LAL Live: R. Rex Parris + Climate Change, Gay Marriage, Privacy (NPS July 21)

Norm opens the show reflecting on the Dobbs decision and Senator Ted Cruz's recent remarks concerning the future of other supposed 'rights' derived by the Court pursuant to its right to privacy jurisprudence in recent decades. 

In particular, Norm is preoccupied today with the thought that the federal right to gay marriage will indeed be the next to be peeled back. But he is uncomfortable with that. Of course, the decisions are a mess. But they're not ones that Norm is ready to disband the republic over. And doesn't that seem like what's stake?

Norm reviews the function of the bill of rights—the first ten amendments to the constitution and the subsequent amendments ratified and added in later years. We don't want Justices making law based on what they think it should be; that's the role of Congress and our elected legislative officials. 

Norm shares a rare story about being recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency back in the early 1980's and his trips to Manhattan and D.C. for a series of interviews. Hear why Norm probably flunked his polygraph exam. 

One thing that stuck out was the insistence from the Agency that it know whether Norm had ever indulged in homosexual activities. Maybe it was the middle finger to the two-way mirror on his way down the hall. Maybe it was his palpable issues with authority. Whatever it was that kept Norm from becoming an Agency operator, we will never know. 

The file is guarded by the Privacy Act. 

Norm takes calls from listeners to discuss the likelihood that Dobbs forecasts some foundational shifts in our rights to privacy in the years ahead, and why Ted Cruz's comments are not so absurd all things considered. 

America is currently playing with its social chemistry in ways that are having unexpected consequences. 

Norm is joined in the second hour by R. Rex Parris, famed trial lawyer, Mayor of Lancaster in northern California, and longtime friend of Norm's. 

Rex joins Norm to discuss his experience as a mayor and his view and approach to the climate change spectacle dominating our media headlines. Parris is keen on understanding how to create the first "net zero" city in the country by way of hydrogen technology and its innovations. 

Are we really staring down an existential threat to human existence? Rex did not always believe this, of course. He would say "belief" is the wrong way to conceptualize it. According to Rex, the science about climate change is indisputable. What did Rex read? Norm asks for his listeners. Rex references a book by Bill Gates he found persuasive. 

Norm and Rex discuss the recent Supreme Court decision regarding the EPA and the likely consequences. 

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