Welcome to Beg to Bueg to Differ, the Bullworks weekly roundtable discussion featuring civil conversation

across the political spectrum from center left to center right. I'm Mona

Charon, indicated columnist and policy editor of the Bullwork and I am joined by our regulars

Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution in the Wall Street Journal,

Damon Linker of the Week, and Linda Chavez of the Niskanin Center.

Our special guest this week is Ted Johnson of the Brennan Center for Justice and the NYU Law School.

Good to be back, ladies and gentlemen gentlemen and I want to thank Sarah Longwell for sitting in for me last week

fabulous job much appreciated and let's get right to it this This is a special edition of Begg to Differ.

We're going to devote the whole hour to Ted Johnson's wonderful new book,

when the stars begin to Fall. So thank you so much Ted for

joining us. Why don't you start us off by telling us where the title comes from?

Yeah, absolutely.

And thank you all for having me here.

This is like the exact kind of conversation

I've been hoping to have with the exact kind of

people I've been hoping to have it with.

So I'm kind of excited about it.

So when the Stars begin the fall, it's, it kind of has a dual meaning here.

The first is a kind of superficial meaning, which is to say that just given the words

when the stars begin the fall, it immediately draws to mind the American flag.

And in fact, the book has that kind of iconography on it.

The idea here is that either we figure out

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