The "Wet February" Edition
Rational Security
The Lawfare Institute
4.8 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2022
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Alan, Quinta and Scott were joined by Lawfare senior editor, Roger Parloff! They talked through some of the week's biggest national security news, including:
- “The Turn Heel State.” North Carolina Congressman Madison Cawthorne has sued to stop a state law inquiry into whether he is disqualified from running for re-election under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment for participating in the Jan. 6 insurrection, not by disputing the facts, but on due process grounds and in reliance on a 1872 law pardoning members of the Confederacy. What are the odds of his case and what does it tell us about the possibility of future disqualification proceedings?
- “There Never Was a Quiet Part, Was There?” Former President Trump triggered a stir earlier this week when he made statements suggesting not only that former Vice President Mike Pence could have overturned the 2020 election outcome, but that he would pardon participants in the Jan. 6 insurrection if reelected in 2024. What impact will this have on ongoing reform debates–and Trump’s election prospects?
- “He Took Home a Bronze for Dodging the Issue.” The Beijing Olympics get underway later this week, kicking off a multi-week period where Olympians, their governments, sponsoring corporations and sports fans will all have to navigate an array of tricky questions about how they should act in light of China’s questionable conduct, including its human rights record and expected surveillance of attendees. What should we expect from these games around the games?
For object lessons, Alan recommended the recent Vanity Fair portrait, "The Rise and Fall of Jerry Falwell, Jr.," for some casual bedtime reading. Quinta embraced pundit accountability and issued a mea culpa for an earlier misstatement about a notorious terrorist's history with the law. Scott celebrated the end of "Dry January" by sipping on an amaro caldo, and recommended listeners do the same. And Roger made another drink recommendation from his own family history: the hard-to-find (in America, anyway) vin jaune.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, it's Fern Cotton here. Now, my podcast, Happy Place, is brought to you by Mindful Chef, |
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| 0:45.6 | Well, guys, it is February 1st and you know what that means. Our long national nightmare that is |
| 0:57.0 | dry January is over or just don't do dry January. I don't understand dry January, |
| 1:03.8 | just just drink moderately throughout the year. That's what I do. Like why do you need to like |
| 1:07.8 | to have a dry January, just have a have a damp January and then a damp February. |
| 1:13.3 | A moist a damp year. A moist. Oh, I don't know. That's a bummer word. I don't like that word. |
| 1:17.9 | I will say I did dry January and doing a dry January when you have a one-year-old in the middle |
| 1:22.2 | of the pandemic and you can't leave your house for a month straight is the worst single idea I've ever had. |
| 1:27.2 | And so I will admit I am celebrating it by having a little drink right now when we're recording even |
| 1:31.5 | though it is 11 o'clock in the morning. A very breakfast appropriate light work appropriate |
| 1:36.1 | direct is just getting the creative juices flowing. Scott, I don't I don't know what good dry January |
| 1:40.2 | does if it encourages this kind of behavior. Also I have to say that's a very large mug. |
| 1:45.8 | Audience members can't see this. It really is. It's an enormous mug. I'm just very curious if |
| 1:50.2 | this is just a giant mug of vodka that Scott is drinking on. I guess we're going to find out |
| 1:54.8 | by odd necklaces. And hello everyone. Welcome to Rational Security 2.0 aka Rogue Pun, |
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