposed to sit down and shut up. I’m uneducated. There’s obviously something out there I’m missing because I’m not convinced there’s a God, but all these other people are. So they’re gonna run the show, and I’m just gonna. I’m just gonna sort of sit at the kitty table, as you sort of alluded to. and going back to that comment you had about, the beauty, you know it when you see it. it reminds me there was justice potter on the supreme court. There was an obscenity case back in, I forget, this is a long time ago. and he famously, It wasn’t the exact test he enumerated, but he used shorthand of, I can’t define obscenity, but I know it when I see it. And that was some. Some people actually lauded that as a. Like, a brave thing to say, like, he’s being honest. But a lot of people criticized him for the same reasons you’re criticizing the person about, not being able to define beauty yet. Holding people accountable for knowing what it is, is. It’s ridiculous. You can’t. You can’t move forward in an organized fashion without defining your terms. If you’re. If you’re going to say, I believe x because of beauty, or it is beautiful, and you can’t define beauty, you haven’t made a cogent argument. You haven’t made sense. Okay? So thank you. That was a great interview. part one, I should say, from godless engineer. I really do appreciate the time that he spent with me. Please stay tuned for the next episode, where we will delve into mythicism. What is it? What is the evidence that supports that position? Is there anything that. That argues against it? It’s an interesting conversation, and one in which godless engineer is a bit of an expert. So I hope you stay tuned for part two, which will be coming up right now. Why did I say right now? So I hope you stay tuned for part two, which will be coming up next. Have a good one. This has been the cross examiner podcast, the Internet’s courtroom in the case of rationality versus religion. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider subscribing. See you soon.

The Cross Examiner/Graham: Welcome to another episode of the Cross Examiner Rocket Docket, where you are the judge here. We brief you on the news of the day so that you can issue a ruling. Get ready to hear the arguments, because court is now in session. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the Cross examiner podcast. I am your host, the cross examiner. I am an attorney, I am an atheist, and I am alarmed. I’m alarmed by the rise of christian nationalism in the United States. And more importantly, I’m alarmed by the massive amount of misinformation that is powering that rise. Today is a rocket docket episode. these are unscripted, usually reacting to current events. And today we’ll be talking about one special trick that you can use to get out of criminal prosecutions if you’re Donald Trump. the story, of course, is about Eileen Cannon, the judge, federal judge down in Florida, has dismissed a case, the secret documents case, against Donald Trump. And her reasoning, is being called into question. And rather than have you rely on talking heads on news shows that give you just a summary statement, you know what I like to do? I like to dig into the details so you can fully understand what’s going on here and why this is, ridiculous. But to tell this story, I have to start with another story, as is so often the case. And where I’m choosing to start this story is with the Vietnam war. So you may recall that there was a war in Vietnam that the United States engaged in, and a lot of people were unhappy with that war. some of those people had access to secret information and learned that the United States had been lying to the world, lying to the citizens, for not just the current administration, but previous administrations. One of those people was named Daniel Ellsberg. He was a MIT researcher that had also worked for the, Rand foundation and other places, who had access to information during his research that proved that, things like, Lyndon Johnson, who had campaigned on staying out of Vietnam or not escalating Vietnam, nothing sending troops to Vietnam had planned all along, prior to the, election, to at least bomb, Vietnam, if not go, increase, war efforts there. in fact, when he was campaigning, he criticized his opponent, Goldwater, for being a hawk, for wanting to increase, hostilities, while all along, these papers revealed that he had planned to do that as well. They contained a lot of other information. The illegal bombing of Cambodia and Laos, all sorts of stuff that, if it got out, would utterly turn public opinion against the United States, at least against the, administrations who had concealed this information. And it dated back to the Kennedy administration. These came out because Daniel Ellsberg chose to reveal them. And the way he did that was by giving them to the New York Times. I think the best way to really understand what this was like is to listen to a few news reports. So here is a united, press, talking about the history of this case and here, all followed by, Walter Cronkite reporting on the day that Daniel Ellsberg turned himself in for having stolen these documents and, being in possession of, national secrets, just like Donald Trump. So let’s give a listen.

Speaker B: The Trisha Nixon wedding was dutifully reported the next day in newspapers all over the nation. But on that Sunday, June 13, one paper had something on the front page that no other paper had. For on that day, the New York Times began publishing top secret, sensitive details and documents from 47 volumes that comprise the history of the us decision making process on Vietnam policy, better known as the Pentagon papers. After the government said the publication of this material would cause irreparable injury to the defense interest of the United States, a federal judge ordered the Times to temporarily halt the publication of the papers. The Times said what was revealed had to be revealed, that, people had the right to know. Times publisher Arthur och Sulzberger.

The Cross Examiner/Graham: These papers, I think, as our editorial said this morning, were really a part of history that should have been made available, considerably longer ago. And I, just didn’t feel there was any breach of national security in the sense that we were giving secrets to the enemy.

Speaker B: In Boston, Doctor Daniel Ellsberg, the man named as the source of the Pentagon copy that appeared in the New York Times, turned himself in today to federal authorities. David Culhane reports. Even if the FBI had wanted to.

The Cross Examiner/Graham: Arrest him outside the courthouse this morning, they probably couldn’t have done it. Ellsberg was walled off by a mob of newsmen and supporters as he admitted that he was indeed the man who.

Speaker B: Brought the Pentagon papers to the press and congressional leaders.

Daniel Ellsberg: In the fall of 1969, I took the responsibility, on my own initiative, of delivering to the chairman, the foreign relations Committee of the US Senate, or the information contained in the so called Pentagon papers, including the several studies on negotiations which have not been given to any newspaper. I could only regret that I had not, at that same time, release that information to the american public through the newspapers. I have now done so. I can no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the american public. I did this clearly at my own jeopardy, and I am prepared to answer to all the consequences of these decisions. That includes the personal consequences to me and my family and whatever these may be.

The Cross Examiner/Graham: Hey, wait a minute.

Daniel Ellsberg: After all, be more serious than the ones that I and millions of other Americans have risked before this in the service of our country.

The Cross Examiner/Graham: So you may be wondering, what does this have to do with Donald Trump, other than Ellsberg had stolen secrets and Trump has stolen secrets? Well, this case created concern in the Nixon administration. The Nixon administration was not implicated by the Pentagon papers directly. In fact, Nixon’s political instincts were to just stay out of it because it had nothing to do with anything he was doing. But Henry Kissinger advised Nixon to try to prosecute Ellsberg and try to prosecute the New York Times, for, publishing this information. Now, people debate why Kissinger did that. Some people say that it’s because he had a previous relationship, you know, a close working relationship with Ellsberg, and he wanted to distance himself from him for whatever the reason, Nixon went along with that and tried to shut down the New York Times publication of this information. At first, they succeeded. The district court held that, the New York Times could not publish this, and they put a temporary restraining order on them from publishing any more papers after they had published some of them. Then the case ended up going to the Supreme Court. And in a six three opinion, the court held, in order to prevent people from speaking ahead of time, which is called prior restraint, the court pointed out, you have a massive burden, as the government, to show imminent harm to national security or actual loss of life, things like that. That’s a really hard thing to do, to say, I’m going to prevent you from even speaking before you say what you’re about to say. And the court recognized that. So the New York Times was allowed to publish everything. And when it all came out, Ellsberg, the case against Ellsberg was dropped eventually because it was ludicrous. The amount of information in here that was damning to the people that were pushing for this military, industrial complex effort to keep, making money off of the war. Justifications, for staying in the war included things like, we don’t want to be embarrassed by leaving. Like, that was 70% of why they were staying in the war. so Ellsberg was vindicated. He was sort of the original Edward Snowden, if you will, chose, as you heard in the news report, to say, I’m willing to go to prison for this, but I don’t want thousands of our boys being shipped off. And again, lower and middle class boys, never the upper class boys, right? Never the sons of the rich and powerful, Mister bone spur, Donald Trump. I don’t want our young boys being shipped off, like hamburger meat and just, destroyed in Vietnam. So he did a wonderful thing. So the reaction to this in the Nixon administration, in addition to going after the New York Times, was to create an internal security, team, information security team, that became known as the plumbers. And the way that they got to be known as the plumbers is one of them was asked by their grandmother, what do you do? Or what are you going to do in the White House? And he told her, I’m there to fix leaks, as in the leak of information. And she said, oh, so you’re a plumber. And he liked that so much that he, I think he put a sign up on his office or piece of paper that said, the plumbers. And that’s what they became known as. Shortly after the plumbers were formed, a. Nixon’s enemy list is started by White House aides, though Nixon may not have been aware of it. and it was, quote, to use the available machinery of the federal government to screw our political enemies. Does this sound familiar? Does this what Trump and project 2025 are swearing to do? You’re going to see a lot of these echoes. So then, on September 3, 1971, the plumbers, G. Gordon Liddy, and others, break into the offices of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. Daniel Ellsberg, the man who, released the Pentagon papers. And they did not find anything at that point. They didn’t find any files, although his psychiatrist said that there was a file on the ground for Ellsberg, and it was open. So they may have been lying about that and may have never, been forced to release whatever they stole or took pictures of. Then we have, what’s the next step? So J. Edgar Hoover dies May 2, 1972, and Patrick Gray is appointed the acting FBI director. And then shortly after that, about three weeks after that, May 28, 1972, the plumbers break in to the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in, Washington, DC, and bug telephones of the staffers. They realized that there was a problem there, and they had to go back in to fix some of the bugs and steal more information because they wanted to spy on the Democrats. Because there was an election going on. Nixon wanted to win a second term. So on June 17, 1972, they go back to the Watergate, Watergate complex and break in again to plant more bugs and fix the bugs that they’d planted before. Now, they had lookouts. There was a restaurant called Howard Johnson’s across the street from the Watergate complex. And there was a lookout posted there. But he was distracted, just like you see in the movies. It’s kind of incompetent. Like, I I don’t know if breaking in to spy on, political enemies of the president and committing what is could be a felony is humdrum for these people. But he was distracted by watching some b movie on tv called the attack of the puppet people. Like, not even a good movie. And he didn’t notice when police showed up. And the police showed up because an alert security guard at Watergate noticed that some doors had their Ydez latches taped over so that when you close the door, it wouldn’t lock. And at first, he just took the tape off, thinking somebody was moving something in or out. But then when he patrolled back, after a while, he saw the tape was there again. And that’s when he called the police. They show up. The lookout is watching attack of the puppet people. They end up arresting, g. Gordon Liddy’s team, the plumber run team, at, 02:30 a.m. m in the democratic, national committee offices. So this is, the beginning of the unraveling of the Nixon administration is when this arrest starts happening. And you may have heard of, Bob Woodward, Woodward and Bernstein, who investigated this. And they got a tip from, somebody at the time. They used a code word, deep throat, who ended up being FBI agent Mark felt. We only found that out very recently. For 50 years, nobody knew who this was, but basically told them to follow the money. That was the big line. If you’ve ever seen the film, all the president’s men’s great movie about this, he tells them, follow the money. So they start investigating how these are burglars. These, foreign national burglars at the Watergate building were paid, and they found payment records and invoices. And this is how people get caught all the time. And it ran into the White House. And very quickly, people lawyered up. It was obvious that there was a problem. So meanwhile, and by September, they’re indicted at federal grand jury, and in November, Nixon is reelected in a landslide. It was the largest plurality of votes in american history. I think it is to this day, if I’m not mistaken. So don’t be, don’t be fooled by your, what you know now about Nixon. He was very popular, right? He was a horrible, evil, racist, misogynistic, horrible man. But he was insanely popular again, just like Trump is today. He’s got a huge amount. Millions and tens of millions of people are going to vote for him and he’s probably will win this election, especially after the assassination attempt. I can’t believe that I’m saying that past cross examiner would be amazed to hear those words coming out of my mouth, but that is, that’s the reality we’re living with. So he’s inaugurated and they need to appoint, ah, a, new FBI director and they begin hearings for Patrick Gray. At his confirmation, Gray testified that he had complied with an order from John Dean, who was White House counsel under Nixon, to provide daily updates on the Watergate investigation to the White House. And this was a real problem. The Department of Justice is supposed to be at arm’s length from the president. The president can hire, fire the attorney general, but that’s supposed to be pretty much all he should do. And this is just like Trump, right? Nixon, it comes out, he’s going to fire a bunch of people, he’s going to, he’s going to put pressure on the attorney general’s office to protect him, just like Trump did. You may remember Trump fired a bunch of people to try to protect him during the Russiagate, right. in instances, investigation. he fired acting attorney General Sally Yates, he fired us attorney Preet Bahara, he fired FBI director James Comey, he fired deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein. Side, note, I took a class from Rod Rosenstein when I was in law school. I disagree with him politically. He, was my professor. He taught, federal prosecutor, the role of the federal prosecutor’s office. And I took that class as an elective. He was an excellent professor. He brought, assistant us attorneys with him and I learned a lot from them. I disagree with his politics, but I think at his core he is a smart person. So, yeah, I was, I was saddened to see that that happened. But you know, when you’re going into that job, he was, he’s the one who, who said, hey, it’s my job to, to land the plane of this investigation. And the press debated whether he meant, like, for Trump or not. I don’t think he was in a fan of Trump. I think that he was trying to help the country and he stepped in, tried to help, got fired because he wouldn’t do what Trump wanted to do. I think that’s sort of the proof is in the pudding. He fired acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, he fired, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, he fired, ah, acting FBI director Christopher Wray. He fired, he tried to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, right. That’s what we’re dealing with today, special counsels. So Trump is, is just like Nixon. So here we have the Nixon White House ordering Gray to give them daily updates. And Gray testifies at his hearing that John Dean, White House counsel, had, quote, probably lied to FBI investigators. Again, more unraveling of what’s going on. So, they need a new attorney general. And the problem is, by this point, Congress is got blood in their nose, they’re on the scent of Nixon, and they are chomping at the bit to get, an investigation going. And what Congress does is say we aren’t going to confirm any attorney general unless they appoint a special prosecutor to the Watergate affair. So, Richardson, ah, this is, Elliot Richardson is nominated and he calls somebody, that you, you should know this name, Archibald Cox. He ends up appointing Cox as special prosecutor. And by saying he will do that, Congress approves of Richardson’s appointment as attorney general. So Congress, is well aware. That’s, that’s the first, 1st thing you should remember. Congress is well aware of the existence of special prosecutors. And they insisted upon them because they wanted independence from the executive. That’s what they wanted. A whole bunch of things happened. I’m going to skip. There’s a, whole bunch of things we’re going to skip to the Saturday night massacre. The Saturday night massacre is when, in a single evening, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson, the guy I just talked to, to fire Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor. Richardson refuses and resigns immediately. Nixon then calls Deputy attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox. He refuses and resigns. So this is just like what we saw with Trump, right? With Jeff Sessions and my old professor Rod Rosenstein, getting people, trying to get people fired to find somebody who will end this investigation into him. So Ruckelhaus resigns, and Nixon then finds the third most senior official at the Justice Department, which is solicitor general Robert Bork. You may remember Bork as a law professor, and he had a bunch of stuff, there’s a whole term called getting borked now in the legal history, we won’t go into that. Bork said that he wanted to resign, that he would do it and then he would resign afterwards. But Richardson and Ruckelhaus, who had resigned, encouraged him to stay on because they needed basically adults in the room, they needed somebody there who would possibly be a check on Nixon’s power. Now, how did that work? What was the order of our operations there? I don’t know. Did he have that conversation? And they convinced him. Go ahead. We’ve, we’ve both of us resigned. This is going to be the biggest scandal in us history. You don’t need to resign. Go ahead and get rid of Cox and then stay on. This was the final nail in the coffin for Nixon. The impeachment process against Nixon started a week later, about ten days after the Saturday night massacre. Meanwhile, public pressure was so great that Nixon, was forced to appoint a new special prosecutor after Cox was fired. And that was, Leon Jaworski. He is the special prosecutor now in charge of investigating all crimes related to the election. That’s how broad the power was. Remember I told you Gray was going to appoint Cox? And. And Gray’s appointing of Cox was part of the deal of him getting approved as attorney general. Well, in order to convince Cox to be the special prosecutor, Gray had to agree with Cox to make it a fairly broad authority in the appointment. Cox had woken up the morning he got the call. He woke up and he had lost hearing in one of his ears. And he later found out that would be a permanent hearing loss, and he was not feeling up to the task of becoming the new special prosecutor in the. In the crosshairs of the Nixon administration. Right. so Richardson did some wheeling and dealing to convince Cox to come along. He is given this authority to investigate anything with any crimes related to the election, and this is how we handle it. Right. So if Trump were serious about the election being stolen, this is what he would have done. Create a special prosecutor, give them broad authority, an independent. That’s why we have special prosecutors, independent from anybody. I can’t control you. All I can do is hire or fire you. And that’s what Cox had. He would. Trump would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate any crimes related to his law. Election loss right before he loses office and get that ball rolling. He knew he had no evidence, which is why he didn’t do this. So Nixon appoints Jaworski. He gets a subpoena ordering Nixon to release the White House tapes. The Nixon tapes. And Nixon fights that subpoena, and that goes all the way up to the Supreme Court in a case called us v. Nixon. And that is where we jump back into today’s opinion by just Judge Eileen Cannon, because she ignores us v. Nixon and other cases. So thank you for going on that journey with me. I wanted to make sure you under sort of understood how important this was to the country when this us v. Nixon case comes to the supreme Court in the. In the opinion, which I believe is eight to one, let me make sure it’s yes, a unanimous opinion, I think. Yes. Rehnquist, recused himself because he had previously served in the Nixon administration as assistant attorney general. So that was a time even Rehnquist, who I disagree with on his judicial philosophy, but this was a time, this was 1974, when this case was decided, when justices would actually recuse themselves due to even the appearance of impropriety or an appearance of a conflict of interest. I’m pretty sure Rehnquist would have, joined the majority. Okay, so it would have been a nine to one. It’s an eight, nine to zero. It’s eight to zero. Unanimous opinion saying, yeah, you have to turn over the tapes. You’re not immune from this. You’re not. You don’t have executive privilege like you. You claimed you have to give this over to the investigator. And during that opinion, they talk about the appointment of the special prosecutor. And I want to read from the opinion right now. This is what the court says about the special prosecutor. in the Watergate case, quote, under the authority of article two, section two, that’s of the constitution, Congress has vested in the attorney general the power to conduct the criminal litigation of the United States government. So, in other words, the Constitution gives Congress the power to create offices and, allow the president to appoint officers with their approval. That’s article two, the executive. And two is powers, I think. Section two. in 28 USC section 516, it has also vested him the power to appoint subordinate officers to assist him, him being the attorney, the attorney general, in the discharge of his duty. So what is 28 USC, section 516? So USC is United States code. That is the law of the United States, the federal law, not your state law. I’m in Maryland. We have our own Maryland code. Code, is just means it’s been codified, it’s been written down, and it’s been published in books and things like that. So 28 USC 516 means volume 28. If it were printed out, they would have books, and the one with the number 28 on the spine would be the section we’re talking about, which has to do with the, among other things, the Department of Justice, section 516. So you would pull out book 28, you’d open up to section 516, and who knows what page number that is. You go by section numbers. and they say, section 516 has vested in the attorney general the power to appoint subordinate officers to assist the attorney general in the discharge of his duties. So let’s read what, that says. So, 28, what did we say 515 is entitled authority for legal proceedings, commission, oath and salary for special attorneys. This sounds very on point. Quote, the attorney general or any other officer of the Department of Justice, or any attorney specially appointed by the attorney general under law, may, when specifically directed by the attorney general, conduct any kind of legal proceeding, civil or criminal, including grand jury proceedings and proceedings, before committing, magistrate judges. Judges, excuse me, which United States attorneys are authorized by law to conduct, whether or not he is a resident of the district in which the proceeding is brought. So the attorney general or any other officer that is appointed by him has the authority to conduct any legal proceeding on the behalf of the United States, criminal or civil. That’s what 5515, says, but they’re not done. The Supreme Court then goes on to say, 28 USC, sections 509, 510, 515, and 533 also are relevant. And then they say, and we’ll read those. They say, acting pursuant to those statutes, 509, 510, 515, 533, the attorney general has delegated the authority to represent the United States in these particular matters. The Watergate investigation, the investigation to any crimes related to the election, to a special prosecutor with unique authority and tenure. The regulation gives the special prosecutor explicit power to contest the invocation of executive privilege in the process of seeking evidence deemed relevant to the performance of these specially, delegated duties. So here we have the Supreme Court acknowledging that these laws passed by Congress give the attorney general authority to appoint special prosecutors. I mentioned a bunch of them. 509, 510, 515, 533. Let’s just skip to 533. That one’s sort of the nail in the coffin, in my opinion. let me look it up here. Investigative and other officials appointment. The attorney general may appoint officials. And then there’s a list of numbers. One, to detect and prosecute crimes against the United States. I, Need I go on? We’re done. This seems pretty clear, right? The Supreme Court said this was okay. They acknowledged all of these sections that grant the prosecutor, this special prosecutor, this authority, as setting the table for why they are going to move forward and render this opinion in the Watergate tapes, issue. If this is so clear, we have to ask, why did Judge Cannon hold that the opposite was true? That’s a great question. I’m glad you asked. The answer is, because Clarence Thomas told her to, and I’m only slightly tongue in cheek on that one. You may remember that there was a kind of a side case in the nation’s history a week or two ago. God, it seems like forever, but it’s only been a couple of weeks where the United States Supreme Court, issued the immunity ruling. Donald J. Trump v. Us. Sound familiar? Nixon v. Us. Trump v. Us. Isn’t it interesting that these. These people keep having these cases? Well, in the immunity, case, keeping in mind this came up as part of a special counsel investigation, into Trump. They didn’t discuss special counsels at all. In the majority opinion, Thomas, who, concurred in the opinion, wrote a separate opinion to add his own two cent. And in his own two cent, he says, hey, if you are unable, through statute, to justify the appointing of a special counsel, then all of this doesn’t matter, because it would be, unconstitutional for anybody that wasn’t appointed legally as a special counsel to prosecute Trump. He. That’s the long and short of it. And he starts by reviewing the appointments clause, article two, section two, clause two of the Constitution, same way that, the Nixon court does. But then he starts twisting, sort of squinting his eyes real closed, looking at the law sideways, looking at the plain language of the statute, and he decides that, maybe, it doesn’t mean what it appears to mean. Maybe, just maybe, if you do all of these sorts of hokey pokey dance, you can come up with a justification for why special, counsels can’t be appointed by attorney general. Now, wouldn’t you like to know what his reasoning is? I would, too. I’ve read. I’ve read his dissent, and I’ve read justice, Cannon’s. Justice, judge Cannon’s opinion. She echoes him word for word, in fact, to such a degree that I think we should take a look at a little video that I queued up. If you are familiar with my podcast. You know, I’m a bit of a fan of broadway musicals. see if you recognize this one and what the point is of me showing it. Understandable. Understandable? Yes, it’s perfectly understandable. Comprehensible. Comprehensible. Not habit. Reprehensible. It’s so deep. Defensive. How you feeling? Very frightened. Are you sorry? Are you kidding? What’s your statement? All I say is throw my choo choo, jump the track. I give my life to bring him back. Stay away from jazz and liquor and the men who play for fun. That’s the thought that you came upon me when we both reached for the gun. So, yes, obviously, if you’re familiar with the musical Chicago, that was Richard Gere as the lawyer Billy Flynn and Renee Zellwerger as Roxy Hart. And he is being a ventriloquist, getting her to say exactly what he wants, and then when he’s done with her, he discards her, obviously. I’m thinking that Thomas is Billy, Flynn and Cannon is Roxy Hart, because she is literally just reciting his opinion basically verbatim in hers. And, I’ll give you the highlights. So there. I’m going to say there, because it’s canon Thomas opinion. Their observation is, hey, for 25 years, we had a law that specifically had language, in it that passed by Congress that, ah, allowed for the appointment of special counsels, special investigators, in the Department of Justice. you may recall the whole kenneth star investigation into Bill Clinton, because Bill Clinton lied about a blowjob. Those were the days, right? Weren’t. Aren’t those the days where we get wind that a president lied by. Here’s. Here’s that sort of. This is where we’ve come. Bill Clinton is under oath talking about something, and he’s asked if he had ever had. If. If there is a relationship, if there is a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. And he says, no, there is not. And later on, it turns out there was, as is evidenced by the famous blue dress. The Republicans clutch their pearls and say, oh, my goodness. A sitting president would lie under oath to protect, to hide his infidelity, that we can’t have a president that would do that. We must impeach him. So let’s get a special prosecutor and see if he. He can be convicted of a crime of lying under oath. And his defense, as you may. May know, the famous Bill Clinton defense is. Well, it all depends on what the definition of the word is, is. And that to the. To the layman is like, yeah, that’s ridiculous. To the lawyer, you’re like, you know, he has a point. The question was, is there a relationship between you and Monica Lewinsky, a sexual one? And he said, no, there is not. Was there? Yes. Is there? No. So this goes to a whole side issue. there’s a lot of case law about how much does a witness have a duty to understand or interpret what the question is versus answering it literally? And I will say you have some duty to exercise some. Some reasonableness there, but it’s not a lot. So, anyway, Clinton. Clinton was being a lawyer. He paid the price. But this is where we were as a country that, you know, we were willing to go to impeachment over that, whereas now we have a president who was elected after the tape came out, where he talked about, grab them by the pussy and they’ll let you do anything. You want, because you’re the president. And after he incited an insurrection and the same GOp that wanted, to impeach Clinton for lying about a blowjob, that was, you know, kind of nobody’s business says, no, no, no, we can’t. We can’t impeach Trump. We can’t convict him. At least he got impeached, but we can’t convict him of, an insurrection and of Russia gate and all of these things. No, no, no, no. That’s. That’s. We want a bold, decisive, president, an executive office. So I hope you can smell the, bullshit, which is bullshit scented hypocrisy is what it is. Okay? So that was done under this enabling statute, a separate statute that then Congress, partially because of the Kenneth Star fiasco, let it expire and said, if the attorney general wants to enable this, this was the implication at the time. The attorney general still has the power to, appoint special counsel. So for 25 years, we had this rule, and now we don’t. So one of the Thomas’s points is they let it expire. That means they don’t want special counsels anymore. Well, no, that would mean that they don’t want this particular statute that gave them this particular budget or authority and all that to be the. One of the ways to appoint a special counsel. There’s lots of ways to skin, a cat, as they say in federal regulations, you can do the same thing using different mechanisms. So his logic falls apart there. And, that’s one of the challenges. The other challenge is, hey, the Constitution says that, the Senate has to approve the appointment of officers, and the special counsel is an officer. And the special counsel, in their response to this, says, yes, I am an officer, but I am an inferior officer. The constitution addresses officers and inferior officers and uses them differently. And Thomas doesn’t give a shit about that distinction. He just says section, 515 and 533. That gives the attorney general the power to appoint officials, does not give him the power to appoint officers. That official is not the same word as an officer or an inferior officer. And because it doesn’t say the magic word, therefore, Senate has to approve the appointment. And because Jack Smith was not approved, the special prosecutor in the Trump case, this is an illegal, unconstitutional prosecution he ignores or decides to not really address, because the issue was not presented at the immunity trial. So he doesn’t address the fact that two district courts and a circuit court have had this argument, expressly argued before them. So this is in Ray jury investigation. So regarding a jury investigation, sometimes you get these weird names when it’s just sort of emotion and things like that, and you’re appealing a decision of a judge. this was published in February 26, 2019. So you may remember what’s going on during this time. Before Trump leaves the White House, a bunch of people are being subpoenaed, and they’re refusing to comply with the subpoena. And here we have Andrew, Miller, is appealing an order holding him in contempt for failing to comply with a grand jury, arguing that the special counsel of appointment is unlawful on the appointment under the appointments clause of the Constitution. He argues exactly what Thomas is saying. The, district court says, no, you’re absolutely wrong. They unanimously say everything that I’ve been reading to you. Go look at 28 USC, section 515, 509, 533, 503. But they do a bunch of fives of, And say, it’s obvious what’s going on here. There’s no way that you even have a case. It’s a very short opinion. They dismiss it almost out of hand. Same thing happens in Virginia. The appellate court, in the case, also agrees that special counsel is obviously empowered. So we have this backdrop where all of the courts that have, argued this on the merit so far, three different courts agree that special counsel is obviously enabled by Congress in these, you know, 28 USC 500, 515 and 533, and. And the others at all, as they would say. We have precedent, where Congress just assumed that they’d granted it when they let the special counsel statute expire and then appointed their own special counsels, Republicans and Democrats alike, using 28 USC 500, 515, 533, and others. Both administrations have done this. Right now, technically, that’s irrelevant. They could have done it and nobody challenged it. So it never got to a court, et cetera. But it did get to a court. We’ve cited those three courts, and they all agreed. Now, those courts are inferior to the supreme court, and Justice Thomas is on the supreme court. So he could overrule them. If he could convince people to bring up, to bring this issue up with him, he didn’t. This issue wasn’t argued in the immunity case, so he didn’t have any reason to start talking about this. It wasn’t argued at all. But the reason he wrote his concurring opinion in the immunity case is because he was talking to judge Cannon. He had seen what was going on with the people who didn’t want to comply with subpoenas. They were making this argument. So he signals to cannon, in his opinion. Hey, here’s an outline. Here’s 20 pages of why I think the appointment of a special counsel is unconstitutional and not supported by statute or precedent or everything else I want to ignore. And Cannon comes along and says, we both reach for the gun. Right? She just parrots what he is saying verbatim. So that’s the context of what’s going on here. It’s obviously false. She has this line that she quotes as a famous line in the law that Congress does not hide elephants in mouse holes. She tries to make this argument that all of these sections, this section, 515, 533, and all of those were intended for very, very small officials. And she also makes this weird argument that it only applies once they’ve already been appointed. And there’s been lots of people writing in the news, the, legal junkies, saying, wait a second. You’re talking. That. You’re saying that the appointment of the official can only occur after they’ve already been pointed by other means. And that seems to be part of her argument. She’s not very clear on that. So it’s a bunch of hand waving. It’s a bunch of ignoring precedent. It’s a bunch of ignoring history to put us right back in the same spot that we were in the Nixon White House. We’ve got an executive who is finding any dupe or chump or crony he can find to try to protect him for. Against the crimes that he committed. Thomas is such a chump. Cannon is such a chump. All these people refusing to testify and getting convicted and arguing this. They are chumps. so I hope I’ve explained this to you. This is. Let’s talk about the consequences of this opinion. Right? Does this mean the prosecution’s over? No. This was not a hearing on the merits of the case. She dismissed the case without prejudice. Without prejudice means you can bring this case again. If I dismiss with prejudice, it’s deemed the final outcome. And because in criminal cases, we have a prohibition against what’s called double jeopardy, you can’t be tried for the same crime on the same facts twice. I can’t keep prosecuting you like, I’m going to charge you with theft. The jury says not guilty. Okay? I’m going to. I’m just going to open another case and say, I’m going to charge you with theft again on the same. For the exact same behavior. That’s unconstitutional. So if a judge dismisses a case with prejudice, they’re saying jeopardy has attached, is what that. What that saying is that. That the person was at jeopardy of being convicted. And when jeopardy attaches, and jeopardy usually attaches when a jury is seated, but it. It can attach at different times, depending on the issues that you’re talking about. So, once jeopardy is attached, a judge will probably dismiss with prejudice, which means you cannot bring the case. Again, she did not do that here. She just dismissed the case. So what are the options for the special counsel? One is to appeal, which it sounds like from news, that is breaking right now. They are going to do. So. This will go up to, the circuit court, I think she’s in the 11th circuitous. And the 11th Circuit has reprimanded cannon twice before in this case, where she has made a ruling. The special counsel has appealed. And at no point was anybody objecting to the special counsel during all of this, except, you know, now. and the 11th Circuit has written opinions that basically, if you read between the lines, say Judge Cannon doesn’t know the law, she’s incompetent, they’re scathing opinions, overturning her rulings and directing her to do the opposite of whatever she’s doing. And that has happened twice in the same case. So this will be the third time the 11th Circuit is hearing something from this court, from Cannons court, that they are most likely going to overturn. Now, if that happens, the Trump team will probably appeal. They’ve been signaled by Thomas. Hey, doors open. Come on in, boys. So they would probably appeal at that point, but that’s not really their game, right? Their game is get Cannon to dismiss this case so that it will take too long to get things going again before the election. And that is what the game has always been. And that is what people have been complaining about, about Cannon. This is kind of a mundane case. This is no different than the Ellsberg case. Again, we’re back at where I started, the Pentagon papers. Ellsberg had possession of secret documents without the authority to do so. That’s a clear violation of federal law. Donald Trump had possession of secret documents without authorization to do so. That, too, is a very clear violation of the law. We have had intervening events, like the immunity case, which told us that, if Trump gets back into the Oval Office for the first time ever, the Supreme Court mentioned when they didn’t even have to, in the immunity case, that Trump could pardon himself. So if he gets elected, he will pardon himself for this case, and that will be the end of it. But even so, even if he can’t, pardon himself, they’ve raised the question that he might be immune against this prosecution, one has to ask if secreting away, our national secrets into your bathroom in huge boxes and shipping them to Bedminster is part of an official act. I don’t think it is, because a lot of the criminal activity took place after he was out of office. So I don’t think he gets immunity for this. So his only win here, his only path to victory, is to get elected and pardon himself and pardon everybody who was moving the boxes around and all that, and then it will be dead. And to quote the reporter who heard that, George Bush the senior, had pardoned everybody, Casper Weinberger, in the, Iran Contra affair on Christmas Eve, years after all of it had broken, the conspiracy to cover up the crime in Iran Contra has now been completed. That will be the sentiment when Trump gets elected, and possibly on day one, just without fanfare, issues pardons to himself for anything he’s ever done, ever. That’s how I would write it. If I miss his attorney, I issue a pardon for anything I’ve ever done that violates federal law up until this point. And if I could, I would write it to say, and anything I ever do. But I don’t think you can do prospective, pardons. Who knows? This court might let them, right? They’ve created a king, and they are the hand of the king. So that’s one option, is they’re going to appeal. It looks like, just from the news breaking now that they’re going to do that, another option would be to refile in another district, they filed down in Florida. I have never researched why. I’ve always been curious, but not curious enough to override all the other stories I want to tell. Why they filed there, that seems crazy. Because they knew they were like cannon adjacent, that they might be assigned to canon. Maybe it’s because the 11th circuit is friendly to their philosophy. They could file in DC where the crime, the papers were taken. They could file in New Jersey, the Bedminster location where he hid the papers. They could file in lots of different places. So they might file somewhere else. But I’m betting for now, they won’t. Well, they can’t, because they’re appealing this, so I’m guessing you can’t do that. I’m not familiar with that procedural history. and then they could, they could drop the case. I don’t think they’ll do that. Or they could say, okay, we’re going to file again in the same, same court with the same judge, which would be dumb, but we’ll use a United States attorney to do it. We won’t use a special prosecutor. We’ll just do it. And that’s kind of the point here, is everything they’ve done, they can do. If they just use a us attorney. Even if you assume cannon. Ah. And Thomas’s twisted logic holds, they could do all of this with just a us attorney. The reason. This is the irony of this whole thing. The reason you appoint a special counsel. Why do we do that? For independence. For arm’s length. And what is. What is Tom, what are Thomas and Cannon arguing? the special counsel is too independent. They weren’t appointed by. By the president, approved by the Senate. They’re too independent. So, that is not what. What Congress intended in these enabling, statutes, 28 USC 533. So, yeah, wow, they could do all of this. They could spend the money. They. Cannon and Thomas also point out a budgetary issue, which you usually also make that, hey, the special prosecutor’s office has been spending money. And if they weren’t appointed properly, if they don’t have a budget for this, then that’s, only Congress can authorize the expenditure of money. Therefore, this whole investigation was unconstitutional for the lack of a budget. I don’t think that holds at all. There is a budget, a sort of a slush fund for special prosecutors. you’d have to first find the first argument to be true, that the appointment of the special prosecutor under 28 USC 533 was unconstitutional, which then kind of makes the budgetary thing moot. But then you could say, okay, then if they weren’t properly appointed, then they couldn’t be spending the money. But that’s. That’s sort of a distraction to try to make them, you know, look good. Although, you know, mad respect. As an attorney, you always make every single argument. In case their first one fails, you go to the second best one, right? The old joke is, you know, the guy says, hey, your dog right here just bit me. And the attorney says, well, my dog would never bite anybody. So that’s. Hold, on a second. It reminds me of the old joke where, a guy is standing next to a lawyer, and there’s a dog next to the lawyer, and the dog bites the man. And the man turns to the lawyer, says, your dog just bit me. And the lawyer says, well, my dog’s nice. He would never, never bite me. And also, you, weren’t really hurt. And also, I did. I didn’t see it happen. How do you know it happened? And finally, I don’t own a dog like you make. You make your best arguments all the way up to, like, the least plausible one that can pass what’s called the laugh test. As long as you’re not going to get laughed out of the room, you make the argument for your client, because you know you’re fighting for your client. And if they authorize you to make those arguments, you’re going to make those arguments. So, that’s kind of what cannon and thomas are doing with the budgetary thing. It doesn’t really hold if the first argument doesn’t, isn’t supported. So that’s what’s going on there. So I hope this was useful. I like telling the stories in their full context. You’re going to hear from the press that headlines are going to be loose cannon, things like that. Right? who needs a gun when you’ve got a cannon on your side? Whatever headlines the reporters are going to come up with. my favorite one was indicted on federal, charges. Try this one crazy trick to get out of it. When they’re talking about this case, I’m pretty sure what will happen is they will appeal. The 11th circuit will reverse, cannons, ruling, and then they will appeal to the supreme Court, which will take forever. And then. And Trump will probably get elected, and then he will pardon himself, and then we’ll never hear about this case again. But it is. It is Nixon 2.0. It is, it is, you know, Watergate tapes 2.0. And it is more evidence of what happens when you let bad people hold, even temporarily, the reins of power in your government. Make no mistake, this is the least of our worries when Trump gets reelected. Right? When he gets reelected, we’ve got Project 2025, which we’ve got to do at least one episode. I’m trying to get an attorney who’s familiar with that, to interview with us. we’ve got. Project 2025 explicitly says, hey, we are going to. We’re going to do what the. What the, the White House staff under Nixon said, the enemies list. That is what Project 2025 is. We are going to use the. What did they say it was? The machinery of the federal government to screw our political opponents. That is explicitly in Project 25, in addition to a whole bunch of other stuff. It’s racist, it’s xenophobic, it’s horrible, horrible stuff. The best tweet I saw about it was, I don’t know why the Heritage foundation spent 900 pages writing Project 2025. I think it’s best read in the original for 14 words. If you’re unfamiliar with what that means, 14 words is a shorthand for, nazi propaganda. Edit out this research. I’m going to just read it. It, And this is, if you’re unfamiliar with it, 14 words is a reference to the most popular white supremacist nazi slogan. This is what was chanted by, David Lane, who is a white supremacist of the worst type. People were saying this at Charlottesville, and the slogan is, quote, we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. That’s what 14 words mean. So when somebody said, I don’t know why it took. Took 900 pages to write project 2025, I think the original 14 words is a better version. They’re spot on. That’s exactly what project 2025 is. So while this case is important because of the outcome, right, of trying to convict Trump and hold him responsible for his crimes, it is more important as a cautionary, tale. Trump was in. In power for four years, and he appointed judges like Cannon, like Kazmeric. I have episode. I have three episodes coming up about Judge Kazmeric and the damage that he has wrought down in Amarillo. Excuse me. and he did so many more things, and this is what you get. You get judges who are bending over backwards and straining credulity to try to find some argument about, well, you know, they had this law, and it doesn’t explicitly, explicitly say officer and all of this sort of stuff, to try to undo mountains of precedent, mountains of history, and come up with the best outcome for their client. Make no mistake about it, Trump is Judge Eileen Cannons client. And I can’t think of a better way to end the podcast than on that sentiment. Thank you for sticking with me. please check out my website if you want to see more episodes or my YouTube channel, where you’re probably watching this now. I also have. This is on podcast. If you’re listening on a, podcast, that’s great. my website is thecrossexaminer.net, where I have extra, information about each episode. And if you enjoy this content and you want more of it, please like and subscribe and maybe even comment on it. That helps the algorithm spread this information. Right now, I am not, I’m nothing monetizing any of this. You don’t hear ads, anything like that. This is a passion project. It’s my advocacy to try to push back against what I see as one of the biggest threats, existential threats, to the United States of America. So thank you for listening, and I’ll see you next time. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Cross examiner Rocket Docket. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider liking and subscribing. We’ll see you soon, Sadeena.

The Cross Examiner/Graham: Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the Cross examiner podcast. I am your host, the cross examiner. I am an atheist. I am an attorney, and I am alarmed. I am alarmed by the rise of christian nationalism in the United States, but more importantly, about the massive amount of misinformation that is powering that rise. Today is a rocket docket episode. I, These are my episodes. I want to get out quickly to react to current developments. And today, we had quite a development. The United States Supreme Court just issued its opinion in Trump v. Us, and we need to talk about it. I’ve read the opinion. I haven’t read all the opinion. I got. I got to be honest, I’ve read the sotomayor’s dissent, the main paragraphs and points of the majority opinion, and, Barrett’s dissent and some of Jackson’s dissent. I should characterize Barrett’s as not a dissent. She’s dissenting from parts of the opinion, not all. And that’s an interesting development. Barrett is really turning out to really be expressing her independence from the rest of the court in a very interesting way. But let’s get to the meat of this case, because I think it’s very important. I don’t know what the headline of this episode is right now, but it could very well be something along the lines of, the Supreme Court says, it’s probably, let’s rephrase that. The supreme Court says Biden would probably be immune if he ordered the military to assassinate Donald Trump. And I’m not joking about that. at least three of the supreme Court justices agree with me on that, and here’s why. The case, if you may remember, this, is about Trump’s, election interference. And his attorneys are claiming that he’s immune from prosecution because he was still president, and anything he does as president, he should be immune from. And he was asked in court if he were president and he ordered SEAL team six to assassinate a political rival because he thought that that rival was a threat to America, would he be immune? And his own attorney said, eventually, yeah, he probably would be. That’s why we take our elections seriously. So if that’s shocking to you, as I hope it is, we should probably dive into this case and figure out what it means for the future, because I, think what we’ve just done is reverted back to creating presidents, as kings, rather than, the people that our founding fathers thought they would be. So what, what’s in the opinion? The nutshell is the supreme Court has created three different buckets of presidential activity. The first bucket is core constitutional powers of the president. Things that the president does that are enumerated in the constitution. He is the chief executive of the country. He issues pardons, he can veto bills, he can sign bills. he is the commander in chief of the military, things like that. He appoints judges, he appoints ambassadors. So that’s actions that the president takes that are core constitutional powers. The Supreme Court is saying any action that he takes in the execution of those powers, he is immune from criminal prosecution related to any action. So that means, for example, if he goes to appoint a judge and that judge pays him $10 million in exchange for the appointment, or Steve Bannon, who is going to prison today, pays Donald Trump, if he were in office, $10 million, $100 million to issue a pardon, Trump would be immune from criminal prosecution for that. That’s what this opinion means. Now, the dissent, Sotomayor, gets to this right off the bat. She says, why did we even address core constitutional powers, and whether or not the president is immune in the execution of those powers? Because the case at hand doesn’t have anything to do with core constitutional powers. The case we’re deciding today is a president doing politician things, trying to

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The Cross Examiner/Graham: desperately stay in office, leveraging the power of the Department of Justice to try to put pressure on states to change their reported elector, electoral votes, the president talking directly to states to influence them. None of that is in the core powers of the president. Everybody agrees on that. And it’s a longstanding principle with, the Supreme Court to avoid a. Answering questions that are not asked, because it just gets you into trouble. They use that principle of, hey, we don’t reach that question as the language. We don’t reach the question of whether or not core constitutional powers, actions taken under them can be, prosecuted criminally, because that’s not relevant to this particular case. They will do that all the time to avoid answering political questions or sensitive questions or questions that they just don’t want to touch, because why answer it if it’s never going to come up, is the philosophy, which is a. It’s a good philosophy. Keep in mind, the Constitution talks about the court addressing cases and controversies in front of them. There is no controversy in front of them about core presidential powers. So that’s one of the first criticisms that Sotomayor lays out, we didn’t have to even make this rule. Then she points out later on in her opinion that, okay, since you made that rule, does that mean, and it appears to her and the three other dissenting justices that it does mean, if I’m executing those core presidential powers, and I do so in a criminally corrupt way, I am immune from prosecution. If I, like I said, a judge bribes me to get appointed, I issue a pardon. And then one must ask, I am the commander in chief. If I ordered SEAL team six to assassinate a threat to America that I, as the president, have determined is a threat to America, is that a core constitutional power? And if so, does that make him, immune to murder charges? All three dissenting judges say, yeah, it appears that that’s what you’re saying. So that’s the first bucket. We’ve never addressed this question before, and it goes against historical precedent. You may have heard of, a small little book called I’m holding it up now, the federalist papers, for those who are watching on video, the federalist papers, what is that you may have heard that, addressed a lot of times. these were articles written by three very influential people. You may have heard of Hamilton, and, Madison and Jay, John Jay, defending the proposed constitution to the citizenry of the United States. While the constitution was being, debated, they went out and they realized, we’ve got to sell the constitution. So we need to explain what it is, because we’ve written it in a very broad way. They wisely wrote it in a broad way, so it could be more of a living document, give you specific steps to do pretty much anything other than how to run the government. They just tell you that the. The Congress can legislate and do anything they want. And then later, they add the bill of rights to say, except this. They can’t establish a government. They can’t quarter, soldiers in your house. They can’t deny you the right to a fair trial. Basically, it doesn’t explicitly say that, but that’s what we’ve interpreted to. To mean. So the Federalist papers say, okay, I know you have a lot of questions. Here’s what all of this means. And in the federalist papers, Hamilton. And I’m going to. Forgive me for pulling up my book here, but I’m going to read from my copy of the Federalist papers. This is federalist paper, 70, 60, nine. Excuse me. The real character of the executive. The executive is the president. So this is cutting in, in the middle. This is Alexander Hamilton. Quote, the president of the United States would be liable to be impeached and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law. This is. Sotamoyer quotes. this exactly. So a, when a president misbehaves, you can impeach him to get him out of office. And then once he’s out of office, he’d be liable for prosecution for any crimes he committed. This is a founding father, a group of founding fathers, all writing together to say, this is what the Constitution intends. He goes on to say, the person of the great king of Britain is sacred and inviolable. There is no constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable, no punishment to which he can be subjected without involving the crisis of a

00:10:00

The Cross Examiner/Graham: national revolution. He’s talking about the king here. The king. There’s no law. He answers to, this is why we are leaving Great Britain. The king is not accountable to anybody. He can’t be prosecuted criminally. If the king says murder somebody, then by rule, that’s okay, because the king said it. And Alexander goes on, Alexander Hamilton, quote, in this delicate and important circumstance of personal responsibility, the president of Confederacy Federated America. The United States would stand upon no better ground than a governor of New York and upon worse ground than the governors of Maryland and Delaware. So he’s saying, hey, the king right now is like what the Supreme Court is doing. The king is not answerable when he’s doing his kingly duties to any criminal trial here. Alexander saying, under our constitution, the president would be like a governor, in fact, worse than the governor of, new, York. Right. So in retrospect, when we go back and we look at what the founding fathers say, this is the core principle of our democracy. The entire purpose of the revolutionary war was to get away from kings. And what Sotomayor is pointing out is you just moved us back towards kings without any, any backing by historical precedent at all. In fact, she points out, and the majority is very clear on this, they take up this argument that conservatives, conservatives have long held, because let’s be clear about who conservatives are. Conservatives are, if anything, bootlickers of the king. At the very beginning, the conservative movement of this country was arguing that we shouldn’t have a president, we should have a king. The conservatives want a strong executive. We want to give all this power to one person so they can do whatever they want, and they trust that that person will do what’s in the best interest of the country, or at least what that person thinks is in the best interest of the country. And I don’t think they really contemplated the idea that we would have somebody like Donald Trump, who is absolutely the worst type of person to be president of the United States. He cares nothing for the people who elected him, even less for the people who didn’t vote for him. And all he cares about is his own advancement. They may have intellectually contemplated that, but they’ve put so much emphasis on they won’t be kings, that I think that that wasn’t a concern to them. So instead, the executive is viewed today by conservatives as it should be stronger. Like, we have a very strong executive, but executives want it to be stronger. And the excuse they give is, we want the executive to be bold and decisive. That’s the language that they use in the opinion. In other words, if the president has to second guess every decision he makes by thinking, could I be held liable criminally when I leave office for what I’m about to do? They say that that’s a bad thing. That’s literally their argument, that we want an unrestrained, bold, decisive, almost reflexive, reactionary executive, rather than one who sits, as they have been up until this very moment, sits and says, hm, I wonder if what I’m about to do, I could be criminally liable for. That’s the argument that Trump’s old lawyers make, is, hey, he wouldn’t have done it if he thought it was criminally liable, because we all know that you can be criminally liable. We wouldn’t have had Watergate under this opinion. Under this opinion, what Nixon did in Watergate would not be going to trial now, not for the reasons that I’ve stated so far, because breaking, authorizing the break into a political campaign headquarters is not a, core constitutional power. So we’ll get to that later. But even. Even under the second bucket, which we’ll discuss, he would not be immediately, at least criminally liable for what’s going on. In other words, Nixon’s ghost is rolling and laughing and pointing at us in his grave. You may remember, Nixon famously went on air in an interview and said, if the president does it, that means it’s legal. That’s how much of a king he wanted to be. It’s the same. It’s the same as. As the king. I, think it was King Louis XVI, maybe. I forget which Louis it was. There were so many Louis. I am the state. The state. C’est moi. I am the state. I am the government. The government is me. If I say

00:15:00

The Cross Examiner/Graham: something should happen, then by definition, that is the law, that’s what the supreme Court is giving us. And so, and so to mayor and, that her fellow dissenters point this out time and again. The executive, the, excuse me, the majority is mischaracterizing history here. We don’t have a history of the founding fathers saying we want a quick, bold, decisive, reactionary president who is not even concerned about criminal prosecution. We have in the very federalist papers, by the way, there’s a whole society called the Federalist Society. You may have heard of it. It’s because conservatives love the federalist papers, because they want to get back to just those core principles that were in that document. They refuse to acknowledge that they wrote the constitution in a broad, so it could be a living document. They, they argue, just read the federalist papers. That’s all we should do. So. Okay, let’s do that. Conservative majority, strict constructionists, historically based people who have created a history and tradition. Test now for establishment claw case law cases and other cases. Gun law. We’re using history and tradition and gun law. Now, why are we not using history and tradition in this case? And I’ll tell you why. Because this opinion is structured in a way to give Trump an out. This is the Supreme Court. Opinions are supposed to be decisions for the ages. This is a decision of the moment. I was, I was hopeful, I don’t think I counted on it, but I was hopeful that they might get a majority opinion in this case. And I, they probably, probably were close until they decided this, carve out of these three buckets, and tried to give Trump an out. If they had said, core constitutional powers are, immune from criminal prosecution, the actions you take under those are immune, and then everything else is subject to prosecution. I think the minority could have agreed, at least on the conclusion. If nothing, they might have objected and dissented and said, I don’t think we should have even reached the question about core powers, because it’s not in the case that’s before us. But they at least would have probably agreed. But they didn’t. They carved out this middle bucket to give an exemption to Trump. That’s probably going to get him back into the White House, if not keep him immune from prosecution altogether. So let’s talk about the other two buckets. On the first bucket is actions taken that are core to your constitutional powers. We can go to the third bucket. The third bucket is purely private matters. Trump is at the gas station. Fill up. Filling up, his gas truck with gas. As if he would ever drive himself or drive a truck fans of him. I mean, I hope you realize how ridiculous that is. Right. and he steals the gas or he punches a guy or he shoots somebody on Fifth Avenue. Like, he loves to fantasize about purely personal matters. Absolutely. Subject to criminal prosecution once he leaves office. Right. That’s. That’s a no brainer. Everybody agrees on that. So what’s this middle bucket? The middle bucket is official. Other official actions. So we have official actions taken under the core powers that are granted to him by the constitution, appointing people, vetoing bills, being the commander in chief of the military, negotiating, with other countries, either himself or via, ambassadors. That, again, he appoints. Those are. Those are the core ones. Anything else that he does as president can be an official action. He’s doing it as part of being in the office, but it’s not a core power. And they carve out this middle status and say, well, you might be criminally liable later on, be able to be prosecuted, I should say. But, there’s going to be a presumption that you can’t. We’re going to presume that you’re immune, but we’re going to allow hearings where the state, the prosecutor, can come in and present evidence to prove that you should not be immune for this act. So, in other words, we’re just going to take it on a case by case basis. And as far as I can do, and I haven’t read the guts of their opinion, sotomayor does not mention it. But I haven’t seen yet any guidance as to what people will use, lower courts will use to figure out whether or not a president should be immune for something. So, for example, let’s take, I am directing the Department of Justice to create a sham investigation and do press releases to say that they suspect that the 2020 election was fraudulent. Okay. That’s not a core constitutional power. Right. It’s not a personal

00:20:00

The Cross Examiner/Graham: thing. He’s not stealing money from the. The gas and sip. It is an official act. He’s talking to the department, of justice. So you might think, okay, well, that’s an official act. We can go to court and say he should be, he should be held liable, because, look, in his communication to the Department of Justice, he told them, we know this is all made up, but I want you to go out there and lie to the public. Well, you’re wrong, because the Supreme Court said today that any official communication, as part of his official duties, cannot be introduced into evidence to try to prove that he should be held liable. How? I hope your jaws on the floor, because mine is as well. I do not know how I’m supposed to prove that an official act should be liable to criminal prosecution if I’m not allowed to introduce evidence of communications and things like that that were done within that official act. I can just, I can just bring into court the result. So let’s take the bribery of, to appoint a minor official. Let’s say that’s not a core, it’s a minor official or it’s a bribery for something that’s not in the core constitutional powers. Right. And I have communication saying, hey, if you pay me a million dollars, I’ll make you a federal judge or I’ll make you ambassador to Barbados. How you, how’d you like to spend your, your days in Barbados? And they pay him and he appoints them. None of that communication can go into the record. You go to the, you go to the courts and you say, he should be prosecuted. This was bribery. well, wait a second. Objection. How do you know it’s bribery? You have no evidence of that. You can’t, you can’t introduce evidence of bribery. Well, I can introduce evidence that this person paid money to this person who probably then dropped it into some campaign fund or some offshore account. Maybe I can find that evidence and introduce that to say, we’ve traced the money back to this judge and it was paid to the president and he asked for that money. Right? No, I don’t have any evidence of that because I’m not allowed to introduce that evidence. I could just say this guy paid money to that judge. Excuse me, this judge paid money to the president through a series of things. Maybe I can’t even prove it right. People get very good at laundering money, so you can’t figure out where it went from. But let’s just assume you could. Is that a crime or is that maybe a campaign finance donation? If they say, well, that was just a gift, look at Clarence Thomas, look at how much money he’s getting. And so these were just gifts. These were just, there was no expectation on the other end. And I won’t, as an attorney, I could not rebut that. I have the evidence. I’m not allowed to tell the judge about it, right. I’m not allowed to introduce it. And the judge, if they heard it, would not be allowed to consider it. All I have is money going one way, an appointment going the other. But no smoking gun. And this is criminal court. Keep in mind, you need a smoking gun beyond a reasonable doubt as long as there’s just money going one way and a point going the other. We’re going to get. We’re going to get opinions for the president. So you have de facto immunity for the middle bucket, official actions that aren’t necessarily core constitutional powers. and I’m going to read, a couple of comments out of Sotomayor’s opinion that I think we should listen to. Here’s what she said. Today’s decision to grant former presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the presidency. It makes a mockery of the principle foundational to our constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law, relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for a bold and unhesitating action by the president. The court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more, because our constitution does not shield a former president from answering for criminal, treasonous acts. I dissent. And let me tell you those last two words. I dissent. That’s a sick burn in Supreme Court world. The vast majority of the time, you will see justices say, I respectfully dissent. But for us court watchers, I dissent. That’s a slap in the face. That’s a glove across the face to the rest of the court. She does not respectfully dissent. She does not respect the opinion of this majority. She just dissents because they are putting, our freedom at risk. so this is what she said earlier, just to give support to my analysis. Right? And again, these are my rocket docket episodes. This is not scripted. I apologize if it’s a bit disjointed, but you need to know what’s going on here, because you’re going to hear a lot from President Trump claiming victory here. And to some degree, he’s right.

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The Cross Examiner/Graham: In another degree, he might be wrong. So she says. The court now confronts a question it has never had to answer in the nation’s history. Whether a former president enjoys immunity from federal criminal prosecution. The majority thinks he should. And so it invents an atextual, ahistorical, and unjustifiable immunity that puts the president above the law. The majority makes three moves that, in effect, completely insulate presidents from criminal liability. First, the majority creates absolute immunity for the president’s exercise of, quote, core constitutional powers. This holding is unnecessary on the facts of the indictment, and the majority’s attempt to apply it to the facts expands the concept of core powers beyond any recognizable bounds. In any event, it is quickly eclipsed by the second move, which is to create an expansive immunity for, quote, all official acts whether described as presumptive or absolute, under the majority’s rule, a president’s use of any official power for any purpose, even the most corrupt, is immune from cross prosecution. Again, reading that, whether you describe that immunity as presumptive or absolutely, it makes a president’s use of any official power for any purpose, even the most corrupt, immune from prosecution. Then she goes on, that is just as bad as it sounds, and it is baseless. Then she says, finally, finally, the majority declares that evidence concerning acts for which the president is immune can play no role in any criminal prosecution against him. That holding which will prevent the government from using a president’s official acts to prove knowledge or intent in prosecuting private offenses is nonsensical. So these are the things that, Sotomayor and the rest of the, minority are pointing out, and I can’t agree with them more. This is undoubtedly new territory for the court. We’ve never had to deal with a person like Donald Trump, and the court here is showing its ass. They could have said, core constitutional powers immune. I don’t think they would have gotten any objection other than the. The minority saying, we don’t think it’s appropriate to even reach to answer that question because it’s not raised under this indictment. That would be like if I sued target for false advertising. And then I got to the supreme Court and they said, the rule for determining whether, target is allowed to advertise, using federal dollars, is x. It has nothing to do with the lawsuit, but they know that. They want to come in here and say, this is the time, this is the opportunity for us to put our stamp and create a king, a mini king, because that’s what we conservatives love, not thinking about the opposite. Right? That’s why I think maybe the headline of this episode should be, Supreme Court thinks that Joe Biden should be able to assassinate Trump and be immune from prosecution. They never think that this is going to be used against them. Right. do you want a king as a president, or do you want somebody who is, careful, thoughtful, has a team of people who is advising him on the best course of action? The rest of our government is structured in a way for hesitancy. The legislative branch is example of log jam on purpose. We don’t want spur of the moment bills being passed. Do we want that in our president? that’s a. It’s a good question. Do we want him when he’s going to war? No. If we’re in war, we need somebody to issue orders, make their best decision hopefully have a bunch of really smart people around them and make the best calls for the information that they have on hand. But that’s a core constitutional power. Do we want them to be immune? Do we want them to be second guessing as to whether or not he should instruct the DOJ to bully the states using false information into getting him reelected? You’re damn right we do. I want somebody to be second guessing that. I want them to think, I could go to jail for this. There’s no urgency here. None of that applies. And yet this court has, pretending like they’re, they need to answer all of these questions. So they create these three buckets, core powers, private business, and everything in the middle, and everything in the middle is presumed to be immune unless you, the state, go to court and prove that he shouldn’t be immune. And by the way, I don’t think they say what, like I said, I don’t think they tell what elements you should use to decide whether he’s immune or not.

00:30:00

The Cross Examiner/Graham: And when you go to court, you can’t bring up any of his official acts. I’m baffled. There’s going to be a lot more coming out. I appreciate you listening to this. I had to get this out on the air. This, court has just, I mean, I’m right now thinking we need a constitutional convention. We need to update our constitution in many, many ways. We need to clarify things like the second amendment, the first amendment, this opinion, and many other opinions. we should have a constitutional convention where we update the constitution. This is the analogy I use. Our constitution is our country’s operating system. It’s like windows, right, or iOS, right? It’s been around for two, hundred and 50 years, approximately, a little under, right. It’s old. We’ve discovered a lot of bugs in it. It’s time to patch our os. It’s time to issue Constitution 2.0 with all the best upgrades of what we’ve learned over the last 250 years. And we’ve done this. There are 20, I think, six amendments to the United States Constitution, 27, something like that. We have amended the constitution multiple times in the past after the Bill of Rights, the Bill of Rights was, ratified in 1791. That was the first patch, because people were concerned about the powers we granted to this big federal government. And we said, well, okay, they can do everything except these broad ten categories of things they have to. You got freedom of speech, you got freedom of religion. You’ve got a, right to bear arms. All of these things that we were concerned about but since then, we have m had many, many constitutional amendments changing the voting age, creating, prohibition. We didn’t want people to consume alcohol, doing away with prohibition, letting women vote. All the civil war amendments where we ended slavery and applied the bill of rights to the state so they couldn’t have any excuses to say, oh, we want to keep owning humans as property and beating them and killing them at will. All of these things we have reacted to, well, we need to react to this, at least this and possibly more things that this court will do. We need to stop being afraid to amend the constitution. Other countries do it all the time. States do it all the time. We need to do it soon to fix this problem for sure. So that’s, I guess, my conclusion after a quick read of sotomayor’s dissent and some of the majority’s categorical arguments. More to come out, I’m sure, later on. But I, that’s the nature of these rocket docket episodes. I hope you found this useful and a useful explainer. if you do like what I do, I do not monetize this stuff. I don’t make any money off of this. I lose money off of this because it’s my passion, it’s my hobby, it’s my activism. The way you can help out is by subscribing to the podcast, listening, commenting on episodes, subscribe on YouTube, and sharing it on your friend with your friends. This is hopefully would be a great explainer for anybody who doesn’t know what was really going on with this opinion today. So with that said, I appreciate you listening, and I’ll see you next time. Bye bye.

<name></name>: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Cross Examiner Rocket Docket. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider liking and subscribing. We’ll see you soon.

00:33:30

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Why do all the trees in Texas lean to the east? Louisiana sucks.

>> Sam Grover: Welcome to the Cross examiner podcast, the Internets courtroom in the case of rationality versus religion. Here, our host uses his experience as both an attorney and an atheist to.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Put religion on trial.

>> Sam Grover: We solemnly swear that it is the most informative, educational, and entertaining jury duty you will ever do. And now it’s time for the cross examiner.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the Cross examiner podcast. I’m your host, the cross Examiner. I am an attorney, I am an atheist, and I am alarmed. I’m alarmed by the rise of christian nationalism in the United States. But more importantly, I’m alarmed by the massive amount of misinformation that’s powering that rise. Today, I’ve got a very special episode. I interviewed Sam Grover. He is the senior counsel for litigation at the Freedom from Religion foundation. He is one of several lawyers in a coalition of groups who is suing the state of Louisiana over their newly enacted, requirement that every public school room contain a display of the ten commandments. Obviously unconstitutional, right? Well, not so fast. The court has changed. They’ve done away with laws that. Excuse me. They’ve done away with tests that have previously found this to be unconstitutional. So, what will this court do now that the rules have changed? Well, let’s find out. Here’s my interview with Sam Grover. So welcome, Sam Grover. Thanks for, coming on the show.

>> Sam Grover: Hey, thanks, Graham, for having me. I’m really excited to be here and to get into it on Louisiana.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Absolutely. So, before we start, raking them over the coals, how about we tell our listeners who you are? I can read off your stats, if you don’t mind. make sure I’m accurate here. You got a BA in philosophy and government back in 2008, and then in 2010, you started to intern for Freedom from Religion foundation. Why don’t you tell our listeners how that came about? And what is FFRF?

>> Sam Grover: Sure. so, that I interned at FFRF in 2010. that was right after my first year of law school at Boston University. I had a wonderful professor there, Jay Wechsler, who, he’s really into state church separation. I had him for a different class, but that doesn’t matter. he had, ah, written this book called Holy Hullabaloos, where he took a tour around the United States, going to the location of different supreme court decisions that had to do with state church separation. And, came to, Wisconsin for the Wisconsin v. Yoder decision. and I went into amish country for that but also visited FFRF, which is based in Madison. so he developed a bit of a relationship with Dan, Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, our co presidents. and, he recommended that I reach out to FFRF. So I owe my entire legal career, to Jay Wechsler.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Wow, that’s amazing. that book hook of traveling to the different sites sounds fascinating. It reminds me of, Sarah Vowell wrote a book called assassination Vacation, where she went on vacation to all the important locations for presidential assassination. So, I’m going to pick that up and read it.

>> Sam Grover: He’s a very funny guy.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Oh, wonderful, wonderful. So then you got your JD, from Boston University, and then you went on to clerk for the Vermont office of legislative counsel. Was that regulatory work?

>> Sam Grover: I was, So I was basically the lawyer for every house and senate member in the state house, drafting legislation that they wanted me to draft. specifically, healthcare, and tax, were the two areas that I was helping out in.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Okay, and then, right after that, you ended up signing up with FFRF, I should say, in 2013, if I believe I.

>> Sam Grover: Yes, that’s right. Yeah. So, FFRF was my second job out of law school, and I’ve been here for over ten years now. Ah.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: As I told Ryan Jane, one of your, coworkers there, you, have the dream job for most lawyers. Like, this is amazing. So you’ve been there, like you said, for over ten years, and you were recently promoted to senior counsel. What does that mean?

>> Sam Grover: Oh, it means that I’ve been here a while. yeah, so, as senior counsel, responsible, for our litigation team, so I have, a big say in which cases we’re taking and why, and sort of developing our legal strategies as we move forward in this era of many trump appointed judges.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: I’m glad you point that out. We’re going to talk about that. So, finally, one more point. I went to your Twitter feed when I was researching, this case, and I saw in your bio you declare you are America’s only atheist church state separation attorney. Who can dunk. There’s gotta be a story there.

>> Sam Grover: Oh, well, I mean, no one has reached out to me on social media to prove me wrong yet, so, as of right now, that remains true.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right.

>> Sam Grover: And still dunk at the age of 38. So, we’re still going with it. I’m not taking it down.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Okay, that’s the. The gauntlet has been thrown to all other, specifically atheist church state separation attorneys.

>> Sam Grover: Exactly.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Okay.

>> Sam Grover: Yeah, there are a couple other qualifiers there. Yeah.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: All right. Well, why don’t we jump on this case. as I talked in the intro to this show, it’s about Louisiana. Has, the governor has signed a law mandating that the ten commandments be displayed in every public school room in the state of Louisiana. two, pieces of background our users should know a the First Amendment exists, and it has done so since it was ratified in the bill of m rights in 1791. And, that this week, you have, as part of a coalition, you have filed suit against Louisiana. So could you talk about, mechanically, how does that work? you formed a coalition with the ACLU, ACLU of Louisiana, and Americans United for separation of church and state, and also included Simpson, Thatcher Bartlett, a law firm serving as pro bono. So, mechanically, before we get into the analysis of the case, I’m sure my listeners would like to know, how do you manage that? Is it like herding cats, or do people, like, generally fall in line?

>> Sam Grover: sometimes it’s one, sometimes it’s the other. so, I mean, the way the coalition came about is, our legislative team has been tracking this Louisiana bill since it first was introduced, and all the way through its passage in their state house and senate. so, we’ve known about it for a long time, and when it became clear that this one was going to pass, we reached out to our Louisiana members, to see who has kids in public schools, who will be affected by this law, who has concerns, and we got a lot of responses, an overwhelming number of responses. And, Americans united, the aCLu, they were doing something similar, and they were hearing from people, and, we’re in communication with each other, now and again, about these kinds of things all over the country. And, when it was clear that there was a lot of interest in all our organizations for taking a lawsuit on this, that’s when we formed the coalition.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Understood. And, what is your particular role in the coalition? Are you a drafter of the complaint? Are you, doing basically, organizational efforts?

>> Sam Grover: Yeah. so it’s a little bit of everything. so all our organizations were responsible for vetting potential, ah, plaintiffs who reached out to our individual organizations. So I did a lot of plaintiff interviews, and, just prepared potential plaintiffs for what it would mean to be part of a lawsuit, because most people don’t really know, what goes into that. and don’t think about how they’re potentially exposing themselves to being deposed or something like that. So you go into that a little bit. and then in terms of drafting, all our organizations have had a hand in the drafting. There are a couple primary, drafters, within, Simpson Thatcher, and also, the aclu, of Louisiana. that branch, did a more heavy hand in the initial drafting of everything. And then, everyone else has been supplying, what they can. And there’s been a lot of refining, as you can imagine, as we try to decide how to move forward.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Oh, yeah. I mean, that’s the name of the game for, listeners who are not familiar with legal writing. it’s easy to write 800 pages. It’s hard to write ten pages. So I’m sure there’s a lot of decisions to made on how to express a book’s worth of content in a sentence.

>> Sam Grover: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s a lot of consideration that goes into even what claims to bring. Right. Because, you know, this is a brazen constitutional violation, but the constitution has a lot of parts to it, and, you could point to quite a few different ones that this law potentially violates.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Absolutely. And that’s something I think I would like to get into, when we get to that analysis, because that is an interesting decision to make. And I’m assuming, like any other court, you have a limited number of pages.

>> Sam Grover: Yeah. I don’t believe that for the complaint itself, that’s true, but, yeah, you can file an 800 page complaint if you want. but it’s not the best foot to start off with.

>> Sam Grover: So, yes, you try to keep things, as trim as possible. You try to keep, you know, just the actually relevant facts in the actual complaint.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Very, very good point. So now that the suit’s been filed, could you explain the process moving forward for, our listeners? What are the major procedural steps? what are the typical motions? Is there a trial? Will there be witnesses? You talked about depositions. how is. How is evidence introduced? All of those sorts of things.

>> Sam Grover: Yeah. so I believe at this point, as of this recording, all of the, defendants in the lawsuit, save maybe one school district, have been served. Right? So that’s the first thing. You can’t do anything else until they, have been formally served the complaint. So, that’s happened. and now we are, gearing up to file a preliminary injunction. And what that is, it’s a motion for a preliminary injunction. we are asking the court before it actually rules on the case, based on the likelihood of our success, to stop any school district in Louisiana from putting up the ten commandments in classrooms this school year. lawsuits take a long time. they can take years. Right. and this one probably won’t be an exception to that. and so you want to, win at the outset so that this year, our plaintiff’s children, are not seeing the ten commandments in their classrooms.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Absolutely. So, with that request, that motion to enjoin, is that typically indicative if you win on that, is it typically indicative that you’re going to win in the long term? Because I think you mentioned the standard is the judge is thinking, well, based on what I know now, you may be greater than 50% chance you’re going to succeed.

>> Sam Grover: I would guess that. I don’t know for sure if this is true, but I would guess that there is a fairly good correlation, at the district court level, of if you win on the preliminary injunction motion, you also win at the district court. I bet that that, correlation goes away as soon as you’re talking about appeals in the case. and that is the big concern, for our case right now. the district court judge, is faced with a fairly straightforward decision, because we have established supreme court precedent saying that what Louisiana is doing here is blatantly unconstitutional. And the district court, and in theory, the court of appeals, are bound by the supreme court’s decision, in that 1980 case, Stone v. Graham.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right, right, yeah. And Stone v. Graham, we’ll talk about in a little bit. But that was an eight to one opinion from 1980, I think. so it’s nearly half a century of precedent. that you can basically. Dear court, see Stone v. Graham. Thank you. Like, that’s. Yeah, that’s kind of the argument. Even though your. Your complaint, of course, goes into a lot of details. That’s the argument, correct.

>> Sam Grover: I mean, when you put it like that, I’m wondering why we’ve had so many coalition calls to try to figure out what we’re going to argue.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right, right.

>> Sam Grover: yes. That is, that, that is one of the bases on. On which we’re moving forward is gotcha.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: So when you do end up going to trial, how is evidence introduced? Because a lot of people, I think they’re familiar with appellate work, where you’ve got a couple of lawyers filing arguments. They’re all arguing over the woulda, shoulda, coulda’s, but you actually do have a trial in constitutional cases. So what does that look like if you’re an outside observer? Most people are familiar with traffic court or suing their neighbor over the fence. So they know how that works. How is this different? And how is this the same?

>> Sam Grover: Yeah, so this is, largely for the most part, I’m talking in generalities. for the most part, this is different than, traffic court or, any civil case, or any criminal case, really. where in most types of cases, you have disagreements over the facts when you conduct a trial, that is for a judge or jury to listen to the evidence that the attorneys present and decide issues of fact. Right. did this person run a red light, or did this, weapon found at the crime scene have fingerprints on it, that belong to whoever?

>> Sam Grover: So that’s what typically happens at a trial. in most, of the cases that I work, in most constitutional cases, there are no issues of fact, usually. and in this case, there probably won’t be any issues of fact that need to be resolved at the trial. Louisiana knows what it’s done. We can see it. It’s, you know, it’s written on paper. and we know what the effect will be. So most likely, there won’t be a trial. Most likely, we will file, what’s called a motion for summary judgment. So this is after, discovery has been conducted, and we’ve been able to present any evidence that we do need to present. a motion for summary judgment says there are no issues of facts that require a trial. So let’s just resolve this. the judge just needs to decide the issues of law, right. How to apply the law to the agreed upon facts.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: That makes sense. So, for things. Excuse me. For things like witnesses. you have, excuse me, plaintiffs. You’ve got 14, plaintiffs. They, are, I assume, going to be deposed. Is that correct?

>> Sam Grover: you know, that is a bit of an open question right now. yeah. So there will be a, discovery process where both sides get to, do interrogatories and conduct depositions, if they so choose. the defendants get to decide whether to depose, our plaintiffs. and, the typical reason why you would do that in a case like this where, the defendants don’t have personalized knowledge of what went into writing the bill, they just have personalized knowledge of how this is going to affect their children. So, the reason to depose them would be to chip away at their standing, their ability to sue and have, a stake in the outcome of the case.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right. You don’t live here, you don’t have kids, all of those sorts of things.

>> Sam Grover: Exactly. Exactly. Like standing would have been a great reason to throw out the Kennedy v. Bremerton decision because coach Kennedy moved to Florida and never had, a real intention of moving back to Washington and coach football again. right. But like as you said, we have so many plaintiffs, we have nine different plaintiff families. so parents, and their children, they all live in Louisiana. Their kids all go to public schools where the ten commandments will be displayed if this law is allowed to stand. so there’s not really good grounds, for getting the case dismissed for lack of standing. the defense has the right to try. and that will take a lot of attorney time and resources if they choose do that. But even if they found, you know, hypothetically, one of the parents, you know, is, is moving and taking their kid out of state next school year, you know, that’s not going to defeat the case. So, you know, it’s, it’s it’s their call, on whether they want to spend the time and resources, to do that.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: that makes sense. And I assume strategically the, the possibility of plaintiffs dying, moving, all of sort, those sort of things, is part of the reason why you have so many in these sorts of cases, is you dont just want one person necessarily. did that play into this decision here?

>> Sam Grover: I guess so, in a bit of a way, but more so the reason why we have so many plaintiff families is that there are just so many people who are affected negatively by this law. we have, atheist and agnostic parents, and their minor children. We also have christian families and minority religious families. They all take issue with the government telling their children, you know, what to believe, in terms of morality, within the public school setting. so, it’s an issue that affects everyone with children in Louisiana’s public schools. we didn’t want to exclude, any segment of the population from getting to voice their unique concerns with it.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: And that’s a great point. if I recall correctly, four of the plaintiffs are actually reverends, is that correct? I mean, that speaks volumes, doesn’t it?

>> Sam Grover: Yeah, I think it does. religion is meant to be in the private sphere, and the government’s not supposed to interfere with it. you know that Louisiana hasn’t just mandated that the ten Commandments get posted. The state has mandated a specific version of the ten Commandments, that’s going to be posted in every public school classroom if they get their way. And so in addition to commandments like I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before me, offending, the morality of atheists and agnostics and minority religious people, you also have, commandments like, don’t, create any graven images, which conflicts with the catholic version of the Ten Commandments.

>> Sam Grover: So, there are a lot of reasons to object to the state getting involved in this sort of religious teaching.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: I totally agree. That was one of the points that really jumped out to me is somebody asked early on, why are there eleven commandments in their list of ten commandments? And it goes into this history of, well, some faith traditions combine the first two, some faith traditions combine the last two. The Catholics don’t like the graven images one. So merely picking one is another layer of lack, of equal protection, violation of the establishment clause, all sorts of things that you could argue. It reminds me of, a while ago, it seems like decades now. I’m not sure when it was when Louisiana tried to make their Bible, the official state book of Louisiana, and it failed in part, in a large part because they couldn’t agree on which one. So all of this sort of speaks to that sort of, I almost picture it as a clown car routine of trying to impose their religion, but running into problems even when they’re dealing with fellow christians.

>> Sam Grover: Absolutely. This is ten commandments by committee, which is why you have a lot of.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Exactly true. So you mentioned the plaintiffs earlier. One of the concerns is sort of coaching them on what to expect to make sure. Are you ready to be in a case like this? do they have anything to be concerned about? I’m reminded of earlier, cases like Jessica Alquist, who was a girl up in Rhode island where she said, hey, my school has a christian prayer on a banner in it. Can you please take it down? That’s against the law. She ended up needing police escorts to school. She, had. After, after the case was decided, a state, representative, Peter Palumbo, spoke on the radio broadcast, everyone, and called her an evil little thing, which raises real concerns about, you, know, for want of a better phrase, stochastic terrorism. You’ve got public officials villainizing and demonizing people who are saying, hey, it is very clear you are breaking the law. Would you please stop breaking the law? And this goon squad comes out to attack people. Here you’ve got, it’s much more of a national issue and it’s much a bigger. There’s a bigger question involved. And you’ve got 14 plaints, which you don’t see them being paraded around on news at this point. Do they have any concerns of what goes into the decision or the, planning for something like this from just a safety perspective?

>> Sam Grover: Yeah, well, first off, I’ve met Jessica, and she’s not evil and doesn’t carry herself like a little person. she’s a very big personality.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: So, powerful and a wonderful speaker, too. I mean, that she turned this into, like, really lit a fire. I mean, she was already fairly focused, on this, but it really lit a fire on her. She turned the phrase into a. Her supporters sold t shirts, evil little thing to raise money, and really turned it right on back on them, which I thought was brilliant.

>> Sam Grover: Yeah. But, Jessica’s, experience with being a plaintiff in a lawsuit like this is not unique. Unfortunately. when, plaintiffs are not anonymous, which is the case in this lawsuit, they definitely, should, be concerned with, their safety and their children’s safety. They need to be, hyper aware that that’s, a real concern. So there are countless examples. we put them, when we do seek anonymity for our plaintiffs. We put a lot of those examples, in our motion, seeking anonymity. people have had, their pets killed and left on their doorstep. they’ve had things thrown at their houses, they’ve been had kids bullied in public school over things like this. and that is a concern here, too. that is one of the reasons, why we have so many plaintiffs. there is a first named plaintiff in the lawsuit, but it’s not like, this challenge is coming from any one person. Right. there’s a large community of people from Louisiana who object to this, and because this is a statewide law that also takes a little bit of, the focus off. It’s not, ah, any one community who’s being affected by this. It’s everyone. Yeah. that, that provides some level of protection and security, but certainly, not enough that you shouldn’t still be hyper vigilant, if you’re a plaintiff in our lawsuit.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right, right. I will say as a small piece of satisfaction that, state representative Peter Palumbo, who called her an evil little thing, years after that, he was convicted of embezzling over $30,000 from his own campaign, which speaks to, I think, the hypocrisy at play here in his case. In the, the discussion, you just gave us about people who are supposedly defending these christian values are acting like, terrorists. They’re seeking, to silence people through threats or actual, physical violence, which is yet, another demonstration of why this issue and why the first amendment is so important. This is part of the. The rule set that we are, put in place. So this sort of stuff shouldn’t happen or won’t happen.

>> Sam Grover: Yeah, I think that’s very telling. that when it comes to morality, morality isn’t the goal here. morality is a tool. Right. posting the ten Commandments. The goal isn’t to teach kids good morals. the goal is to use religion as a cudgel, to get children to fall in line, to indoctrinate other people’s children with a certain set of beliefs, not just religious, but political as well. and to, well, to, proselytize them, to brainwash them into believing a certain set of things about the founding of our country and who we are as a nation. Right. That’s the goal. And so it doesn’t matter to peter that he’s embezzling money. because, you know, that’s. That’s not the goal. It’s not. The goal isn’t to live a moral life.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: The goal is to. Is to enforce these beliefs on others. And from a politician standpoint, one must always question actual motives from a. My goal is to make my christian followers think that I want to impose these morals when in reality, I’m seeking their votes. So I’m just doing whatever I want. See, for example, certain presidential candidates.

>> Sam Grover: Yeah, yeah.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: All right. So, moving on to the actual claims that you’re making. You mentioned first, amendment, obviously. But there’s two claims you file there, the establishment clause and the free exercise clause. Could you give our listeners a breakdown of the arguments for both and how they’re different?

>> Sam Grover: Sure. so the establishment clause claim is the one that’s probably, most straightforward. This is the government, putting its thumb on the scale in terms of religious favoritism. Right. It’s putting up one sect of Christianity’s. Well, no sect of Christianity’s version of the ten Commandments, but something that approximates one sect of Christianity’s version of the ten Commandments. These are beliefs that are, exclusively christian or Judeo Christian in nature. So they exclude minority religions, they exclude the non religious. and that’s something that our constitution forbids. the government and religion are supposed to remain in their separate spheres, right? So that people are free to believe what they want to believe.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right? Yeah, I think, I didn’t, I didn’t think about asking this until now, but I think it’s worth saying because this is going to come up in. Already has for the last two years. What do you say to people, who have received misinformation regarding christian nationalism, specifically the argument, and we’ve seen this, time and time again. We’ve seen people like, mAGA supporters and even Trump haters, but pro Christian nationalists say things like the phrase separation of church and state doesn’t exist in the constitution. It’s all lies, or, this is a christian nation and always has been. What’s your response to that?

>> Sam Grover: Yeah, I mean, if you want to talk about the literal text of the constitution, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. Well, that’s literally what the state of Louisiana is doing here. Right. They are making a law respecting an establishment of religion. It doesn’t get more clear cut than that. to the point that the words separation of church and state don’t appear in the constitution. that’s true. most of the rights that people, believe are in the constitution, are in the constitution. But the literal words aren’t there.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah, it doesn’t say, you have a right to a fair trial. Exactly right. But you have a right to a fair trial, because that’s what the words mean.

>> Sam Grover: Yes, exactly. And, the establishment clause was meant to keep religion and government separate. That’s its purpose. And, so that’s what we mean by separation of churches.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Perfect. Perfect. And then on the free exercise clause, that again, first amendment, saying that they shall not deny, people their right to freely exercise their religion. How does that come into play here where the school is proselytizing? By posting this out. What’s your argument for a free exercise case?

>> Sam Grover: Well, undeniably, part of the ability to free, freely exercise your religion is the ability to, raise your children within your own religious traditions. And this is the government interfering with that part of free exercise. by expressly putting something on the wall of the classroom that coerces students into believing a different set of religious beliefs, or, it will influence children, to, in the classroom to be adopting those beliefs, or to adhering to those beliefs in the classroom, over the beliefs that their families instilled.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Or as the majority, said in Graham, to venerate the Ten Commandments. To venerate the concepts in the ten Commandments.

>> Sam Grover: Yeah. Should have pulled the word venerate when I was saying. It’s not in my, day to day vocabulary.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah. Why use a 25 cent word when a $5.01 will do? Right. okay, so, that’s establishment clause for exercise clause. One of my, little horses that I get on sometimes is, a question that I ask of many people is why no equal protection clause claim? And I feel like I should explain that just a little bit. So first amendment is your claims are basically saying, hey, you’re not allowed to establish a religion. You are. You’re supposed to let me exercise my religion freely. You’re nothing. Free exercise. excuse me. the equal protection clause is saying you’re supposed to not differentiate between how you regulate behavior of different groups of citizens based on impermissible distinctions. Things like your religious belief, your race, your national origin, things like that. and correct me where I’m wrong here, but that’s sort of the equal protection claim. And equal protection is what I. Cases like brown versus Board of Education were grounded in where the court said separate but equal. Even if it were not a fiction, even if it was literally true, that you could create a separate society between white and black people, and they were totally equal, the mere drawing of the line is not, the reason for doing it is not mysterious to anyone. And the kids in this system know that the reason that line is drawn is because the white kids don’t like the black kids, not the opposite. And the government drawing the line, is a violation of equal protection. and so I read a paper, entitled, this is a law professor, a couple of law professors wrote a paper entitled, thou shalt use the equal protection clause for religion cases, quote, parentheses, not just the establishment clause. So, that’s me ranting for a while. why no equal protection clause, claim here?

>> Sam Grover: Man, the easy answer is just ask my coalition partners. with a case like this, I agree in general that, equal protection arguments should be raised more often in these types of cases. there are good arguments to be made there. the case law needs to be developed more in that regard. the reason why no equal protection argument here, to the extent that I can get into it, I, think probably the easy answer is just we have such well established case law on the establishment clause issue here. We have Stonegreen v. Graham, 1980, Kentucky. You cannot put the ten commandments in public school classrooms. right. Yeah. so we have that, it’s easy for the district court to rule on that. And hypothetically, the court of appeals should also be bound by that precedent, correct? So this is not the case to be putting in, untested legal theories.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: yeah, and that is a very common, rationale, a very good one, like we said earlier. Dear court c, Stone v. Graham. Have a nice day. now, sort of a strategic question here. This, court, the current supreme court, has demonstrated, a hostility, towards establishment clause cases that they are leaning way in favor of saying, hey, government, employees can do, things that previously, under old tests, might have been found to be unconstitutional, but we’re going to allow it because of history and tradition and things like that. Given their hostility to establishment, cases. would you be able to raise a equal protection claim on appeal, or would you have to introduce it now? And the reason I’m asking is this court obviously going to say, see Stone v. Graham. The appellate court says Stone v. Graham. You get to this supreme court, they might say, historical. Hm. Tradition says, I don’t think they will with Stone v. Graham, but because the test it was decided under is gone, which we’ll get to in a second, they might say, well, we’re going to analyze this under a few other methods. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to make an equal protection clause claim there? Would you be able to raise it on appeal? Or is that just a decision that’s locked in at trial?

>> Sam Grover: No, unfortunately, the arguments that you make at the trial court level are what you are, restricted to on appeal. You can’t raise novel, arguments, novel legal arguments on appeal.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right. Yeah. And, and the getting back to your point about, hey, this is very clear case law. There’s no, no need to bring up this sort of untested or not untested, but sort of novel approach, on equal protection. In fact, the. The authors of the paper that I mentioned have a list of potential obstacles, and one of them they call landmines of confusion. Basically, novel arguments, risk misunderstandings by judges. I appreciate you getting into this detail, because my listeners, I think, are very interested in that inside decision making process of. There’s a strategy here, and you’re saying, make it simple, make it short, be on point.

>> Sam Grover: Yes. Yeah. And I could, see many, different fact patterns where an equal protection argument would be a lot more appealing than this one than in this case. So, it’s certainly not something that, we’ve ruled out for future cases.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Okay, so let’s talk about Stone v. Graham, this important case. if I understand correctly, the facts of the case, it was basically substantively an identical law in Kentucky, mandating the display of the ten commandments, there were some differences at the edges about payment and. And those sorts of things, but substantively, it was identical. And the supreme Court held in an, eight to one opinion that it was unconstitutional under something called the lemon test, with the sole, lone dissenter being Rehnquist. Do I have those facts right?

>> Sam Grover: Yes. Yeah. So the lemon test is, a way of evaluating claims under the establishment clause. So it’s not, a different law in itself. It’s just how the supreme Court has chosen to evaluate establishment clause claims. So it’s a three pronged test where the court first considers whether there was an impermissible religious purpose behind government action. the second prong is whether the effect of the law has an impermissible religious, effect, such as endorsing religion. and then the third prong is whether there’s excessive government entanglement with religion. So that would be things like government telling a church, who its pastor can be. Something like that.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right, right. Yeah, I’ve always loved that third one. I think, excessive entanglement is like, you know it when you see it type of reasoning, it’s like it doesn’t really help. Thanks, court. So, Lemon. Lemon came from a case called Lemon Ben v. Kurtzman, 1971. It’s been around for 50 years. Conservative, judges have always hated it, and I think liberals would admit it’s not the best. so it’s been on the decline pretty much since it came out, but, because it tended to favor, I think, establishment cases, that the purpose of this is to establish or is religious in nature. Conservatives really didn’t like it. And, if I understand correctly, the court has not overruled that, has not said it’s bad law. But in, Bremerton, Sotomayor, in her dissent, said, in this case, this is, again, the high school coach praying on the field. sotomayor, in her dissent, said, lemon’s dead.

>> Sam Grover: So, no. the majority, in, the Kennedy v. Bremerton case,

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Oh, okay.

>> Sam Grover: The majority has killed the lemon.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: They said lemon’s gone.

>> Sam Grover: Yes.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Oh, okay. Wow. Okay.

>> Sam Grover: Yeah. So there are other cases, from the past five or so years where the court has said, we’re not going to follow it here and we don’t like it. and this, time, they explicitly said, we’re no longer evaluating establishment clause claims under the lemon test. Instead, we are focusing on history and tradition. Right. So it’s. Does, the law comport to the historical understanding of what the establishment clause meant. Now, frustratingly, in Kennedy v. Bremerton, this is a school case, a public school case, the court announced this history and tradition test, but they only applied that test in order to say how badly they hated Lenin. Right? They didn’t actually then say, okay, we’ve got this new test, history and tradition, and now let’s apply that test to the facts. In Kennedy v. Bremerton, they didn’t do that, which is wild, because there were no public schools at the founding when the establishment clause, was written. District courts are left with no guidance on how to apply this history and tradition test in the context of the public schools.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right. And in fact, there’s so many questions I have about history and tradition.

>> Sam Grover: Me too.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: I guess my main question, and this is something I’m going to sort of jump to, talking about some of the comments that the courts have made recently about history and tradition. I’m going to actually let me back up and talk about a few other cases that sort of demonstrate historical tradition, even though they were pre Bremerton. So we had Van Orden v. Perry in 2005, longstanding ten commandments monument in Texas was held constitutional, talking about history and tradition. American, Legion v. American Humanist association, rejecting constitutional challenges to a latin crosse erected as a world war one memorial. Again, talking about history and tradition. All of these. These cases were still out there pre Bremerton. Again, I assume because people just didn’t like lemon. so it’s not surprising they went with history and tradition. But the question then comes up, like you said, what do you mean? How do we apply it? And two, my specific question is, which history? The history after the bill was enacted, the history before the legislative language in question was enacted, the history before the first amendment was created, or after? Has, the court clarified any of that?

>> Sam Grover: No. so there are two areas, within, establishment clause case law where the court has applied history and tradition. You noted one of them, which is, religious displays cases. That’s both. The cases you talked about are crosses or religious monuments on public property. and the court now has fairly well established, how it wants to approach those. And if there’s a history of this sort of thing going up in a way that, doesn’t expressly endorse religion, then it’s okay. That’s what the court says. It doesn’t actually work out that way. You know, a huge latin cross in the middle of government property that endorses Christianity. We all know it does. So do the justices but they’re going to pretend that it doesn’t so that they can keep up the cross. That’s the one area you also have, a lot of history and tradition analysis in government, prayer cases. Ernie Chambers, the Nebraska senator, he brought back, he brought, Nebraska’s, prayer. I’ve met him. He’s also very funny. and he’s like the longest running, senator, ah, Nebraska’s unicameral, but he’s the longest running, legislator in Nebraska. He’s termed out twice now and has had to sit out a term and then run again. but he’s a fantastic guy, very, spunky. But anyway, he brought a legal challenge, against opening their sessions with clergy led prayer.

>> Sam Grover: And that’s the other, area where the supreme court has said, we’re going to look at history and tradition and we’re going to say that historically, states have done this and so we’re just going to allow it.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: I’m glad you affirm my understanding, because that’s what I’ve been telling my friends and family for a decade. I think what the court is saying is, eh, ah, we’ve always done it, so it’s okay. Even if we started doing it after the First Amendment was ratified. Like some of these, these monuments were not there and all of that sort of stuff. So it doesn’t even seem to be specific to a particular monument. It seems to be, eh, people generally put up crosses. So we’re gonna let the government do it, even though the entire history of the enactment and debate over the first Amendment argues against it.

>> Sam Grover: Yeah, so, right. So those are the two, examples where you kind of have this loose history and tradition. And the court says, oh, ah, you know, like it’s kind of enough, and really what it amounts to is just a lack of commitment, on the part of justices to do what the establishment clause actually says that what it actually requires, which is no, the government doesn’t get to pander to religious people by putting up monuments to their specific, belief system on public property. And no, you don’t get to bring a bunch of christian chaplains into pray at the start of legislative sessions. but the supreme Court’s allowing that, and it’s very much an open question as to how much further the history and tradition test, will take us in terms of rewriting, the establishment clause. In Kennedy v. Bremerton, the court didn’t go so far as to say history and tradition allows a public school football coach to pray with players on the field. Instead, the supreme Court said, didn’t rewrite the establishment clause. Instead, it rewrote the facts of the case.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right.

>> Sam Grover: To say this coach wasn’t praying with students. He was doing this by himself, you know, at the 50 yard line with no one else around, which was never the case. You know, there are pictures of him praying with all. With players from both teams, all around him.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah. I think it was sotomayor in her dissent, if I recall correctly. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this. But in her dissent, she includes photographs in her opinion of, basically, gorsuch is lying to you.

>> Sam Grover: Yeah. yeah. And she, you know, she goes on to write a thousand words to go alongside the picture. Yeah, the picture is worth more than that. the picture says it all. This was a, fake case, with manufactured facts.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: And the coach was. Was calling the opposing coach pre game and saying, hey, I’m inviting you to come pray with me after the game. Like, this was not spur of the moment. This was not private on the side as Gorsuch. I mean, so much of it, it’s jaw dropping as to its being counterfactual. Right? It’s just jaw dropping. It’s almost criminal in my mind. Like, forget about the corruption cases of these justices. Let’s look at them actually lying and misrepresenting the facts. And the press, in my mind, really didn’t pick up on that as much as they should have. I mean, that should be like a story every night of this is what gorsuch and the majority said. Let’s roll the tape. Let’s look at what actually happened. He’s lying to you.

>> Sam Grover: Right, right. So then to put together the question that you’ve implied, but maybe haven’t directly asked yet, is. So we have Stone v. Graham in 1980, and, are we hanging our hat on the analysis from Stone v. Graham when Kennedy v. Bremerton decided last year or two years ago? says, you can’t do that anymore. The lemon test is dead.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Which, Which, sorry to interrupt, which, quite frankly, is probably why Texas and Louisiana and other states are starting to do all of this stuff when. When lemon dies, they go, oh, now’s the chance to get all these test cases in front of the supreme Court.

>> Sam Grover: Yeah, well, they’re certainly ramping it up. They never stopped doing it.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah, that’s true.

>> Sam Grover: Louisiana and Florida, these states are always, pandering to their christian base by, proposing legislation like this. Usually the bills don’t get signed by governors because they don’t want lawsuits. but now they’re feeling emboldened to do something that has been blatantly constitutional for almost 50 years. and, yeah, and a lot of that has to do with there being, three Trump appointed justices on the supreme Court and a lot of, really conservative judges on courts of appeals. but, in terms of the legal analysis, we’re not dead in the water just because the lemon test is dead. Stone v. Graham is still good law, because in addition to relying on that lemon, test, it also speaks to the coercive effects of, putting something like the ten commandments in a public school classroom. The supreme Court has long recognized, that the government has coercive influence over students in public schools. Right. you’re mandated to go, there are truancy laws, and the adults who are in the classroom with students have, ah, influence over those kids. I mean, we’ve all been through school, at least to a certain extent, and we all understand what that, coercive pressure is like.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: yeah, you’re sitting in the classroom as a kindergartner or a 6th grader or a high school student. You get bored. You start looking at the pictures on the wall, and every day you’re staring at what is mandated to be a prominent display of the ten commandments.

>> Sam Grover: Right, right. And because it’s on your teacher’s classroom wall, the automatic assumption is, oh, these are my teachers values. Right.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah.

>> Sam Grover: so.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Which is another argument altogether. Like the. I don’t even think you have to get into this, and I don’t think you do in your complaint, but the teachers themselves could object to say, hey, you are making it seem as if I am endorsing this religion.

>> Sam Grover: I’ve heard from several teachers in Louisiana who object to this, and they want to know what they can do as well. they don’t have, a clearly established free speech right to not post things that the state mandates on their classroom walls. So that’s not a claim we’re bringing in this case. But I feel for those teachers.

>> Sam Grover: And the message that it’s sending to students, especially students, who are minority religious, or some other minority status, LGBTQ students who are seeing this on the walls and then thinking, oh, is this teacher an ally? Like, can I go to this teacher with the problems that I’m experiencing, and trust that they’re going to do something in my best interest? can really, it can really hurt student teacher relationships just to have something like this on the walls.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: So I interrupted you. I apologize. What will the court do with Graham now that lemon’s gone?

>> Sam Grover: Yeah. So, fortunately, in addition to having this history and tradition test, the other thing that, all the supreme court justices maybe except Thomas, still believe the establishment clause prohibits is government coercion. Right. The government literally coercing you, into believing or not believing something or doing something that goes against your religious beliefs. and that’s what we have here. So, the court still recognizes the coercive pressure on students in the classroom, that the government exerts, and the government is doing that here. So we have coercion in the bag. Additionally, we will be arguing a lack of history and tradition of the ten commandments in public school classrooms. This has never happened before, except in Kentucky, and it was struck down quickly. But no one in the country does this. No one in the country has ever done this. and also, you really can’t support the claim that, the claim that they make in, the legislative history of this bill, that the Ten Commandments are the founding of our country, that somehow the Ten Commandments are wrapped up in, our history and tradition as a country. because that’s just, on the face of it, false. When you look at the text of the Ten Commandments and compare it to the actual laws, and beliefs in our country.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: yeah, that’s their. I’m taking the other side here. I’m Louisiana, and I want this to get overturned. So, or want Graham to get overturned, or this to be found as distinguished from Graham somehow. so my argument is what you just said, that I have to frame this as. This is a history lesson. This is not religious, in nature. Basically trying to listen to Rehnquist’s dissent in Graham, where Rehnquist says, I believe there is a secular purpose, where the other eight justices said, this is obviously religious in nature, it’s coercive, etcetera. Lindquist says, no, no, no. This is bound up in the history of western law. And if a. And he even has a line in Graham where he says something along the lines of, in fact, any school that doesn’t teach the importance of religion in general to the history of the United States would be a bad school. That’s how far he goes. Like, it’s almost, you know, it would be, deficient or, What’s the word I’m looking for?

>> Sam Grover: Negligence.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah. Negligent. Thank you.

>> Sam Grover: Each religion in the classroom yeah.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Ah, malpractice was the word. You’d be teacher malpractice or school board practice, not to teach about religions, influence and all of that stuff. So on one hand, if I’m Louisiana, I can say, hey, I can teach whatever I want to my students. Like, if Louisiana says we’re going to mandate that every student be taught that there was a farmer that lived in our state 200 years ago, and he had a cow named Bessie, and you’re going to be tested on that. I can teach that. Right. No matter. It can be tiny. Tiny or zero impact on the state, there is just something that I can teach. So is that the argument they’re going to make, or are they going to try to make the ten commandments smaller by saying, it’s just a historical document, it’s not a religious thing? Is that literally what they’re doing?

>> Sam Grover: That is part of what they’re doing, yes. So, first of all, we don’t have a separation between Bessie and government in this country, so you can teach about Bessie. because there’s nothing a literal constitutional amendment saying you can’t.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Okay.

>> Sam Grover: and then also, it’s weird that this is, you know, the one public school lesson that they’re choosing to put on the classroom wall. Right. If that’s the argument. Right. past kindergarten, you don’t usually have, the lessons you’re learning posted onto your classroom wall. You’ve got the number line and the colors. And then after that, it gets a little burdensome to put all of, Moby Dick on the classroom wall. You just don’t. After that.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah, I remember the one poster I had in high school, the one poster I remember looking at time and time again within my german classroom. It was a german seatbelt safety ad that my german teacher was doing, and it was just a guy’s bare chest with a giant bruise across it where the seatbelt was after an accident. And in German, it said, something along the lines of, the bruise is better than the graveyard or something like that. But I sat there and I stared at it, and I remember it to this day. So, yeah, if that’s sitting next to the ten Commandments, somebody going to remember that to that day.

>> Sam Grover: So many questions about your german teacher now and what their motivation was.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: it was a very effective, like, it was very effective in Germany to get people to wear their seatbelts, right. You know, like, the bruise is nothing compared to the death, but it was in German and et cetera. But my point is, I remember it to this day because it was like one of the only posters on any classroom when I was in high school. You’re right, there was nothing. There was just blank walls and talking to a teacher.

>> Sam Grover: But yeah. so to get back to your question, Louisiana is going to get very ahistorical, in the claims they’re making about, why the Ten Commandments are up there. They’re going to say that it’s one of the foundations of law in the United States. They’re going to say that for that reason they needed to be up there, that it influenced the founders, ah, when they were writing the constitution. Which begs the question, why isn’t the constitution the thing you’re putting on the wall? if that’s the whole point, and the Ten Commandments probably did influence the founders in the sense that a lot of them believed in it and tried to adhere to their own personal sects version of the Ten Commandments. I don’t know how well they did. That’s beside the point.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah.

>> Sam Grover: The truth of it is that the Ten Commandments, are almost commandment for commandment, not found in our country’s, founding documents. the two that everyone wants to go to, thou shalt not kill and thou shall not steal. yeah, those are laws, ah, in our society and every other society that has ever existed, including the ones that predate the Bible.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: That’s an ah, argument I made. I did an episode on this law when it first was passed, and that’s one of the arguments I made. I found a 200 page paper by a law professor who went and researched the history of western, law. And is it true that it stems from Moses and the Ten Commandments? We have. The earliest written law we have, as far as I recall, is written in Sumerian. It’s on tablets. It dates to five to 800 years prior to the earliest estimates we have of when the Ten Commandments were created. So half of an eon before then. And they include, don’t kill anybody or we’re going to kill you. Don’t steal stuff or we’re going to kill you. And it says things like, don’t kidnap people, you know, like kind of anti slavery, even though they were still slavers. Like, it has a bunch of stuff in there. So if the argument is this is the source of law, it’s not true. If it’s unique to the Ten Commandments, it’s not true. As I think Ingersoll said in the 18 hundreds, as a famous atheistic attorney, everything that is good in the Ten Commandments is not new, and everything that’s new in the Ten Commandments is bad.

>> Sam Grover: Great. So you saved me a lot of time at. I’m not going to rail against the Ten Commandments and go. Commandment. Commandment versus our constitution, freedom of belief and religion contradicts. I am the Lord thy God. I’ll skip that.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: A good friend of mine has proposed, for, I don’t know, 15 years. He’s like professors in college that are doing, ethics, or even in high school, should do, do constitutional ethics, use the constitution and the bill of rights to teach an ethics class. And I think you’d end up better than if you taught it from the Ten Commandments. But again, we’re getting into bashing the Ten Commandments here.

>> Sam Grover: I absolutely agree with that. So, that is an area where, when we actually get into discovery in this case, that is one thing that we’ll have to do during discovery is, see, what the basis is for the state’s claim that this is historical. Right. Right. And probably the state will end up having to put up some sort of expert to argue that this is a historical document, and probably will have an expert, to contradict theirs. That’s something that, because of the history and tradition test, is becoming a lot more commonplace in establishment clause cases. Is these warring experts talking, about, what the tang, you know? Well, what is the history, the relevant history, when analyzing these sorts of things?

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah. And Louisiana’s framing it that way. Even in the act, they try to frame this as historical. They recite a bunch of. I’m not sure if it was, whereas. But a bunch of, preamble to the actual effective language they included even fake, or false or lies in their own act. They said that. I’m going to read this real quickly. James Madison. This is straight from M. The act that Louisiana passed. James Madison, the fourth president of the United States of America, stated that, quote, we have staked the whole future of our new nation upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the ten Commandments. Close quote, which has been debunked. I mean, I found a case in 1994 where Rush Limbaugh read this on air, and an organization called fairness and accuracy and reporting fair rushed out and said, this has been debunked. Madison’s own authors of his own collection of papers have debunked this. But here we have this Louisiana, representative including it in the act. How does that, is that useful to you?

>> Sam Grover: I mean, certainly doesn’t hurt. Yeah. it’s comical, actually. it’s so two faced. these legislators who are saying, we’re trying to uphold the traditions of our country, and we care about history and kids learning about our nation’s history, and there’s bullshitting. They don’t care about it at all. They’re trying to score cheap political points, and they’re trying to influence other people’s children to believe what they believe. That’s the bottom line.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: If you have a moment, I’m going to play a video that really supports and drives this home. This is a video of the governor signing, the bill and commenting on why we’re doing this. This is Governor Jeff, Landry. And then followed quickly by Representative Dodie Horton, who is the chief sponsor and author of this act, I should call it now. so here’s what they had to say about this. If you want to respect the rule of law, you got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses. What do you hope to, achieve by having the Ten Commandments requirement in classrooms? our students will be able to look up and see that there is.

>> Sam Grover: A moral standard that God set forth.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: For man to live by. There is a moral standard. I want my students to look up and see that there’s a moral standard that God set forth for mankind, for man to live by.

>> Sam Grover: I mean, it doesn’t get much clearer than that.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: And, you talk about this in your complaint. How will this go down with the judges? Does this matter? Or are they sort of like contract law, like the four corners of the bill is all we’re going to consider? Or will they, in fact, listen to this and say, oh, this whole historical thing is just a pretext?

>> Sam Grover: Yeah. So we had, this long period between, when the lemon test was first established and when the lemon test died, were legislators, started having to be more savvy about what they were willing to say in public, because, yeah, legislative history, legislative intent does factor into the lemon test version of the establishment clause. Right. If, there’s a religious purpose behind a laws enactment, then the law is unconstitutional. that’s what the lemon test says. And now that the lemon test is dead, politicians have spent no time at all going back to being completely brazen and saying the quiet part out loud, which is what you have here. So, is it still relevant? Yes, absolutely. it’s no longer, sufficient, to overturn a law, but, it is, it’s still supporting evidence.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: And there’s many. You cite many examples. You have representative Horton saying, it is so important that our children learn what God says is right and what he says is wrong. you have Horton again saying, I am only concerned with our children looking and seeing what God’s law is. You have another representative Taylor saying, a lot of people, their children are not attending churches or whatever. So we need to do something to get the schools to bring people back to where they need to be, presumably churches. And, Wilder saying that the opponents of this bill are, quote, attacking. It’s an attack on Christianity. It goes on and on and on. and you’re just bringing the receipts. You’re putting it right in the complaint, saying, here’s everything they’ve said.

>> Sam Grover: It’s incredible how little they care about being two faced, when it comes to this. They say one thing in the legislative enactment, the whereas sections, and they’re saying to their supporters, what the supporters want to hear.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yep. Absolutely. So, in the end, if I’m understanding what your prediction is, I guess I have one more question about the case and how it will be, interpreted under Graham. I’m guessing the best result is you win at trial, you win on appeal. And the supreme court just declined cert. Is that what they’re going to do? Or are they going to take it and then say, you still lose, but we’re going to create a new rule?

>> Sam Grover: I mean, the ideal scenario would be that the supreme court just doesn’t touch it, because the supreme court respects that. In 1980, a previous supreme court ruled on this very issue, and it settled law. that would be ideal. If the supreme court takes it, then it will be, so that it can analyze under the history and tradition test, something that has been illegal for almost 50 years. So, we’ll see how it chooses to do that if the time comes.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Okay, well, I really appreciate your time. I have one more question, and that is, this is not the only case that you’re working on at the freedom from religion foundation. The country is sort of hyper focused on it. I’ve seen memes going all over the Internet about it. But what else are you doing currently? What are. What are the cases that are on the horizon? I’ve described you guys before as the soldiers that stand watch on the top of the wall of separation of church and state. What are you seeing that’s coming over the horizon?

>> Sam Grover: Yeah. so, I love working at the freedom from religion foundation because we are, so responsive. so we take in thousands of complaints every year from around the country. People email us, they call us, they fill out our intake form on our website just to say, hey, I live in this small, predominantly christian community. You know, I’m an atheist, or I’m minority, religious, or even I’m christian, and just take issue with the government telling people when and how to pray, something like that. So we take in thousands of complaints. This happened to my kids public school. And mostly, what we do is we write letters, to those government entities, a lot of school boards, things like that. Local, police departments, that put crosses on badges, things like that. And we say, hey, knock it off. This is illegal. Most everything, that we write about gets resolved in that manner. we get so many victories every year on behalf of people in little communities, who just need support from an outside organization who’s going to keep their name out of it, right. so often these people have, to be anonymous in order to keep their relationships in their small town. So that’s the primary thing we do. and I do a lot less of that now. I’m heading our litigation team. So, I’m heading out, heading up the cases where that solution doesn’t work.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: yeah, I mean, even though you guys are reigning champions of whack a mole on first amendment violations, right? That’s what you do. That’s your wheelhouse. Like you said, the angry letter, the threatening letter, the. Hey, persuasive letters don’t always work. So, we see cases like this one. Are there any other big cases like this that you anticipate, coming up, or, is it all quiet on the western front for now?

>> Sam Grover: you know, well, it’s never quiet. there’s always interesting things happening. our caseload right now is mercifully light, which allows us to be nimble and take that next big case when it comes along. we’re actually just wrapping up a case right now that dates back to 2015, or I guess we filed in 2016 against Texas, Governor Greg Abbott, who censored one of our displays in the Texas capitol. just during this interview, we got a ruling from the court that, they have to pay us over $400,000 in attorneys fees and costs, for, that first amendment violation. so, you know, these cases can drag on for a long time. so there’s always things to do there. but, we’re ready to take on more. And, I’m really excited, to get some new cases underway, when necessary. so we’re here. We’re here for the people who, support us or the people who contact us with their local problems. and that’s why I love this organization. It’s where I want to be.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: I will put a link to the FFRF website on, this video and podcast. are there any tips you have for contacting you? Just go to the website, or are there other ways?

>> Sam Grover: The website is the easiest and best way to do it. the form is easy to fill out, and it just has a couple questions with basic information. And, there’s also a link to donate or become a member on there. Membership is criminally cheap. It’s, $40 a, year, I think, which, I’m not a math major, but that’s less than a gym membership. It’s less than $5 a month, which is what you typically, pay a bare minimum subscription service. just being a member, it helps us so much, because we put that in every letter to government entities. We have over 40,000 members across the country. Please listen to us. And that number has, been rising over time, and it gives us more legitimacy, more power to help out the small guy.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Absolutely. I have, a side gig I have is I am a host for a show called the atheist experience, and it is a weekly call in show where theists and atheists will call in and talk about these sorts of issues. I cannot tell you the number of times that freedom from religion foundation has come up in those discussions. People will call in and say, this is my problem. And the hosts will say, you need to contact FFRF, or people will call in and say, I’ve contacted FFRF, and they wrote a letter, and it solved the problem. even outside of that, the last year when I interviewed Ryan Jane from FFRF, I was talking about it online, and somebody reached out to me and said, my daughter just came home from school, and there’s something called this good news club that she was forced to attend to. I mean, it’s like, just nonstop, like we said, whack a mole. So please, please, please. I gladly pay the $40 a year to be a member. I get all sorts of emails. You get all sorts of insight on their videos. it really helps you stay in touch with what’s going on with, the rise of christian nationalism, as we’ve demonstrated today, the massive amount of misinformation that powers that rise. That’s the tagline of my whole podcast. and how you can help either locally, if it’s happening in your state, or by supporting organizations like yours.

>> Sam Grover: Well, thanks so much, Graham. It’s great having, support, from you and, the people who watch, your content.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: excellent. Excellent. So I will close by saying thank you so much. You’ve been very generous with your time, and hopefully, like your tagline on Twitter says, this case against Louisiana will be another case of you doing a slam dunk.

>> Sam Grover: Slam dunk. Yeah. Thanks, man.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: All right.

>> Sam Grover: Appreciate it.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: All right, have a good one.

>> Sam Grover: You, too. Bye.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: And there you have it. That’s my interview with Sam Grover, the senior counsel for litigation at Freedom from Religion foundation. I am very, very thankful for his time. He was very generous with me. I am also very happy to be a member of FFRF, and I encourage all of you to be the same. As Sam mentioned, it’s $40 a year, and it really helps them keep an eye on the stuff like we see happening in Louisiana. Without them, we would have, fewer lawyers available to play that whack a mole game of keeping these christian nationalists from taking over our country. I’ve put a link to FFRF in the description of this video and podcast and on my website at www.thecrossexaminer.net. also, if you have time and if you’ve enjoyed this content and the interviews I do and the deep dive stuff that I bring to you, please remember that I don’t monetize any of this right now. It’s just my advocacy. It’s something, that I do, that I have a passion for. But you can help by liking, subscribing, commenting, and sharing my videos and podcasts. That way, we get more people watching, and the algorithms will take over, and more and more people will start hearing this information straight from the experts like Sam Grover. So thank you very much for listening today. It really means a lot to me, and I look forward to seeing you next time. Bye bye.

>> Sam Grover: This has been the cross examiner podcast, the Internet’s courtroom in the case of rationality versus religion. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider subscribing.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: See you soon.

The Cross Examiner/Graham: Welcome to another episode of the Cross Examiner Rocket Docket, where you are the judge here. We brief you on the news of the day so that you can issue a ruling. Get ready to hear the arguments, because court is now in session. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the Cross examiner podcast. I am m the cross examiner. I am an attorney, I am an atheist, and I am alarmed. I’m alarmed by the rise of christian nationalism in the United States. And I’m more alarmed by the massive amount of misinformation that’s powering that rise. This is a rocket docket episode. It’s unscripted. I’m reacting to the news. I want to get this out as soon as possible. So forgive the ums, the AHS, the pauses, as I need to look things up. but what we’re going to be talking about today, if the title of the episode didn’t give it away, is Louisiana has, now mandated that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom. Texas tried this last, ah, session. They had it for procedurally didn’t get through. They ran out of time here. Louisiana sealed, the deal, so to speak, with their governor, signing it and saying, this is the best bill, the happiest he’s been, I think, is the quote, or the most satisfied he’s ever been, signing a bill into law, which should speak to most people about how crazy Louisiana is. Now, it’s easy to look at this and say, that’s unconstitutional, right? That’s crazy. The state can’t come in and say, hey, let’s put, copies of christian scripture on the wall of every public classroom, right? Yeah, it should be unconstitutional. But we have this little issue called, the McConnell court. So you may recall McConnell refused to seat Obama’s nominee for replacing, Supreme Court justices. he ran out the clock, so to speak, in dirty politics that they place so well on the GOP side of the aisle. So when Trump took office, he got to insert three justices into the supreme Court, making it an overwhelmingly, christian, nationalist centered set of justices that have control over the court. And that is exactly why these bills are being introduced now. So what I’m going to do today is I’m going to go through the history of First Amendment law, the, important milestone cases to center us to understand deeply, because I’ve done this in the past at a higher level, but this, this law under this court, this is a real threat. This is the real deal. This is why I want to take the time, because if you get into discussions with your MAgA relatives, and they start talking about the talking points that the Louisiana governor, and legislators who support this bill throw at them. I want you to be able to push back and have all the facts at your fingertips. So what we’re going to do is I’m going to read the law, the operative pieces of the law, so we can understand it. Then we’re going to. We’re going to do a little bit of a deep dive on. Wait a second. Shouldn’t this violate the First Amendment? And, in order to answer that question, we have to understand the First Amendment, and we have to read a few key cases that the Supreme Court in the past has decided that relate to this. So you can see that, yes, clearly, up until 2022, this would have been clearly a, case that would have not even gotten to the Supreme Court. They would find it unconstitutional in the lower courts, and the Supreme Court would not even take this up. But today, in 2024, there is a real risk, and not even a small risk, a substantial risk, that this court will not only take this case when it eventually gets to them, but they may find that Louisiana is allowed to do this under the Constitution, and they will be wrong. They will be inserting their own religious preferences into the Constitution and subverting it. And that is the definition of christian nationalism. And that is why I am so eager to get this in front of you. So you will have all the facts. So let’s start with the law. I’m going to read it. I’ll put. I’m doing this on YouTube as well, because I want to be able to put some screenshots up. So I normally just do podcasts. I’m doing video here, so forgive me for sometimes, not looking at the camera, things like that. But the operative parts say that basically no later than January 1, 2025, I’m going to read this exactly. Each public school governing authority shall display the Ten Commandments in each classroom in each school under its juris. Excuse me. Jurisdiction. So, public schools. They specifically say public schools. The nature of the display shall be determined by each governing

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The Cross Examiner/Graham: authority. So each district, with a minimum requirement that the Ten Commandments shall be displayed on a poster or framed document that is at least eleven inches by 14 inches. The text of the Ten Commandments shall be centered, it’s the central focus of the poster or framed document, and shall be printed in large, easily readable font. So you determine what the poster looks like, districts, but it must contain the Ten Commandments. It must be large and easily readable. They don’t define yet what does that mean? From how far away? but large and easily readable font. And, it must be this. The Ten Commandments must be the central focus of the poster. So number two, the text shall read as follows. And I want you to count along with me here because there’s an interesting point to be made. So the first, they say the heading, the ten commandments on one line. And the next one. I am the Lord thy God. So with I am in all caps, Lord, in all caps, I am the Lord thy God. That’s the first two sentences your kindergarteners are going to read when they come into the classroom on their first day of school. So here, let’s go through, the commandments. They list. One, they don’t print the numbers. but I’m going to count them off for you. One, thou shalt have no other gods before me. Two, thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images. Three, thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Four, remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. Five, honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. Where are we? Six, thou shalt not kill. Seven, thou shalt not commit adultery. Eight, thou shalt not steal. Nine, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Ten, thou shalt not cover thy neighbor’s house. Eleven, thou shalt not cover thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maid servant, nor his cattle, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s. Eleven. Sure enough, there are eleven commandments in their list of ten commandments. Why is that? Well, my understanding and I was not raised religious, but in doing some research on this, different sects of, Christianity will combine certain commandments, like the first two, will be combined into one in certain, belief systems, maybe let’s say, catholic versus protestant. And in others, the last 2 may be combined into one. And they couldn’t agree in Louisiana which version. And this is a pattern that we’ve seen, which version of the Ten Commandments to use. So they just listed all eleven. Because I’m going to assume it’s Catholic versus protestant. Let’s make it easy. Catholic versus protestant. If they both have two different versions of the Ten Commandments, they probably ended up in a debate about which ones to use and nobody, would give in. So you end up with this eleven commandments on your child’s ten commandment posters. I don’t know about you, but when the smart kid of the class in kindergarten looks at this poster and points and says, 1234-5678 910. Eleven. And then raises their hand and says, dearest teacher, why, if it says the Ten Commandments are there eleven on there, what is the teacher supposed to say? Right? That whole discussion I just had with you about, intersectional differences, between theology. That’s not a conversation we want our kindergarten teachers having with kids, much less having the kid raise his hand and say, what is it? What does it mean to commit adultery? Could you please tell me? Dear Teacher, I just learned to read, and one of the first words I’m learning to read on this wall is adultery. What is that? Is that what we should have in our kindergarten classrooms? Well, in Louisiana, they think it’s just fine. So this hearkens back to, I think it was two decades ago, Louisiana tried to make the Bible their official state book. You know how states have a bunch of official state crap that’s meaningless? They just do it to either help some sort of industry or to get people to rally behind things. I’m from Maryland, our official state sport. I can never keep track as to whether it’s jousting or lacrosse. I actually think it’s jousting. Believe it or not. we have a great renaissance fair. So maybe that’s doing it, or maybe it’s just a holdover. so in Louisiana, they wanted to make the Bible

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The Cross Examiner/Graham: the official, state book. But what happened? Why isn’t it these days? It never got out of their legislative body because they couldn’t agree on which version of the Bible to use. And we see this again and again, whenever christians are left to themselves, they start fighting amongst themselves. We can’t agree as to which version of the Bible to use. We can’t agree as to which version of the Ten Commandments could use. And that should tell us something about Christianity as a whole. Right? If this was the most important message in the entire universe, that is, there could be an afterlife. This may not be it. You may be able to live for all eternity. Wouldn’t the person who is creating the rules about how to get there make it pretty clear not not have it? So there’s 40, 00, 10,000 different versions of Christianity alone in the world? I don’t know. You’ll have to tell me. But. But let’s move on. I’ve got a lot to say in that. A lot of time. So this is the Ten Commandments. And then they say, the Ten Commandments shall be displayed with a context statement as follows. I’m not going to read it. It basically says, the, history of the Ten Commandments is important to the country, and it cites a couple of events in the history where the Ten Commandments were referenced. It’s three paragraphs, and it has no rules as to how prominent that statement must be. They were very careful to say, hey, this must be. The Ten Commandments must be printed in a very large font and easily readable, presumably from anywhere in the classroom. But when they say, we want to put this disclaimer, which we’ll get to why they’re putting the disclaimer entitled the History of the Ten Commandments in american public education, the reason they’re putting that in there, we’ll get to later. They, don’t say how small that can be, and you can bet it’s going to be fine print in most of these classrooms. so then it says in section four, a public school may also display the Mayflower compact, the Declaration of Independence and the Northwest ordinance as provided in, RS, 20, 512 82, along with the Ten Commandments. So you must display the Ten Commandments. You may display these other documents as if that means anything. Right. It. Was there a previous law that said you couldn’t display the Mayflower compact? Would a teacher get in trouble for displaying the Mayflower compact before this law? No, this is, again, cover. It’s similar to this disclaimer as to why they’re trying to cast the Ten Commandments as just another document. so then they go, to section five that says, this section will not require public school governing authority to spend its funds to purchase displays. In order to fund the displays, free of charge, the school public governing authority shall do either the following one or, a, accept donated funds to purchase, or b, accept donated displays. This is a very common theme when christian, nationalists try to sneak in laws they know are violative of the First Amendment’s establishment clause, they try to dodge a specific argument, which is, the government shouldn’t spend money to favor any one religion. And, they’re trying to avoid that here by saying, you don’t have to spend your money on this. Just accept the donations of displays that we know the communities around you will be glad to print and put in your classrooms. think about this. The fact that they have to say this is telling. If they create a law that says, we, require you to post copies of the constitution, or let’s just say the Bill of rights, right? Another ten sort of rules to follow. You must display a copy of the Bill of rights in every public classroom. Do you think they would have a section that says, the section shall not require a public school governing authority to spend its funds? You must accept donated copies of the Bill of Rights. No, the only reason this is in here is because they know they’re violating the constitution and they’re trying to act like, well, you can’t say that we tax and spent on religion. It’s an empty argument, which we’ll get to. And the rest of this is just procedural, stuff, talking about when and how and who has the authority to do all of this. So let’s. Let’s cut to the chase. Is this constitutional? like I said before, 2022, I would have said, that’s laugh. That’s a laughable question. Of course it’s unconstitutional. But something happened in 2022 that made me not so sure. So we’re gonna work our way up to 2022. I’m gonna give you a few basic dates and cases that you should remember. There. There’s about four big cases you should remember. If you wanna get into, a skirmish about this at the thanksgiving table with, with Aunt Bertha, of course, you need to know that the constitution took effect in 17, 88. And the

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The Cross Examiner/Graham: Bill of Rights took effect in 1791. Okay, so those are the two big ones. Bill of rights, which contains the first amendment. 1791. It’s not 1776 like people think. 1791 is the bill of rights. So, the first case, the earliest case where the supreme Court really gets into first amendment, the. The separation of religion and government, and the tension, or the apparent tension between the establishment clause of the first amendment and the, free exercise clause of the First Amendment is a case called Reynolds v. United States in 1878. So this is 87 years. 87 years. Two to three generations. Four generations after the Bill of Rights. So what does the First Amendment say? Let’s start with that. The First Amendment says, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. And then it goes on to talk about freedom of speech, of press, the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for redress of grievances. But the two clauses of this amendment that are matter to this case are, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. That’s the establishment clause. Congress shall not make a law respecting or about, or regarding, or affecting the establishment of religion. And then it has a comma. Or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The free exercise of religion. So Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. You can’t create an official religion, you can’t promote a religion, and you can’t make a law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. So I can’t make a law, as Congress that says you can’t say, that you love God or that you believe that Jesus Christ is the savior. I can’t do that. That’s me prohibiting the free exercise of your religion. Now, there’s a natural tension here. If I claim that my religion allows me to do something that’s illegal, my religion allows me to go on a killing spree once a year. So when I go out and kill people during my purge, the government telling me I can’t do that would be, prohibiting the free exercise of my religion, right? Well, no. and this particular part of our case, law was decided in that case from 18, 78, which was Reynolds v. Us. Interestingly enough, my Mormon, and ex Mormon followers, I know I’ve got a decent number of them at this point, will love to know that this case, Reynolds v. Us, was, from Utah. So let’s guess, in 1878, what law was a person violating that they claimed was a religious practice, and that if the law criminalized it, it would violate their first amendment rights? I’ll give you two guesses. And your second guess doesn’t count. It was bigamy. So for those of you don’t know, the church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, otherwise known as the Mormons, settled, in Utah 100 and something years ago, 50, 40, some somewhere in that. And, they practiced polygamy for a long time. At first, in secret, the leadership did Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, and then more out in the open. So this case, Reynolds v. Us, is, Reynolds was a man who had, married two women, and he was, arrested and convicted of bigamy. And that, the law in that territory in Utah at the time said, ah, bigamy shall be punished by a fine of not more than $500 and an imprisonment for term of not more than five years. I don’t have on the record what he was sentenced to. He may have been, he may not, have been sentenced by the time this appeal took place. I don’t know. So at the time of the trial and trial, keep in mind, is where you establish facts. The supreme Court doesn’t establish facts. And that will be important later when we look at the, at the McConnell court. We need to remember this. Trials establish facts. If a jury comes up with a fact that says this guy did, in fact, commit, bigamy, and maybe on the jury questionnaire, form says, did he knowingly marry this person while he knew he was already married to that person? Yes, that yes, that’s it. Once the jury says that no appellate court, no supreme court, no legislator can come in and say, no, no, no, you need to change that answer to a no. That’s a right that’s enshrined in the constitution itself, that no, fact found by a jury can be overturned by any other body. So at trial, they found that, yes,

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The Cross Examiner/Graham: he was, in fact, guilty. And he argued and introduced into evidence, unrebutted, that this was a holy practice. My church condoned it. My priest, or bishop or whoever married him condoned it and was aware of it. He was told by the members of the church that you have to practice polygamy. And if you don’t, you will go, you will be, He quotes, failure would be damnation in the life to come, failure to practice polygamy. So this, is clearly, there wasn’t a question of the doubt that this was the practice of the mormon church. It was part of their religion. So the Reynolds court looks at this and says, all right, we need to resolve this tension between the establishment clause and the free exercise clause. I can’t establish a religion. I can’t promote a religion, but I also need to let you exercise it. And if I am, creating a crime, if I’m criminalizing behavior that your religion finds holy, aren’t I establishing all other religions, more than yours? Am I punishing yours? I’m singling yours out. And so this court, this is the first time I found this. This court dives into the history. They take, paragraphs and paragraphs to explain the history here. And in their paragraphs, you can find a very interesting story that relates directly to what Louisiana is doing today. And I’m going to go into that. The story is back in 1784. So this is four years before the constitution takes place. is, ratified, I should say. Virginia, Jefferson state. Jefferson’s home state is considering, the house of delegates is considering, quote, a bill establishing provision for teachers of the christian religion. And this bill would be what Texas was trying to do, or a version of what Texas trying to do, but actually worse, it’s trying to hire teachers for their public schools who will come in and teach Christianity. Preachers, basically, to come in and convert kids or ensure that the kids remain christian. They, introduced that in 1784. They say, we need the commonwealth of Virginia to talk about this. So we’re not going to even vote on it for a year. And during that time, all of the famous founding fathers from Virginia are up in arms. Jefferson, Madison, the rest. Right. Madison prepares a document called a memorial and remonstrance, which was circulated all over the place inside, in which he demonstrated, that, quote, religion or the duty that we owe the creator was not within the cognizance of civil government. That’s his argument again. Civil government. Civics in that sense. Not civilized and polite, but civil government has no business, even contemplating religion or the duty that we owe a creator. So this is circulated, it’s published in papers. everybody is talking about this. And in the next session, a year later, this bill is not only defeated, but a different bill drafted by Thomas Jefferson, which he had written like, seven years before this. He reintroduced this, and it was called for, it was a bill, quote, for establishing religious freedom. That bill was passed in its place, and the preamble of Jefferson’s bill for establishing religious freedom says that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty. Let’s break that down. That’s a little complicated. And if you’ve listened to a previous episode, I have talked about this quote before, so, I apologize for repeating, but it is one of the most important sentences that was written by our founding fathers. And yet another piece of evidence that shows that any christian nationalist who says this is a christian country was founded as a christian nation is lying. They’re mistaken or they’re lying. So that to suffer the civil magistrate so to allow a government official to intrude his powers into the field of opinion, so to allow a government official to exert control over people’s opinion, discourse, preaching, and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles. So to allow the government official to restrain, to prevent people to profess, say, declare, or to propagate the propagation, to spread principles, ideas,

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The Cross Examiner/Graham: on the supposition of their ill tendency. So the he’s talking about, if we allow the civil magistrate, if we allow the government to restrain the profession of concepts, the discussion of ideas, the discussion of religion, on the supposition of their ill tendency, because we presume that these things will have bad effects, they tend to bad outcomes, is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty. So what he’s saying here is if you let the government, intrude into the area of discussion, debate, preaching, the discussion of ideas, even if you, we all agree that, the ideas we’re addressing with this government action are bad or they have bad outcomes. He’s saying, that’s a bad fallacy. That’s a faulty logic to think that it’s a good idea to allow the government to control our conversations and our words. And he says, by doing, if we did so, we would destroy all religious liberty. And by that he means, you know, it wouldn’t be right away. Right? Like me saying, hey, I don’t like you preaching that, we should all, take up arms and blow up this building over here because your God doesn’t like it. That may encourage people to do it. I’m not saying do it right now so it doesn’t fall into the imminent, threat doctrine that’s developed a century later. But I am preaching something that if we followed, it would be bad. And he’s saying, yeah, that sounds like it’s easy pickings. Let’s outlaw that. But what he’s saying here is if you do that, then the next administration that comes along that doesn’t like the preaching of the hare Krishnas is going to ban that. And the next one that comes along that doesn’t like Judaism, they’re going to ban that. Next one comes along and says, wait a second, Christianity’s got a lot of bad stuff in it. You’re not allowed to preach that anymore. And only Islam can be preached or only Christianity can preach. That’s where he’s saying is going. As soon as you allow the government to intrude, you have done away with religious liberty, because the winds of preference and philosophy will change over time. And sooner or later, you’re going to give the Banhammer to anybody in power like we’ve seen with Donald Trump, or imagine Marjorie Taylor Greene with it, and they would just outlaw anything that they didn’t like. So then he goes on to say in his conclusion here, it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere where principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order. And what he’s saying here, and the Supreme Court in Reynolds is, is purposefully talking about these two sentences here. he’s saying it’s time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government. It is. You can wait for the government officials, for its officers to intervene when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order, you can wait for government officials to start interfering with things when people’s ideas and conversation change and become acts actions. So what Jefferson is saying is, we don’t want that. In short, the government should not be able to regulate speech and thought specifically and more generally anywhere but specifically with religion. But they can and should. and it’s a good idea to wait until any sort of principles or discussion breaks out into an action. As soon as somebody breaks the law, arrest them. And this, the Supreme Court in the Reynolds case, the bigamy case, says, quote, in these two sentences is found the true distinction between what properly belongs to the church and what to the state. And they go on to explain exactly what I said. You can think that bigamy is fine. Polygamy is fine. You can rally your followers to say, hey, you know what? I think polygamy should be legal in Utah. You can say, I think we should be able to marry, anybody we want. Marry our mothers, marry our sisters, marry people that are already married, whatever it may be. You can tell people to go vote to elect officials who will change the law to make bigamy illegal. That is fine. That’s desirable. That’s what Jefferson wants. But the minute you commit bigany while it’s illegal, Jefferson saying that’s when you commit an overt act against peace and order. And peace and order is following the laws of the. Of the country. So the Supreme Court here in this first case, Reynolds v. us in 1878, let’s do the math. How long ago was that? That’s 22.

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The Cross Examiner/Graham: And we’re in 24. So 46, 146 years ago, we. We have our first case where we’re saying, all right, government gets to regulate acts and stay, out of anything else. Do not get into the discussion of religion. So that’s. That’s the first case. Now we jump way forward. And the reason I read that to you is we need to understand how long ago it was that we’ve sort of settled that principle where the Supreme Court said the state can regulate acts. The state shouldn’t get into the promulgation of religion. The discussion of religion, the repression of religion. They shouldn’t be get into the repression, promulgation, or, encouraging of speech about religion. So we jump all the way to 1963, and we get a case called Abington school district versus Shemp. This was in Pennsylvania. And back then, the Pennsylvania law required schools, public schools, to start the day by reading Bible verses. And this law had been on the book since 1949. Somebody sues. And this is the law, the quote of the law. This is a, 24 pa statute, which Pennsylvania statute, section 15 1516, enacted in or as amended in, 1959, requires that quote at least ten verses from the Holy Bible shall be read without comment at the opening of each public school. On each school day, any child shall be excused from such Bible reading or attending such Bible reading upon the written request of his parent or guardian. So they knew, you know, this is not constitutional. Let’s let kids opt out. This goes to the supreme Court. And they find that the trial court found that every school day at Abington senior High School between between 815 and 830, while pupils were attending their homeroom, the, opening exercises, the reading of at least ten bible verses, and it turns out the Lord’s prayer as well, is what they were doing, were broadcast into every single room in the school building, often with students reading the verses. And they were conducted. The reading was conducted under supervision of a teacher. Selected students from the course would gather in, the workshop studio to read over the loudspeaker. And then every student in the school was told to stand at attention and recite the Lord’s prayer. And this was, again, also broadcast over the intercom. But students were told, you need to join us in reciting this. So this is government mandated speech. This is the worst violation of first amendment. Not only am I. Am I saying I’m promoting Christianity here, but I am compelling students through peer pressure and, through unawareness of their parents. You need to start reciting this mantra every single day. And they tried to make it so it would be like, hey, you can opt out if you want to, right? You can go stand in the corner by your. While the rest of your classmates are doing this, chant, so to speak this prayer. You can be the weird kid if you want to. We saw how that plays out in all sorts of equal protection cases, right. In brown versus board of education, was, very short opinion. You don’t treat these students differently based on these certain things that are unconstitutional to use to differentiate students. That’s what they were doing here. so. And this was not the only state. By the sixties, four, more states were doing this. So shemp, who had a student, I don’t know if it was a son or a daughter. but he was a unitarian universalist. He was actually religious. He was a Christian, but he sued. And this is important because, this is going to be relevant to our Louisiana case when we analyze it. And the court held that public schools cannot sponsor bible reading readings and recitations of the Lord’s Prayer under the first Amendment’s establishment clause. It’s establishing a religion reading the part of this historical document that they will call it, the Bible is a, violation of the first amendment. So this is as far back when was, Abingdon, 1963. So you can’t read bible passages. You can’t make people recite the lord’s prayer. You can’t recite the lord’s prayer in school. Then we go to probably the second most important case. I would say it’s the most important because, it created a big test. But that test has gone away. So you may have heard of the lemon test. It comes from a case called

00:35:00

The Cross Examiner/Graham: Lemon v. Kurtzman in 1971. So the facts under Lemon v. Kurtzman are Pennsylvania and Rhode island had statutes that provided, non public elementary and secondary schools with benefits. They paid all or some of teachers salaries. They paid for textbooks. They paid for instructional materials, all of this stuff. And it was for, non public schools, which is code for religious schools. So money was going to religious schools. They were taxing their citizens and giving their citizens money to schools that promoted a specific version of a specific religion. Right. the question the court had to ask was, hey, is this constitutional? And, chief justice, Berger, in a unanimous opinion, was eight oh, as to Pennsylvania and eight to one. And there was a technical reason somebody dissented to the Rhode island one, said, no, this is not constitutional. This violates the establishment clause easily. And in doing so, they created, they basically are saying, hey, we’re getting more of these. We need to. We need to guidance to the lawyers working for school districts. We need to give guidance to the lower court. We need to guide the country as to how to tell when government action violates or likely violates the establishment clause. And they produced what’s called now the lemon test. And it was a three pronged test. It was a sniff test. You go through it, one, two, three, you know, do you pass this? If so, go to two. Do you pass that? If you go to, then go to three. If you pass that, fine, you’re constitutional. The first was the purpose. Prong the statute must have a secular legislative purpose. Make that. Make that clear again. Whatever the government’s doing must have a secular purpose. So here they’re saying, you’re paying money to religious schools. There’s no secular purpose there. You are giving money to christian schools. They are going to promote Christianity. the states tried to argue, hey, we’re paying for the secular textbooks and we’re only paying teachers salaries. And they don’t always teach religion. They teach other stuff. Sometimes the court called bullshit on that and said, no, you can’t pay for public schools. So then we have. Which means you don’t even get to the second and third prong. Right? in that analysis. But the second prong was the effect prong. The principal or primary effect of the statute. Must neither advance nor inhibit religion. So, first you must have a secular purpose. You must be able to at least articulate and pass the snicker test. Like, if you tell me what your secular purpose is. And you’re not laughed out of the room as it being a lie or transparently a, facade, then you get to the effect prong. And the effect prong says, okay, it’s got a secular purpose, or a claimed secular purpose. What’s the actual primary effect of this? Because even if your secular purpose is to teach history, but the primary effect is to promote Christianity, you fail under the lemon test. Because the effect is to advance religion. Or if they do something that inhibits religion, they would fail there. Like, if you have a secular purpose to talk about, the history of how certain religious leaders of, let’s say, islam, have, done horrible things. And how their book is false. And how people shouldn’t pray to Allah, those sorts of things. You might be able to couch it as a history lesson. So maybe you get past the purpose prong. But you fail at the effect prong. Because you’re obviously trying to inhibit a specific religion from being practiced. So if you do have a secular purpose, and if the primary effect is neither advancing nor inhibiting religion, you get to the third prong, which is the entanglement prong. And the entanglement prong said the statute, the government action must not result in a, quote, excessive government entanglement with religion. What the hell does that mean? Right? Like, this is this is where the criticism really piled up by conservatives on this. Like, what do you mean, excessive entanglement? We’ve already said there’s a secular purpose. We’ve already said if we were at this stage, we know there’s a secular purpose. We know that the statute neither has a. Has a primary purpose that neither advances nor inhibits religion. What’s this entanglement? And there’s cases that get into that. I won’t get into it, because the cases that we review don’t even get to the entanglement prong. So that’s the lemon test. 19, 71. So I’m glad you stuck with me so far. Quick recap. Bill, of rights, 1791. Reynolds v. United States. Just remember, bigamy case. Bigamy case, 1873. Okay, that’s the one where they

00:40:00

The Cross Examiner/Graham: say. They quote Jefferson. This is the one that you can throw at Aunt Bertha. Hey, your favorite founding father, the one that. That said, the tree of liberty must be occasionally watered with the blood of tyrants. You know that the quote that the conservatives love putting on their t shirts? The quote that Timothy McVeigh had on his t shirt when he blew up the federal building in Oklahoma and killed kids, that immediately sold out as soon as he went on tv in that t shirt, that conservatives bought it up because they liked the idea of this guy blowing up government buildings and killing kids. that guy, Thomas Jefferson, is reacting to the idea of putting christian teachers in schools. Vehemently opposed to it. Madison, another conservative icon of the founding fathers, vehemently opposed. They write letters, they defeat the bill, and they pass their own bill establishing religious freedom. And they clearly say the government can regulate behavior all at once. It just can’t regulate thought, and it shouldn’t promote religion at all. So, bigamy case. says, yeah, you can say brighamy is good, but we can criminalize it. That’s 17. Excuse me. 1878. Then we go to Abington school district. This is, prayers being the holy bible being read over the loudspeaker in Pennsylvania. That’s 1963. Lemon test. This is paying for private school Christian schools, 1971, and creates the lemon test. So that’s 50, years old, right? in 1971. Over 50 years old by now. Then we get to the most on point opinion for this whole discussion, which is Stone v. Graham. That’s 1980. This was a Kentucky case. this is the case where Kentucky passes a law that’s almost identical to what Louisiana does. It mandates that the Ten Commandments must be posted in every classroom in every public school, and that Kentucky not pay for it. But you must accept donations. It’s a trick they’ve been trying to pull for. For decades here. This is 44 years old. 1980, Stone v. Graham. This is the case to remember. As far as being totally on point, the, The court found in this case, eight to one, an, overwhelming majority, that this was unconstitutional. It failed the lemon test at the first prong. And remember, to get past the first prong, you must be able to demonstrate that the statute has a secular legislative purpose, that you were doing this for non religious reasons and what the state did. And this is very important, they said in their bill. The reason we are mandating the display of the Ten Commandments throughout Kentucky is because the Ten Commandments are an important historical document. All of our laws are based from or stem from the law of Moses, the law that God gave us on the tablets. and that is why we are doing this. And they knew that they had to say that to try to get past the purpose prong, right? They. Lemon was. Was how old? At this .9 years old. They knew what they were doing. so they put this statement in there, and testimony was held at trial that that was the purpose, that that’s what the state claimed, the court wrote, and I’m going to quote them exactly here. Quote. This is not a case in which the Ten Commandments are integrated into the school curriculum, where the bible may be constitutionally used in an appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, or the like. Posting of religious texts on the wall serves no such educational function. If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are, ah, to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey the Ten Commandments. However desirable this might be as a matter of private devotion, it is not a permissible state objective under the establishment clause. I don’t know how much more clear you can get. This is an eight to one opinion from 1980 saying, you don’t get past the purpose prong. You are lying. Kentucky legislators, when you say the reason you are doing this is to teach history. You didn’t put it in history books. You didn’t introduce it into your curriculum. You posted it like rock posters, rock and roll posters all over the school without any other instruction. And there is

00:45:00

The Cross Examiner/Graham: only one result here, and that is to promote this particular religious text. So you don’t even get past the purpose. Wrong. We don’t believe you, that there’s a historical purpose. They also addressed the whole, hey, you don’t have to take money, to pay for these posters that Kentucky did and Louisiana is also doing in their bill. And they said, quote, it does not matter that the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are financed by voluntary private contributions for the mere posting of the copies under the auspices of the legislative. Excuse, me. The legislature provides the, quote, official support of the state government, quote, that the establishment clause prohibits citing other cases, saying, hey, you’re giving this the official support of the government. This is very similar to Brown versus Board of education, where the court unanimously said, even if you could draw a line and say that separate is equal, the mere drawing of the line by the government and saying it’s just a line is, a facade. The schoolchildren know why the line is being drawn, and it’s not because people dislike the white kids. It is obviously because they dislike the majority. The government dislikes the black kids, so that is impermissible. That’s what’s going on here. it’s a form of this. They’re to say it doesn’t matter, that it’s. We’re not paying for it. Right? That if it was just some poster we put up up, we didn’t have to pay for it. We’re just saying put it up. But it’s not an official government action. No, you mandating that the poster go up, even if you don’t pay for it, is putting this stamp of approval on Christianity, and that’s unconstitutional. That violates the establishment clause. That’s what the court says here. And then they call out the General assembly specifically, that passed this, the legislative body that passed it, quote, the preeminent purpose for posting the Ten Commandments on schoolroom walls is plainly religious in nature. This is true even though the trial court found, quote, the General assembly thought the statute had a secular legislative purpose and specifically said so. So this is the. This is the Supreme Court’s very polite way of giving Kentucky’s legislature the bird. They are saying, I know you said that this was, a secular purpose, that this was a history lesson. And I know that you probably. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and say you think that, but you’re wrong. We know why you’re doing this. So they find it fails the first test there. There is no purpose other than a religious purpose of doing this. That should be the opening shut, right? That’s it. That we have clear precedent. It’s a hundred percent percent on point. There is no substantive difference between the Kentucky statute passed in, decided upon in 1980 and the bill that was signed yesterday by the governor of Louisiana. There’s no difference. So we should just be able to take them to court, point to Stone v. Graham, 1980, and say, no, you can’t do this. This is unconstitutional. See, Stone v. Graham, it’s a two sentence opinion. I mean, it’s. It should be that easy, right? Well, no, there’s. There’s two reasons that make it problematic. One, we’ve already talked about. The court has changed. We have a super majority of christian nationalist judges on this court that might hold differently. But more importantly, the test that was used in Graham, the Lemon test, which has been around for a half a century, was abandoned by this extreme christian nationalist court two years ago. You heard me say in the introduction that before 2022, I would have thought that this was easy. Before 2022, it’s literally Louisiana passes this, the ACLU sues. Tomorrow. They go into court, and the judge says, yeah, unconstitutional. See, Stone v. Graham, get out of my court. And then they appeal, and the circuit court unanimously says, stone, v. Graham, get out of my court. And then they appeal to the supreme Court, and the supreme Court doesn’t even take the case. That’s how it should go. Pre 2022. Post 2022. Now that this court has abandoned the lemon test, it’s the wild west. We have no idea what’s going to happen. Actually, that’s not true. I have an idea of what’s going to happen, and that’s what we’re going to talk about next. So, to know what was going to happen next, we need to revisit Stone v. Graham. But look at the dissent. I told you with an eight to one opinion, the chief justice of the court dissented. That was William Rehnquist. If you’re not familiar with Rehnquist,

00:50:00

The Cross Examiner/Graham: he is a very conservative judge. He is a textualist and originalist. He, he’s one of those people that doesn’t think that the document should change over time as our world changes, right? That, if in order, you know, I, the judge, I’m going to interpret these words the way they were meant the moment that the Congress put them into play. And if the world m changes, to make that a ridiculous result later on, I don’t care. The principles of democracy say, I’m supposed to tell. Well, I’m supposed to interpret what the legislative body meant when they wrote these words, and I don’t think they intended for their meaning to change. If you want to fix that, update the constitution all the time. Update the laws all the time, which is impractical. We know, it’s just impractical. Our government is designed to be a. So that’s Rehnquist. Rehnquist says he thinks that it should at least pass the purpose prong, and probably every prong, the. The Kentucky Ten commandment statute. So this is what he says. he argued that the commandments, quote, had a significant impact on the development of secular legal codes of the western world. His dissent contended that, quote, since religion has. I’m sorry. His dissent contended that since religion has, quote, been closely identified with our history and government, one can hardly respect the system of education that would leave the student wholly ignorant of the currents of religious thought. So what he’s saying here is, wait a second. You, the majority are saying that posting the Ten Commandments has no secular purpose whatsoever. But I find, and I think people will agree, says Rehnquist, that the Ten Commandments has had a significant impact on the development of secular legal codes in the western world. Basically, western law comes from or is greatly influenced by the Ten Commandments. I’m going to call that a little bit of bullshit, and it gets to be a big bullshit later, but remember that that’s his thing. He’s basically. And then he goes on to say, one can hardly respect the system of education that would leave a student wholly ignorant of the currents of religious thoughts. In other words, a school that doesn’t teach kids about the history of religious thought is a bad school. You’re not doing your job. Not only should you, should you, Not only is this important, it’s so important that if you don’t teach it, it would be bad. And then he says the court rejects the secular purpose articulated by the state because the decalogue, that’s the Ten Commandments, is, quote, undeniably a sacred text. Then he says, it is equally undeniable, however, as the elected representative of, Kentucky determined that the Ten Commandments have had a significant impact on the development of secular legal codes. That’s where he came that from. The trial court concluded that evidence submitted substantiated this determination. Certainly, the state was permitted to conclude that a document with such secular significance should be placed before its students with an appropriate statement of the document’s secular importance. The establishment clause does not require that the public sector be insulated from all things which may have a religious significance or origin. This court has recognized that, quote, religion has been closely identified with our history and government. And, quote, the history of man is inseparable from the history of religion. And he’s not wrong on some of these points. He’s not wrong that the history of man is inseparable from religion. He is not wrong that religion has been closely identified with our history and government. There’s a lot of there. But then he goes on to say this, quote, Kentucky has decided to make students aware of this fact by demonstrating the secular impact of the Ten Commandments. And I have written in my notes, in all caps, bullshit. And this is with a big bullshit. Okay, so he’s sitting here talking. At first, the history of law stems from, at least in the western world, stems from the Ten Commandments. That religion has been closely identified with our history and government, that schools who don’t talk about the subtleties of how religion interface, excuse me. Affects our history. Would be a bad school system that, quote, the history of man is inseparable from the history of religion. He says all of that, and then he has the balls to say, Kentucky has decided to make students aware of this fact by demonstrating the secular impact of the Ten Commandments. How does posting the Ten Commandments on a wall in every classroom demonstrate the secular impact of the Ten Commandments? I ask you,

00:55:00

The Cross Examiner/Graham: in what world does that follow from everything that you just said? Even if we accept that this is important, which I tend to agree, the Ten Commandments were important to a lot of people. But I will also argue later that they’re not unique and they weren’t the first. They aren’t the original source. we find laws. I guess I’m arguing now. We find laws, sumerian laws, dating to five to 800 years before our earliest estimates of when the Ten Commandments were written. And the fact that we don’t know when the Ten Commandments are written should tell us something about religious belief, but that’s not this episode. So, 500 to 800 years before the Ten Commandments, we have laws, written in sumerian that we have found written laws that say things like, don’t kill people. If you kill a man, you are going to be put to death. Don’t steal. If you steal, you’re going to be put to death. Don’t kidnap. If you kidnap people, you’re going to be put to death. don’t rape a woman. That that’s somebody else’s property. If you rape somebody, you’re going to be put to death. No, I’m just kidding. They don’t say that. They say if you rape somebody, you’re going to owe the owner of the woman 15 shekels, just like the Bible does. I just need to. Need everybody to wrap their head around. They said, it’s another fight for another day. But kill somebody, get put to death. Steal, get put to death. But rape a woman, you owe somebody 15 shekels. But these are all mirrored in the Bible. so there’s a very famous quote by Robert Ingersoll, who was a famous atheist. He described himself as agnostic, attorney back in the 18 hundreds. And he talks about the Ten Commandments and this claim, this claim of Rehnquists and others, the Louisiana state legislature, the Kentucky legislature, and certainly the people that are going to be talking to the Supreme Court about this case, that this is the origin of our laws, that it’s the most important thing for our laws. I’m going to read this quote now. It’s one of my favorite pieces of writing. and I’d like for you to listen to this and keep it in mind. This is what should be ringing true when you hear the argument that we’re doing this for secular reasons, we’re doing this for historical reasons. This is Robert Ingersoll. Some christian lawyers, some eminent judges have said that the ten Commandments are the foundation of all law. Nothing could be more absurd. Long before these commandments were given, there were codes of law in India and Egypt, laws against murder, perjury, larceny, adultery and fraud. Such laws are as old as human society, as old as the love of life, as old as industry, as the idea of prosperity, as old as human love. All of the ten Commandments that are good were old. All that are new are foolish. If Jehovah had been civilized, he would have left out the commandment about keeping the Sabbath. And in its place he would have said, thou shalt not enslave thy fellow men. He would have left out the one about graven images, and in its stead would have said, thou shall not wage wars of extermination, and thou shalt not unsheathe the sword except in self defense. If Jehovah had been civilized, how much grander the ten Commandments would have been. All that we call progress. The enfranchisement of man, of labor, the substitution of imprisonment for death, of fine for imprisonment, the destruction of polygamy, the establishment of free speech, of the rights of conscious, in short, all that has tended to the development and civilization of man, all the results of investigation, observation, experience and free thought, all that man has accomplished for the benefit of man since the close of the dark ages has been done in spite of the Old Testament. So, what he’s saying here is this claim that this is the source of our law, or should be considered the source of our law is utter bullshit. That not only were there written laws in India and Egypt, but, as I say, we’ve found laws that he wasn’t even unaware of that predate the, ten commandments by, 800 years. Five to 800 years. At least. At least that long that say the same things. And his argument under his argument is saying this is a secular thing. Living beings in a social society will come up with

01:00:00

The Cross Examiner/Graham: the same laws. You don’t need the Ten Commandments. I will learn pretty quickly. That’s a bad idea, for people to go around killing each other and raping each other and and lying and stealing all of these things we don’t like. And so we get together and make laws to outlaw them as we did long before the Ten Commandments. Was. Was Christianity as a whole important to people? Yeah, it sure as hell was. Either because they liked it or because it was brought upon them through crusade and threat of death. But it became important, and that’s important to discuss that whole thing. But that’s for a history class. Posting the Ten Commandments on the wall is the stupidest way I can think of, of trying to have that discussion. And that is what the Supreme Court said in Stone v. Graham. So what happened? Why am I worried? Why. Why is everybody talking about this? Worried? Well, we have to talk about one more case, and that’s Kennedy versus Bremerton School District from 2022. This is that, that time I was telling you about. So what was Kennedy? Kennedy was, if you remember this, this is a recent case. The football coach who had taken to the practice of praying in the middle of the field after each game, and players would join him. And the school started investigating what he was doing with his prayers because they were worried that it would constitute a violation of the establishment clause. He is a government official that Jefferson wrote about back in his letter, objecting to hiring teachers of the christian faith, right? Objecting to what he is doing. He is becoming a teacher of the christian faith. He is a teacher in the school. He is getting his players to pray with him. And you can be damn sure it was a christian prayer. I, mean, we know it’s a christian prayer. There’s no doubt about that. So. So the school started asking what was going on, and I’m going to read a few facts so we understand what was going on here. So he had taken to the practice of praying in the middle of the field. Immediately after each game, the players and others would join into that practice. After a while, like they noticed. And after a few games, more and more players were just praying with him in the middle of the field. As soon as the game ended, the school board, told him, hey, we’re worried about this establishment clause. But he kept doing it. they told him, hey, you can pray elsewhere or at a different time. But he continued the practice. And, then, Kennedy, found out that he had been leading prayers in the locker room. This was not just him prying, praying by himself. This was him praying with a bunch of kids on the field and praying with a bunch of kids in the locker room. He was being a teacher of the christian faith through example, if not through deeds. and, the court, which is now the McConnell court, the court that McConnell used dirty politics to create, held that the school board fired him because he refused to stop. And they said, well, because this violates the establishment clause, you can’t do it. He refused to stop, and he said, we got to let you go. The school. The court, in a six, to three, I was believe. Yeah, six to three opinions, and said, nope, that violates his free exercise clause. And this is why we had to talk about what we had to talk about. Reynolds v. Us. right. This was the bigamy case in which the Court, the Supreme Court, same court, went to. That went to all that discussion about the Jefferson sentences that says the two sentences find the true distinction between what properly belongs to the church and what properly belongs to the state. So you’re my students. What do you remember about Reynolds? What did they talk about? What does Jefferson say is the property is properly belongs to the state and to the church. The church gets speech and thought right. The state gets to regulate actions. And this guy can be christian, he can profess Christianity all he wants, but the action of doing it at school as a government official is wrong. It violates the constitution, as this is the claim. And, that is why we can regulate it. And that’s the tension that this court brought back out of nowhere. And you might say, well, wait a second. Why are they not going through this three pronged lemon test? What, is there a secular purpose for praying at a school football match? It. No. If Lemon was in play, it would have failed on day one. Like prong, one instant one. But the court didn’t use the lemon test. The court had been. This conservative court didn’t like the lemon test from the minute it got put into place by the Supreme Court 50 something years ago. And they’ve

01:05:00

The Cross Examiner/Graham: been looking for a way to get rid of it, because that first. They don’t like that first prong. Oh, we have to have a secular purpose when we try to indoctrinate and groom our kids in public schools to be christians. I don’t like that. Let’s get rid of lemon. And that’s what Gorsuch did. So Gorsuch is the. Is the judge that wrote the opinion. And they held, and he held that the gut. And they held, the six held, that the government, while following the establishment M clause, may not suppress an individual from engaging in personal religious observance as doing so would violate the free speech and free exercise clause of the first amendment. So a few things we need to go over about why this is such a bad case. First it got rid of lemon, and that’s the real problem for us. But it is also, the first case I’ve read. I’m sure there’s others where I see Gorsuch just lying in writing in front of the whole nation. He is lying when he recites the facts of this case. Gorsuch, if you’ve read a court, opinion, there will usually be, you’ll get the case of so and so versus so and so. Here are all the lawyers. Here were the judges. This is the date. Here’s how it’s going to be reported. And then you’ll get sort of a recitation of facts. If the judges are writing their opinions correctly, they will say on this date and this time, this person did this. and these are all facts that should have come from trial. That’s where facts get established. You don’t bring facts in as a supreme court justice. You go back to trial and you say, the facts of this case, as were found at trial, were the following. And what Gorsuch said was that Kennedy offered his prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied, and that he made short, private, personal prayers. He also said that there is no indication in the record that anyone expressed any concerns to the district about the quiet, post game prayers that Mister Kennedy asked to continue, and that led to his suspension. So he’s saying that these were short, private, personal prayers just for him. Gorsuch said, he distinguished this case. Storage, said, this case is different from cases, quote, in which this court has found prayer involving public schools to be problematically coercive. They’re talking about, which case here we’re talking about, Abington, where they’re reading prayers over the loudspeakers in schools, right? That’s what they’re saying is, well, this is different than that. This is not something that’s being broadcast to all students, which is true. I’ll give him that one. he reasoned that unlike these earlier cases, Kennedy’s prayers were, quote, not publicly broadcast or recited to a captive audience, and students were, quote, not required or expected to participate. So the main points that Gorsuch is making here is this was a short, private, personal prayer. Those are the words he used. And that this was not publicly broadcast and it was not recited to a captive audience. And they were, students were not required or expected to participate. I hope you see the bullshit that they’re laying on here. So this is even not knowing the facts. You know how schools work, you know how teenagers work, right? Saying this was not a captive audience and that the students were not required or expected to participate. Right? That’s what they’re saying. I see, as a teenage boy that’s trying to make varsity football, I see my coach and a lot of my teammates out in the middle of the field praying after. After class, after, excuse me, after the game. You can bet my. Your ass that I’m going to be out there praying, even if I’m not christian. I am going to be doing that because I want a spot on the team. I don’t want my teammates to ask me, why aren’t you praying? This is coercive, just the act of doing it and saying, if you don’t like it, you can go sit on the bench or you can walk away. We’re right back at equal protection again, right? We’re right back in the lap of brown, versus board of education. You, a government official, are drawing a line between people who are participating in your sectarian prayer, your christian prayer to Jesus, and the students who do not participate. And we know what the effect is going to be. So Gorsuch is full of shit here. He also said that it was small. What was the exact, quote? Short, private and personal prayers. And you have to. I’m going to put the pictures up in the video, if I can find it, of what happened at these things. These were not short, private, personal prayers. Sotomayor wrote the dissent, and I’m going to go through her dissent, because we need to understand what’s going on here so we can know what’s going to happen with the Louisiana case. But one of the things she did that I think is very, telling

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The Cross Examiner/Graham: is she did something I’ve never seen a supreme Court justice do. I know they’ve done it on a handful of occasions, but I’ve not read a case where this has happened. She included photographs in her written opinion. If you’ve ever read a, read a judicial opinion, it’s just walls of text and citations and footnotes. That’s it. She put pictures in three different pictures because she wanted to call Gorsuch’s lies, and she wanted it on the record. In her opinion, she put pictures in of giant crowds of students and parents surrounding the coach when he is praying in the middle of the field, people taking pictures. She puts numbered circles on some of the participants to identify who they were, and it discusses them in her opinion. So please go to my. My site, thecrossexaminer.net, and take a look at these pictures. since I’m doing this as a video, I’m probably gonna edit this and put the pictures up while I’m talking right now so you can see them here. it’s ridiculous to even claim that this was a small, quiet, personal, just for me prayer. He is surrounded by, like, 50 students in one of these things. I have to describe this, by the way, because I have both a podcast of this and a video of this, a YouTube of this, something that came out that she also pointed out. well, I’m going to go through it. Let’s go through what she said. Sotomayor says Mister Corsic described this as, quote, Mister Kennedy prayed during a period when school employees were free to speak with a friend, call for a reservation at a restaurant, check email, or attend to other personal matters. He offered his prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied. Sotomayor said the record reveals that Kennedy had a longstanding practice of conducting demonstrative prayers on the 50 yard line of the football field. Kennedy consistently invited others to join his prayers and for years led student athletes in prayer at the same time and location. He did this in the locker room. M too. That, she points out, the court ignores this history. Gorsuch never mentions any of this. The court also ignores the severe disruption to school events caused by his conduct. She also described the implicit coercion that I talked about from peer pressure. She said, quote, to the degree the court portrays petitioner Joseph Kennedy’s prayers as private and quiet, it misconstrues the facts. She wrote that the court has consistently recognized that school officials leading prayer is constitutionally impermissible. The majority ruling, she wrote, quote, charts a different path, yet again paying almost exclusive attention to the free exercise clause, protection for individual religious exercise, while giving short shrift to the establishment clauses, prohibition on the state establishment of religion. And that’s the core here. Again, it goes back to, to our earlier case where we reviewed what Thomas Jefferson said about this tension between free exercise and, establishment. This is the Reynolds case from 1878, right? She, has got hints of that here. In fact, one other fact I forgot to even note, this is the one that I think really sort of blows the whole Gorsuch argument. This is a quiet, private prayer off on the side of events while students were free to go do whatever they wanted. She says it’s in the record. In the trial in September 2015, quote, a court, a, coach, excuse me, from another school’s football team, informed Kennedy’s principal that Kennedy had asked him and his team to join Kennedy in prayer. The other team’s coach told the principal that he thought it was, quote, cool that the district would, quote, allow its coaches to go ahead and invite the other team’s coaches and players to pray after a game. So this, this utterly destroys what Gorsuch was saying, and it’s there for the public to read. And I’m surprised that people aren’t alarmed by this. I mean, people were, but this is just pure bullshittery on the, on the side of Gorsuch. This, he portrays it, in his opinion, as this quiet, personal, short, private prayer. And we see facts in the record established at, trial. And you can’t ignore this. These are facts at, ah, trial that. That they found he was inviting other teams ahead of games to say, hey, come pray with me. Bring your whole team. We’re going to make a big demonstration out of this. He would hold his helmet up in the middle of the field before the prayer. that’s in the record, too. So, go take a look at the pictures. one of the things she points out, and this is the important part, is, hey, Gorsuch didn’t use lemon. Lemon, is dead. We didn’t officially say lemon is bad law, but sotomayor, in her dissent, says lemon is dead. The court’s never going to use it again, which now means it’s bad law. Which basically means if you ever go to a court

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The Cross Examiner/Graham: and argue a first amendment case, and you start by saying the lemon test says, blah, blah, blah, blah, you’re going to be laughed out of the courtroom because lemon no longer applies. Because justice sotomayor properly, I called out this court, for ignoring it. And, they had ignored it in other cases previously. So what does that mean for the Louisiana case? Where do we stand? That’s been a very long episode. I appreciate you staying with me. So Lemon is out because of this, Bremerton school district, the Kennedy, the coach case, they’re not going to use lemon. So before 2022, before Bremerton, we would have said, okay, Stone v. Graham says the exact fact pattern we have in Louisiana, we had in Stone v. Graham, in Kentucky, the displaying, the posting of the Ten Commandments in every classroom doesn’t get past prong one. There is no secular purpose to this. So you’re gone. That’s what would have happened. But now we don’t have that. Lemon is dead. That three prong test is dead. So what is the court going to do with this? We don’t know. And that’s the scary part. Right. I believe what will happen will be the trial court should say Stone v. Graham is still good law. They haven’t said lemon’s bad law. They haven’t said Stone v. Graham is bad law. Sotomayor has said lemon’s dead. We’re not going to use it again. So they should say, this is exactly the same as, Stone v. Graham. Case closed. Leave that. That should be the end of the story. Then Louisiana will appeal, and they’ll go to whatever district. I don’t know. Excuse me. Whatever circuit, Louisiana’s in, I didn’t look that up yet. and that should be a unanimous opinion by all the judges that say Stone v. Graham applies. This, Bill, excuse me, this act is unconstitutional, and then Louisiana is going to appeal to the supreme court. What should happen is the supreme court should just refuse to hear the case and leave the circuit court’s opinion in place. We don’t know what’s going to happen. I would not be surprised at all if this court, accepts the case. And if they do, there’s two things that could happen. They could accept it because they want to create a new lemon test. Lemon point, you know, 2.0, because they still want to reject it, but they want a different test to use and some sort of vague balancing act. But this court, as Sotomayor says, is all about free exercise and doesn’t give a shit about the establishment clause. So I think even under that sort of, if we say this court’s all about free exercise, I still. There’s a still a chance this court says, yeah, this is still fails, because who’s exercising free religion here? I don’t think they passed the sniff test on the history thing, but that’s going to be the argument. Louisiana is going to argue all along. The Rehnquist dissent in, Stone v. Graham. They’re going to say, this is historical. This is why we’re doing it. It’s got a secular purpose. And the lawyers for, freedom from Religion foundation and ACLU should be arguing as part of their response, should be saying, that’s bullshit. And here’s why. You know, there’s lots of different ways to phrase that. You could say, the way you’re doing it is not an. Is not in a standard way of instruction. You’re just putting a thing on a wall and not talking about it. You’re making sure by the law that it’s large enough for everybody in the classroom to read, read. It’s not incorporated into your lesson plans. This is not instruction. This is indoctrination. This, when you want to talk about grooming in schools, this is grooming people to be christians. That’s what. That’s the argument here. This is not a teaching of history. And then the other argument prong to make on that is, even if it were teaching history, this is not proper history. That is a pretext, because when you look at the history of our laws, they predate the Ten Commandments by five to 800 years. And there’s lots of other laws. As Ingersoll said, Egypt and India, and everybody has always come up with, don’t murder, don’t kill, don’t rape, don’t lie, don’t do all these things that a societal species doesn’t like. There’s nothing new in the Ten Commandments. Anything that is new is foolish, as he said. So that’s the other argument to make. Make. A couple of other arguments that they should make are 14th. Ah, amendment case. They don’t do this enough. This is, again, brown versus board of education. 14th amendment is equal protection. That’s how. That’s what brown versus board of

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The Cross Examiner/Graham: Education was decided upon. They should be making that argument. There is a, law review article by a professor entitled thou shalt use the 14th amendment more. And her point is, hey, everybody that’s fighting these First Amendment cases always relies on the First Amendment, always relies on establishment and free exercise. But mostly establishment right. They don’t want the government to do this. But there’s another argument to be had, and it’s true with the prayer case, and it should have been brought up in Bremerton, and it’s true now, even if everything fails, even if the court says no, this is historical, et cetera, et cetera, you have to say, well, why aren’t you including jewish texts? Well, this is kind of jewish, right? Why aren’t you including islamic texts? Why aren’t you including secular, texts? Why are you not putting the Bill of rights right next to this and all of that sort of stuff to say you are singling out Christianity as being special when we’ve demonstrated it’s not that special in the way that you want it to be, historically speaking. And you’re not including any other religious texts, and you’re not promoting any sort of secular stuff. So you are creating the same situation we had in brown, versus board of education. You’re saying, anybody who’s not Christian is worth less than those who are christian. And that is the message you get from the first day you learn to read in kindergarten when it says, I am the Lord thy God, and big, bold letters on the walls. That’s the equal protection argument that should be made. I don’t know what the court’s going to do. I really don’t. I could see this court shooting this down. I could see the court rejecting it not, and refusing to hear it and just saying, graham’s m still good law. Graham Stone v. Graham. but I could also see them taking it and then coming up with sort of a new test or rule, a balancing act or whatever they’re going to do. They always use sniff tests and balancing acts and a, logic gate, like the lemon test, like, first check this, then check that, that sort of thing. and then still rejecting the laws unconstitutional. But I could also see them finding this constitutional. And the only way they would do that, I think, would be to say that even though lemon’s dead, those elements are still going to be discussed. This is a purely secular bill, or this is a purely religious bill, and there’s excessive entanglement, and all of those things will still come up, but they just won’t be called the lemon test. This is why you should be donating, quite frankly, to the ACLU and the freedom from Religion foundation and Americans for the separation of church and state. There’s, there’s multiple organizations that have teamed up. I spoke with representatives from, I should say, I traded emails with representatives of FFRF, freedom from Religion foundation, weeks ago when this bill was passed. And I said, whoa, this is a big one, right? And they said, yeah. Yep. We are partnering already with ACLU, Americans, for separation, church and state, and all these other sister organizations. We have a team together, and we are going to sue the minute that the governor signs us into bill. I offered to do an interview with them. I’m like, hey, we got to talk about this. And they said, let’s wait till it actually gets signed. So hopefully in the next week or two, we can get somebody on to give, to correct any errors I’ve made in this podcast, and talk about what they think is going to happen in this court. But you should be funding them. Go to FFrF, uh.org, comma, go to ACLU and give them $5, $10, because as I’ve described before, there is a wall that separates religion from government. That’s what Jefferson created long, long ago, writing about these issues. That’s what the first amendment creates. That’s what the case law. If you spent this hour and a half, 2 hours, how long has it been reading to you to try to understand that’s what we’re protecting and the people from FFRF and the related organizations are the soldiers that stand guard on top of that wall. They stand watch looking for this sort of bullshit because, this is, this is directly on point for the theme of my podcast. Christians, christian nationalists have wanted to, quote, put Jesus back in school for a long time. He was never in school. Jesus was never taken out of school. Kids can pray on their own. You can, you can have your own little christian club and in your school and meet together and pray every day, right? That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the government coming in and saying christianity is better than everything else. So they’ve wanted to do that for a long time because it’s just a thing. It’s just a thing that gets a mad, right? And the GOP knows that it gets a mad.

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The Cross Examiner/Graham: And if I can keep you mad, I can keep you voting for me because I’ll be mad with you. I’ll pretend to be mad. And now they’re doing this because they’ve played the long game. They played dirty baseball when Obama was in office. They loaded up this court when Trump was in office. And now we have this situation where there’s a real possibility that every school in the country could start posting the Ten Commandments because the court says it’s okay. That’s why you need to give money to these organizations, because they need to stomp this out the minute that it’s detected. So thank you very much for sticking with me. if you take anything away from this, just remember bigamy in 1878, the court makes it clear, cites Jefferson and tells the story of Jefferson fighting against this stuff before the bill of rights even existed. So as far back as 1878, bigamy. And that’s the Reynolds case. And then, if you care to remember, Abingdon, this is the Pennsylvania schools were reading the ten verses, the Bible verses, to their students in 63, fully unconstitutional. Lemonade, 1971, states paying for the activities of religious schools, clearly unconstitutional, and created the lemon test that stood for 50 plus years. Then we have Stone v. Graham, the one that’s on point. If you remember one case, 1980, Stone v. Graham, Kentucky did the same thing. Louisiana is doing, blatantly unconstitutional. With Rehnquist objecting, saying, I think that there is a secular purpose. And I think it’s that objection that’s going to carry forward. Even though Bremerton, the football coach thing, did away with Lemon, 50 years later, after Lemon was passed, did away with it and signaled that it’s, it’s. It’s open season on bringing these sorts of bills which is why Texas did this last year and why Louisiana is doing it now. And why, I think it’s Ohio, where they’re trying to create religious chartered schools, which is what violates the. The holding in, In, Lenin. Right, Violet? You know, we’re paying for a private, religious school. That’s what a charter school is. And then they have them. Now they’re trying to create them in Ohio, I believe it is. So those are the big ones. Stone v. Graham being the biggest, 1980. So get out there and fight. Do not give up because your vote matters. This is another thing I should say. Sorry, I keep acting like I’m ending this, but people will say, I don’t see a difference between Biden and Trump. This is Trump. This is what happened. I don’t care if you are a Republican most days. the MAGA movement is not the traditional republican movement. It is the white christian nationalist movement. And he is their fascist leader. And this is the prize that they got for supporting him. You wonder why all of these, allegedly good christian people would. Would vote for the pussy grabber in chief, the philanderer in chief, the porn star, hider in chief. This is why. Because he told them he would do this. He gave trillions of dollars to the richest Americans without giving any to the poorest. And he gave the religious fanatics that got him into power. He gave them this court, these judges who did Bremerton did away with lemon, and now are poised to let schools start teaching you not only that Christianity is the best religion and everybody else is second class citizens, but potentially, which version of Christianity is the best. And that’s really, really scary. That should be scary for anybody. Even Christians should be outraged that this is going on. All right, long rant over. I appreciate you sticking with me. This, I, think the amount of time I’m devoting into talking about this should signal how concerned I am about this. So please get out there and vote. Please get out there and donate. And I promise you, the stories I told you were coming up are coming up, but I had to get this in the can and talk to you about it. So thanks for paying attention, and I’ll see you next time. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of the cross examiner rocket docket. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider liking and subscribing. We’ll see you soon.

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