Editor’s Note: Liberty Nation’s Washington Political Columnist Tim Donner and Legal Affairs Editor Scott Cosenza sit down to discuss legal challenges and cases taking place across America. This is the transcript of Liberty Nation Radio heard coast-to-coast on the Radio America Network. A podcast version or a videocast of this program is also available by clicking the links.
Tim Donner: One of the many things that we are desperate for more of these days is individual liberty. And thus we introduce once again, our segment called Talking Liberty as we welcome back our regular contributor, constitutional lawyer and libertynation.com legal affairs editor, the man we call fondly our guardian of individual liberty, Scott Cosenza. Hello, Scott.
Scott Cosenza: Hello, Tim. And yes, sadly, the future offers good job security, sad to say, for somebody who needs to point out where liberty may be threatened.
Tim: Well, I was stunned by this first story. Chief of security for the Apple Corporation is charged with bribing a sheriff for gun permits for Apple executives. I thought they were anti-gun, Scott.
Scott: You know, it’s such a doozy of a story, Tim. It’s one of those that’s so delicious because I imagine that most people hearing it from my mouth, and your mouth will not have heard it elsewhere. This is not a story that’s at the top of the crawl on the legacy media outlets. The New York Times isn’t going to do an exposé, flying people in to discover what’s happening here.
And what’s happening is very simple. California has a may issue law for gun permits, which is to say the sheriffs of the counties may issue permits to people they want to issue them to. Curiously enough, that often mostly includes people who generously donate to their campaigns, and their friends and their neighbors and family members, okay. And if you just happen to be a poor guy, or not poor, but regular folk who may have a threat or just want to protect your family, you’re denied. And that’s what’s happened in California.
And it’s the Santa Clara County Sheriff, Laurie Smith. And the indictment is against the Apple security chief, Tim, who offered, according to the indictment, 200 iPads to secure four concealed carry permits for Apple executives. By the way, I did the math before we went to show, Tim, that’s about 140 or 50 grand worth of iPads for four permits. That shows you how desperate these people are. But you know we’ve talked about it before, to arm themselves in the pandemic COVID world and finding it’s not so easy as gun grabbers would have you believe.
Tim: Gun permits for Apple executives can be summed up with the expression: Good for thee, but not for me. Now, one of the subjects we’ve discussed on and off over the years, Scott, and we’ve been doing this a long time, this segment for eight years now, is offensive license plates and whether they constitute free speech. And a court in California, or a court has told the state of California, that they in fact are free speech.
Scott: That’s right, Tim. This is a federal court decision that rules that offensive speech is not bannable. Threatening, aggressive, or hostile doesn’t include what’s bannable. They can go for straight vulgar-type speech. They can ban that. But if they’re going to allow people to put messages on their license plate for fees, like they do in California to create income to the state, then they can’t exclude messages they think are offensive.
And for instance, and I love this example, Tim, one of the plaintiffs in this case, wanted a license plate that said queer on it. And the California authority said that was offensive to so many people. And the permit applicant, a gay man who owns Queer-something Records, is the name of his company, said it’s not offensive to him and he would like to have that speech on his plate. And if he has to live in a world where other people can publish their own private messages on government license plates, why can’t he? So a good win for free speech forced down their throats, sad to say by the federal courts, but a win nonetheless.
Tim: Would a pro-Trump license plate be considered merely offensive or downright vulgar? It’s a facetious question, Scott.
Scott: If you even type something like that into the computer systems I think they’d blow up and/or report you to some sort of central authority that you do not want to be reported to.
Tim: I’m sure you’re right. Now, this next one, I honestly had to read this a few times to make sure that I wouldn’t start cracking up in laughter or sorrow, I don’t know which, at this next one where a lawsuit was settled where U.S. citizens detained in the state of Montana were stopped for speaking Spanish, really.
Scott: Customs and Border Patrol agent Paul O’Neill detained and arrested these women simply because he was in a convenience store checkout line with them, and they were casually chatting to one another in Spanish. They were in Montana, not too far from the Canadian border, where maybe they don’t have that many Spanish speakers, which is what he said led him to investigate.
And maybe it’s appropriate for that man to investigate, and he wants to chat up these women in line with what would be a consensual encounter, like just asking them where they’re from or something like that. That’s perfectly reasonable, Tim. But it’s not reasonable to place U.S. citizens in custody or detain them because of the language they choose to speak to one another while in line at a convenience store. And the fact that a federal agent, sworn to uphold the Constitution, doesn’t know that is profoundly troubling.
Tim: Let’s move to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals that has ruled that felons cannot bear arms, including if they’ve committed a white-collar crime involving taxes, for example.
Scott: Yeah. This case is a movement, Second Amendment case. It’s an important case. Well, let me say this. It has the potential to be a very important case. This case is trying to move the needle in Second Amendment jurisprudence to increase the rights that that amendment guarantees currently under law, basically trying to winnow the rules under which those rights can be stripped. And so there was a split in this Third Circuit decision, Tim.
There were two Democrat appointees and one Trump appointee on the three-judge panel that heard the case. The Trump appointee dissented and mimicked, or mirrored the arguments that Amy Coney Barrett had made in a case some years ago, where she questioned whether or not firearms rights could be stripped for crimes that didn’t involve any threat or violence, and that the person’s ongoing presence in society didn’t pose a risk of violence with them being armed. So anyway, I think this is tailor-made for the Supreme Court hearing. The parties have a choice to try to apply for en banc review at the Third Circuit, or they can go right for a request to have the Supreme Court grant the case.
Tim: I love when you speak French, Scott. Now, finally, the Illinois Supreme Court has confirmed the existence of illegal traffic ticket – or at least one illegal traffic ticket quota. Now that’s one of the stereotypes for years. Every time somebody gets stopped, or every time they get a parking ticket, it’s oh, it must be the time of month where they need…
Scott: That’s right…
Tim: to fulfill their…
Scott: traffic stop at the end of the month.
Tim: fulfill their quota. And I wasn’t ever sure if that was actually true, but apparently the Illinois Supreme Court believes it is.
Scott: Well, let me just say this, Tim, as a person who’s carefully examined these stories over the course of 20 years, the existence of ticket quotas in many departments is absolutely present and unmistakable evidence. But usually, courts don’t certify that to be the truth, which is why this is a novel story. It’s from the town of Sparta, and they had a point system where an officer had to accumulate so many points in a shift. And they were, for instance, given one or two points for just a warning ticket and double that for an actual violation ticket. And so there were two problems with that. One, the court articulated is, an officer’s much more likely to give out a violation if they get a reward for it. Because the punishment was, if you didn’t accumulate enough points in your shift, you got a talking to with progressive discipline. So it’s like, okay, now you’re just in trouble, but tomorrow you’ll lose a day’s pay or who knows what it might be. So if the cop discovers a greater crime, that’s bad evidence.
Tim: So, any ticket could be considered as compelled by a quota, and therefore challenging anything else that might be discovered in the course of the stop?
Scott: Absolutely.
Tim: Thank you, Scott.
Scott: Thanks, Tim.
Tim: This program, Liberty Nation Radio, and libertynation.com’s own podcast, The Uprising, hosted by Scott. And The Rabbit Hole: Politics & Pros, where past is prologue with Mark Angelides, all available on demand at libertynation.com, and from fine podcast providers everywhere.
So that is it for this week, and we’ll be back at you once again next week. Same time, same station. Until then, this is Tim Donner saying stand up for liberty. And we’ll see you next time on Liberty Nation Radio.
