Welcome back to the Dershow. We feel we get to the serious legal and political issues of the day.

A quirky story about animals in the law. So a, this is true story. A great photographer went into the wild to photograph monkey's gorillas, apes.

Um, and he couldn't get close enough to them. They would run away. So he left the camera on a tripod and left a mirror. So the, the animals could see themselves and, uh, and then a button and, um, the animals within.

Press the button, um, and take essentially selfies and, um, he then went and collected the selfies and, um, wanted to sell them obviously for, um, a profit. He had put a lot of effort into it.

A lot of work and a lot of money into it. And, uh, Peter, the animal rights organization sued him and said, no, uh, he didn't have the copyright. He didn't take the picture.

Uh, the ape that pressed the button had the copyright. And therefore he had to, um, pay whatever money he received from the pictures to the ape, um, and to funds designed to support the ape.

Uh, the case went all the way through the courts and ultimately, um, the courts held no that he did have the right to the copyright.

And then the copyright agency issued a clear definitive important order that Peter hated saying animals do not have copyright.

Uh, the copyright is always going to be in the person who got the animal to take the selfie or take the picture.

All right, that's my quirky law bet for the day. I found that amusing. I hope you did too. So this is, um, my end of the year, uh, show where approaching new years.

They will not be another podcast between now and new years. So I'm asking the question on this podcast was 2022 good or bad for America.

It was clear. Yes. It was both good and bad for America. There was some very good things.

Um, there's a lead editorial on the Wall Street Journal today that is entitled democracy made a comeback in 2022.

And it goes through most of the positives that happened, um, for democracy, not only in the United States, but around the world. And they make a fairly compelling case that there was some pretty good things for, for, for, for democracy.

Congress actually passed some legitimate legislation. There was a little bit of cooperation between the Democrats and the Republicans. They list, um, the most significant gun safety bill in decades.

Now, some of my viewers will say, oh my god, that destroys democracy. What about the second amendment? No, these were gun safety bills that were entirely consistent with the second amendment legislative support for, for same sex.

The next marriage, very important because it begins to federalize the issue and take it away from the states. They go through a number of other issues that they think were quite positive.

This is very important. The reform electoral act that clarifies the process for challenging election results during the tally of electoral votes in the Congress. It means that Congress made it clear that the vice president's role is solely ministerial.

And that the holder of this office has no discretionary authority to delay reject slates of electors, preventing any future president from trying to do what president Trump did to vice president pants. Look, it's an improvement, but they didn't go far enough.

A kind of should pass a national electoral commission, much like Great Britain has other European countries have Israel has. This is a commission usually consisting of wise women and men, people who have been safe, former justices of the Supreme Court, presidents of universities, ministers, people who are beyond reproach.

And when there's a challenge to an election, it doesn't go to partisan Congress to make the decision instead it goes to this commission and this commission decides whether or not the election was fair or wasn't fair.

And what aspects of the election will fair and not fair and make suggestions for improvement be a tremendous step forward if Congress were able to pass and establish a permanent electoral commission and say with people serving tenia terms with an equal number of people who have backgrounds of Democrat backgrounds Republicans and hopefully some who have non partisan backgrounds or backgrounds that whose who's partisanship is.

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