Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed special guest host and Nashville Tea Party Founder Ben Cunningham to the show to discuss elements of the Senate confirmation hearing and how power corrupts.
(Kamala Harris clip plays)
Leahy: That is Kamala Harris remotely looking like big sister.
Cunningham: Not a good look.
Leahy: Not a good look at all in her inquisition of the very accomplished, very qualified Amy Coney-Barrett.
Cunningham: Yeah. I mean you expected it was an attempt but it was very lame. The look was bad. She just came off as kind of desperate and transparent.
Leahy: Transparently partisan. And she was in her office in California and really the big screen. It just didn’t go over well at all. But there’s nothing that Kamala Harris has done that makes her likable to really anybody in my view.
Cunningham: Yeah, it’s I don’t think the Democrats or the Biden campaign quite knows how to place her. What advantage she gives them in the campaign. It’s not clear to me that they but they have discovered any advantage that she gives them in the camp.
Leahy: Yeah, well, they’re hiding her. She’s not on the campaign trail like Joe Biden who by the way, put a lid on him again yesterday in the morning right after that story broke in The New York Post. The one that you can’t find on Facebook or Twitter. The one they won’t let you share. Emails apparently have emerged from Hunter Biden’s computer that shows that Hunter Biden arranged for a Burisma executive to meet in person with his father who was then the vice president of the United States Joe Biden. He was in charge of sort of the Ukrainian policy. And of course, all sorts of money were going to Hunter Biden for his access to his father. His father denied that he ever talked business with his son. But apparently, this email says otherwise.
Cunningham: Well, it was a ridiculous claim for Joe Biden to say I never talked with my son about overseas business. Everybody knows that’s a ridiculous claim. This just continues this whole pattern where they say, you know, Joe Biden, will you tell us how you stand on packing the court. And he says you don’t deserve to know.
Leahy: You don’t deserve to know how I stand on that most important issue.
Cunningham: How in the world is the press give him a pass on that? I mean, it’s so absurd! It’s so ridiculous! And yet they do. Day after day after day CNN, MSNBC, and all these people who take Republicans to tasks every day are basically saying it’s okay Joe you have no obligation to tell the American people about this absolutely critical issue.
Leahy: And so the other interesting thing about this and I want to get into where the election stands right now. And we have one of our favorite callers that will be calling in here is on hold. So here’s what’s interesting to me. If you sort of look at the issue of court-packing. There are right now, there are nine members of the Supreme Court. There have been nine since 1869. The Constitution does not specify how many members of the Supreme Court there will be there.
The number has gone from the First Judiciary Act when it settled. I think it’s six. It went down to five for a while went back up to seven, nine. in 1863-64 for a brief period of time, there were 10. And then there have been nine since 1869. The Constitution does not specify the numbers. But there is a fundamental foundational principle of our Constitution called separation of powers between the judiciary, the legislative, and the executive branch.
If you pack the court with say, I don’t know six, seven, eight, whatever number of liberals that under a Biden administration and Democratic Senate, you will ultimately change that concept of separation of powers. That is fundamental to our Constitution. And the Supreme Court will become a super legislative branch. That’s an issue I think it’s very significant and fundamental to the outcome of this election. Joe Biden won’t talk about it.
Cunningham: As far as the Constitution goes and our system of governance I don’t think there is any more fundamental concept than the balance of power. It’s what keeps each branch of government in check.
Leahy: Because as the father of the Constitution James Madison, so aptly noted, men and women are not angels. (Laughter)
Cunnigham: And power corrupts.
Leahy: Just watch Mazie Hirono ask questions in the Senate hearings.
Cunningham: You get these and power corrupts people who don’t even know they’re being corrupted. And liberals are an absolutely prime example. Many liberals think of themselves as Thomas Sowell has always said is these kinds of utopian figures that bring the superior intellect and superior morality, so they don’t even think of themselves as tyrants. And yet they are the worst kind of tyrant.
Leahy: We had an example of that at the Judiciary Committee hearing when Senator Amy Klobuchar who is a Democrat, Minnesota said, you know, I had imagined myself in your seat someday because I would be a benevolent queen. I’m paraphrasing. Did you catch that?
Cunningham: No, I didn’t hear that.
Leahy: She said, benevolent queen. (Cunningham laughs) Now, this is how liberals think.
Cunningham: Good lord.
Leahy: Now her benevolent queen is are authoritarian dictator, right?
Cunningham: Exactly.
Leahy: And Amy Coney-Barrett, it totally rejected that comparison. She said, I’m not a queen.
Cunningham: And her own personal humility and her own style is manifest that she would not be that kind of person. But you’re absolutely right. It’s these people who think of themselves in these kinds of utopian terms. You know, I want the best for everybody. I want people to be equal. I want all these utopian principles quote-unquote that lead us to tyranny that leads us to a hundred million people being killed in the last century under communism. Now in the Great Awakening, The Bolshevik Revolution, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. All these people had these utopian visions of society. And it led to genocide every time.
Leahy: It never works.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Amy Coney Barrett” by Rachel Malehor. CC BY 3.0.
