Sex, Ducks, and The Founding Feud

Summary

---

Radiolab Episode Summary

Episode: "Sex, Ducks, and The Founding Feud"

Release Date: December 19, 2013
Hosts: Robert Krulwich & Jad Abumrad
Contributors: Kelsey Padgett, Duncan Hollis, Nick Rosenkranz, Joseph J. Ellis, John Bellinger

---

Overview

This Radiolab episode dives into a seemingly strange legal case—Carol Anne Bond, a Pennsylvania woman prosecuted under an international chemical weapons treaty for a personal crime. The story launches an exploration of American federalism, constitutional debate, the scope of federal and state power, and how international treaties interact with US law. The episode cleverly tracks the historical "founding feud" surrounding the balance of state and federal authority, all while peppered with sharp wit and characteristically engaging sound.

---

Key Segments & Discussion Points

1. The Strange Case of Carol Anne Bond (00:44 – 05:48)

• Carol Anne Bond discovers her husband is having an affair with her best friend, Merlinda Haynes, who is pregnant by him.
• Enraged, Bond, a microbiologist, steals and buys toxic chemicals and attempts (unsuccessfully) to poison Haynes 24 times over half a year, leaving visible chemicals on doorknobs and car handles.
• Local police ignore Haynes’ repeated complaints until the postal service intervenes (she also put toxins on a mailbox), setting up a camera that catches Bond in the act.

“If there’s a moral to the story, it is do not mess with the mails. They take that very seriously.”
— Nick Rosenkranz [03:43]

• Despite the victim sustaining only minor injuries (a burned thumb), Bond faces federal charges—a violation of the international Chemical Weapons Treaty, not just local criminal charges.

2. Legal and Constitutional Oddities (05:48 – 06:46)

• This prosecution instantly raises questions.
  • Is it appropriate (or constitutional) for such a local crime to be prosecuted under international law?
  • The law in question criminalizes the use of a “toxic chemical for other than a peaceful purpose.”
• Bond’s defense: This is a state (not federal/international) matter, and such application overreaches federal power, circumventing the Constitution’s limits.

“When I poison someone, the last thing I’m thinking about is violating an international treaty.”
— Kelsey Padgett [04:40]

3. The Founding Feud: Who’s in Charge? (06:12 – 11:44)

• Historian Joseph J. Ellis breaks down how federal vs. state power has always been ambiguous and hotly contested.
  • At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, figures like Hamilton and Jefferson vigorously disagreed: Hamilton advocated for a powerful central government, Jefferson for maximizing states’ rights.
  • James Madison realizes that ambiguity—the Constitution as a framework for argument, not a set of answers—was the solution:

“The Constitution isn’t a set of answers. It’s a framework for argument.”
— Joseph J. Ellis [11:17]

• This foundational vagueness explains the recurring states’ rights debates and legal battles that persist today.

4. Ducks, Treaties, and Supreme Court Precedent (12:54 – 16:40)

• Enter the famous Missouri v. Holland (1920) case:
  • Missouri’s Attorney General, Frank McAllister, is arrested for shooting ducks by a federal game warden, even though state law permitted it.
  • The federal government used an international treaty with Canada about bird migration to create national bird protection laws that states had to follow.
  • Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes upholds the treaty’s power, declaring treaties “supreme law of the land,” enabling broad federal reach.

“[Holmes] actually invokes the language of the Civil War… saying we spent all this sweat and blood to figure out what kind of nation we were going to become—for birds.”
— Duncan Hollis [16:06]

• This case justifies using the chemical weapons treaty against Bond.

5. The Slippery Slope and Modern Debate (16:40 – 20:32)

• Critics, notably Nick Rosenkranz, warn: If treaties can justify any federal law, the scope of the federal government could become “potentially infinite.”
  • Hypothetical: What if a treaty banned homeschooling, a local issue?
• John Bellinger counters that while this scenario is theoretically possible, it hasn’t happened and cutting back on treaty power could threaten international cooperation.

“Why would any other country want to make a treaty with us if Kansas could back out at any time?”
— John Bellinger [18:40]

• The debate illustrates ongoing friction: global challenges (e.g., environmental, criminal, or technological) often require unified action, but local autonomy and variation have advantages, like “laboratories of democracy.”

6. Resolution & Human Coda (20:32 – 21:20)

• Carol Anne Bond served six years in jail but stayed with her husband after release.
• The victim, Merlinda Haynes, changed her name and vanished from public records.
• Kelsey Padgett reflects wryly on human complexity:

“Law is interesting, but love, that’s complicated. Love is greater than treaties.”
— Kelsey Padgett [21:11]

---

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “It just seems—seems too big for the little lady.”
  — Kelsey Padgett [05:23]
• “The Constitution isn’t a set of answers. It’s a framework for argument.”
  — Joseph J. Ellis [11:17]
• “This decision seems to say the federal government’s power is potentially infinite.”
  — Nick Rosenkranz [17:30]
• “Competition—this, the idea of laboratories of democracy... maybe some state will hit on something brilliant.”
  — Nick Rosenkranz [19:53]
• “Law is interesting, but love, that’s complicated. Love is greater than treaties.”
  — Kelsey Padgett [21:11]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Story Introduction & Bond’s Crime: 00:44 – 05:48
• Treaty Law & Supreme Court: 05:48 – 06:46
• Founding Fathers, Federalist Debate: 06:46 – 11:44
• Ducks, Missouri v. Holland, Treaty Power: 12:54 – 16:40
• Treaty Power Debate & Modern Implications: 16:40 – 20:32
• What Happened Next (Bond’s fate): 20:32 – 21:20

---

Tone & Style

The episode blends Radiolab’s signature curiosity, narrative drama, and playful banter. The hosts and guests alternate between sage constitutional reflection and tongue-in-cheek, irreverent asides, grounding legal abstractions in memorable stories—whether a jealous spouse or a duck’s life.

---

Takeaways

• A deeply local crime (revenge poisoning) led to a Supreme Court-level constitutional debate about the reach of federal and international law.
• The American system’s foundation is intentionally ambiguous, ensuring perpetual debate over state vs. federal power.
• Historic cases—right down to “duck law”—shape how the US government wields international treaties domestically.
• Complex, weird, and very human stories often disguise the philosophical arguments at the root of American governance.
• And sometimes, love trumps law—even chemical weapons treaties.

---

Transcript

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, wait, you're listening.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

All right.

[Kelsey Padgett]

Okay.

[Robert Krulwich]

All right.

[Nick Rosenkranz]

You're listening to Radiolab.

[Duncan Hollis]

Radio Lab shorts from wnyc.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

And npr.

[Robert Krulwich]

Today on the podcast, Robert, we're going to talk constitutional law, federalism, and the intricacies of international treaty practice.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, God.

[Robert Krulwich]

You ready? No, it's gonna be good. It's gonna be good. It's gonna be good. Cause I have help.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hey, guys.

[Kelsey Padgett]

Hi, Kelsey.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hello.

[Robert Krulwich]

Kelsey Padgett has reported this segment and just listen to how it starts.

[Jad Abumrad]

So this story starts with a betrayed spouse.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, you see?

[Kelsey Padgett]

Oh, it's much better. I'm coming back to my seat.

[Robert Krulwich]

Get some popcorn.

[Duncan Hollis]

My name's Duncan Hollis.

[Jad Abumrad]

He's not the betrayed spouse.

[Kelsey Padgett]

Nope.

[Duncan Hollis]

I'm a professor of international law here at Temple University in Philadelphia.

[Nick Rosenkranz]

And I'm Nick Rosenkranz.

[Jad Abumrad]

And not.

[Nick Rosenkranz]

I'm a professor of law at Georgetown. I'm also a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the cato institute. So Mrs. Bond.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's her. That's our betrayed spouse. Carol Ann Bond, 36, lives in a suburb of Philly.

[Nick Rosenkranz]

Discovered that her husband was having an affair with her neighbor.

[Jad Abumrad]

Actually, it was worse than that. This woman was her best friend.

[Duncan Hollis]

Not only that, she finds out that her friend is pregnant via her husband.

[Jad Abumrad]

He got her pregnant.

[Kelsey Padgett]

Oh.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, my God. Yeah. And this is her best friend and her husband of 14 years.

[Duncan Hollis]

You know, she was quite upset, distraught.

[Robert Krulwich]

Enraged, I would imagine. Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

Carol made threats. There were confrontations. The other woman is named Merlinda Haynes, by the way. And eventually, Carol Anne Bond, she did.

[Nick Rosenkranz]

What anyone would do. She got a bunch of toxic chemicals, and I do it all the time.

[Jad Abumrad]

And she tried to poison her best friend repeatedly.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, back up for a second. Where would she have gotten the chemicals from?

[Nick Rosenkranz]

She worked, I believe, at a lab.

[Duncan Hollis]

She works for a chemical company. I think it's Roman Haas.

[Kelsey Padgett]

So she's a biochemist.

[Jad Abumrad]

She's actually a microbiologist. But she grabs some chemicals from her office.

[Duncan Hollis]

I think she also orders some off the Internet, Amazon.com, but they're pretty serious chemicals.

[Robert Krulwich]

Like what?

[Duncan Hollis]

Well, one was arsenic based, and in large enough doses. And when I say large doses, I'm talking teaspoons, not gallons. It can, you know, cause serious injury and can be fatal.

[Jad Abumrad]

So anyway, she took these chemicals, she went over to her best friend's, or, well, her former best friend's house, and.

[Nick Rosenkranz]

She spread them on the doorknob and on the mailbox, the door to her.

[Duncan Hollis]

Car, and they're visible, I guess. I guess you can see them.

[Robert Krulwich]

So the best Friend isn't fooled. Nope.

[Duncan Hollis]

She calls actually, the local police. The local police tell her to take her car to a car wash. They said, oh, you know, it could be drugs. Get the car washed off.

[Jad Abumrad]

They kind of just blow her off. But it keeps happening. Over the course of, like, half a year. This happens 24 times. 24 powder attacks, according to the court briefs. You know, the police were just not being very responsive. She called them over a dozen times, and they tested it to see if it was cocaine. But once they figured out it wasn't, they didn't really do anything. So finally she tells the post office.

[Duncan Hollis]

And it was the post office that actually sent out postal inspectors, and they set up a hidden camera, and they.

[Jad Abumrad]

Videotaped Carol Anne Bond in the act.

[Kelsey Padgett]

They get it on tape.

[Robert Krulwich]

Mm.

[Duncan Hollis]

That's how they identify her as the person putting the chemicals, you know, on the mailbox.

[Robert Krulwich]

I didn't know the post office did stuff like that.

[Duncan Hollis]

To be honest, I didn't either.

[Robert Krulwich]

That's so. I think of them so differently now.

[Nick Rosenkranz]

Yes. And I think if there's a moral to the story, it is do not mess with the males. They take that very seriously.

[Jad Abumrad]

Actually, there's a whole lot more going on than just messing with the mail because of what happens next. So according to Nick Rosenkrantz, generally things.

[Nick Rosenkranz]

Like assault or attempted murder, those are state crimes.

[Jad Abumrad]

In most circumstances, the federal government can't charge you with murder. The post office, that's a federal institution. So when they caught Carol Anne Bond, they kicked this up to the federal.

[Nick Rosenkranz]

Attorney, who then went ahead and brought a federal case.

[Jad Abumrad]

And here's the thing. They ended up charging Carol Ann Bond with violating the International Chemical Weapons Treaty.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

What?

[Nick Rosenkranz]

We should be clear. The victim got a tiny thumb burn and ran cold water on it and was fine. So this is. We're not. This is not murder.

[Kelsey Padgett]

Well, that makes this all the more odd.

[Nick Rosenkranz]

Very odd.

[Kelsey Padgett]

When I poison someone, the last thing I'm thinking about is violating an international treaty.

[Robert Krulwich]

We should never have you over for lunch.

[Kelsey Padgett]

But, no, really, why would they charge you with that? I don't understand.

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, if you actually read the treaty.

[John Bellinger]

The statute simply says that it's a crime to use a toxic chemical for other than a peaceful purpose.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's the exact language. And that guy, That's John Bellinger.

[John Bellinger]

I served as the legal adviser for the Department of State under Secretary Condoleezza Rice.

[Jad Abumrad]

And John says that even though it sounds a little weird, this is exactly what this treaty was meant for.

[John Bellinger]

For people using chemicals, highly toxic chemicals.

[Jad Abumrad]

For Non peaceful purposes.

[John Bellinger]

Exactly right.

[Robert Krulwich]

And that's what happened here.

[Jad Abumrad]

Imagine if she had killed a bunch of postal workers.

[John Bellinger]

Then I don't think anybody would complain.

[Kelsey Padgett]

But to charge her with an international treaty violation, it just seems. It seems too big for the little lady.

[Jad Abumrad]

It was really odd to her lawyers too. I bet they're like, look, in the Constitution you have laid out what the federal government could do. This is not one of those things. You can't just take a treaty and use it to reach into the very local life of a normal person. That's a huge overreach.

[Kelsey Padgett]

Sneaky, frankly.

[Jad Abumrad]

And now this case is before the Supreme Court and it's become an ideological battle that goes way beyond Carol Anne Bond, her cheating husband, or her adulterous best friend.

[Robert Krulwich]

And I would argue that this case, as weird as it is, raises some really important issues about how the world is changing and about one of the most fundamental questions that is at the heart of America. I really believe that.

[Kelsey Padgett]

Well, you have to defend that position. What do you mean?

[Robert Krulwich]

Let me take you back to the beginning. Okay, sure.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

My name is Joseph J. Ellis. I am a historian. I've written the book called Founding Brothers and my most recent book is called, what's it called? Revolutionary Summer.

[Kelsey Padgett]

You are a modest man.

[Robert Krulwich]

So Joseph Ellis has written a. He's Pulitzer Prize winning author, has written a bunch of books about the founding of our country, the Revolutionary War. And there is a scene in one of his books.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

Book called American Creation didn't sell as many as Founding Brothers.

[Robert Krulwich]

Doesn't matter to me because it has this one passage that when I read it, I was like, wow, I've never thought of this country that way.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

To set the scene, you want to be real specific.

[Robert Krulwich]

It's September, September 1787. Philadelphia.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

You know, it's abominably hot, yet all.

[Robert Krulwich]

These great men crammed into a state house. I mean, George Washington, this guy is a stud. Six foot three war hero.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

This guy is overwhelming.

[Robert Krulwich]

Alexander Hamilton was there.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

Hamilton. He would have got the highest grades on the LSATs. I'm telling you, this guy was really smart.

[Robert Krulwich]

Even Ben Franklin.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

Yeah.

[Robert Krulwich]

Who's pushing 81 at this point.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

Franklin's there.

[Kelsey Padgett]

Oh.

[Robert Krulwich]

They all came together to try and figure out, like, how do we do this? Like, if you think about it, it was a puzzle because you've got these 13 colonies which are really like sovereign nations. They were loosely organized into a federation that was about to go bankrupt. So they had to do something. So they're like, okay, let's bring them together into A union. But how do we do that without a king? It was a crazy experiment.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

Well, I mean, one thing you gotta realize that at that time in American history, the average person was born, lived out his or her life and died within a 30 mile radius. They don't have cell phones and they don't think about themselves as Americans.

[Robert Krulwich]

They thought of themselves as Pennsylvanians, South Carolinians, Bostonians.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

There is no real national ethos.

[Robert Krulwich]

So that's one problem. Second problem, the founding fathers could not agree, could not agree on the most basic question. If there's not a king, who's in charge? Right. The so called sovereignty question. And on the one hand you had a guy like Alexander Hamilton who got up there and was like, why do we even need states? What's a state? All right, what we need is a federal government that is big and strong and powerful.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

That's Hamilton, baby. Hamilton wants a president elected for life. Hamilton wants a senator elected for life.

[Robert Krulwich]

On the other hand you had the Thomas Jefferson school of thought which was like, no, no, we just got out of a monarchy for Christ's sake. And the only way we're not gonna get back in one is if we keep the government small, restricted, and all.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

Domestic policy belongs in the hands of the states.

[Robert Krulwich]

Sound familiar?

[Joseph J. Ellis]

Jefferson likes anything in which the government's not gonna be doing much.

[Robert Krulwich]

So you had these two very different philosophies. And the way Joe sees it, if.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

You let Jefferson have total power, we end up at anarchy. If you let Hamilton have total power, you're gonna end up with a totalitarian state.

[Robert Krulwich]

At the convention, the two sides went back and forth and anytime a Hamiltonian type proposal hit the floor, some of the states would say no and they'd shoot it down because they did not want some big government telling them what to do. Especially when the 800 pound gorilla in the room was slavery. So they couldn't agree at all. And into this mess walks our hero, James Madison.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

Madison, you know, like Madison's 52120 Madison. He's the kind of guy that, you know, stands in the corners during a dance. He's, you would call him a nerd.

[Robert Krulwich]

Madison or you might call him a pragmatist.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

Madison wants a clear decision about sovereignty.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah. Like for example, on local matters, who gets the final say, the states or the federal government? Just give me some clarity.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

And he's not going to get it. And he comes to that realization at the very end.

[Robert Krulwich]

Because at the end of the convention they have this document. I mean he wrote the original blueprint now there's this new document so riddled with compromises that according to Joe, the basic question he wanted answered wasn't the who's in charge? Question was left kind of vague on all sorts of matters. I mean, who regulates money in banks? Who gets to tax what. Who decides whether new states will be slave states or free states? It was vague. And initially, according to Joe, in a letter that Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson, he's like, come on.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

He's very disappointed.

[Robert Krulwich]

He thinks the document's gonna fail and the country's gonna fail.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

He doesn't think this is going to last.

[Robert Krulwich]

But then Joe says in his writings, you start to see a shift.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

He starts to think differently. He starts to say, oh, yeah, wait a second, this could work, precisely because it's unclear. And we found what he calls a.

[Robert Krulwich]

Middle station where everyone can see what they want to see.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

People come out of the convention, go back to their states, and the guy in South Carolina says, don't worry about slavery. The 10th amendment's going to tell us that they can't do that. The guy in Pennsylvania says, it's just a matter of time before we end slavery. The Constitution becomes successful because the people don't agree on what it means.

[Robert Krulwich]

That, according to Joe, was Madison's epiphany.

[Joseph J. Ellis]

That the Constitution isn't a set of answers. It's a framework for argument. This is a document which allows us to continue to discuss and debate the core issues that we face. The powers of the presidency, the sovereignty question. The real resolution of the sovereignty question is never achieved, and it eventually leads to the Civil War.

[Robert Krulwich]

What I find kind of neat about this is that, like that argument that happens in modern politics all the time about states rights or the size of the government, which can feel like a random argument for me at times, suddenly to know this. I mean, if you buy what Joe's saying, it's not random at all. This is an argument that was actually literally written into our founding document. In some sense, we as a country are the product of that argument.

[Kelsey Padgett]

Of course, not everybody agrees with Joseph Ellis. There are people who. Who think that the Founding Fathers had a very specific thing in mind. And if you just go back to their debates and to what they said to each other, that you can find the real, only deep logic for the Constitution.

[Robert Krulwich]

But the fact that they disagree with Joe in some sense, doesn't that kind of make Joe's point that you can read this document in 10 different ways?

[Kelsey Padgett]

Yes, everyone always argues, always, just to.

[Robert Krulwich]

Pick up the thread. I mean, after the Civil War. The argument changes. It gets centered.

[Kelsey Padgett]

But the union is still an experiment.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah. Massachusetts can still do their business differently than Colorado, differently than Vermont.

[Kelsey Padgett]

And the jostling between the federal government and the state government doesn't end. It just gets a little quieter. Thank heavens. Because you don't want.

[Jad Abumrad]

Unless you're a duck. And our next stop is.

[Robert Krulwich]

And this one has everything to do with our poisoner.

[Jad Abumrad]

So it's spring of 1919, rural Missouri. You've got Frank McAllister, the Attorney General of Missouri. He's out there with a bunch of friends, and they're pointing their guns at the sky and shooting ducks one after another, after another. And they end up shooting, all in all, 76. He knows he can do this because, you know, he's the attorney general of the state, he knows all the laws of the state, and he knows it's his right to shoot whatever duck is flying in the sky of Missouri.

[Robert Krulwich]

It's the state law that you have.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's the state law. You can shoot the ducks. So they're out there, they're having this great time, they're having this great haul. They've gotten all these ducks. And then out of nowhere, Ray Holland, the federal game warden, shows up and he says, no, you can't do this. You can't shoot these birds. They're not your property. McAllister says, you, you're wrong.

[Duncan Hollis]

This is a matter for the state. You know, it's our sovereignty. We never gave this over to the federal government.

[Kelsey Padgett]

So he must have been like, I don't think the federal government does anything to say to me about a duck that was born here. At least I look, I found it in the sky here, I shot it here, it died here, and I'm gonna eat it here. This is my duck.

[Jad Abumrad]

But the game warden says, no, it's not York duck. And he arrests them all, setting up a landmark confrontation. Because here's what had happened two years earlier. The administration of Woodrow Wilson was sitting there wringing their hands, thinking, all these people are killing birds at like a non stop pace. And if this didn't stop, you know.

[Duncan Hollis]

There was some concern at this period that we were gonna, you know, we were gonna hunt these things to extinction. You know, we might not have any migratory birds at all.

[Jad Abumrad]

Problem is, the courts had already told the federal government, this is purely a local matter. You can't make federal hunting laws. But then somebody in the administration has this really great idea, or a really evil idea, depending on how you look at it.

[Duncan Hollis]

Maybe if we can get Canada to Cooperate with us. We can do this by a treaty.

[Jad Abumrad]

Because there's this clause in the Constitution that says treaties are the supreme law of the land. So maybe if we make an international treaty, then the states will have to go along. Frank McAllister, he sues. And this goes all the way up to the Supreme Court.

[Duncan Hollis]

It lands before Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the more famous justices of the Supreme Court. And he basically says the treaty power is something that was given to the federal government. Don't limit this. This treaty is good. And the treaty and the legislation are upheld.

[Robert Krulwich]

So score one for the federal government.

[Duncan Hollis]

Score one for the federal government. And in there, you actually have Holmes talking about what the Constitution is. He was this, what, thrice wounded Civil War veteran, and he actually invokes the language of the Civil War, saying, we spent all this sweat and blood to figure out what kind of nation we were going to become for birds. He invokes this language and basically says, whatever we had debated in the past, could the states regulate slavery without federal interference? And Holmes says, no. The side who fought that argument, they lost.

[Jad Abumrad]

All this talk about birds and, you know, state versus federal has everything to do with our poisoner, Carol Anne Bond. This case is the precedent upon which the federal government says that they can prosecute Carol Anne Bond, because Oliver Wendell Holmes said that treaties are the Supreme Court law of the land.

[Kelsey Padgett]

I don't know. I'm still of the mind that this is a sneaky bit of business by the federal government.

[Robert Krulwich]

I mean, it's not sneaky if you're a duck. I feel I must speak on behalf of the ducks here.

[Kelsey Padgett]

But no, forget your ducks. This is a Pennsylvania lady doing a Pennsylvania adultery in a Pennsylvania mailbox with a Pennsylvania mood. I mean, there's nothing. There's no birds flying overhead. This is an all Pennsylvania crime.

[Jad Abumrad]

But you know, who wasn't doing a about that Pennsylvania? But just to take your side for a second, Robert, please. If you really think about it, you know, and the way that Nick Rosenkrantz thinks about it, this is really troubling. This decision seems to say that theoretically.

[Nick Rosenkranz]

The federal government's power is potentially infinite.

[Jad Abumrad]

Cause like, say, John Kerry, who's our Secretary of State right now, he goes and makes treaties, say he's talking to Zimbabwe, and we agree that we want to have a treaty about educational standards for children. So we come home and we write a law that says all children must go to public schools. But then that would outlaw homeschooling for children, which is a clear local state matter. But now Suddenly the federal government has a power to do that.

[Nick Rosenkranz]

Just seems odd, the idea that the President, the Senate, and Zimbabwe can increase Congress's legislative powers.

[Jad Abumrad]

Here's how John Bellinger responds.

[John Bellinger]

Is it a theoretical possibility that the federal government might try to go and do that? I suppose it's theoretically possible, but there's no evidence that that happened here. There's no evidence that that has happened in the hundred years since Missouri versus Holland.

[Jad Abumrad]

He would say, look, consider the practical.

[John Bellinger]

Impact that a decision might have that would cut back on the President's treaty power. Other countries are already highly suspicious of the United States ability to deliver on its treaty commitments anyway.

[Jad Abumrad]

John would say, why would any other country want to make a treaty with us if Kansas could back out at any time?

[Robert Krulwich]

And like, how do you deal with a question like global warming if everybody is allowed to be left to their own devices?

[Kelsey Padgett]

Well, that's a tough one.

[Duncan Hollis]

I mean, the reality is that's Duck and Hollis again. We live in a globalized world. Whether it's, you know, dealing with things like climate change, terrorism, shipwrecks, cybercrime, increasingly, these are things we can no longer regulate just within a particular local community or a local society.

[Robert Krulwich]

And like, on some level, if we now find ourselves in this world where, like, I can get on the Internet and spend hours and hours playing World of Warcraft with people in Yugoslavia, and yet I've never really talked to my neighbor that's just down the street, like, why wouldn't we all have the same laws?

[Nick Rosenkranz]

But, you know, I think the flip side of your question is, fine, the world is very interconnected, but are there still some things that are local? Are there some things left where we could say the federal government doesn't need to be able to reach this?

[Jad Abumrad]

And more than that, Nick says that having a bunch of different communities that are governed by different rules, all under the same nation, actually has a bunch of benefits.

[Nick Rosenkranz]

Competition, this, the idea of laboratories of democracy, that the 50 states will all try different things as to regulating guns near schools, as to regulating whatever it is, and maybe some state will hit on something brilliant. And if they do, then it will spread and be replicated. And, you know, that theory has been borne out in a lot of different areas. When the feds decide that they're going to come up with a one size fits all national solution, that's the end of the experiment.

[Kelsey Padgett]

So, by the way, what happened to Carolyn Bond?

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, she went to jail.

[Kelsey Padgett]

She's in jail. She's still in jail?

[Jad Abumrad]

No, she's out now.

[Kelsey Padgett]

So she could go to court and find out whether this thing was. That's cool.

[Jad Abumrad]

She could show up.

[Robert Krulwich]

What about the poison E?

[Jad Abumrad]

What happened to her poison E? She changed her name. She moved away. She's unsearchable now.

[Robert Krulwich]

Good. But I hope she moved to Zimbabwe.

[Kelsey Padgett]

Is she still living with the guy that gave. Gave her the baby or.

[Jad Abumrad]

No, no, no, no. You see. You see, Carol, even though she went to jail for six years, she stayed with her husband.

[Nick Rosenkranz]

No way.

[Kelsey Padgett]

Really?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Kelsey Padgett]

She stayed with the man who had a baby with the other lady.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, that she tried to poison that lady about. She stayed with that guy.

[Kelsey Padgett]

See, that's the thing. Law is interesting, but love, that's complicated. Love is greater than treaties.

[Robert Krulwich]

Thank you, Kelsey.

[Jad Abumrad]

Thank you.

[Robert Krulwich]

Kelsey Padgett, Robert Krulwich, Jada Boomerad.

[Kelsey Padgett]

Yeah, that's all of us. I think you've mentioned all of us.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah. Let's go.

[Kelsey Padgett]

So we have to say goodbye to all of you. Bye.

[Robert Krulwich]

Happy Christmas.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Bonnie calling from Boston, Massachusetts. Radiolab is supported in part by the National Science foundation and by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Enhancing public understanding of science and technology.

[Robert Krulwich]

In the modern world.

[Jad Abumrad]

More information about [e-mail].