Rational Security: The “Scoot Over” Edition

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“I'm about to say something that I think will more so than other things,”

I say on this podcast, which is actually kind of astounding, marked me as a middle-aged man and father,

which is that I had my very first lime scooter experience this morning,

I'll try to get here on time for this podcast, by virtue of my bike being in the shop. Are you lime scooters and are you or are the most useful of us? Are you a lime scooter person? You're like not enough or enough of your own mortality yet

to avoid those things? Definitely not in New York and Georgia. That's not a thing, but in DC, oh dear. Sorry. That's okay. Look, we may not have scooters in Georgia,

but we do have dog attacks, so we have scooters going for it. But in DC, I want to my favorite things to do is go to the mall and get one of the scooters, and especially one of the main things I recommend to people is doing this at night, like really late at night at midnight,

and you go around to all the monuments.

However, there are some of the scooters that kind of

stop automatically around certain areas of the monuments, but yeah, it's really fun. I mean, I'm into Scooter. What did you think about it, Scott? I was not a fan.

I was like, instead of finding it dangerous, when I usually, my experience with Scooter usually is that I see like nine high school students piled on one, seemingly going like 55 miles per hour down a bike land, and I, all my fatherly and things get kind of, I say,

this is bad news and bad for society. We should kill these things. And then I was on a today, it just felt so ploddingly slow. I feel like I didn't get anywhere. Maybe I was in one of the like the slow zones or something.

As some people who listened to the show will recall, I was a segue writer for a long time. I am right. And I, I wore out several segues, and I just got to say, you know, people, when I started writing a segue,

people would say, oh, you shouldn't do that. It's so dangerous. Now, be like, no, you can't fall off of this. It's gyroscopically balanced. It's really smartly designed.

And then people started writing scooters, which are, you know, can fall in any of several directions. You can flip over the top of. They ride them in traffic. And I felt so like, wait a minute,

you guys were yelling at me about my segue. And by the way, they're slow and plodding. Where is the segue, where is the zoo by them? We're not addressing the biggest problem with the DC scooter ecosystem,

which is the thorough blight up on the landscape. When I was still living in the district proper, I could not get out of my condo without nearly tripping on one. I used to regularly see them immersed in rock creek on my jogging runs.

There's no actual mechanism for ensuring that these things don't just become a new form of pollution. And I just subject to them on a static basis. Well, I would just like to clarify, Ben,

“that I think the reason people were worried about your segue use”

is not because it was a segue per se, but because you would do things like you would call us and then be like, hold on, let me get quint on the phone. And we'd be like, you can't do this while you're driving your segue. You're meaning is from the segue.

You tried to record it a lot for your podcast. That's what I'm saying. I can't believe it. And that's where we became a bridge too far. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to

Rational Security. The show we invite you to join members of the law fair team

news stories, whether they are win or lanes,

“or not, I am your host, Scott R. Andersen,”

thrilled to be back with few my colleagues as we dig into not one, but two weeks by virtue of my vacation last week of National Security News. We've had a couple of big developments. We've got the end of us being court term.

We've got the continuation of the ODI and I story, and a couple of the things that we have been eyeballing. And a few more big international stories that we're going to talk about next week on the podcast. First, let me introduce my guest for this week.

Joining us once again is Loffer, Editor-in-Chief, Rational Security, co-host, Emeritist, Benjamin Whittes, Ben. Thank you for coming back on the pod. Great to be here.

Ben is once again hanging his Loffer ISIS flag,

which I always find slightly disconcerting about his designated

recording spot. The large black flag sends a message, even if it's the Loffer look. No, I was like, man, I didn't design it. This was an Ian and a goat rodeo creation

for the high-pouse that Annabauer and I. That's right, that's good. And I just couldn't let it go to waste. So I brought it home and it is now my background, and it's stock open right now.

I can't close it. All right, well, with that intimidating visage, looming over us, let us turn sides to our second guest. Loffer, senior, editor, Annabauer, fresh off vacation or self-annot.

Thank you for joining us back on the podcast. It's been a while. It has been a while, but I'm glad to be here and glad to be back. Wonderful. And joining us once again is among a lot of

other senior, senior, editor, senior, editor, Michael, fineberg. Mike, thank you for coming back on the pod as well. Glad to have you on to help us sift through the news of the week. Of course.

Well, let us get right into it. We've got a couple of big stories of the past few weeks. Topic one, Humphrey's Executioner. On June 29th, this has been quite closed out. It's turned with the trio of decisions on the president's

power to fire officials at supposedly independent agencies. And Trump's slaughter, a six-three majority, upheld, Trump's firing of FTC commission, or Rebecca Slotter, and overruled a 90-year-old president, Humphrey's executor, handing the president at will removal power over roughly

two dozen multi-member agencies. I should say the members and commissioners of those two dozen multi-member agencies. The same day, in Trump's be-cook, the court refused five-four to let President Trump remove

Federal Reserve government release a cook, carving out an exemption for the central bank. And a day later in Blanchevieve, Pro-Mutter, the justice declined to let President Trump out the register of copyrights sure a pro-mutter

whose office sits within the legislative branch, or at least seems like it likely sits within the legislative branch. That's actually a little bit of a point of contention in the litigation. It was the same brief. So we're inquiring to tip its hand, but perhaps it thought in very well might.

Taken together, what do these cases tell us about the

“unitary executive and the future of agency independence?”

Topic two, for your lies only. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is in free fall. Since Bill Pulti, a housing finance official with no intelligence background, took over as acting D&I on June 19th, he had demanded a roster of every employee,

fired the head of the office that oversees the president's daily brief, and all but liquidated the national intelligence council. The fight over as a appointment has already cost the government its section 702 surveillance authority, which lawmakers let laps rather than leave in Pulti's hands. And President Trump abruptly canceled the confirmation hearing for his own

permanent nominee, Jay Clayton, to let keep the less shackled Pulti in place. How do the nation's top intelligence coordinator get here and how much damage can politicize ODI and I actually do? And Topic three, Fixer Upper. And one of the strange turns of the Trump era, Michael Cohen, the former

fixer who's testimony helped convict Trump of 34 felonies in New York's take court, says he and the president have reconciled, Cohen, who once vowed to flee the country if Trump won reelection, said that the ice between them didn't just melt it broke, and he's now taking a weekend slot on a conservative radio station with what he says was Trump's glowing recommendation.

The thought arrives as Trump's appeal of his new or conviction and related civil fraud judgment grind forward, and after Cohen publicly claimed he felt pressured and coerced to testify, what might Cohen's turn mean for those pending appeals? So for our first topic, we had a big week at the Supreme Court last week.

It is the end of the term. We never know exactly what it's going to come some.

We'll usually, it's by the end of June, sometimes it bleeds in the July. This year, the Justice got it under the wire on June 29th. So we saw a decision in a number of cases, a lot of which have valances here at Laugh Fair. We saw important Fourth Amendment case in Trotry. We saw some important decisions regarding campaign finance reform, a little out of our

layman done the less notable. We of course saw the birthright citizenship decision. And then we saw what is, I think, arguably, I think, because they just fairly confidently, the most consequential decision, certainly of this last suite of decisions, arguably of the whole term, at least one of the most consequentials of the whole term, that is the kind of paired cases of slaughter and cook about the president's removal power. Ben, you and I had a conversation

“about this. You may not remember. On this podcast, I think, possibly on one of our other podcasts,”

about what exactly the future of Humphrey's executive was likely to be under the Supreme Court. Once we saw the initial removal, so more than a year ago now when we saw the FTC commissioners,

Exactly where the line would be drawn, how far would it go? I'm wondering how you

came to these decisions, how surprised you are about where the line is going to be drawing and the lines that, hey, haven't drawn, that we still leave the big questions open about where they're going to go and how far they're going to go. Talk to us about what you missed since you made of these decisions that came down last week. I think this is very possibly the least principled outcome you could have hypothesized here, which is, so look,

there is a decent argument, which was first articulated by the Court majority and Myers

overturned in Humphrey's executive and then re-vivid by Justice Scalia in the dissent in Morris and Vielsen, which is kind of an almost biblical text in the judicial conservative movement.

“And that argument is that, you know, if you are a principal officer, you must be appointable”

and fireable by the president at Willful Stop and that anything that interferes with that interferes with the unitary of executive and kind of causes Alexander Hamilton to commit Sepuco in his grave. And that is a coherent and plausible interpretation of article two, it is inconsistent with 100 years of case law, but, you know, sometimes you overturned case law, and so I have believed at least since seal a law that Humphrey's executive was a, you know,

dead president walking and it would be overturned. And I don't think there's anything surprising about the majority's decision to pull that particular trigger. Nor do I think there's anything unprincipled about that. It is the completion of a 40-year-old project of reorienting the

“appointment's clause and one can agree with it or disagree with it, but I think in and of itself,”

it has integrity. Let's then come to the part that doesn't have integrity, which is if you're undertaking that enterprise, trying to distinguish the Fed from the FTC is frankly indefensible. And the relevant question should be, does the entity exercise executive power? And if it does, it is, it is power belongs to the president and the question should be, is the person removable at will by the president who is exercising that executive power?

The answer to that question is yes, the Fed exercises a great deal of power, and it is, you know, really power of the executive branch of the United States as delegated by the

Congress of the United States. And the idea that you can whisper the words first bank of the United

States, second bank of the United States, and make that problem go away is frankly beneath the intelligence of John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh, and it kind of gives the game away. And what it says is, we don't think the FTC is important enough or could do enough damage if the president willy-nilly fires Ms. Slaughter, but boy, it would be terrible if he could do that to the chairman of the Fed. And that's not the way the Constitution is supposed to work, and it's not the way the test that

“they've been talking about for the last 40 years has been supposed to work. And so I think the”

Slaughter decision is defensible on its terms in its context. The cook decision is irreconcilable with it, and there attempts to reconcile it are just sort of embarrassingly unpersuasive. And so I, that then leaves the last question, which is how far are they willing to go with this. I presume you mean down the level of the civil service, and they conspicuously do not answer that question, but they do answer it by saying, if the issue is really important enough,

like if it affects our 401(k)s, we will find a basis to restrict the president's power, but if we don't care about the agency very much, then we won't. And so I think the answer to your

about the FBI or the Justice Department? Like did you want to jump in on that?

Yeah, I want to tag off of Ben's last point, which is that if this does really go down to the working level of the civil service, you know, the sort of journeymen public servants that cap out in GS15 on a good day, there's going to be a real consequence in the efficiency and professionalism of government that has unfortunately been sort of brushed the side and a lot of these discussions, because if you're given career employee, by which I simply mean somebody who

does not obtain their rank or position by virtue of a political appointments, if that individual finds that they can just be dismissed for not having personal politics or policy preferences,

simpotico with the chief executive, it's an inexorable consequence that you're going to have more

turnover in the civil service. And while that is probably a feature for those who think that the civil service should be this sort of invisible hand that helps carry out the president's preferences, it's going to be really deleterious for the collective subject matter expertise in government. Institutions have cultures, institutions have histories, institutions have lessons learned and if you're turning over the mass number of employees every four years, you're by definition

going to lose that. And there's going to be some regular reinventing of the wheel that has to occur on the presidential electoral cycle that is just going to inevitably cause inefficiencies

in the administration of government. And these inefficiencies are going to have nothing to do with

presidential policy preferences. They're going to have to do with just not having the people in the office who know what levers to pull in order to make things happen. And while I my youth was very

“sympathetic to the sort of formalist arguments animating the slaughter decision, I think it's a”

bidier responsible to ignore what could very well be the mass de-professionalization of government. Yeah, you know, two things jump out of me from this decision that is both the underlying pragmatism and kind of like a methodological hypocrisy that I think is really hard to ignore in this new originalist kind of like late stage Roberts court, which is that the classic critique we've heard of legislative history in the statutory interpretation context is that

while you've got this whole universe of history, judges just get to cherry pick and that therefore you know, that's too much discretion to the judge, guys, to close to the text. And then we're seeing this whole universe of these originalist cases that are leaning heavily on historical practice and tradition to define a scope that's not even actually often closely tied to the actual constitutional text or defines it in contours that have no textual

justification. It's strictly historical practice oriented. We see in this context we see it in the definition of cases and controversies in the transunion case. Like you know, seeing this

“super can only be described as kind of cherry picking of history. And it's kind of what you have to”

do if you're going to accept that there's any sort of contours and subtlety as opposed to the idea that the original generation was defining and super hard terms hard constitutional limits on Congress. I tend to be of the view that, you know, the framers that gave the Congress the necessary improper clause authority, the idea that they're supposed to fill in what is necessary to exercise the federal government's role probably didn't have a lot of intent to put hard

constraints on what Congress can legislate and the ways in which it was to adapt and address future concerns and future problems. Think about what, you know, Thomas Jefferson said about a revolution every generation and the fact that these institutions that were establishing today in their view were intended to be malleable and mutable and subject to change to address what they understood would be very different challenges in the future. This just cuts against that whole tradition

“and it does it in a way that, as you've particularly really well-bent, I think, is like”

actually kind of arbitrary. Even if I agree with the outcome, like I think it's good that reserve and look everybody thinks it's good the president can't remove that reserve chairman from a pragmatic perspective. But it's really hard to reconcile with that underlying legal analysis in a very honest way. I think at least. And I want to come back to your point on the civil service. So what do you think we should make of this fact that we had the silence, the kind of deliberate silence about

how far this goes down the civil servant chain? I think we, there's good cases to be potentially

that there's, that there is not clear that they had enough votes in the majority to reach that

conclusion, which actually may not be a good sign for the idea that this actually deepets the unitary executive all the way down the federal bureaucracy. To some extent, it's hard to reconcile

“that with the vision that they carved out. But we already know that vision is deeply compromised, right?”

By both certainly by the Federal Reserve case by Cook, maybe by Promenade too, although I think there's actually a principle distinction basis there that we should get into as well. So, you know, how alarm should we be and, like, how far down does that go? And, like, how does it enter into the actual context in which we're operating? Remember, we're seeing the Trump administration take much personal actions and then backstop and attempt to give itself broader authority through

the imitation of what was once known as Schedule F is now known as Schedule. I can't remember exactly what the Trump Schedule policy making and something, something where they're using statutory and regulatory authorities to assert broader authority over federal personnel that provides

one vehicle by which the courts will never have to reach the constitutional question. They can say,

well, statutory and regulatory, you actually do have this authority and I suspect that's going to be a ground that's tempting for them, even though I don't personally like that outcome and think it, think it, if I will, might be wrong. How concerned do you think we should be from a legal

“perspective? How much we know about that depth and the consequences of this opinion downstream?”

It's really difficult to predict where this is going to go with respect to lower level government employees, but I think in articulating why that prediction is so difficult. We can actually sort

of draw a theme that has animated the Roberts Court for quite some time now that does not get as

much discussion as I think it should. And that is that one of the animating principles that seems to motivate at least the Chief Justice's decision-making process is keeping the Supreme Court's options open. This is a court that has been very willing to overturn precedent in a way that I don't think we've really seen in modern jurisprudential history and the willing to do it in really unpredictable ways. There's almost a calculation about at least on the Chief Justice's

part. And he's almost been open about this in public. There seems to be a real calculus going on with will overturning precedent acts, help or denigrate the Court's institutional authority in American life. So I don't think it's possible for us to predict how far this decision goes without knowing what is the public discourse going to be like at the time the Court reaches that decision. For a group of justices who currently make up the majority that is very fond of claiming

their school of originalism is the sheer application of neutral principles. There is a real selective imposition of those principles on a case-by-case basis that doesn't really

“guide with what they're profiting as they're overall philosophy. And I think what this is indicative”

to get to one of your other points more than anything is that what we're seeing is not originalism as a school of inquiry or originalism is a canon of construction with academic rigor what we're seeing as originalism as a political project in which it's become no different from the legislative history arguments that they used to deride or the arguments to look at international law that Harold Coe was fond of making. It's just a new tool in the Quiver. These people are not employing

as their clerks people with professional historical training. They're not doing archival research. They're finding quotes from the 1789 or the Reconstruction era that support their current day policy preferences and ignoring evidence to the contrary. That's not actually an attempt to find out what original meaning was. It's an attempt to find people who at the time of any given laws promulgation agreed with you. So Ben, I want to come to you on this question because I think you

have been an observer. At times, I would say you feel free to object to this if you disagree, but a contributor, perhaps you're in a little bit of a fellow traveler of the conservative

thinking and writing about this stuff longer than I have, but for a number of decades now,

centered around the federal society, not exclusively limited to it. I'm wondering what you think of where it's future is after this decision. Humphries was one of the big targets, one of the big points of consensus. It's almost I would say kind of like a litmus test for membership in the movement. Now you get this outcome. You get a decision that is there, solid in the actual slaughter

“opinion, spells out I think what people will want to see, but as you know, deeply compromised”

in the cook case in ways that are hard to reconcile that, no one in the movement is making that much noise about. I don't think. There are people who are saying, oh, it should have gone, this is a wrong outcome too. But I don't think you're seeing like a kind of mainswell among conservative legal intellectual figure saying, nope, cook was wrong too. Tim, which to me, suggests that as Mike said with this into our view, this has a movement, a political movement,

some accept an intellectual movement, movements have momentum and they lose momentum and they have

cohesion and they lose cohesion in ways that don't always map under their ideological kind of like

justification frameworks. So like how much juice is left in this? Are there other big targets that are still big motivators for this movement? Has the Trump era and frankly the excesses of it

“that are hard to ignore? I think for a lot of people, fragmented it, we know, you know, many founders”

of the federal society while the federal society itself has plenty of people still feeding the Trump administration. We know a lot of prominent figures have broken with it and broken from the Trump administration become notable critics of it. So yeah, Ben, tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, so I look, I think the conservative legal movement at its best was organized around a set of principles and people debated at what about what the core and what was marginal to those

principles, but there were there were a set of things that a group of people believe. And the problem with Donald Trump is that he insists that nobody around him is allowed to believe anything except him. And that is irreconcilable with principles of any kind. And so it forces a movement like the conservative legal movement to fracture a long fidelity to what it is that one actually believed or fidelity to Trump and to what is good for him and what he wants and what he says.

Most of the movement has responded to this the way most of conservatism has, which is by buckling and being grotesque and objectionable. A significant swath of the movement has broken off and gone and done other things and sometimes very honorable things. So either Kisler who was the that one of the founders of the Federalist Society is now the founder of the Washington Litigation Group, which George Conway is doing the George Conway things and the society for the rule of law

people, a whole bunch of whom are associated with law fair and one way or another, are doing great

“stuff. So I don't think there is a movement anymore. I think there is a group of people who call”

themselves the conservative legal movement who have mostly just gotten behind Donald Trump. And

there are a group of people who continue to believe the things that they always believed but have

you know in many cases decided that the basic functioning of the rule of law is a pre-condition for any of those things and so I'm not sure it makes much sense to talk about the conservative legal movement anymore. There are the organizations that formed it, the Fed Sock and others and there are the people who made it up who've gone in as I say in a lot of different directions and then there of course the judges of it who've also gone in very different directions.

Sometimes very different directions than themselves. So Karen lacraft Henderson on the DC circuit is one day seems very passionately in defense of anthropic also wrote the you know lower court opinion, denying presidential immunity and has written some opinions that are seen in very Trumpy in other areas. So like some people have a genuine and I assume sincere internal division. So I don't know I think I don't know what the future of it is except that I don't think

directions and will continue to. Okay I actually want to step back for a second and think about

the Supreme Court's term more broadly and I'm curious what you all think specifically about the impact of the immunity decision which was handed down roughly two years ago now which is kind of hard to believe it feels like it's been one minute. But you know I'm I'm just curious looking at the Supreme Court's recent jurisprudence as a whole what has the impact of the immunity decision been thus far is it more or less of an impact than what you might have expected when that decision was

handed down two summers ago. Anyone have thoughts on that? I will just say there are two impacts. One of them is easily discernible the other is not. So the easier easily discernible one is that Donald Trump has not tried to go after Joe Biden and given what he's done to other political

“enemies I think that's probably because somebody has whispered in his ear you can't and by the way”

dido Barack Obama so that's probably an effect the second effect is not discernible and I have my

suspicions about what it is. But you know how unbound Trump feels as a result of that decision may be fueling his tirade of lawlessness more generally right particularly on the corruption side. Now in order to know that for sure you would have to have an internal view of his subjective perception of what he is now allowed to do but I think it's fair to say he's much more lawless than he was last time and he does not seem to fear anything and last time we had to ask is that because he

will pardon himself and this time we don't really need to ask that question because the Supreme

“Court has kind of done it for him so I guess I think you can you can see the effect”

with respect to Obama and Biden and you can you can intuit the effect with respect to Trump's feeling unleashed. But what about the Supreme Court itself did you expect that there might be more citations to that opinion in the court's decisions around presidential power because that opinion seems to be like it has such a kind of transit like it you know transferable to all types of different decisions about presidential power not necessarily in terms of the immunity itself

but just in terms of some of the principles the court articulated in that decision. I'm not sure to be honest I I there's a lot of verbiage in that opinion that if you take it not as dicta but as you know and if you imagine that it was a whole it holding would be quite sweeping in terms of the preclusive powers of the president you don't need any of that to resolve any of the slaughter or cook or other presidential power cases or any of the immigration cases

that we haven't talked about but we're all resolved in favor of the president's power and so the fact that they're not it's doesn't play in that doesn't necessarily mean anything that said look

“I think this court has a major thumb on the scale in favor of the president at least when the”

president is a Republican and you know you would do well not to litigate on any other premise in an appellate court in the United States because you know they will appeal the court tends to grant certain separation of powers matters and they tend to win so I I think the mood of it is certainly transferable even if the doctrine doesn't demand it yeah I think your question actually for me personally ties together a lot of the different strands we've discussed in this episode thus far

I think I'm the only one of us present who would have considered himself a card carrying member of the conservative legal movement and you know even now there is not a Trump nominated justice

but what we saw with the immunity decision is that that stated style of cautious limited interpretation is readily thrown out the window when it is not convenient for larger political projects on Ben's right they very much have their thumb on the scale sometimes it is dressed up in originalism and again I'm still sympathetic to that movement but what we saw with Trump the United States is they're also willing to create

doctrines out of whole cloth to be frank when it suits them and to me the biggest second order consequence of Trump the United States actually is nothing to do with the exercise of presidential

“power or its effect on Donald Trump's psyche I think what it signified more than anything”

was the Supreme Court publicly stating its willingness to thrust itself into debates that traditionally it would be a little more cautious to get into and we're seeing that now with a lot of decisions that indicate the docket itself is being shaped by not what are the cases in

controversies most live for the nation as a whole but which are the ones most important to the executive

branch and which ones did the Supreme Court think that they should exercise their influence a lot. Yeah I'll take a slightly maybe more a more generous perspective of the court than Ben and Mike on this I do think feeds in here a little bit. Trump United States where they think was just a very confused opinion it was very unclear when it was saying it was a complete patchwork it was internally inconsistent in ways we talked about the time and it hinted at a lot of broader ideas

without clearly having the sense that there was like the full extent of what could be read out of the language in the opinion actually meant what it meant. When we read at the time I believe we I can't wear those me specifically certainly some people on this or another law fair podcast hypothesize that it had been amended substantially late in the game because parts of it did not hold together or read together and it seemed like parts may have been cut out I think where

this specifically theory that maybe at some point there had been some willingness to join parts or concurrent parts by Kagan or someone else that then pulled out and that ultimately led to this

kind of bolder language whose full consequences are never really clear. My suspicion is that

Trump United States actually probably doesn't mean as much as we fear it meant and that's kind of been my suspicion the whole time because for something to really mean as much as we want it to mean

“there has to be as the language it uses my suggests you have to have a sense that it has the”

consequences behind it particularly when a lot of it is essentially dicta in these cases or at least really close to it it's direct relevance to the holding is really limited. For the record I think that's also a lesson to be taken on slaughter in these other cases that you can read slaughter really really broadly but it's not clear to me that all the justices who join slaughter have the full conviction to read it to those full consequences. In fact when you see I think those the efforts to do

things like say we're not specifically reaching this issue about downstream people yes you can read the logic of slaughter they should reach those people but if all six justice is wrong board with that I think they would have done that more clearly or signal things that much more only that way I suspect some weren't willing to join and maybe not even you know five

“which is really what we care about. So I went that surprise I will say I think the administration actually”

has done more with Trump the United States and the logic behind it then frankly people give a credit for. I know Jack Goldsmith wrote a piece on this who originally deposited the use of Trump the United States in the kind of separation of power as context as being potentially substantial within the executive branch at the time and he wrote a piece more recently for executive functions as blog with Bob Bauer about saying essentially oh actually I'm not sure I was right so far we haven't

seen much in this trend although I think more will be coming down the line which I generally agree with but I think it's almost selling is this is a little bit short a lot of parallel logic you see the Trump administration really leaning in on think of executive orders at a search far reaching executive power over not just the justice department not just litigation positions not just law enforcement action but of a variety of other executive functions the thing is that the most compelling parts of

Trump the United States intersect with the broader military executive argument it's just the

clearest most recent example that up until slaughter and cook right and you don't always need

to cite the case directly that to have those implications but I think you can see how the administration really leaning on those arguments and part of the reason not the only reason but

particularly in the DOJ law enforcement context I would not have the confidence that's going

“to withhold if it's subject to judicial scrutiny and most of the times it's window dressing right”

it's not something that's like because Trump the United States that relevant language is largely dick to you're not actually relying on it and of course don't feel the need to repudiate it directly so I don't know I think it's doing more there's more work there but it's primarily as a rhetorical support you know you see these arguments that the administration was available to them anyway and probably was going to make any way that they're leaning into but you know

and those arguments are definitely there but I don't know if Trump the United States was ever going to be the the bull work we thought it was going to be precise because it's it's such a

confusing opinion the first place do your current managed services really help run your

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“you can run faster scale smarter lead stronger that's why the Syrian phenomenon is”

zurück they come from the island and drone get weiter up so forth get the citritte stuffle house of the dragon by HBO Max here findet you the ganze world from Vesteros an one-emort gamer friends a night off the seven kingdoms unnaturally house of the dragon drachen camp from gig and drachen tigerians ging tigerians intrigue ferrat and epische slachten all that awaited you in the new stuffle also streamed yet the new stuffle house of the dragon

and all the Syrian from gamer friends nur of HBO Max marketers you can do this feel when your creativity is hard to find a social media post through the deck if your outer civil camp a positive ROI is seen when a personalized star-side interest in content is created that is pure market in luck content full health or mass-resistant omnigannel elite to the ship all over the world no stress no ignorance nor mugglish gotten spirit of content full dot com well let us go from one branch of

“the government to another the supreme court to the executive branch and one uh particularly”

relatively new uh compared to other parts of the executive branch part of it that is the office of the director of national intelligence which has been going through a very tumultuous period

over the last month we of course have seen the first senate confirmed director of national intelligence

told segapard resign initially aiming for June 30th resignation then bumped up a little bit to be by the president uh to around June 19th at which point we saw bill polty a known loyalist president trump most well known for using his role in a federal housing agencies to essentially use records in ways that many people suspect and believe in some cases being litigated or investigated by various uh parties uh improperly to dig up information that provided the basis for attempts

uh of criminal conviction or at least allegations against several perceived enemies of president trump ranging from Jim comie to Adam chef to Latisha James not of which have really born fruit yet but that we had seen the basis for at least criminal prosecutions in the James and comie cases uh investigations which have since largely put her down so now we have him in charge of Odie and I president trump is taking a position that even his own party

does not seem very happy with although as pre-usual there are a little hesitant to um criticize him openly um we know we've had people criticize polty uh ranging from John Thune um to other people suggesting that he's not a serious person or serious candidate we be a serious person or candidate in this position um that led to the nomination of Jake Clayton but that now has been slow rolled held up we don't know exactly where that's going on timeline uh we've seen uh in effort

on congresses part two with hold 702 authority something the executive branch has traditionally been very intent under both parties under every president of securing in one form or another for national security reasons saying we can't give this to you if you're going to have built polty a loyalist in charge of Odie and I uh and that was enough to get president trump to budge his position and now we're seeing a range of personnel actions and other efforts to do things that period

to be to slice Odie and I down to size something that Tulsi Gabbard could have done at the president's direction um there's no report that he didn't want to but now appears to be part of the trump administration to agenda for the agency Mike you wrote about this with our colleague Julia Curley uh in a piece last week um talked to him about what you guys observed as two intelligence community veterans um from slightly different perspectives what you observe

community and and that's going to be more generally under this current iteration of the trump

administration. Yeah so I generally have two thoughts which at first glance are going to seem like

“they're in conflict with each other but I'm going to do my best to reconcile them because I think”

they both provide a good way of understanding how we should think about Odie and I just in theory. The first is and this is widely shared by many members of the intelligence communities that like Odie and I to a very large extent is sort of a non-issue. There is a former CIA case officer who is very active on social media and rights stuff himself who for example when Joe Kent was controversially nominated to be the head of Odie and I's national counterterrorism center this former case officer

response was just sort of a tough stuff well and CTC doesn't actually do anything so it's not a big deal

and I think that's the view a lot of people who are involved in intelligence community

“operations have about Odie and I it's responsibilities are mainly administrative to the”

extended exerts a real influence on other members of the community it's through things like analytics standards and sort of the administrative yaw of making judgments based up on intelligence that is collected by its constituent agencies so in that sense like we shouldn't give Odie and I much thought but at the same time Odie and I by virtue of being that sort of

analytic referee has access to a lot of intelligence and when you have access to a lot of intelligence

and you also have the legal authority to declassify and release much of it in part or in whole you can do a real lot of reputational damage to people you don't like you can essentially take raw reporting that's something that the intelligence community has collected and has not analyzed or broken up itself in other words it's a recording of a conversation in a foreign country that is not been manipulated it is an intercepted email it is something that the community possesses

in an adulterated format and simply by exercising your declassification authority in a way that also makes you in a bridge of that raw reporting you can really shape the public's perception of things so for example and this is a hypothetical if we overheard a conversation going on between policy makers in Iran indicating that they wanted to interfere with the next round of midterm elections that conversation might be too hours long and at the end of it the senior ranking official in the

room might say I understand your motivations for wanting to do this but on a balancing of the equities it's not a wise idea and we're not going to go forward with it but if you just declassify the opening 15 minutes of that conversation where they're spitballing this idea you can make it look

“like they actually are trying to interfere and I think that's what a lot of us who served in”

the community are worried about Bill Pulti he has been able to see mortgage fraud in documents that are wholly innocuous and convince the department of justice to open investigations or seek indictments that's exactly what somebody who's committed mortgage fraud would say they're homeowner Mike Michael findberg one home one home or two Mike that's the real question no but but there's a real danger in having access to lots of reporting and having the ability

to selectively release it even if you're not the one collecting it and what Julie and I tried to explain in this piece is that a lot of this was if not inevitable at least a possibility that was baked into the legislation that chartered ODI and I like a lot of legislation that is promulgated in response to an emergency or a black swan event it was probably done hastier than it should have been and while there was some pushback largely from Duncan Hunter at the time against

the creation of the office like there wasn't a real lot of vigorous debate or at least not as much

just think the intelligence reform and terrorist prevention act of 2004 which established the position

“of the DNI and the office didn't really consider what could go wrong there was a desire”

after the completion of the 9/11 report to have some sort of legislative response to the deficiencies the report identified and they moved quickly and I just don't think as much thought went into it as they should have and as a result you now have this agency that has oversight of the entire intelligence community but not a lot of guidelines limiting its discretion in how to use that authority and I just I fear we are in for politicization and weaponization of intelligence collection and

analysis in a manner that has really been unseen in this country since the missteps and just bad actions of the intelligence community led to the church committee in the 70s. Ben what about you let me turn to you on this as somebody as a observer of the intelligence community the last several years you know we've got this kind of extraordinary circumstance where in arguably you're seeing different pressures in different direction effort to weaponize OD and I potentially expected I don't know if you see

in clear signs of that yet underpulti although there are arguably cases of that undergabbert under a much longer tenure now this effort to dismantle it break it down oddly a year plus into the

second Trump administration very kind of like doge like effort if you will resembling a lot of what

we saw the administration pursue in other agencies but happening far later with a strange impetus coming as if nowhere because I don't think it was ever mentioned as being on the administration's radar that breaking down OD and I was really a point of concern until mid June when Tulsi Gabbard's resignation became known. What do you make of are you concerned about the the same things Mike is it that run in a different direction or is there maybe other longer term considerations like

702 that we need to bear in mind? Yeah so I look I this is going to sound glib but I actually kind of mean it seriously which is if Bill Pulti is going to be the head of OD and I on any kind of

“medium term basis the best thing he could do would be to dismantle it because the alternative”

is having him use it the way he use the housing administration which is to say to dig political dirt on his enemies and the country got along fine for 200 years without an OD and I and you know I would rather have the office dismantled than have it fully functional in really bad hands so just to remind you of the degree to which we have slid down the slippery slope in Trump one Trump nominated a man named John Radcliffe to be DNI and this was considered scandalous by you know

people like me because Radcliffe was completely inappropriate for the job Radcliffe who is now of course the CIA director is the grown-up in the room today is the CIA director who's you know secretly making sure we continue providing intelligence support to Ukraine the CIA is not functioning well right now but it's not in freefall disaster the way other components are and by contrast we have

an FBI that you know used to be run back in the battle days of the first Trump administration was

run by the the blander than milk toast Chris Ray and is now in the hands of cash Patel and OD and I which we were terrified was going to be wrecked by Radcliffe we would you know bring back John Radcliffe to OD and I except that of course then he would have to give up CIA and that would have intelligence

“consequences to our allies so I I mean I think how far we've gone is you know just since Trump”

won in this area is actually kind of hard to overstate and in light of that I'm not sure that the look I don't favor tearing OD and I apart or at least not doing it without appropriate deliberation

whether OD and I was a good idea or was a bad idea and I think if you were going to put in it people of the caliber of a McConnell or Afrill Haines or you know people just who were of extraordinary capacity it's better to have a DNI than not right if you're going to put it in the hands of Bill Palty it's better not to have the office than to have it and so I do think you know to a certain extent form follows function here you know if you're going to put the DNI's

office in the hands of Palty then it should not have 702 authority and it should not maybe exist I'm not sure so I'm not I I guess it's it's upsetting to watch him do the things that he's doing but I'm not sure that I don't prefer it to watching him you know turn the OD and I into a mortgage fraud investigation outfit. Well it's worth noting one piece of late breaking news on

“those that came out to the late in the day yesterday I think we started seeing meteor reports indicating”

that the Senate select Committee on Intelligence has or is reportedly I don't I'm going to look on the calendar see if it's posted yet because the actual meteor reporting is a little dodge on whether it's completely public that's happened yet but says that the chair Tom Cotton has scheduled a confirmation for Jake Clayton the current acting or until a recent I should say acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York former SEC chairman who has been nominated

to be the permanent OD and I for July 15 so that'd be next Wednesday I think for the next week I haven't looked in the calendar to see if that's official yet but notably that is a a little bit of a apprav indicator that there may be a little bit of thawing on the Trump administration's position

“if it's going forward no they never pulled Clayton's nomination formally as far as I'm aware”

normally there would be some sort of public record of that that I haven't seen reported in which case I'm not sure that Senate can't proceed with confirmation hearings until it's formally pulled on its own schedule although of course Clayton may choose not to participate. Scott I want to insert element of measure pessimism to what you just noted Jake Clayton coming in following bill pullty is sort of to me like Pam Bondi being nominated after Matt Gates's nomination to AG was

shot down I realize it's not a complete parallel because pullty is merely acting and not formally

nominated but you know Clayton has two major things going against him the first is the intelligence

reform and terrorism protection act which statutory lays out the requirements for the director of

“national intelligence explicitly states that the position should be held by somebody with extensive”

experience in the intelligence community I'm sure Clayton supporters will argue that in his capacity in SDNY he's dealt with national security prosecutions but prosecutions are not something with which ODNI is traditionally involved and he has zero experience in the national security community. The second thing is he's shown the same tendencies as many other Trump nominees including gathered including pullty to engage in conspiracy theorizing he has made allegations about

California's elections which are outside the scope of his duties as a US attorney and

our matters on which has zero first-hand experience you do not want somebody who is willing to

opine on things about which they know nothing to be in charge of an agency who's very purpose is to enforce analytic rigor upon judgments that are going to affect US policy so even if Clayton has his hearing in a week and gets confirmed I'm not quite willing to yet put up the bonding and celebrate because it's not clear to me that we're going to be in any materially better position. It's a fair assessment but I suspect that there's going to be a lot of pressure on people both

to swallow Clayton's nomination over they may object to it and frankly to get 702 reauthorized in some form or another so my suspicion that we're going to see move very quickly if and when they can reconcile find some sort of bridge between the administration and the committee

and the broader Senate and that 702 reauthorization of some form always is controversial topic

I think they've said this specifically in this reporting all the members of Congress involved

want to get done before the August recess so we'll see so the end of July may be a little busy for intelligence and people watching stuff around OD and I and 702 but keep an eye on that in the weeks to come and at that hearing possibly schedule still 100% confirmed and possibly scheduled for next Wednesday. Before we break we need to turn our eyes to New York to Jay Clayton's home district but not in the federal courts in the state court system where we are seeing a couple of actions

including some trying to move these actions that actions to the federal court system surrounding President Trump. There we have of course the criminal conviction of President Trump the sole surviving the only criminal conviction of President Trump kind of sole surviving legal action against them on a variety of financial crimes measures relating to the manipulation or of documents

“around payments to stormy Daniels over an alleged affair. A key witness in that trial was Michael”

Cohen, President Trump's now notorious fixer at some point early in his administration and in his

private life before entering the White House the first time around. There's also a related civil

judgment for penalties related to the criminal conviction arising from the criminal conviction released the facts and conduct or lying the criminal conviction I should probably say more properly. But we have seen this pretty dramatic kind of development turn into Michael Cohen somebody who briefly emerged as kind of like a lion of and I trump sentiment one of these briefly weirdly valorized figures that popped up repeatedly during the first Trump administration came out

was a print lead witness to President Trump's serve prison time for allegedly lying to Congress in earlier testimony was a key witness here had a kind of long history of criticizing President Trump coming out and opposing him saying that he was persuaded in part by the views of his daughter a daughter's objections to some of the corrupt things happening to be involved in this now claims have had this dramatic thawing of relations and re-embrace by President Trump that's led to him

returning to be have a radio show on a conservative radio network and I swear I swear he had a podcast or another radio show on a left-leaning radio network or podcast network just a couple of years ago so the man is truly all over the place I was invited on his podcast you were

“sure I don't I think I vaguely remember this I didn't go interesting I mean yeah I probably still”

have the correspondence from that but I declined well see if you can get on his new one I guess it's the radio show I will decline again it is a it's been a while right uh for Michael Cohen and you've been looking at this case and thinking about its intersection with the two preceding New York cases talked with a little about that and where where this all how this all fits together and how this reconciliation may relate to the ongoing legal actions yeah so

so keep in mind I think this sequence of events is important here we actually for I got our first

signal that Michael Cohen was making what some might call a heel turn depending on you know how you view this turn but this first happened back in January actually when Cohen who as you mentioned you know previously like had a podcast or a radio show with I believe it was affiliated with the Midas Touch Network which is a huge you know left-leaning left-to-filiated media organization had a substack that had a lot of a base audience that was like quite left-leaning because of his

in recent years criticism of Trump and had many thousands of followers on that substack and still does but he posted a substack back in January in which and this isn't the wake of keep in mind at appeals court ruling in which essentially the appeals court said okay federal judge

“at the district court judge hellerstein you need to reconsider yourself this question of whether”

Trump's appeal of the hush money conviction should be removed to federal court because of the immunity ruling there's been this kind of live question of you know could Trump's team remove from state court to federal court on appeal in light of the immunity ruling and so that is about to go back down to judge hellerstein and in the wake of this opinion Cohen posted a substack in which he quite bizarrely if you were someone who watched this trial and and and as Ben and I

were said you know I felt like Alvin Bragg and then also in the civil fraud case

convict Trump or to go after Trump you know he emphasizes that he was subpoenaed you know

kind of tries to suggest that both him and Trump are our victims of this process and it's it's really bizarre because Michael Cohen had been such a prominent critic of Trump for so many years had been a key witness in the tribe both of those trials so he does this and in the intervening period you know there's all this litigation that's going on on the criminal side you have two tracks there's the federal track like I mentioned with the removal issue but then there's also just

an appeal in state court that is now at the intermediate appellate court in New York of his

conviction there and it all feels a little bit at that point like maybe it's geared towards you know it's not clear why what the motivation here is but it it feels like it's maybe motivated towards extending and all of branch to Trump because this is all coming amid these politicized

“prosecutions and you have to wonder if maybe Michael Cohen thinks to himself oh you know they're”

going after Brennan they're going after Komi they're going after all these people what if I'm next of course that's just speculation but it it was a really kind of bizarre turn the most recent happening since then and the news that we got this week is that Cohen explains a little bit more about this reconciliation in which he talks about you know six or seven months ago so sometime around the time that he made the sub-stack post it's not clear if it's before or after a friend

an intermediary according to Cohen you know reached out to him and said something to the effect that you know Trump was sympathetic to some of the criticism that Cohen had been getting in the

wake of Cohen saying that he never observed interactions between Trump and Epstein and so

that kind of initiates this opening of communications between Cohen and Trump and according to Cohen they are all you know have completely reconciled and in fact it was Trump who recommended Cohen for this conservative radio show gig that he now has on on this radio program I will mention as well that although we haven't really seen the sub-stack post and Cohen's public statements about this come up much in the criminal context it has come up very much in the appeal of the civil

“fraud judgment where Cohen was also a key witness and in that appeal that was filed the brief was”

filed by Trump's team back in April they specifically cite Cohen's sub-stack post as a way of arguing that the trial court judge was wrong to credit Cohen's testimony and so of course that has been at play in that appeal related to the civil fraud judgment I am not entirely convinced that this is going to be a huge factor at all in in the civil fraud judgment or the criminal case appeals in terms of the actual because the legal issues are so different and that this is that's such a

you know discretion of the trial court and of the jury to credit the testimony or not of witnesses but I certainly do think that in terms of the public narrative that Trump has created around these cases about them being witch hunts both politically motivated it it does seem to really give him some ammunition in terms of just crafting a public narrative around it but then Mike Scott I would be curious as people who all follow these cases closely as well especially Ben you were there at the trial

I mean what do you make of all this? Well I have one question which is what did Michael Cohen

“testify to that he now says wasn't true that does seem like the key questions yeah he doesn't”

and actually he doesn't say I and I this is one thing I noticed in reading in reading his substack is that he actually doesn't say that he testified untruthfully he says I felt pressured and

to build the cases against and secure a judgment and convictions against president Trump so he's not actually saying that he was pressured to testify untruthfully or falsely he's saying I just felt pressured to testify almost like he had a settlement agreement with with the government I will say

a few things about this the first is that it is definitely true that Alvin Bragg's people pressured

Michael Cohen they pressured him to shut up because he was talking so compulsively on his podcast and saying insulting things saying things that were causing you know motions to be filed saying

“things that could discredit his testimony that there was an Anna you may remember details of this”

that I don't there were repeated conversations between the prosecution the defense and the judge about what could be done if anything to prevent Michael Cohen from keeping on doing these out of court statements about how much he hates Donald Trump. And not just Donald Trump but also

Donald Trump's lawyer because remember famously or in famously Todd Blige's first question on

cross examination of Michael Cohen in this historic criminal trial. You say that I'm a you you called me a crying little shit on TikTok didn't you? And so like the idea that there was pressure

“from Alvin Bragg and it was to be less evidently hostile than Michael Cohen was natively”

look if Michael Cohen wants to come out and say I testified to X and it isn't true or if he wants to say I didn't testify to X I withheld it though it was responsive to a defense

question on cross examination because I was pressured by Alvin Bragg or Latisha James I'm all ears

but if he's not going to say something along those lines and he's merely going to say I felt pressured I am going to respond that facts don't care about your feelings and you know you're a witness in a criminal trial and a civil case you swore to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth the record is closed unless you are claiming that you didn't do that. So that is my view of of the matter I do think that it is great when people can reconcile and so

if Trump and Michael Cohen can come together in a joint scheme to make money for Michael Cohen at the expense of MAGA people you know God bless and may they prosper in their business ventures together I fail to see what this has to do with either the criminal case or the civil case on a peel without more. I am generally inclined to give Michael Cohen as much thought and intellectual efforts to understanding is I am to the Kardashians or with respect to at least one of our co-hosts

Taylor Swift's wedding but I do want to point out that was not directed at Scott or me let's just

“put it that way. Look I think it's important to contextualize Cohen's initial testimony this was not a”

one-off of him under pressure from a local prosecutor testifying against Donald Trump this was the culmination of a campaign he himself launched against the then president in an effort to rehabilitate himself and if you look at his statements before Congress the guy gave a 30 minute pereration on what a wretched human being Donald Trump was and what a mistaken character it was from Michael Cohen to be swayed by him or fall under his spell this is nothing more than when Donald

Trump's son was rising Michael Cohen was happy to be in attorney and a fixer when Donald Trump's son appeared to be setting Michael Cohen was happy to be a penitent apostate and now that Donald Trump is back in power Michael Cohen is trimming his sales again. I don't think we need to give this too much thought other than to say that Michael Cohen is a protein person without many fixed principles

should surprise us. I also add to that you know so one thing that I alluded to earlier is just that

the things that are at issue on appeal are very discrete legal arguments that really other than the one I mentioned in the civil fraud brief really don't go to the question of relocating the credibility of the witnesses but even if that were in question I will add that you know Michael Cohen was just one part in the hush money trial and the civil fraud case of those cases his testimony was corroborated a lot of other evidence and and what and his testimony was corroborated by other evidence as well

and so I don't you know I want to dis abuse the notion that he was the star witness or the

soul witness that provided the evidence that led to Trump's conviction because I mean we sat in court

“for weeks and there was a lot of other evidence so yeah I think we should agree that in the real”

world not his own head Michael Cohen is functionally the Rosencran's or gildin stern of Trump's handlet he played a minor part in a walk on roll and yes there is a universe maybe author by Tom stopperd in which he is the star but he's a bit player most audiences are going to forget the minute they leave the theater I will point out that Michael Cohen is still alive today so I Rosencran's in gildin stern for the majority of stopperd's play I will I think we will have to

leave the conversation about time but I will I will just put a close to loop on one point that Ben guy up I'll give her underscore this exact point which is that I think to reopen anything here it

“would have to be a lie and for a comment actually confirm there's a lie here it would be confirming”

that he committed perjury so he'd be shifting criminal liability from the president onto himself I'm not sure his new found the real loyalty necessarily runs that deep but we will have to wait and see for now we are out of time on rational security but this would not be rational security if we don't leave you with an object lesson to ponder over in the week to come until we are back in your pod catcher Ben with us what did you bring for us today no Mulligan's we've already

spent your Mulligan for the year now I have an object lesson that involves not one not two but all three of the other rational security posts today oh so as listeners may know I have spent the last

“several weeks last couple months really building a tool called ragtime which uh today did something”

that I am fairly sure that no other tool on the planet could have done and so first how does it

involve Scott so yesterday at Scott's suggestion I loaded the entire OFAC sanctions list on to ragtime that's every sanctioned person and company and I put it in the same searchable database as the complete federal court dockets database so that you can now cross reference things between them now this brings me to the second person on the show Anna Bauer who this morning I offered to give a demonstration of ragtime and when she said she wanted it I asked it

the following question thinking of Scott from the previous day which sanctioned individuals right now have pending federal litigation and I just asked it that question now this is where it brings me to Mike Feinberg who was the person in this that I did not expect to be involved in this let me read you the results of this search it found uh electera pasca the Russian aluminum oligarch who has a pending criminal case in Manhattan it found Huawei in an active criminal prosecution in

Brooklyn and for those of you who don't know this about Mike Feinberg Mike kind of ran a big investigation of Huawei back in his FBI days it found a Venezuelan state oil company tangled in a whole cluster of live cases in Washington it found Iran's national oil company fighting in federal court in Texas it found spare bank the Russian bank who have been sued by a bunch of

and underneath these marking aims it turned up literally hundreds of sanctioned drug trafficking

“figures who were sitting as defendants in federal criminal cases white right now and it spat all this”

out in response to a single sentence query that I relayed to it from Annabauer and thereby brought all the co-hosts of this rational security episode together in one object lesson it is truly an extraordinary tool one that Ben has been frankly the driving force behind that we've all gone to play with and are playing with and developing different ways to use in the future and of course you can play with this tool in beta format if you are material supporter of law fair worth noting

before we part here with some instructional videos Ben has there but I'm excited to see these results for myself Ben when we get off the call not least because I'm working on a piece of Venezuela for this case might be particularly relevant so we'll off the dig into that Mike Feinberg what did you bring for us for an object lesson today so I may be violating object lesson rules because what I'm going to talk about doesn't exist yet but has been announced and that is the

criterion collections new box set of every accident work including short films that have never

been before seen of Stanley Kubrick I pre-order this in about within about 30 seconds of the announcements it contains every film of which people are aware it contains his first film fear and desire which he was ashamed of and went to great lengths to keep out of circulation for nearly half a century and it contains the criterion collections usual smartness board of extras including a now difficult to find documentary about the making of the shining directed by Kubrick's

daughter I'm looking forward to this just for the sheer aesthetic value of watching a Kubrick film

“but also because my son's about to turn one and I think it would be a great father son experience”

to sit down in his youthful years and you know maybe watch eyes wide shot or a doctor strange love at the tender age of two what is your favorite Kubrick film I'm going to get a lot of grief for this one but the one I go back to the most often is the one most people can't get through which is very linden notable mainly because Kubrick did not film a single shot using artificial lighting he had co-dact developed special lenses which could make the entire film photograph my

candle light or sunlight fascinating as you didn't know you listened to that rational security to find out there you go why have a slightly more low brow combaterics I want to talk about something I got to do on vacation last week for my object lesson that is drink beer which I like beer like one of all these words from court justice I like beer you still like beer I still like beer you

“may not I don't know but I still a fan I don't get to drink it that often because I am a”

middle-aged father of two young kids and frankly if I have one beer it will put me to sleep and give me a headache the next day but on vacation I was able to indulge as in beautiful grand lake Colorado doing some hiking and hanging out with my kids and my in-laws up there and I was amazed to find what has become my favorite beer setting aside Wheatland Springs local brewery here in DC

area which is amazing highly regarded mostly the beer I drink but if I don't drink Wheatland Springs

there's one other beer I drink which is a beer called the Montucky Coltsnacks which is an amazing logger that I thought was brand new and then when walking at least in the east coast it's really only appeared in the last year too and then when walking around Colorado not only did I see a sign for Montucky Coltsnacks I saw a bar advertising buckets of Coltsnacks as if it was well known and what we're going to put it on a chalkboard outside for the use to be drawn in by this and I

asked my substantial younger brother and law hey what is this do you guys drink these Coltsnacks he's like yeah they've been around for years because it turns out on the west coast or at least out west and different corners it has been a really prevalent and a popular beer to the point that you can sell buckets and advertise buckets of Coltsnacks and it is something that draws people in and this all let me down a rabbit hole and best day in this beer which is a genuinely

amazing beer and that it is delicious logger but with like a little bit of hop a little bit of

malt a really balanced super super flavorful highly recommended in that regard even if you're not logger drinker try it because I'm not usually logger drinker and I love this beer and then when I looked into it it's amazing it only has a hundred calories for a 12 ounce beer and a great of protein it's basically health food this beer is truly phenomenal so I'm putting it out there

these coasts make it more broadly available it's just my neighborhood bar I've been able to find it at around DC and I want to find it more place to think I'd love to buy some and bring it home and I haven't seen this store yet I've just seen them bars this episode of rational security is brought to you by Monthuk and Coltsnacks I would talk to me Coltsnacks we may have a policy against alcoholic beverages but I'll see if I can get an exception and I will say this on top of it if you

“feel a one more incentive they give 8% of their proceeds I think it was 8% to local charities wherever”

they sell their beer so they support a bunch of animal and child welfare charities a bunch of nature natural preservation charities a bunch of other groups seems like phenomenal company so I'll throw it out there for Monthuk he Coltsnacks one of my new favorite beers my new favorite nationally available beer turns out to check it out if you have the opportunity and with that low brow suggestion let me turn it over to you Annabara to bring us home what do you have for your

object lesson this week yeah so I do a lot of legal writing and legal reading but as you guys know but I love also in my you know spare time when I have it doing some writing for myself as well I creative writing and one of my favorite forms of the genre is the personal essay I just love

“reading personal essays which is I think the best way to learn how to write them and I over vacation”

I decided I was gonna try to read a bunch of good examples of personal essays and I found this one

that I read for the first time that it was published in 1996 it is by Joanne Beard

it was published originally in the New Yorker and it's called the fourth state of matter and it is a remarkable piece of writing I just like it's one of those pieces of writing where you read it and you're like I can't not just tell everyone about this and tell them that they have to go read it and all I will say about it is that it is about dogs and grief and mass murder so I'm going to mock it to say anything else but go read the fourth state of matter in the what is this what is the

date June 1996 of the New Yorker magazine wonderful suggestion I will have to check this out

“it seems like a powerful essay I was half expecting you to bring in your favorite Adam Samler facts”

beyond him initiating the wedding of the the wedding of the decade this past week of in New York but that's all right we'll save the same man for another day we got we've got time to bring back much of an Adam Samler person so I I don't know anybody really was still yeah I mean is is anyone much of an Adam Samler person I don't know but I I discovered my parents are Adam Samler people and have actually gone to see him live I cannot explain this um this came out of the

blue for me but somewhere in my heritage is an Adam Samler gene and I hope like many genes this particular one is not passed through my on the edge you know what can you do well you know good

congrats to the salmon for finding yourself back on the national stage for the first time in a long time

and with that we will wind up this episode of Rational Security and that brings us to the end of this week's episode of Rational Security is of course a production of Laugh Fair so be sure to visit us at lafermedia.org for our show page for linked to past episodes for our written work and the written work of other law for contributors and for information on Laugh Fair's other phenomenal podcast series while you're at a be sure to follow law for social media wherever you socialize your media

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is known as band of goat rodeo and our music as always was performed by Sophia again

well you're once again edited by the wonderful gen patcha bath my guess Ben Michael and Anna I am Scott our energy we'll talk to you next week until then goodbye Do your current managed services really help run your operations or are they just running in circles running isn't enough anymore with PWC's managed services your operations don't just run they evolve continuously powered by AI embedded directly into your workflows so instead of

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