Welcome everyone to what is actually an irregularly scheduled rerun.

This show does have regularly scheduled rerun, but this happens to not be one of them.

Unfortunately, Amanda and I are on the road, we're just visiting some friends and family and fully expected to be able to do a brand new episode today,

but ran into technical difficulties, primarily focused on incredibly slow internet, where we are, you know, at a remote location.

Things can be a little iffy and it turned out that it's so bad that it's logistically impossible to do all of the downloading that needs to be done in order to get a new show up and running.

So if you are hearing the sound of my voice right now, then it means that I at the very least overcame the obstacle of uploading a pre-produced show for you.

And of course, we also did a bonus episode for members as is promised with all rerun episodes comes paired a member on the bonus episode to kind of make up for it.

So today's episode is a good one. I think it's definitely worth your time.

It's nice to remember the puppeteers in this puppet show of a government we're living under.

And that's what today's episode is all about. So I hope you enjoy that.

And if you are not already a member and would like to become one so that you can of course support the show and all of the hard work we do and get all of the members on the bonus content, especially today's episode, which I must say is a bit of a doozy.

I'm not going to tell you what it's about today.

I may tell you sometime in the near future, but it's a big one. We like to get in deep on issues and today's was definitely one of those.

So if you'd like access to that, you can join up either at patreon.com slash best of the left or go to best of the left.com and click on the contribute tab for all the details. And now enjoy.

One of the things that he wanted to buy was an America that more closely fitted their political point of view. So they poured money into that project.

This program is made possible by the members and donors to the show to support the work we do get commercial free versions of every episode and occasional members only bonus content to visit the contribute tab at best of the left.com.

Now welcome to the award winning best of the left podcast with clips today from democracy now start making sense. The humanless queers the majority report and intercepted.

Leonard Leo is currently on leave from the Federalist Society to help shepherd gorsuches nomination.

In addition to nominating gorsuch the Supreme Court president Trump has 123 other federal judgeships to fill because Senate Republicans blocked many of Obama's nominees.

Eric Lipton welcome to democracy now. Why don't you start off by talking about the conservative shaping of the judiciary and particularly the role of the Federalist Society.

Sure, you know, first of you, I mean, you introduced them once point by describing them as a right wing group. I wouldn't call the Federalist Society a right wing group. I think that they are a group of conservative legal scholars who see themselves as an alternative voice.

And they really got started through law schools in the United States where there was some concern by law professors that there was not a forum for conservative people to sort of, you know, meet and discuss theories relative to the court that that could.

...