This is an IHeart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, and we love your story.

Send them to Our American Stories.com.

Everyone has that one funny friend, the wise guy, the one that's mastered pranks, has clever

comebacks, or pulls humor out of the strangest situations.

Maybe, well, just maybe, if you're lucky, you're one of them.

But we all know at least one, and they have the best stories. Today's wise guy, Duncan Scott,

hails from the great state of New Mexico. When I was elected to the state Senate in New Mexico in

1992, I was on a path of politics, but after I served four years in the state Senate,

I concluded while it was an incredible honor to represent the people who were in my district,

it was an absolute waste of my time.

I was a Republican. New Mexico is a heavily

blue Democratic state. So whatever Republican principles or philosophy I brought to the state

Senate, it was dead on arrival. An educated monkey could have sat in my chair and it would have

made no difference whatsoever for the

arc of New Mexico history.

When I did the pointy hat bill, it was obvious to me that if I proposed serious legislation,

it wasn't going anywhere.

And the pointy hat bill was really to address the insanity defense plea.

So I thought that satire and humor was a better form for getting out the idea that the insanity defense is way overused and inappropriately

than drafting some technical change on the rules of evidence that nobody would see and would follow

Szil if they read. Your listeners will have to go back to the summer of 94, and some will be alive.

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