I'm Allowed False Hope You S.O.B.

Summary

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Armstrong & Getty On Demand

Episode: "I'm Allowed False Hope You S.O.B."

Date: October 16, 2025

Guest: Tim Sandifer, Goldwater Institute

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Episode Overview

In this episode, hosts Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty welcome constitutional attorney Tim Sandifer of the Goldwater Institute for an in-depth, candid discussion about the U.S. Supreme Court’s new session, pivotal cases (including parental rights, gun rights, vaping, and tariffs), and the broader impact of legal philosophies on American society and personal freedom. With a trademark blend of humor, clarity, and plain talk, Sandifer demystifies complex constitutional issues, critiques the legal profession, and passionately advocates for individual rights and limited government.

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Key Topics & Discussions

1. The Supreme Court's Schedule & Case Selection

[01:29 – 02:40]

• Why the Supreme Court takes a summer break:
  Sandifer notes, “The justices like their summer vacation time. They get to go on these junkets to foreign countries where they teach classes ... and it's just the way things have always been done.”
• Case selection process:
  The Court only takes about 1% of the cases submitted; it only requires four justices’ votes to hear a case – not a majority – out of nine.
  • "They can choose to take a case or not... they only take about 1% of all the cases that they are asked to decide." — Sandifer [02:40]

2. Parental Rights & Schools Concealing Information

[02:52 – 07:30]

• Current controversy:
  Sandifer discusses his institute’s petition to the Supreme Court regarding schools that aid children’s gender transition and conceal this from parents.

  “Schools are supposed to be ... teaching them reading, writing, arithmetic and history ... Instead, they’ve taken this aggressive approach to withhold information from parents ... Psychosexual development of a teenager is something a parent needs to be there to help a child through.” — Sandifer [04:10]

• Quote from the Court:
  “Parents’ rights do not end at the schoolhouse gate.” — Sandifer, discussing a previous Supreme Court decision [06:38]

• Broader implications:
  If the Supreme Court rules for parental rights in these cases, the precedent could affect more than just trans-related issues, extending to all situations where schools might conceal crucial information from parents.

3. The Philosophical Roots of Public Education's Role

[07:30 – 09:18]

• Sandifer references Woodrow Wilson’s notion that “the goal of the school is to make the child as unlike the parents as possible,” pointing out the progressive era idea of schools shaping children into “good citizens” as defined by the state. This, he argues, risks overriding parental values.

  “The progressives thought of public education as a means of shaping the minds of kids. ... Wilson has this speech where he says that the goal of the school is to make the child as unlike the parent as possible. That is so crazy.” — Sandifer [07:44]

4. School Choice and Parental Control

[08:34 – 09:18]

• Sandifer champions school choice and the “Empowerment Scholarship Account” in Arizona as effective ways for parents to regain control.

5. Gun Rights Case: Property Rights vs. Second Amendment

[11:05 – 12:38]

• Hawaii law under scrutiny:
  Law requires explicit permission from private property owners to bring a firearm onto their property.
• Complexity:
  ~"It's kind of a clever way of preventing people from carrying guns anywhere."~ — Armstrong [11:51]
• Sandifer’s worry: This may weaken firearms rights, but he acknowledges property owners’ rights to control what happens on their premises.

6. The Vaping Case & Freedom of Speech

[16:41 – 18:55]

• Oregon law:
  Public health rules make it illegal to package vaping products in a way “that might be attractive to minors.”
• Sandifer’s challenge:

  “Under this law, he cannot even put a picture of a cherry on a box of cherry-flavored vaping liquid. The state has said that is illegal. Well, that obviously violates your freedom of speech.” [17:53]

• Broader concern: Empowering bureaucrats to decide what is “attractive” or what speech is permissible.

7. The Role of State Constitutions

[18:55 – 19:50]

• State constitutions can be more protective of individual rights than the federal constitution, but federal oversight (especially via the 14th Amendment) remains crucial.

8. Goldwater Institute's "Right to Try" Achievements

[21:52 – 22:32]

• Milestone:
  Goldwater Institute’s advocacy allows terminally ill patients to access medicines not fully FDA-approved:

  “Our greatest achievement really is right to try, which is legislation signed by President Trump ... if you are a terminally ill patient, to access medicine that has been approved for safety but not yet fully approved for sale by the FDA.” — Armstrong [21:58]

• Memorable moment:

  “How about I'm allowed to in my final days alive as a human being to have some false hope, you son of a bitch.” — Sandifer [23:09]

9. Legal Academia & Ideological Leanings

[23:24 – 24:45]

• Sandifer critiques the law school system for being “way left,” misunderstanding justice as mere equality rather than fairness, and churning out progressive lawyers and judges who have “never seriously considered the alternative.”

10. Eccentric State Constitutions

[25:37 – 26:28]

• Fun facts about “wackiest” state constitutions:
  Montana’s is “pretty bad” and Hawaii includes “the law of the splintered paddle.”
  Alabama’s is “the worst... several hundred pages long... every little last detail of state law embedded in it.”

11. Trump’s Tariffs & Supreme Court Role

[26:47 – 28:42]

• Sandifer argues Trump’s tariffs are “totally unconstitutional, totally illegal,” as the founding fathers specifically wrote the Constitution to prevent one person from imposing taxes unilaterally.
• Likely outcome: The Court will probably resolve the issue on statutory rather than constitutional grounds.

12. The Supreme Court’s Reluctance and "Judicial Restraint"

[29:56 – 31:55]

• Sandifer worries the Court hides behind “judicial restraint,” letting governments violate rights to avoid appearing “activist.”

  “The idea that judicial activism is a serious threat is wildly overblown. Congress and the president violate your rights on an hourly basis in this country. ... Courts have very little power. All they can do is pronounce what the law is ... That was never intended to be that way.” — Sandifer [31:06]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Schools Concealing Information:
  "Psychosexual development of a teenager is something a parent needs to be there to help a child through. And the schools are saying, no, no, you shouldn't have a say in the matter." — Sandifer [04:10]

• On Parental Rights Extending Beyond Picking a School:
  "It can't be the case that your rights as a parent end once you send your kid to the public school and then they can do whatever they want." — Sandifer [06:24]

• On Bureaucratic Arrogance and Medical Choice:
  "You might give them false hope." / "How about I'm allowed to in my final days alive as a human being to have some false hope, you son of a bitch." — Sandifer [23:07–23:09]

• On Law Schools:
  "They teach a corrupted notion of what justice means. They think ... justice means equality. Justice does not mean equality." — Sandifer [24:17]

• On Supreme Court Passivity:
  "I'm worried about them getting things wrong. ... Courts have very little power. All they can do is pronounce what the law is. Congress and the President can resist them very powerfully." — Sandifer [31:06]

• On Limited Government:
  "The less the government is involved, the less it matters whether they get it right or wrong, because they're not deciding for me." — Armstrong [33:50] "I believe in freedom because I don't trust other people to be ... to make the right decisions for my life." — Sandifer [33:57]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |----------------|--------------------------------------------| | 01:29–02:40 | Supreme Court calendar & tradition | | 02:52–05:42 | Parental rights cases & school secrecy | | 07:30–08:34 | Progressive philosophy in public schools | | 11:05–12:38 | Gun rights vs. property rights (HI law) | | 16:41–18:55 | Vaping regulations & free speech | | 21:52–23:17 | Goldwater Institute’s “Right to Try” case | | 23:24–24:45 | Law schools’ ideological leanings | | 26:47–28:42 | Tariff legality & Supreme Court review | | 29:56–31:55 | Judicial restraint & Supreme Court limits | | 33:03–33:50 | The case for limited government |

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Final Takeaways

• Tim Sandifer presents a lucid, sometimes impassioned argument for limiting government power and placing more decision-making in the hands of individuals and parents.
• The Supreme Court’s choices and slowness are scrutinized, especially regarding timely, controversial issues like parental rights, gun laws, and executive authority.
• The episode closes on advocacy for individual autonomy and wariness of both bureaucracy and the unchecked proliferation of laws.

  “Their mistakes should be confined to their own lives. They shouldn't be allowed to inflict their mistakes on my life. That's the argument for [freedom].” — Sandifer [33:57]

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For fans seeking the heart of Armstrong & Getty’s legal and cultural commentary, this episode is both rich in constitutional substance and infused with the show’s signature wit and skepticism toward authority.

Transcript

[Armstrong]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Public Rec Advertiser]

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[Armstrong]

Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln radio studio at the George Washington Broadcast Center.

[Getty]

Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.

[Armstrong]

Armstrong and Getty. And now here's Armstrong and Getty.

[Tim Sandifer]

Yo, yo, how's it going? Glad you're here. And we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, October means the the Supreme Court's back in session. First Monday in October, they start back up again. I've already have questions about that. We welcome to the studio. Actually in studio, Tim Sandifer of the Goldwater Institute.

[Armstrong]

Now, I have to admit the only reason I came down to the studio was for your life size cardboard cut.

[Tim Sandifer]

Out of Taylor Swift, which we do have. Yeah.

[Armstrong]

No, it's great to be back. It's been a long time since I've been in here. It's nice to see you.

[Tim Sandifer]

Why does the Supreme Court take a break? Why don't they work year round? And they had so many cases between June and October this year. Why don't they just stay in session year round like, like other people with.

[Armstrong]

Jobs, in one sense they do stored they do sort of work all year round because they're always on call for emergency cases and things like that. But the term that that begins in October and ends in late June, right before the July 4th break is when they hear oral arguments and issue decisions and they try to get to get all of the calendar, all the decisions that are on the calendar issued by the end of that session. And most state supreme courts do not do that. Like California's Supreme Court is always in session, but it's just an old tradition. I think the justices like their summer vacation time. They get to go on these junkets to foreign countries where they teach classes for some law school that hosts an event in Spain. And you know, it's kind of just the way things they've done things. And you know, in the law, if they've done things for a long time, that becomes legal, whatever.

[Tim Sandifer]

Yeah, right. Interesting. So this particular Supreme Court session, what are cases that you're excited about? And as you always point out, what cases they decide to take is as big as the rulings.

[Armstrong]

Yeah, that's right. And because they don't have to hear every case, they can choose to take a case or not. And in fact, they only take about 1% of all the cases that they are asked to decide.

[Tim Sandifer]

1%?

[Armstrong]

Yeah, yeah. And fewer every year.

[Tim Sandifer]

Really? And how do they vote on that? Is that just a majority? Five? Four?

[Armstrong]

It's four justices, so there's nine of them. If four of them say they want to hear a case, then they go ahead and hear the case on the theory that you might swing one vote one way or the other. But the one good point, the one that really stood out just this week, is on the, on Monday, the Supreme Court said that they want to hear a case. Well, a few justices said they want to hear a case about parental rights. And in particular, these cases that are popping up all over the country of schools deciding to transition a student from male to female or female to male and, and then conceal that information from a parent. And we at the Goldwater Institute, in fact, are litigating one of these cases. We filed a petition with the Supreme Court that we're waiting for them to, to, to decide whether to take this case or not out of Maine, where a school district in, in Maine decided to take our client's child and give this child a device to restrain her breasts so that she would look male when putting a shirt on.

[Tim Sandifer]

And what age was the kid?

[Armstrong]

A teenager. And child, two of these. And then said to the, to the child, well, we don't, we won't tell your parents and you don't have to tell your parents. And, and then, and so this.

[Tim Sandifer]

Oh, my God, I would lose my mind.

[Armstrong]

Can you imagine? Can you imagine? These are, these schools are supposed to be, you're supposed to be entrusting these schools to take care of your kids while teaching them reading, writing, arithmetic and history. And, and that's, that's what they're supposed to be doing. And instead they've taken this very, I'm sure they think of it as very proactive and protective, but I would call it aggressive approach in, in to withhold information from parents and the kind of information that is really central to a parent raising a child. I mean, psychosexual development of a teenager is something a parent needs to be there to help a child through. And the schools are saying, no, no, you shouldn't have a say in the matter. And well, the U.S. supreme Court has said in the past that parents have a fundamental constitutional right to control the education and upbringing of their children. And so we say that what the school did violated that constitutional right. And we've asked the Supreme Court to take that case. Well, what happened on Monday was that Justices Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch issued a decision, issued an order, you know, it wasn't a ruling, but issued an order saying, we would really like to hear a case like this. There was another case, similar facts. The court decided not to take the case, but they said, well, we would like to hear a case along these lines. And they're going to have to eventually. I mean, as the regulatory state expands its control and as the teachers unions can expand their control, and as the state increasingly thinks that it knows better than you do how to raise your kids, kids, you're going to find more and more and more of these conflicts. And there has to be a limit, a line drawn to protect the rights of parents to raise their kids.

[Tim Sandifer]

And if the Supreme Court decides that no, you can't do that, you can't keep that sort of stuff secret from the parents, will that have tentacles beyond just trans stuff?

[Armstrong]

Oh, definitely it will. And in fact, they've sort of already started doing this. So last term the court decided a case about schools that were teaching lessons to kids about sexuality, like same sex marriages, transsexuals, et cetera, et cetera, in, in. And this was very young kids, I don't remember exactly, but you know, elementary and pre elementary kids in Virginia. And the question in that case was, do the parents have a constitutional right to opt their kids out, to say, I just don't want my kids to go through these, these lessons? And the Supreme Court said, yes, they do. Now the reason that you do have that constitutional right and the reason that's important is because there's been this question among lawyers and judges over the level of how far does the parents right to protect and direct the upbringing of a child? How far does that extend? Does it stop when you choose what school to send your kid to? Because that's what a lot of courts have said, like circuit courts of appeals have said, well, yes, you have a constitutional right to control the education of your child, but once you've chosen what school to send your kid to, that's the end of it. Then it's up to the school that you know. And that makes sense because you can't have parents going in there and vetoing everything that a public school wants to do, you know, have a heckler's veto over the entire curriculum of a school. I can see why they're concerned about that. But it also, it can't be the case that your parent, your rights as a parent end once you send your kid to the public school and then they can do whatever they want. And sure enough, in this Virginia case, the Supreme Court said no, parents rights do not end at the schoolhouse gate. Well, if that's true, then that the same applies to these situations where schools are concealing vital information from parents about how their kids are developing.

[Tim Sandifer]

What's that quote you always have from the early 20th century progressives about schools and.

[Armstrong]

Oh yeah, well, you know, the progressives thought of public education as a means of shaping the minds of, of, of kids. And Woodrow Wilson.

[Tim Sandifer]

Am I living through that right now?

[Armstrong]

Totally. And Woodrow Wilson, who, you know, he was the only president with a PhD. He was like a college president before he became President of the United States. He was a leading progressive intellectual. He has this speech where he says that the goal of the school is to make the child as unlike the par possible. That is so crazy. It's a very extreme way of putting it. But what they were thinking is they were like the problems is all the tensions and difficulties that we have in America, those can be resolved by taking all the kids and putting them together and teaching them, you know, how to be good citizens. Which maybe that sounds good to you in the abstract, but the problem is what do you mean by good citizens? Well, right.

[Tim Sandifer]

Yeah. The problem with that obviously is they have determined we have figured out what is best for all of America and that's what we're going to teach kids.

[Armstrong]

Yeah. And fortunately there are alternatives. There are, there's school choice programs throughout the country that parents can take advantage of to get their kids into schools that are tailored, made or tailor designed for their kids. And especially in my home state of Arizona, we have a wonderfully successful program, the Empowerment Scholarship Account program where a parent can, can decide what schools to send their kids to and get them out of failing public schools or schools that aren't serving their kids needs. Maybe their kids have special needs or that are abusing their power in these ways. And what we need is more school choice, more power in the hands of parents and less power in the hands of bureaucrats who again think that they know better than you do how your kids ought to be raised.

[Tim Sandifer]

You and your wife are committed to non child people. But I, it would be so awesome if you had kids. Just because I can imagine, I mean because you get fired up about this on behalf of other people's kids. I can't imagine if Your kids.

[Armstrong]

It's a scary thought. I had not. I had not thought of it until you mentioned that. But you're right.

[Tim Sandifer]

I can't imagine you at a school board meeting with kids.

[Armstrong]

Well, I just think about how I was when I was in school. I was already a kind of a nonconformist when I was forced to go to the government schools. And I made life pretty. Pretty hell for my parents, my teachers when I was in school. So I can imagine what I would do if it was my kid.

[Tim Sandifer]

Well, I promised to get back to the Supreme Court stuff, but Tim was helpful to me in my story of my son taking a public school American history class and on day one, having to write a land acknowledgment about the tribe that had owned the land where the school was and how we should all feel so horrible about that and who.

[Armstrong]

And that tribe probably stole it from some other tribe, and that tribe stole it from some other tribe. I mean, I would. I just pray for the day when somebody requires somebody to do a land acknowledgement for the Comanche. You know, the most aggressive imperial power in Native America that just slaughtered countless other tribes and stole their land. And yet now, you know, if somebody does. This land was once possessed by the Comanche. You know, I would love to see that.

[Tim Sandifer]

Yeah. That's amazing. They must not do this in Europe.

[Armstrong]

Right?

[Tim Sandifer]

The land acknowledgment. Because it'd be impossible if you had a square foot of France or Germany. I mean, how in the hell would you.

[Armstrong]

This land used to belong to Germany and then Russia and then Germany and then France and then Germany and then.

[Tim Sandifer]

Russia and then Poland. Yeah, it'd be very, very complicated. What other Supreme Court cases are you excited about this week?

[Armstrong]

Well, there's an important gun rights case that's gonna go up there, and this case is. It's kind of tough as an intellectual matter, at least I think so. And that is. So the state of Hawaii passes a law that says you're not allowed to bring a gun onto private property without the express permission of the owner. Now, on one hand, that makes sense to me because I wouldn't bring a gun into my friend's house without saying, hey, by the way, I have a gun. Is it okay with you if I bring it into the house? But on the other hand, the reason this law was passed was because most people are probably not gonna put up a sign on their house that says it's okay for you to bring a gun on this property or something. And so it's kind of a clever way of preventing people from carrying guns anywhere.

[Tim Sandifer]

Ah, okay.

[Armstrong]

Right. And so the question presented in the case is to what level can the state manipulate this sort of baseline rule, this the, the default rule of whether you're allowed to with, with as long as nobody forbids you or whether you're not allowed to unless you get express permission.

[Tim Sandifer]

Yeah.

[Armstrong]

And that's a tough question.

[Tim Sandifer]

Opt in, opt out stuff always drives me crazy. Who decides which, which it's going to be.

[Armstrong]

Right. And I so I now the court has been pretty good about protecting gun rights, but there are some contrary examples. There have been some cases that where the court has not, you know, been as aggressive in protecting these rights as I would like. And so I do worry about them setting a decision here that's going to weaken the right to possess firearms. But on the other hand, property rights, I have a right to decide whether somebody brings a property, brings a gun on my property or not.

[Tim Sandifer]

Of course, I got questions about that and other stuff with Tim Sandifer. Coming up on tell you about price picks. You know, the NBA season is getting underway. Obviously NFL is as hot as it's ever been and playoff baseball, we're headed toward the World Series here. Soon you can get involved with prize picks. You got really strong opinions about who's doing well or what team is going to win. Turn it into cash with prize picks. It's pretty cool. Prize picks now offers stacks, meaning that you can pick the same player up to three times in the same lineup. So for instance, Steph Curry playing basketball, you could take points, three pointers and assists. You could pick all three of them in the same lineup only on prize picks. To make money, this is what you do. You download the Prize Picks app today. Use the code Armstrong to get $50 in line after you play your first $5 lineup. That code is ARMSTRONG to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 Lineup. Price picks. It's good to be right and you can stick around for a little while, Tim. Yeah, look forward to that all on the way. Stay here.

[Armstrong]

Armstrong and Getty.

[Getty]

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[Public Rec Advertiser]

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[Tim Sandifer]

Tim Sandover is thankfully committed to sticking around for a little while talking about these Supreme Court cases or various state cases. But we're just discussing One of the reasons I think Tim is a fan favorite, has been for many years on the Armstrong and Getty show is your ability to explain these complicated cases in a way that's normal people like us can understand.

[Armstrong]

You know, I think part of the reason for that is that I was never a very good student in school and so the teacher would get up there and lecture about something. I wouldn't get it, so I'd have to go out and learn it myself. So I would pull down the book and read it myself. And that's how I got it. And so I know how I learned this stuff. And so when I explain it to other people, I tell them the way that I figured it out as opposed to the way that it's normally talked about in other circles. And I think that might be part.

[Tim Sandifer]

Of the reason that is really interesting. Have you ever thought about teaching in a law school?

[Armstrong]

I have taught a couple classes. I taught a class at McGeorge in Sacramento. I taught a class at George Mason in Virginia. I just taught a class two years ago at Arizona State University. So I have taught a couple times.

[Tim Sandifer]

And I'll bet the students loved it.

[Armstrong]

Well, I, I don't know. You have to ask them. But it was a lot of work. That's the thing. I I've, I felt sorry for my law professors in retrospect because I had not realized when I was a student how much work it really is.

[Tim Sandifer]

But don't you have to just do it once and then you're written. Then you could keep doing the same spiel for the next 30 years.

[Armstrong]

Yeah, I suppose you could, you know, just update your outline as you go. That is true. But on the other hand, you would think that speaking for two hours is twice as hard as speaking for one hour. And actually it's like 50 times harder.

[Tim Sandifer]

Than speaking for an hour.

[Armstrong]

It's keeping the students attention and not being boring. That's the thing. I just dread being boring. So.

[Tim Sandifer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, tell me about it. We call that flop sweat in radio business when you start feeling okay, this is not working. So how did vaping become a court case?

[Armstrong]

So one of the things that makes the Goldwater Institute, where I work, unique is that we try to focus on state constitutions, on the rights that are protected by your state constitution, which a lot of people forget about. They all talk about the Bill of Rights and they forget about the fact that your state constitution protects more rights typically than does the federal constitution. So we like to go to state supreme courts to defend state constitutional rights. And we have a case pending in the Oregon Supreme Court. In fact, it was just argued a couple days ago about the freedom of speech under the state constitution. And it involves a state law that makes it illegal to package vaping products in a manner that quote, might be attractive to minors. End quote. And that term, whatever might be attractive to minors is determined by a government bureaucracy. Cuz, you know, a whole bunch of middle aged bureaucrats in a government, they really have their fingers on the pulse of youthful America. Right. And so we say this violates freedom of speech. Our client runs a vaping shop. Kids aren't even allowed in his shop. Nevertheless, under this law, he cannot even put a picture of a cherry on a box full of cherry flavored vaping liquid. The state has said that that is illegal. Well, that obviously violates your freedom of speech. Right.

[Tim Sandifer]

And it could be, you know, you could extrapolate that to so many other things. Absolutely.

[Armstrong]

Problem is, yeah, you can't put, you can't say what, can't say a truthful message. What's in the contents of a package. And if this isn't even, I mean, if the constitution doesn't protect your right to speak the truth, you've got some real problems there. Right. And the bureaucracy there, when we sued, they came back and said, well, you're not allowed to sue yet because we haven't written the regulations. We haven't told you yet what is attractive to minors, which is just that's crazy. I mean, the idea that bureaucrats can be empowered to decide what speech you are and aren't allowed to, to express and then that you're not allowed to challenge it until they write the rules is wild. So we went up to the Oregon Supreme Court just a few days ago, and one of my colleagues, John Thorpe, argued that case and it went pretty well, I think. You know, I got my fingers crossed about that case.

[Tim Sandifer]

Cool. Would people like you, I others who like smaller government, would we rather we're living under more state constitution rules than federal constitution rules?

[Armstrong]

In some ways yes, and in some ways no. So it is true that state constitutions tend to protect freedom more broadly than the federal constitution does. But you can't just leave it to the states. We have to have that federal protection against states. So the 14th Amendment that prevents the state from violating your federal constitutional rights is crucial in protecting that. But for the most part, of course, these decisions should mostly be made at the state level, political decisions generally and constitutional rights should be understood mostly at the state level because state judges, for one thing, they typically are either elected or we have retention elections. So you have more control over them and they're more attuned to the history and culture of that state and they know what the constitution means.

[Tim Sandifer]

I have more questions about that. We're going to talk about more Supreme Court cases coming up with Tim Sandifer, who works with the Goldwater Institute and has been a fan favorite of the Armstrong and Getty show for how many years?

[Armstrong]

Oh, it's been at least a decade.

[Tim Sandifer]

No longer than that. Yeah, yeah. We've been doing this for almost 15. It's sad to think about really. So we got a lot on the way. I hope you can stay. Stay with us. If you missed a segment or an hour, get the podcast Armstrong and Getty on demand. Stay with us.

[Armstrong]

Armstrong and Getty.

[Getty]

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[Public Rec Advertiser]

We don't give a damn about fashion trends. We are public rec and our whole brand was built as a cheat code for guys who want to look good and feel even better in lightweight, breathable classics made to wear all day, any day day, especially in the fall. And right now, you can get 30% off every single thing we sell during our friends and family sale. 40% off if you sign up for email shop comfortable classics, no [e-mail] radio BU never change.

[Tim Sandifer]

We're talking with Tim Sandifer of the Goldwater Institute. Anything nice you want to say about Goldwater Institute before I start asking you questions?

[Armstrong]

We're a non profit organization devoted to protecting individual rights in, in courts, in and in legislatures across the country. We're defending your right to our greatest achievement really is right to try, which is legislation that was signed by President Trump in his previous term that protects your right, if you are a terminally ill patient, to access medicine that has been approved for safety but not yet fully approved for sale by the fda. And now we're, we're branching out into right to try 2.0, which is an effort to legally protect your right to access tailor made medical treatment that's designed just for you.

[Tim Sandifer]

I'm glad you guys did that. It's insane that it wasn't already the case. I mean, it just blows my mind for years that we've been talking about this.

[Armstrong]

It really is. Well, we were just talking about how bureaucrats think they know better than you do about how to raise your kids. A lot of the time bureaucrats think they know better than you do what medicines you ought to be allowed to even choose from. Even when you're a patient with a terminal illness that can't be cured anyway and you there's an opportunity to take this investigational medicine that might improve things for you. And then some bureaucrat comes in and says, no, no, we're not. You can't do that.

[Tim Sandifer]

One of my favorite phrases from that whole thing was you might give them false hope.

[Armstrong]

False hope. That's right. Well, no hope is false.

[Tim Sandifer]

How about I'm allowed to in my final days alive as a human being to have some false hope, you son of a bitch.

[Armstrong]

Yeah, right. And some, and some authority over my own decisions. God, that's crazy.

[Tim Sandifer]

How before we get to a specific case. How left are law schools in general? Across the country, they are so much.

[Armstrong]

Worse than you could possibly imagine. The entire legal profession. Great is way better. Well, there's a number of historical reasons, I'm sure. I mean, part of it, I think, is the romanticism of the 60s, you know, the heroism of Brown versus Board of Education that then spread after that into this notion that the civil rights lawyers were the champions of social justice and so forth. And that was part of it, even though. Even when that got sidetracked into these crazy left wing notions that have nothing to do with justice. But I think the biggest problem is the very phrase social justice. Law schools are not very good on philosophy and they teach a corrupted notion of what justice means. They think a lot of people think justice means equality. Justice does not mean equality. Justice, inequality, in fact, have very little to do with one another. Justice means ensuring that every person gets what is his or her own. And equality is about distributing things to people according to some set formula. And so justice and equality are very different things. But nobody talks about this in law school. And so people emerge from law school thinking they're deeply educated with these perverse notions about what justice even means to begin with.

[Tim Sandifer]

So if the legal education system in this country is way left, what is the result of that? Do we turn out a whole bunch of left lawyers?

[Armstrong]

We do. We have tons and tons of left lawyers and left judges who often, I think, have never seriously even considered the alternative. And so they've been kind of gobsmacked by the rise of the Federalist Society and the backlash against what we lawyers call the New Deal settlement. The way that constitutional law has been interpreted since the 1930s or so, there's been this effort to push back against that. And I think it really surprised a lot of legal intellectuals. Lawrence Tribe, who, very famous law professor, refused even to publish the second volume of his treatise on constitutional law because he said he no longer understood constitutional law. Well, good, because the constitutional law he's been practicing is cockamamie.

[Tim Sandifer]

And then you were talking about Goldwater Institute, gets involved in state constitutions a lot. What couple of states have the wackiest constitutions?

[Armstrong]

Oh, wow. Well, Montana's is pretty bad. It was written in the 1970s and it has all sorts of sort of lefty notions in it. And Hawaii's my favorite thing. Hawaii, actually, the law of the splintered paddle is part of their constitution. Nobody knows what the law of the splintered paddle means. That's a good phrase, but it's an Ancient thing that dates back to Kamehameha. So it's in the Constitution. But I think the general consensus is that Alabama has the worst state constitution. It's been amended so many times that it's several hundred pages long, and it has every little last detail of state law embedded in it, and it's just too complicated for words. I mean, California is pretty lousy. California has a lousy constitution, but it's not quite that bad.

[Tim Sandifer]

Wow, that is really interesting. But the laboratories are democracy, you know, at least we get to see how it works out.

[Armstrong]

A lot of crazy experiments in some of those laboratories. I mean, you're experimenting on human beings without consent. Right.

[Tim Sandifer]

You do have the opportunity to leave the state if you want to. What other case the Supreme Court's taking up your interest?

[Armstrong]

Well, of course, the biggest case on the horizon, as far as I'm concerned, is the tariff case that we're talking about, Federal Constitution now and the federal Supreme Court, and that is the constitutionality of President Trump's tariffs, which are, I know, totally unconstitutional, totally illegal.

[Tim Sandifer]

I know nothing about this. But the idea that one guy, any guy, Trump or anybody else else, could make that sort of a decision for America and the world just doesn't seem, on its face.

[Armstrong]

Correct. You would have floored the authors of the Constitution of the United States, who had lived through the American Revolution and had experienced exactly that and wrote a Constitution to prohibit exactly that thing from happening of a single person imposing taxes on the whole nation in the amount that he chooses for whatever reason he wants, for as long as he decides that. That's. That's wild. And. But I don't think that they'll get to the constitutional issue in this case. I think they'll probably decide this on statutory grounds. And what I mean by that is the. The terrorists are supposedly in accordance with a statute called ipa, which stands for something, I don't remember, and ia, but does not actually allow for tariffs. What it says is that the President can, in a case, in an emergency, the president can regulate or seize products from foreign, Foreign countries in commerce and things like that. It's designed to freeze assets and capture things so that people aren't sending bad stuff to the enemy in wartime and stuff. The statute is not designed to allow for these tariffs that are just designed or formulated however the President wants. So I think the court is going to say that they don't satisfy this.

[Tim Sandifer]

Shouldn't they have taken that up, like, last week, given the fact that, I mean, we're threatening 100% tariffs on everything from China starting November 1st.

[Armstrong]

Yeah, it would be nice if some of these things were faster. But in their defense there's so much stuff that's been coming at them, there's so much unconstitutional stuff that's been going on that's been thrown at their heads. You know, there's only so much time that they can resolve these cases.

[Tim Sandifer]

Do they? I know sometimes you prioritize things and move them up like you know, deciding on, you know, Nixon and Watergate and all kinds of things that, where you just decide we gotta have an emergency session. But in general you just let it come down the pike when it comes down the pike.

[Armstrong]

So here's the thing. So the Feds said, cuz the plaintiffs in that case said well you need to resolve this really quickly for all the reasons, reasons you just said. And the Trump administration said no, no, there's no hurry because we can always refund people the taxes if these things are declared illegal.

[Tim Sandifer]

That wouldn't be complicated at all.

[Armstrong]

And, and then at the same time the administration is putting out these press releases saying we have to keep these tariffs in place because it would be economic chaos if they get struck down because then we'd have to refund everybody's money. I mean they were literally saying the opposite thing simultaneously. I know that that is ordinary nowadays, but to me that's still, that's still.

[Tim Sandifer]

Shocking us Lay people don't fully understand that, you know, these things have to work their way through group courts, through a low, lower level, all the way to the higher level and takes its time, everything like that. But there's so many examples like the can a 15 year old boy participate in girls sports in high school? Just seems like this is going to get to the Supreme Court. Can we just do it now and decide or the same thing, can you be a sanctuary city and just decide? We don't agree. Well, can we just decide these now?

[Armstrong]

Part of the reason I mentioned how the court takes only 1% of the cases and fewer every year. A part of the thing is I think some of the conservative justices have wanted the Supreme Court not to decide these questions. They, they sort of tend to want lower courts to resolve these questions. The problem with that is of course lower courts disagree with each other sometimes. But I think that the Supreme Court sees itself as, they're worried that they don't because they follow this nonsense idea of judicial restraint. We don't want unelected judges controlling everything, which scares everybody else, but doesn't scare me because I'm worried about judges getting Things wrong. Whether they get it wrong by being too active or too passive, I'm worried about them getting things wrong. I'm not worried about them being activist. I'm worried about them being wrong. Those are two completely different things. I think it's a very bad thing when the court stands back and says, we're not gonna. We're not gonna interfere. We're gonna let the government violate your rights and we're not gonna do anything about it. Cause we don't wanna have activist judges. I think that's a terrible idea. Anyway, what I think we're seeing is that the Supreme Court is trying to offload some of its work to these lower courts. And so they are taking fewer of those cases and not necessarily deciding them as quickly as otherwise.

[Tim Sandifer]

They just don't wanna have their fingerprints on it.

[Armstrong]

Yeah, well, because they buy this notion that unelected judges shouldn't have all this power. And again, of course, nobody should do things wrong if they're in government. But the idea that judicial activism is a serious threat is wildly overblown. Congress and the president violate your rights on an hourly basis in this country. I'm far more worried about them than I am about the court. Courts, the courts are. So. They have very little power. All they can do is pronounce what the law is. The Congress and the. And the President can resist them very powerfully. The. But when the Congress does stuff and the president does stuff that violate your rights, and the court folds its hands and says, we're not going to do anything about that because we don't want to be activist judges, that's a breakdown in our constitutional system. That was never intended to be that way.

[Tim Sandifer]

How often and obviously this is a complete opinion, a judgment opinion. But how often does the Supreme Court make mistakes, do you think?

[Armstrong]

Oh, all the time.

[Tim Sandifer]

They get it wrong.

[Armstrong]

Yeah, they get things wrong very frequently.

[Tim Sandifer]

How often? A third of the time.

[Armstrong]

Oh, nowadays I would say I think they get things wrong about, oh, I'll guess 40% of the time. But I guess it depends on whether you mean get things wrong by not doing things that I wish they would do as opposed to doing things that I wish they wouldn't do. I mean, there's a lot of stuff where, like I'm, for instance, I'm not an originalist. You know, the originalism is this big popular trend right now where these judges are like, well, what the founder fathers thought that the Constitution meant is what it meant for all time. And that sounds plausible at first, but when you get down to It. It's just not how language really works. And so, you know, for that reason, I also find myself disagreeing with a lot of people on my own side. I love Justice Thomas, for instance, but I find that I disagree with him about a lot of things. I don't think that, you know, our constitutional rights should be interpreted in accordance with what the Puritans thought when they landed in Massachusetts.

[Tim Sandifer]

What do you call what you are?

[Armstrong]

I don't know. I have no idea. That's the best word that I've been able to find for what I am.

[Tim Sandifer]

Okay.

[Armstrong]

Yeah. Yeah. I'm hoping to figure this out. I have a big paper that's coming out later this year that. Where I'll talk about this and maybe that'll help me figure out what the title is.

[Tim Sandifer]

Yeah. So on the. How often do they get it wrong? It reminds me of the, like, when they do the right track. Wrong track, you know, is the country going the right direction, Wrong direction, and the number's really high. Well, half the people want it to be further left, and half the people want it to be further right. So it doesn't really tell you anything.

[Armstrong]

That's right. That's why the government should have less power over our lives, because we don't want those crazy people over there, whoever they might be, to control what I get to do with my life. And that's the whole benefit of limited constitutional government is that you get to decide your own life in your own way, and other people don't get to come in and tell you how to live what they think is your proper life. And unfortunately, neither party today believes in that.

[Tim Sandifer]

Yeah, that's a good point. The less the government is involved, the less it matters whether they get it right or wrong, because they're not deciding for me.

[Armstrong]

People sometimes say, well, yeah, I've had this happen to me, Tim. Yeah, you believe in freedom, but you. But that's an optimistic view of human nature. You think people are good. Good and that. And that they're going to do good things with freedom. No, it's exactly the opposite. I believe in freedom because I don't trust other people to be. To make the right decisions from my life. I think other people are often ignorant. They're. They're very foolish sometimes. Sometimes they're corrupt or bribed. They. They don't know what they're doing. They. And. And they'll make mistakes. So their mistakes should be confined to their own lives. They shouldn't be allowed to inflict their mistakes on my life. That's the argument for that's a good.

[Tim Sandifer]

Point to end on. Another excellent point from Tim Sandifer as he's done for we figured it out like 20 years.

[Armstrong]

Yes.

[Tim Sandifer]

On the Armstrong and Gettysburg. 20 years as we all enter the winter of our lives. Thanks for your time Tim.

[Armstrong]

Thank you so much.

[Public Rec Advertiser]

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[Public Rec Advertiser]

We don't give a damn about fashion. We're public rec the cheat code for guys who want to look just good enough. Lightweight breathable classics made for fall and 30 off now during our friends and family sale. 40 off with email shop comfortable classics no [e-mail] radio bu never change.

[Armstrong]

Police say two suspects ambushed a Florida couple at gunpoint near Tampa almost two months later. Police say they've now caught the attackers thanks to something very small taped under the victim's vehicle.

[Public Rec Advertiser]

The search of their vehicle. Our detectives did find that Apple airtag.

[Armstrong]

The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office has records tied that hidden Apple air tag to 26 year old Luis Enrique Charles, who was arrested last week. Apple's website spells out how people can get alerts about nearby tracking devices like air tags. Typically it's on your settings, whether you can be notified, whether the air tag pops in on your phone or not.

[Tim Sandifer]

Yeah, it's interesting, the Apple airtag. I mean when I was a kid, the idea of owning a tracking device that you could have put on somebody's car or luggage or whatever would have been so James Bond and crazy. Yeah. And scary and dangerous. And now everybody's got access to one. But I keep forgetting. Yeah you there's a setting and I should do this on my phone. There's A setting where you can see if there are Apple tags nearby. I have it turned on. Yeah. All women should. Should. Nobody's trying to get to me. Never know. But, yeah, it's good to know if somebody has decided.

[Armstrong]

I would think, yeah, if you're a.

[Tim Sandifer]

Woman, you got to have it turned on. Yeah. The idea every time you leave a night nightclub, the concern that the. The guy that kept asking you to dance and you kept saying no has slipped an Apple tag into your car or purse or whatever. Oh, my gosh. Brave new world. We were talking about scams a little bit earlier, and it wasn't just for the webroot commercials that were regularly doing to try to deal with getting hacked and whatnot. It just. We're all confronted with this so many times per day. Every one of us gets up and deletes, like, 10 emails that are clearly attempts to steal from us or texts on your phone or whatever else else got this text, I.D. theft. There were three student loans opened in my name that I've been trying to clear for over a year. I've filled out and submitted copious amounts of paperwork, and the latest request, request from the lender is for a copy of my high school diploma to prove who I am. I don't know about you, but I can't lay my hands on my high school diploma. Oh, geez. Yeah. This person said, I'm 65 years old and I'm not doing the footwork to acquire a copy of my effing high school diploma. Since I don't need to care about my credit score, I'll die with these loans on my credit report. Oh, and my credit has been supposedly frozen for years in order to avoid such an occurrence. That's what they always tell you. Freeze your credit thing if you're worried about your stuff being hacked. But it's funny, we had to do this the other day for our company insurance, where we had to prove all kinds of different things. And I needed to come up with birth certificates and marriage certificates and various things that I didn't know where they were, but I finally laid my hands on them.

[Armstrong]

Yeah, I'm trying to find them. Find those things. It's. You never think about where they are.

[Tim Sandifer]

Until it's like, down to the wire. Some of y' all are very like, my mom always was super organized and always knew where everything was all the time, but I'm not that person. It's a pain in the ass. Was great talking to Tim, the lawyer. Always is. And I always like his points when he gets to stuff like he did there at the end that it all comes down to. We want the government involved in our lives as little as possible because they are so susceptible to being. Well, to being human beings. And human beings can either have poor judgment, be corrupt, become corrupt, whatever the situation is, be. Be wacky ideologically in a way that you don't agree, so you want in. You know, you want them making decisions for you as little as possible. And that's what it all comes down to. If you lean right, in my opinion, you want the least amount, amount of local, state, federal government involved in making decisions for your life, other than in cases where you know it's keeping you from harming someone else. But that is not the direction that the country seems to be going as we add more and more to our tax code and more laws and federal laws and all these different sorts of things. What's that? There's a saying out there, I think somebody even wrote a book. How many federal laws the average person violates on a daily basis, Multiple federal laws that you violate on a daily basis because there are so many. And then you get into the world of just find me the man and I'll find the crime. If you want to get somebody lawfare and that sort of thing at all levels of government, just fantastic.

[Armstrong]

Anyway, we're gonna talk to Katie's dad.

[Tim Sandifer]

In hour three for the oddest of reasons. It's not because he used to be a judge. It's because he used to be in an embalmer. He used to embalm dead bodies and then dress up them. I just have questions about that, among other things on the way. If you missed a segment the podcast Armstrong and Getty on Demand.

[Armstrong]

Armstrong and Getty.

[Public Rec Advertiser]

We don't give a damn about fashion trends. We are public rec and our whole brand was built as a cheat code for guys who want to look good and feel even better in lightweight, breathable classics made to wear all day, any day, especially in the fall. And right now, you can get 30% off every single thing we sell during our friends and family sale. 40% off if you sign up for email. Shop comfortable classics, no [e-mail] radio BU never change.

[Armstrong]

This is an iHeart podcast.