Podcasts about bad laws

Legal expert Elie Mystal joins Tristan Snell to discuss his new book Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America and expose the racist origins of voter registration and immigration laws. Learn how these popular but problematic laws are undermining democracy and enabling cruelty, and hear Mystal's insights on the Supreme Court's strategy for dealing with Trump.

Thursday night, Trump signed an Executive order abolishing union rights at more than two dozen federal agencies – part of his campaign to destroy the government. Harold Meyerson comments on this "ultimate form of union busting".Also: Bernie Sanders and AOC are on their “fighting oligarchy” tour, and in Denver last weekend they had the biggest political event there since Obama in 2008. It was also the biggest rally of Bernie's life – bigger than anything in his presidential campaigns. And the first big election of the year is underway in Wisconsin. John Nichols has our analysis. Plus: Elie Mystal talks about popular laws that are ruining America – starting with our voter registration requirements. But despite the obstacles and disappointments, he argues that it's always necessary to vote. His new book is Bad Laws.

Bernie Sanders and AOC are on their “fighting oligarchy” tour, and in Denver last weekend they had the biggest political event there since Obama in 2008. It was also the biggest rally of Bernie's life--bigger than anything in his presidential campaigns. And the first big election of the year is underway in Wisconsin. John Nichols has our analysis.Also: Elie Mystal, The Nation's Justice Correspondent, talks about popular laws that are ruining America – starting with our voter registration requirements. But despite the obstacles and disappointments, he argues that it's always necessary to vote. His new book is Bad Laws.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Bernie Sanders and AOC are on their “fighting oligarchy” tour, and in Denver last weekend they had the biggest political event there since Obama in 2008. It was also the biggest rally of Bernie's life--bigger than anything in his presidential campaigns. And the first big election of the year is underway in Wisconsin. John Nichols has our analysis.Also: Elie Mystal, The Nation's Justice Correspondent, talks about popular laws that are ruining America – starting with our voter registration requirements. But despite the obstacles and disappointments, he argues that it's always necessary to vote. His new book is Bad Laws.

In this episode of the Bill Press Pod, Bill interviews Ellie Mystal, Legal Analyst and Justice Correspondent for The Nation, on his new book, Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America. Mystal identifies ten laws plus a constitutional amendment that he argues are detrimental to America. During their conversation, they discuss the misconception of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) as redefined by Republicans, the problematic impact of the Hyde Amendment on abortion rights, and the adverse effects of mandatory minimum sentencing from crime bills supported by both Democrats and Republicans. They also delve into voting rights, gun liability laws, and the lack of effective representation in Congress, suggesting reforms like the Wyoming Rule for more equitable representation. Mystal underscores the role of neoliberalism in shaping harmful laws and calls for a reevaluation of laws passed before the 1965 Voting Rights Act.You can purchase your own copy of Elie Mystal's new book here.Today Bill highlights the work of The Nation magazine. A powerful progressive voice for over 160 years. Bill has been a subscriber for decades and it gives a platform for people like Elie Mystal. Sign up at TheNation.com. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, Matt Larosiere from Fuddbusters joins us for part one of two as we talk about his experience as a firearms attorney and the importance of having knowledgeable and passionate advocates in the field. We discuss his history at Firearms Policy Coalition, why it's important to vet organizations before giving them money, and how most of us don't do that. We discuss the rights of individuals who break minor laws, the misconceptions surrounding gun terminology, the historical context of the Second Amendment, and more. Check out Panther City Tactical for AR parts, accessories, gear and more! Don't forget to use code: ABETTERWAY for 10% off your first order.Go visit our friends at OffColorDecals for sweet leftist swag and wholesale sticker orders! Use code ABETTERWAY for 15% off your first personal AND/OR wholesale order.If you like the show and want to support us, head to our Patreon to do so where you'll have access to exclusive merch and content!

In this episode, Niall asks, "Are Bad Laws Made To Be Broken?" This discussion is sparked by the case of Brendan McDonagh, a father facing possible imprisonment for building a small log cabin on his family's land after being denied state housing assistance. Despite his attempts to follow regulations, Brendan's home is set to be demolished by October 1st due to lack of planning permission, a move that could leave his family homeless.Some callers believe that laws should serve the people, and when they fail to do so, as in Brendan's case, they might deserve to be challenged. They argue that Brendan is simply trying to provide a safe home for his family on his own land and that laws preventing this are outdated and unjust. They see his actions as a form of protest against an unfair system.Other callers feel that laws are in place for important reasons, such as ensuring safety and protecting the environment. They argue that while Brendan's situation is unfortunate, everyone needs to follow the rules to maintain order and fairness. They suggest that changing the law through legal channels is the appropriate way to address such issues, rather than breaking it.Niall wraps up by emphasizing the importance of this debate in the context of Ireland's housing crisis, questioning whether the enforcement of such laws is truly serving the public good or if it's time to reconsider how these regulations are applied in extraordinary circumstances.

Shownotes and Transcript On this episode of Hearts of Oak Podcast, we sit down with Topher Field, a prominent Australian libertarian commentator and activist. Topher shares his experience navigating the challenging landscape of media and activism during the COVID-19 lockdowns in Melbourne. He discusses the charges he faced for advocating peaceful protests against government actions and the importance of freedom of speech in the face of oppressive measures. The interview delves into the impact of lockdowns on mental health and relationships, which fuelled Topher's increased activism. He provides a detailed account of the progression of protests in Melbourne, highlighting the power of grassroots movements in challenging authority. The conversation also touches on leaderless movements, accountability in COVID inquiries, and the need to resist oppressive policies. Throughout the episode, Topher encourages listeners to question authority, uphold morality, and resist unjust laws and critiques the worship of government and the compliance of churches with oppressive regulations, advocating for spiritual autonomy and the purity of faith-based practices. Over 15 years Topher Field has accumulated over 2 Million video views, over 150,000 regular followers, 14 film awards, 2 Libertarian awards, and released his first book in 2023. But his proudest achievement is without doubt his two criminal charges for ‘Incitement'. During the world famous Melbourne Lockdowns Topher was awarded these charges by Victoria Police for encouraging people to exercise their Human Rights during the Covid era in 2021. Topher is a renowned public speaker, interviewer, podcaster, writer, satirist, and champion of Human Rights. Good People Break Bad Laws: Civil Disobedience in the Modern Age in paperback and e-book from Amazon   amzn.eu/d/09MJazgR Watch award winning 'Battleground Melbourne'   battlegroundmelbourne.com Connect with Topher... WEBSITE          topherfield.net X/TWITTER       x.com/TopherField INSTAGRAM     instagram.com/topherfield Interview recorded  16.7.24 Connect with Hearts of Oak... X/TWITTER        x.com/HeartsofOakUK WEBSITE            heartsofoak.org/ PODCASTS        heartsofoak.podbean.com/ SOCIAL MEDIA  heartsofoak.org/connect/ SHOP                  heartsofoak.org/shop/ Transcript (Hearts of Oak) And I'm delighted to have someone from down under that I've seen the name quite a bit in my feeds over the last couple of years. It's always great to talk to someone that you've watched from afar, and that's Topher Field. Topher, thank you so much for your time today. (Topher Field) Well, Peter, what a pleasure, and thank you for having me. Not at all, it's great to have you on. And obviously, people can follow you @TopherField on Twitter, and TopherField.net is your website. And of course you're, I mean I've seen you on twitter quite a bit and whenever Sam Sobel connected us, and I thought I kind of recognized that name, because Topher is not a name that's very popular. So, you're thinking that definitely sticks out but you're probably one of Australia's leading, I think most recognized libertarian political commentators. And you've, it's it's your work in in the media and I know that's your background from when you were younger and now you've really made a name for yourself winning awards: libertarian awards. Also that documentary Battleground Melbourne setting. The madness that you faced there in Australia and author of Good People Break Bad Laws which is a fascinating topic. I know we'll delve into that a little bit and loved, I think on your website you said that your proudest moment, proudest achievement is getting those incitements, those punishments for standing up against the COVID lockdown. Not just punishments, criminal charges. They chased me with criminal charges and tried to lock me away for two and a half years for the crime of encouraging people to exercise their human right to engage in peaceful political protest at a time when our government was violating human rights. So yeah, that is honestly, that is my proudest achievement and, I hope never to have to repeat such a thing in my, in the future, but unfortunately you and I both know this fight is far from over. Oh, absolutely. Could I tell them, I mean, leading, leading up to that, what, you're also your, your background, I mean, you grew up with your dad being involved in media and your understanding a little bit about the business. Some of us have been thrown into this and we've either sunk or swell or swum, but you kind of had a little bit of an understanding. Can you tell us about your role in the media leading up to, I guess, the COVID tyranny. What had been your primary focus in terms of putting a message out up until, I guess, up until 2020? Well, I'm probably the world's only accidental political commentator. I was driving a forklift in a warehouse, quite enjoying myself, making good money. I enjoyed the manual labor, the repetition of it, and I could go home. And I was working on a fiction novel at the time and doing a bit of acting. And just enjoying sort of creative expression. And my cousin came into work one day. Yes, I'm the cliche forklift driving cousin working at the same place, kind of life, very blue collar. And my cousin comes into work and he says, Topher, you should audition for project next. And I said, what's that? It was a project being run by a very respected Australian journalist where he was recruiting and looking for the next generation of news producers, presenters, writers, researchers, these sorts of things. And in order to audition, you had to submit a video. So I went, okay, my dad taught me how to do videos. He was involved in community television. He was in professional radio and then in community television. And I cut my teeth from the earliest ages that I can remember. There was a camera in the house and I've been editing and doing audio and all that stuff. I learned the craft from him. So, I put that to good use and I made a video as an audition. And I was deliberately quite controversial, because I didn't want to find that I got into this show and then had my wings clipped and they were telling me what I could say or what I couldn't say. So I was deliberately pretty provocative and I didn't get in. Surprise, surprise. And so then I was left with this video that I had nothing. This is 2009. I didn't even have a YouTube channel. In fact, in Australia in 2009, most people didn't have internet fast enough to play YouTube videos in real time. You had to let them buffer for a few minutes. So, I started a brand new YouTube channel with zero subscribers. I uploaded the video and I sent it to my mom and she must've watched that video 30,000 times because shortly afterwards, was I had 30,000 views, which is pretty extraordinary for 2009 in Australia, doing a 12 minute long political exploration of water supply issues into my home city of Melbourne. Tell me how a video like that gets 30,000 views, even in today's market, let alone back then. So, then people began asking me to do more videos and I'm going, this is absurd. I'm a forklift driver. What do you think I am? I'm nothing. And eventually someone came to me with a video. I said no to everybody, and then someone came to me with a video that I couldn't say no to, and I said yes to that second video, and then I said yes to a third video and a fourth video, and it became a bit of a thing. My main focus has actually been water and water supply issues, particularly to irrigation farmers in what's called the Murray Darling Basin in Australia. So, 40% of Australia's food comes from this part of the world, and our government is destroying farmers by regulating and restricting access to irrigation water. So, that's really what I've spent most of my time talking about. But I did a series on climate change where I partnered with Lord Christopher Monckton in the UK, and I travelled to the US and Canada, interviewed a bunch of people. Professor Fred Singer, before he passed away, is one of my sort of proudest achievements to have had the chance to speak to him while he was alive. I've done work on freedom of speech. I've done work on over-regulation, over-taxation, cost of living, and a range of other sort of topics along the way. Basically always on the I'm a libertarian. So, I'm always coming from that libertarian perspective, but I'm also a Christian. So, bringing those two together and that's a pretty rare thing in Australia there really isn't a lot of a lot of people in that space in Australia and broadly on the conservative side of politics. Oh that's fascinating. Water management and freedom of speech. How do those fit together? So, I've had to ask myself the same question and the best answer I've got for you, Peter, and it's not necessarily a good answer, but it's the best one I've got, is that I struggle to walk past an injustice. Once I see something and go, that's wrong. That should not be the way it is. I find it very difficult to just ignore it and pretend I didn't see. And so water management, I kind of fell into because my very first video was about water supply into Melbourne city, which is a 4.4 and a half million person city that was on heavy water restrictions. There was a drought at the time and they were building a desalination plant and I've said the desalination plant was a bad idea and we should instead build a dam on there's a particular river where there was a dam reservation set aside by engineers 100 years ago, but politics being what it is today they were refusing to build a dam there for greeny sort of reasons. So, that's that was my very first video and then someone said well if you think that's bad have a look at what they're doing down irrigators up on the Murray River. And I investigated that and boy, boy, is that is that bad and people are literally being pushed to suicide and despair and bankruptcy and everything. And of course, it impacts food prices and has a knock-on effect to us all. So for me, that was kind of a fight that I couldn't walk past. But as a political commentator, freedom of speech is essential to my work. It's a non-negotiable, and it should be a non-negotiable for us all, but it's especially a non-negotiable when that's your stock in trade, is the right and the ability to say, government, you're wrong. You're doing the wrong thing. And so I was already defending, I was defending freedom of speech before it was cool. And then, of course, COVID came along and we saw censorship just escalate to an entirely new level. But those two have really been two of my biggest topics along the way. Tell us about during the COVID tyranny. I saw a level, and probably you did as well in Australia, a level of frustration boiling over that we haven't seen in a long time. We saw demonstrations against the Iraq war back in Tony Blair's time, a million people on the streets. Since then, we hadn't seen anything else. It was the pool tax rats and Margaret Thatcher's time, going back to that. And suddenly this happens and you've got huge, huge crowds coming out and active, I guess not civil obedience, but beginning to beginning to walk towards that line. I mean were you surprised that certainly in Britain people seem to be pushed and pushed and pushed and the the frustration boils out at the pub over a couple of drinks and that's the the level of it. Yeah. But something happened to push people how did you see that and view that because I wasn't in media at that point. We had just started two months before, but you saw this through a perspective of someone in the media. Tell us how you viewed that in your country. Our experience was very different in Melbourne as compared to anywhere else in Australia, let alone anywhere else in the world. So, for those that don't know, Melbourne became the most locked down city in the world and remains that to this day with the exception of China. China then did go on to do even more extreme things, but for a long time, Melbourne was the most locked down and outside of China continues to be the most locked down city in the world. We had de facto house arrest. You could not leave your house unless you were leaving for less than one hour and for an approved set of conditions. They shut down schools. They shut down all but essential workplaces. They shut down even kids' playgrounds and things. You could not so much as go to a beach and sit on the beach to watch a sunset. Even in your one hour of yard time, you would be arrested if you were found to have left the house just to go and enjoy some sunshine. So we had a curfew, an 8 p.m. curfew that was enforced very, very vigorously, very, very violently. We had what was called a ring of steel. This was a series of checkpoints that separated metropolitan Melbourne from the rest of rural Victoria. And they had military manning that checkpoint and demanding that you show paperwork to prove that you had a need to travel across that artificial new border that they'd put up around the city. And we had protests being treated as completely illegal. So, I spoke at the very first anti-lockdown protest, and this was my first ever conscious act of civil disobedience. It was the first time I walked out my door. I was 38 years old or so. I was a clean skin, ex-Army Reserve, ex-I'd done a bunch of charitable work. I was a clean skin. You look at my police record, It was better than spotless. It was positive. I'd handed in wallets that I'd found on the street and all sorts of stuff, right? And then all of a sudden, here I am walking out my door to go and deliberately speak at a rally that had been declared to be illegal. And that was really a turning point in my life and took me in a whole new direction, because I live streamed that event and such was the hunger. People were desperate, but no one was yet willing to make any moves. By the time I got home from that event, that live stream had been watched over 100,000 times. And this is just a live stream on Facebook. I had a Facebook page with maybe 10,000 people on it. So, that was a pretty big deal for me at the time. And people, you know, I had a wave of abuse pour into my inbox, into my emails and so forth. People angry how dare you. You're killing grandma all that sort of stuff. Then shortly on the back of that there was a wave of support: thank you for speaking out I've been thinking the same thing, but I thought I was going crazy, now I know I'm not. And then on the back of that was a wave of despair, people reaching out in emails and in messages into my inbox just needing to tell me their story, because by this point in time we were about we were about by then we're about eight weeks in to lockdowns, seven weeks into lockdowns. And for anyone who was already at the margins financially, was already close to the wind, this was absolutely decimating them. For anyone whose mental health was already borderline, this was destroying them. Anyone whose marriage was close to breaking up, this was the final straw. And I just had people pouring their hearts out to me. And at first, I thought, why are you talking to me? I can't help you. I've got nothing. I'm in the same position as you. I've got a kid, a pregnant wife. My business is going down the tube, because I had I had another business separate to the political commentary at the time. My life is as much of a mess as yours. Why are you asking me for help? And then I realized they weren't asking me for help. Not one of them asked me to help them. What they wanted was someone to listen. And this is the tragedy of what happened, Peter, is all of the people that were supposed to be there for them had turned their back. The church pastors, the mental health counsellors, most of the politicians, a lot of people's families had all turned their back on them to the point that they were digging up the contact details of a YouTube political commentator and pouring their heart out to me in emails and messages. Such was the isolation that they experienced. So in that context, you can understand that the protests remained very, very small for many, many months. We saw violent arrests where if someone was known to have been organizing protests, the police would show up at their door at six o'clock in the morning with a battering ram, smash their way through the door, violently tackle them to the ground, hospitalizing them in some cases. We saw extreme levels of violence that we're not used to in Australia. This is not the kind of place where these things happen. And so that kept our numbers really small, really down in the few hundreds. And myself and a number of other courageous people, we kept on getting out there and kept on doing it anyway, knowing the risks and getting attacked by riot squads and attacked by police on horses, and threats of arrest, and all sorts of things. And then the government made a tactical mistake. There was a woman by the name of Zoe Bueller, and she was out of town. She was outside of that ring of steel that I mentioned earlier. She lived in a rural town, and she said, hey, let's get together and do a protest at the local park during our one hour of yard time. Now, the thing with her was where she was, that was actually legal. But the police arrested her anyway. They went into her home and her husband live streamed, or she live streamed on her phone, her arrest. And that was her, you may be familiar with it, in her pyjamas. She's pregnant. There's a couple of kids in the home. And she's saying, being arrested for what? They were arresting her for incitement, the very same charge that they later charged me with. And that video went viral. And that really turned the movement from just a couple of hundred hardcore people doing what our conscience required us to do against all odds and all of a sudden we were getting a couple of thousand people. And then there was a year or so of that on and off increasing police violence ultimately leading to them shooting us with rubber bullets and then finally their conscience that they were shamed effectively, by us refusing to back down and their conscience got the better of them and the police finally said: hey we're not doing the violence anymore and then all of a sudden our numbers exploded into the hundreds of thousands it's. That accidental leadership which I think has been intriguing and probably is at the heart of what makes the establishment afraid, because when you look at all different demonstrations they kind of come from organizations that then push that agenda, that idea, and then arrange demonstrations, arrange rallies, arrange protests but this had; I mean the people that I'm sure it's same for you, that I've met, who've come from sports, from music, from different industry, from never done as you said a protest in their life suddenly come out. And it's been fascinating that accidental leadership that we have seen worldwide. Yeah, and you're absolutely right this is what makes them afraid. It's the hydra. And this is this really came out to me and I really bring this point out in battleground Melbourne the documentary which you can watch for free at battlegroundmelbourne.com The thing that I really wanted to bring out there was this isn't my story. I had the privilege of being the storyteller, but it's not actually my story. I didn't write that. That was written by the people of Melbourne, the people of Victoria, and the courage that they showed. And what we see time and again, the theme that I really sought to bring out in that documentary was we kept on being knocked down. And then without any structured leadership, there was no board of directors making decisions. People just got creative. And somehow the movement as a whole stood back up again. It might have been different people. It might've been in a different place and it might've been in a different form. But every time the government thought they'd finally knocked us down, we reappeared as a movement. We reappeared in some new form and we were continuously adapting our tactics and they were continuously adapting their tactics. And in the end, they got to the point where they couldn't escalate any further. And we still hadn't gone away. We still hadn't backed down. They literally got to the point where the only thing left for them to do was to start shooting with live ammunition. That was their last option. They had done everything else up to that point. Tear gas and riot police and mounted police and home invasions and rubber bullets onto, you know, shooting people in the back, unarmed people in the back with rubber bullets at the Shrine of Remembrance, a war memorial of all places. I mean, absolute disgrace. And then after doing that, thinking, oh, we finally got them. They're going to run away scared now. Well, then along came nurses and teachers who completely transformed the whole way the movement looked. They showed up in parks in their uniforms, wearing masks, socially distanced, with writing on their tops saying how long they'd been a teacher or how long they'd been a nurse and these sorts of things. And they just stood silently in the park. So, all of a sudden, now that they'd gone to the rubber bullets, et cetera, gone was the rabble rousing and the chanting and everything else. Now, all of a sudden, they're faced with a bunch of young women, mostly incredibly courageous, standing in parks, socially distanced, wearing masks and silent. And they show up with the rubber bullet guns and they show up with the riot police and they show up with the horses. And I think finally, it was like a mirror looking back at them. And suddenly they saw themselves and realized what they'd become. And it was shortly after that that they released, they leaked this letter to the public, which they'd sent to the premier saying, we're not doing this anymore. It's time to put away the tear gas. We're not doing the violence anymore. It's exactly what you're talking about. The way I paraphrase it is this. We were ordinary people who were faced with extraordinary times. All we did was make the decision to do what was right, even though it was our government that was wrong. That's it. That's it. That's all we are. Because there were enough of us and because we had the courage to keep coming back and to keep getting back up in spite of what we faced, in the end, we won. And that, I think, is a massive lesson and for all of humanity with everything that we're up against, because a leaderless, decentralized, organic movement is unstoppable for as long as we don't stop. It's up to us to just go, we're just going to keep going. A movement with leaders can be stopped if you take out the leaders, you know, strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter. But what if there's no shepherd? What if the sheep have started to think for themselves? And that's what we created here in Melbourne. And I think that's a model. That's not to take anything away from people who do step into leadership, but I think that's a model for us. We become unstoppable if we adopt that model. And I want to pick up one of the two things we've learned. And I'm asking you that not just because it's a historical event that we can learn a lot from, but here in the UK, we right now have the COVID inquiry. I think in the next day or two, it's going to release its first findings. And the figures on the COVID inquiry here in the UK, it's thought it'll be the most expensive inquiry in British history. It's just going to be under just under 200 million pounds for the whole inquiry. I think I read something like cost of £130,000 or £140,000 a day. So, I'm asking you your experiences, because we are going through this charade of a COVID inquiry. Has there been, and of course, that's not going to lead to anything. But in Australia, have there been questions? We've seen a kind of slow change in the media on the right, but getting to say, actually, you know, we were always saying we shouldn't buy onto this. I said, uh-uh, no, you weren't. You had like an article every two months that might touch on another side. But what about you in terms of reckoning for the media, in terms of reckoning for politicians on what Australians were put through? Nowhere near enough. We've had a couple of really good politicians, particularly a couple of really good senators who have been relentlessly pursuing this. And they've had some small wins. But one of the things that is just a reality that we have to be willing to accept and push our way through is that the powers that be have a lot of layers of defence. So, they'll try and stop an inquiry from happening. And then once they can't stop the inquiry from happening, they try and rig the inquiry by, you know, rigging the terms of reference or rigging who the commissioner is or these sorts of things. We've just seen unfolding right now in Australia, we have a senator for the United Australia Party called Ralph Babbitt, Senator Ralph Babbitt, great guy. He managed to get a, I don't remember the technical term for it, but it's some form of inquiry and a bunch of people made submissions to that inquiry. And then the person running the inquiry has just announced they're not going to publish a lot of those submissions. They're taking them as almost like comments. Right. And they're not actually publishing them as part of the inquiry. It's like, well, no, you don't get to silence the Australian people like that. And so now Senator Babet is taking up that particular fight to try and make sure that this actually gets done properly, et cetera. So, they kind of have defence in depth, because there's a lot of tricks and tools that they get to use. And every single one of them is a new layer that we have to battle our way through. What I think though is is going to happen much faster than we've seen in history, so in history we saw for example the thalidomide debacle where for a very long time if you know thalidomide being dangerous was considered to be misinformation and you were uninformed and ignorant if you said that it was, or asbestos, and then all of a sudden everyone always knew that it was dangerous. Right? That was you know we saw that trend and we're watching that happen in some parts of the media now: oh, I've always said that we should be careful about an untested vaccine. No you didn't, you told everyone to go out and get jabbed, right? Yeah. So, we're seeing that revisionism is kicking in. But it took 40 years for thalidomide to finally get apologies and compensation and these sorts of things. But that happened before the internet. And that happened when we weren't as able to communicate with each other as what we are now and able to dig and discern the truth. The gatekeepers of old are no longer, they no longer hold the level of power that they used to have. And that allows us to accelerate the timelines. The other comment that I'll make, Peter, is people only start to pay attention to politics once it starts to hurt them. There's a thing called rational ignorance. It doesn't make sense. It's not rational for us to pay lots of attention to something that we can't really influence. Influence if we don't if we can't really control it well we should spend our time and focus you know invest that into the things that we can have more control over. So, there's a level of rational ignorance when it comes to politics. Why would I pay attention to politics when I can't really change anything anyway. And most Australians have that attitude until it hurts them and then all of a sudden they arc up. And then they can't understand why they can't get help from anyone else, well because it's not hurting them. So, the silver lining of something as tragic as what what we've seen during COVID, the silver lining is that it hurt a lot of people simultaneously. And a lot of people at the same time all stood up and said, hey, this isn't okay. I'm not happy with this. And then when they looked around for support, there were actually other people out there to support them because there was a lot of people standing up at the same time. And what's important now is that we maintain the rage, to use a tired old phrase. We cannot let up on this. We cannot let people take a revisionist view. Oh, we did the best we could with what we knew at the time. Any of that sort of, we cannot accept any of that. And we must just continue to relentlessly pursue justice and understand that this is a long-term project. We're not going to win this overnight. But what's happening now is we're getting organized at a level that we've never been before. And our pushback is getting sophisticated at a level that it never has been before. And more and more people are willing to take risks. And I'll use a local example to you, you, Peter. It would have been unimaginable in the 2000s for a situation to arise in a city like London where the ULEZ cameras would have been being vandalized on a widespread scale. That's unthinkable. The Blade Runner phenomenon, again, an example of a leaderless organic movement that just popped up where people used the internet and our ability to communicate with each other to find these cameras, to map them, to publish those maps. And then other people looked at those maps and made decisions about what they were going to do. I'm not condoning anything of course but observing what's happened that was unthinkable 20 years ago and now it's an ongoing phenomenon. So, I'm actually quite hopeful that a lot of these petty tyrants, these people who want to control and tell us how we're going to live, are going to find themselves bewildered by this array of pushback that seems to come out of nowhere. And they will go looking for the enemy and say, who's organized this? And the answer is no one. And that makes it really hard for them to stop. So, I'm actually really optimistic. And I think it was actually in the end, a good thing that COVID would hurt so many people and not good that they were hurt but it's good now that we live in a world where ordinary people are standing up in a way that we have not seen in my lifetime before. And that fits into your your book: Good People Break Bad Laws. Up until this point good people follow the law, good people call the police if there is a problem, good people vote for the the party that they think is best. Good people use the legal system for solutions to problems. And there's a whole list of what good people, and I always looked at CND, the anti-war people, or kind of stop oil people and thought that's so disruptive. How dare they do that? And now... Either maybe I was dumb, maybe I didn't get it before, maybe I trust the institutions. But I think a lot of people, certainly more on the right, trusted the institutions to a large degree. Now that trust has completely gone. That contract, I think, with the government has been completely broken. And we've gone from good people follow the law, even if it's not necessarily the best law, you do what you do as a citizen, to hell no. we're going to break. That's a huge change in society, in a democratic society. That's a massive change. Yeah, there's a number of layers to this. First and foremost, pretty much everybody on all sides of politics acknowledges that civil disobedience has been the right thing in various moments in history. One of the most obvious being, of course, the civil rights movement to end segregation in the US. That's sort of a pretty obvious contemporary example where we say, Martin Luther King and even many people, Malcolm X and a bunch of others, yes, that was the right thing for them to do. Civil disobedience, breaking those laws was a good thing for them to do. And when you look in a historical context, there's almost universal agreement about that. But there is certainly on the more conservative side of politics, a real discomfort about it in real time. And that's simply because conservatives have been used since the end of the Second World War to being the ones in charge, which means that when someone is disobeying, they're disobeying the conservatives, right? They're disobeying the establishment and the conservatives identify as that. They're disobeying us. What a bunch of rabble-rousing ratbags. Well, there's a right way to do it and there's a wrong way to do it. And just stop oil, et cetera. We see them doing it in very, very destructive ways. And my book does address that. I talk about the right way and the wrong way to do these sorts of things. But in principle, doing what's right is always right, even if the law is wrong, right? And we have to accept an uncomfortable truth for a lot of conservatives. And like I said, I'm a libertarian, so I have no issue with this, but a lot of conservatives struggle with this. When you change the law, you do not change what is right or wrong. What is right or wrong is already right or wrong. And when we change a law, we're either admitting that it used to be wrong and now it's right, or maybe that it used to be right and now we've got it wrong, or maybe that it was wrong both times. But we can't pretend that just because some people in a room stood around and approved the change of wording that we've changed the laws of nature and morality and what's right and wrong. We haven't. So, when we write laws, our task is not to define what's right and what's wrong. It is to discern what's right and what's wrong and to align the law as closely as possible to that. And that's a matter of conscience. And I have to do what's right according to my conscience, even if the people in that room have written laws that disagree with that particular point of view. And this is necessary. This is essential. People say: oh, we can't all just run around doing whatever we think is best. No, no, no. We all have to live our lives doing what we think is best. Because guess what? When I stand before God, I can't turn around and say: oh, but Peter made me do it. Peter told me it was the right thing to do. Nor can I say, oh, but a whole bunch of Peters in a house called parliament told me that it was the right thing to do. No, I don't get to outsource my morality. I'm accountable for my decisions, for the moral outcomes and the morality that is represented in the decisions that I make. And that's true, no matter what the law says. So what conservatives have to accept is that they are no longer in the majority. Okay. The cultural war has been lost. That's not to say that it's permanent. It's not permanently that way. But think about the sexual revolution and the aims of third wave feminism, the sexual revolution. They got everything they wanted, right? What we call conservative politics now is unrecognizable in the world of the 1950s. What we call conservative politics now is radical, progressive Marxist ideology. And we call that conservative now because we've completely lost track of how far we've slid. Conservatives have already lost the culture war. The culture war is over. Conservatives lost. What has happened now is that people who who believe in God. Who believe in family, who believe in what we would consider to be basic decency, basic morality, Judeo-Christian morals. We are now the revolutionaries. We are now the beatniks. We are now the hippies of our age. And we are the ones who are actually trying to bring about a revolution against an establishment that has rejected all of that morality. And we have to accept that that means that we need to adopt the tactics of the revolutionaries, the rebels. We're the cool kids now. That's the good news, Peter. We get to be the cool kids for a change rather than the stayed old, you know, the pearl clutches. The pearl clutches now are all on the left. Oh, you used the wrong pronouns. Oh, my heart, right? That's them now. We get to be the cool kids. And what that means is we have to accept and we have to move on from a lot of these old mindsets. And one of those mindsets was, oh, but it's the law. We all need to do what the law says. Well, that was always the wrong perspective. But not only now is it the wrong perspective, but it's also incredibly unhelpful. If the law is wrong, we have no obligation to obey and to do what's wrong. And in particular, I look at Psalm 94, I think it's verse 12, where it says that crooked leaders cannot be your friends. They use the law to cause suffering. And this is one of, I propose two tests for what a bad law is in my book, Good People Break Bad Laws. And one of them is a practical test, and one of them is a principles test. And the practical test is based on that verse in Psalm 94. Does this law cause suffering? Because that's the definition of a crooked ruler. A crooked ruler is someone who uses the law to cause suffering. And if the following or enforcing of a law causes more suffering than the breaking of that law would cause, then you are looking at a candidate for potentially a bad law. There's more to it than that. You have to read the book. But that becomes a candidate for this might be a bad law. And actually, my conscience might require me to disobey this law in order to do what's right. How, I will say I have not read the book, but I will be reading it. I'd encourage others because we are in different times and it's fascinating. And your comment about individual consciousness, individual responsibility, we seem to have contracted that out to a government that actually you're the ones that will decide what is good and what is bad, what's right and what's wrong. I no longer have to and we are in a completely different generation than previous generations in that there is no accountability. There's no right and wrong there's no accountability, and it's; yeah we have it we have to learn how to live as individuals within that new paradigm of actually people don't take personal responsibility for anything. And we'll see that in the COVID inquiry people say: oops. And what do you mean "oops"? How many people's lives were damaged? Destroyed? Kill? How many people were killed? This is not an oops and yet that seems to be where we are that there is zero personal responsibility for anything and certainly we see that in this in the States on obesity where actually you just take a drug, because that's just not nothing to your fault. And you just take a drug or it's your genes. No what about personal responsibility for lifestyle, but But that seems to have gone out the window completely. Peter, it's worse than that. So, I'm working on my second book, which will be out before the end of this year, which is titled Good Christians Break Bad Laws, Obeying God in a Fallen World. And it's specifically on the theology of civil disobedience. It looks at everyone from Dietrich Bonhoeffer and other sort of World War II heroes right back in history and then obviously diving deep into Scripture itself, Old Testament, New Testament, the words of Christ, et cetera, on this topic of obedience to government. Yes, I deal with Romans 13, 1 Peter 2. All of that is covered in this book. The reality of our situation, Peter, is that we actually now worship the government. And unfortunately, I have to include the church in that statement. What we saw during COVID, and I can't speak for where you are, but certainly where I am in the city of Melbourne, was almost every single church with a vanishingly small number of exceptions allowed the government to dictate to them whether or not they would open their doors,. Whether or not they would help the poor, whether or not they would gather and worship, whether or not they would take communion, how many people were allowed to sing etcetera. And and what they did was they turned around and said: oh no it's okay because we can we'll have a tiny skeleton crew in the building and we'll live stream church. You can do live stream church so this isn't a violation of our christian principles this isn't a violation of you know of the exhortation not to forsake the gathering together of the saints, because you can watch a video online. And of course when we look at the example: I'll just pull one example out, look at okay so we know that Daniel would pray multiple times a day he would open his window and he would. We pray in full public view. And when it was, I think, Nebuchadnezzar, I can always get mixed up between Darius and Nebuchadnezzar and all the others. I think it was Nebuchadnezzar was convinced by his secular advisors, his pagan advisors to make a law that said people could only pray to Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel didn't choose to keep praying in the privacy of his room and keep the door and the shutters closed. He could have done that. And he could have said, oh, well, I'm still practicing my religion. I'm just doing it in a way that's not going to provoke trouble. I don't want to cause any issues here. No, no, no. No, he opened those shutters and prayed in the same spot in full view because to go into hiding and say, oh, I'm still practicing my religion in secret is still saying to the government, you have the right to tell me that I can't do that. You're still conceding that ground to the government. And that means that you're giving the government more authority over your faith walk than God has. So, I believe that the church's biggest problem, and this is so funny because as a kid, you'd You'd read the Ten Commandments. You're like, oh, the idolatry one's out of date. Like, that doesn't apply anymore. Actually, I've realized, no, I'm completely wrong. Idolatry is the number one sin that we are facing in the church and in secular society here today. Specifically, we've made an idol with our own hands. Look at what the children of Israel did. They made calves with their own hands, and they fell down and worshipped them. When God designed government, God designed the system of judges. There was enough law that they could read it in three days, the whole thing. And they had a dispute resolution process. They could go to a judge to have a dispute be resolved. There was no other law and there was no other mechanism to make more law. And during the time of Isaiah, the children of Israel decided that that wasn't enough and they wanted a king. And they went to Isaiah and they demanded, oh, Samuel, was it? Excuse me, in the time of Samuel, I think it was. They demanded a king and they ended up getting Saul. When they went to Samuel and said to give us a king, Samuel was upset because he's being rejected as a judge and his children who are ungodly were being rejected as judges. And he takes it to God and God says to him, listen to what they're actually saying. They're not rejecting you. They're rejecting me as their king. And I'll cover all of this in the book, Good Christians Break Bad Laws. As their forefathers did in the wilderness, building golden calves and worshipping them. That's what God says in response. They are rejecting me as their king, as their forefathers did, building golden calves and worshipping them. God immediately equates creating a government that is beyond what God designed with idolatry. He immediately says, this is like worshipping a golden calf. And that's exactly where we are today. Look at the names of God in the Old Testament. Jehovah Jireh, my provider. Who do we look to for provision now? You know, the very Jehovah Nissi, Jehovah Tzidkenud, all the different names of God. They all have different meanings. My healer, my giver of wisdom, my protector, my refuge, my provider, et cetera. We look to the government for each and every one of those things now. We've literally worshipped government and allowed government to usurp God in every single part of our lives. And if it wasn't already obvious enough, it became glaringly obvious during COVID. And I think one of the most urgent needs in the world today is for Christians to get on our knees before God and repent of idolatry and worshipping government and obeying government, even where the government is the one causing misery. Even where the government has become crooked, like what Psalm 94 talks about. We've obeyed government instead of God. And the most urgent thing now is repentance in the church. I wasn't expecting us to go down this angle, but I'm enjoying this. You mentioned about not forsaking Hebrews 10, 25. It said, not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day approaching. And how much closer are we to that day 2,000 years later? And there's no opt-out. The Bible is full of laws, of ideals, of examples, of guidelines for us to live by because God knows best because God made us, and therefore he's the one that knows the best way to live. There are no opt-outs. And certainly I remember being in one church, Church of England Church, and they said, oh, we need to wait until the government announce their guidelines later this week to know if we can meet and sing in the park this weekend. I think, well, we've already been told not to forsake gathering. What's wrong with meeting out in the open? I mean, Jesus didn't stop going and speaking in synagogues because people had leprosy. Actually, no, he went there. And there were so few. I think in the UK, I don't know of any church that actually, there was one church that had a legal fight, but they still shut the doors. I know I went to a big event with a Pentecostal preacher, Rodney Howard Brown. He was the only person, I mean, the first pastor in America. And it was interesting that the more traditional evangelical part of the church said, we need to be good citizens, and that means doing what we're told to do. Then you have the more Pentecostal or charismatic said, no, no, no, the Bible says this, so we do this. I was interested in seeing that division. But certainly, I've seen hook, line, and sinker that churches across the UK accepted everything the government told us to do. And you're saying you saw exactly the same in Australia. And there's been no change of that. There's been no apology. As you said no repentance for saying we got it wrong but if this happens again we will follow god's law not man's law yeah this Is such a crucial thing, it's such a tragedy that I actually know the names globally of most of the pastors that really did stand up. John MacArthur in the U.S and I think he was in California. Arthur Polowski a Polish immigrant to Canada. Bishop Marmari in Sydney who actually since got stabbed. He survived and thankfully he's okay, but he was one of the correct, he was a Coptic, I think, no offense if I get this wrong, Bishop, but I believe he's a Coptic or an Orthodox Christian and was really speaking up. There was a Catholic church in Jindera that was really good in a remote Australian outback sort of town. But these are the exceptions, right? I shouldn't be able to name the ones that stood up and did the right thing. When I challenged my own pastor on this, he said, Topher, I can't do what you want me to do, because the government will take away our funding for the soccer academy that we run for the migrants. Right? Now, I, I've read my Bible from cover to cover in a couple of different translations. And I, I just, I've tried, but I can't remember the verse that says, go ye into all the world and run soccer academies. I've, I'm going to have to go back and just study again and just try and find that verse because what's happened now. I mean, there's a reason why Jesus specifically warned, warned us and said, you cannot serve God and mammon. Why did he pick mammon? You can't serve God and sex. You can't serve God and bar. You can't serve, you know, God and your belly. Why did he pick mammon as the thing? Well, because that's going to be the key core temptation. And this is what we see, particularly in the established churches, because the business of church and the property and the building and the maintenance and the tithes and everything else is such an important thing. Governments have been very clever. They turned around a hundred odd years ago and said, oh, instead of you being excluded from the tax code entirely, let's give you a special charitable tax exempt status that brings you into the tax code. And then you'll be eligible for government funding for programs, for charitable stuff, right? We're doing it to help you. We're going to give you money and you can do more ministry, right? And luring churches with money into compromising and contracting with government and becoming just another civil, just another corporation, really, that just has a few special perks. Fast forward a hundred years and we get to a situation where pastors aren't willing to speak on transgenderism or abortion. Oh no, I better not talk about anything political. Oh no, I better not stand up for our right to actually worship God during a pandemic. I better not do those thing, because I'm going to lose these special privileges that the government has given me. Well, excuse me, who's your provider? What does the Bible say about that? And this is why I say, and I've ruffled a lot of feathers. I've got a lot of people's noses out of joint because I speak at the church and state conferences in Australia and elsewhere. And I challenge pastors and I challenge church guys. I'm not trying to cause damage to the church, but please hear me out. If your pastor compromised during COVID and has not repented, all right, I'm all about forgiveness, all about second chances. Is if your pastor made mistakes and then went, guys, I got that wrong. I'm so sorry. This is what I've learned. This is what I'm going to put in place to make sure I never do that again. Great. Great. All for it. But if your pastor still insists that shutting down was the right thing to do and turning away people who were in desperate need of help was the right thing to do right at a time when people needed the church the most. I mean, if your instinctive reaction when there is a threat to people's temporal lives is to lock the doors of the house that has eternal salvation, if that's your instinctive reaction, then you don't understand what it is that you do as a Christian pastor. You hold the keys to eternal life. When there is a temporal threat, when there is a pandemic, if it's the Black Death, for goodness sake, you should be throwing the doors of the church open, wheeling the speakers out onto the steps, cranking that thing up as loud as you can and saying: come one, come all, repent for your day of judgment could very well be at hand. And if you get word from the government, there's a pandemic coming and and your reaction is to shut your doors and turn people away, I put it to you that you are probably in the wrong profession. A hundred percent. We have pastors who want to be liked more than they want to do the right thing. And I'm a grew up pastor's kid. I've been involved in huge churches. And when you get to see behind the scenes, it is a desire to be liked and to do what you think the government. But it's this issue of which I think is the key issue and it's an issue that we will face here in the UK in the next five years. It's the tax exempt status. It's the charitable status, it is the money in the UK you get tax back. So, if you're a taxpayer, you give your 100 pounds to the church and then the church gets an extra 20 back. And most churches survive on that and if that was taken away they couldn't survive and this is why I've been at churches and pastors have have apologized for suggesting that abortion may be murder. They've apologized for saying that actually transgenderism may be wrong. I had a pastor who told me the way he combats the attack on sexuality is he has a bookmark in his Bible with man and woman in it. And that bookmark means that he is speaking truth. And of course, in the COVID, that's time and time again. And I can see, certainly in the UK with the Labour government, which we have a uni party, of course, it's no different than the Tory Labour Party. This is not on one side. It's the same thing. But I can see churches being told, unless you sign up to these pledges, the good citizen pledges, then you will lose your charitable status. And 99% of churches will happily sign up for the money. So you're 100% right. And this is the tragedy. So in Australia, we had a referendum recently around whether the government should redefine marriage to include same-sex couples, all right? And a lot of Christians, because the result was, yes, we should redefine marriage to include same-sex couples. And a lot of Christians said, oh, no, we lost the marriage debate. I say, well, no, no, no, hold on. We lost the marriage debate back in the 1950s when federal legislation was passed to create a federal marriage certificate. Because before then, you got a marriage certificate from your church. The government had nothing to do with marriage. And then in the 1990s, maybe early 2000s, then Prime Minister John Howard introduced legislation to introduce into the wording of the Marriage Act, man and woman. Because it didn't actually have it. It was assumed in the 1950s. They didn't have to define that in the 1950s. And then the church in the 1990s is like, yes, yes, yes, we've won. No, no. What we've said, what we've done is we've taken a sacred institution, marriage, and we've put it under a secular governance now. We've said this thing that God created can now be defined and redefined by government. I don't care whether you like the government's definition right now or not, the minute you concede to them the power to have a definition, then you've lost. And sure enough, 30 years later, there was a referendum and the definition was changed and all these Christians are like, oh no, we've lost the marriage debate. No, you lost that in the 1950s. We need to stop taking things that are sacred and putting them into the hands of secular governments. That is idolatry. We are worshipping government and it has to stop. Have you always been, I mean, from the beginning focused on the church being engaged and involved in society, because I think a lot of people have seen the collapse of the church during Covid, but then you go back further and you see at separate points in history of each of our countries you see the capitulation of the church to state mandates in varying degrees. But I've, it's you kind of, we've seen it very starkly with, we all thought, we all believed, actually, the state will not stop churches meeting. That'll be the last, you know, they may come in on what we believe on doctrine issues, on the culture wars, but actually, we'll still be allowed to meet on Sunday, so it's all good. And suddenly, that key right for Christians to gather together, share fellowship together, that's now taken away. Has that been partially the the last straw in people's engagements. I mean, how have you seen it in your involvement along that journey? Yeah, I'm going to answer something else before I answer your actual question. Let's stop and think for a moment what a low bar that is to set. Oh, at least the church allows us to meet. Well, the church in China is allowed to meet, right? You can be a Christian in the UK and in Australia and in Canada in exactly the same way that you can be a Christian in China. Just don't say the things that the government says you can't say. Your doctrine just has to to be the government approved doctrine. And then you can be a Christian. You can show up to church, you can wear a cross, you can call yourself a pastor, as long as you only preach the things that the government has approved. Look at how low we've already set the bar and what a terrible compromise that is. To your question, I was raised as a, I'm a pastor's kid. I'm actually, I'm a pastor's grandkid on both my mom and my dad's side. Both of them were pastors. My dad was a pastor, was raised in the church, of course, went through my phase of rebellion and trying to figure out what I actually believe, blah, blah, blah. And then I tried to prove that God didn't exist and I failed miserably. So, I've had to accept that he actually is real. And that the best thing I can do with my life is to pursue him. And as imperfect as I am and as flawed as I am and as a million different ways that I stumble, that's my life mission now. But I considered myself a political commentator. And then over time, I began to realize you can't, there's so many problems in politics that you can't fix without reference to faith, without reference to the underlying values, that inform political policy. So, I started to call myself a political commentator who's a Christian or, you know, a Christian political commentator. And I'm starting to realize, actually, I just need to drop the word political. And I think I'm actually, I actually just need to say, no, I'm a Christian commentator. And because that faith, what you believe about God informs what you believe about everything else. It involves culture. It involves politics. It involves commerce and employment and healthcare and anything you might want to commentate on is downstream of your belief in God. And so all I am is a guy to drive forklifts, who made a video, who somehow people found my work and said, hey, you keep talking. And now as I've pursued that, I've come to realize the most important thing that I can talk about, the most valuable thing that I can be talking about is faith and God and how best we live in a fallen world. And that's essentially the mission that I've set out to do. So that's why Good People Break Bad Laws is my first book is becoming Good Christians Break Bad Laws as my second book is the realization that I have to talk about the faith side of this, not to the exclusion of the politics. The politics does matter. The culture stuff does matter. But it's all informed by what you believe about God. And that's ultimately where the truth lies. And that's what we need to be talking about. Last question is in terms of you kind of don't think of Australia as being a out-and-out Christian country. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Never been down under, so I could be 100% wrong. But are we moving towards a church that is that is underground, a church that actually needs to separate itself from the state in a way that we haven't seen? I mean we have a we have a state church in the UK: church of England. And that's meant that the state have had 100 control and we now have 24 bishops in the lords that are wetter than any pathetic liberal you'll come across and are more concerned about environmental issues and plastic bags than they are actually about God and his position in society. Do you think in Australia you're moving towards actually the church will have to be underground and fairly separate? I think we were headed that way, but I think God is on the move. And I'm going to shamelessly name drop for a moment. Tucker Carlson was in Melbourne recently, and he met with me backstage. My wife and I chatted with him for about 25 minutes. Lovely, gracious man. I was very generous with his time. And we talked mostly about God. That was the number one thing that he and I, that we discussed. And he commented on how dark Melbourne felt spiritually compared to the rest of Australia. And he's absolutely right. Melbourne is a broken city, and there's a spiritual oppression, a spiritual aspect to it. But he also said, do you feel like God's doing something? I said, yes, thank you. We're not the only ones. And all over the place, I'm seeing what gives me huge encouragement is all over the place, including in my own personal faith walk, I'm seeing God calling people to prayer in a new and a fresh and a more powerful way than has been the case since probably the charismatic renewal. And prayer almost always precedes revival. Find me a revival that didn't have an enormous amount of prayer invested into it before it happened. I don't think there is one. And I believe that we're in a phase now where God is calling people to prayer and faithful people, the genuine Christians, the ones who aren't compromising, are coming to prayer. And yes, a lot of the church is falling into apostasy. A lot of the church is walking away from the basic fundamental tenets of the Christian faith and becoming more concerned about social justice and all this sort of stuff. And there will be a split. There will be a bifurcation. But I actually think there's going to be an enormous renewal and an enormous number of people who are just seeking the truth, seeking meaning, recognizing the meaninglessness of third wave feminism, culture war and politics and so much of this stuff, sport, money, all the rest of it. The meaninglessness is becoming really clear for a lot of people now. I think we're actually about to see an enormous revival where an enormous number of people are going to have a come to Jesus moment in the most real and literal sense. Yeah, 100%. I agree with you. And when it gets dark, it's time for the light of Christ to shine brightly. So, we are in that moment, certainly. Topher, really appreciate you coming on all the way over from down under. Thank you so much for your time, sharing a little bit about your story and fascinating how you see the church getting engaged, involved, and where that... Your book, you can obviously get as an e-book, you can get as a paperback. It's available here in the UK. As it will be down under. I'm sure it's available in the US. And Battleground Melbourne, what's the website again? So, the website for the book is goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com. You can order it from Australia along with shirts and hoodies and things like that. Or you can go to Amazon and get it, and it'll just get printed in your local market, and you'll receive it that way. Or you can get an e-book, like you said. You can go to battlegroundmelbourne.com. Now, Battleground Melbourne is my multi-award winning documentary. It's an hour and 40 minutes long. It's a feature-length documentary. It's very high quality. It's won 14 awards around the world, and it tells the story of what happened in Melbourne at the most locked down city in the world. You can watch it for free. I don't need your money I don't even need your email address. Just go to battlegroundmelbourne.com. It's there. You can watch it. I highly recommend everyone do that. You will be shocked. Even people that lived through it in Melbourne but didn't step outside of their homes, they just did what they were told, they watch it and they're shocked at what happened on the streets of their own city on the other side of that door. And for people in London or around the world, the US, etcetera, I think it's worth seeing because this isn't unique to Australia. This is something that our governments all over the world, including in the US, would have loved to have done if they thought they could get away with it. And it's up to us to make sure that they know that they can't. 100 percent. Topher, thank you for joining us. And all the links for those are in the description. However, you're watching or listening to the podcasting apps. It will be all there in description, just click on and you can get the book, you can watch the film and everything is there. So don't for thanks for your time. Such a pleasure Peter. Thank you.

My guest this week is Larry Worthen, Executive Director of CMDA (Christian Medical and Dental Association of Canada). We discuss the CMDA's recent National Conference and its theme, “In God's Image.” And we discuss the ongoing challenge of establishing conscience protection for doctors and other medical professionals in provinces across the country. At this time, only Manitoba has legislation protecting doctors from being forced to perform operations to which they have deep conscientious objections: euthanasia, abortion, gender-transition surgeries.  Visit CMDA's website at: https://cmdacanada.org/conference/Read my 2016 press release calling on the federal government to establish conscience protection, Good Doctors vs. Bad Laws: https://www.chp.ca/news/good-doctors-vs.-bad-laws-chp-canada-calls-for-conscience-protection-for-he

Join me for this episode as I discuss the COVID lockdowns in Australia, the fight for liberation, and Topher Field's incarceration. Don't miss this inspiring conversation on human rights and the power of resilience.

In the U.S., a national push to reform K-12 education through policy and law changes is gaining momentum, driven by organizations, NGOs, and lobbyists. This movement is notably propelled by the SIECUS initiative, originally established in 1964 to promote comprehensive sex education. SIECUS has evolved, promoting sex education as a vehicle for broad cultural shifts towards sexual and reproductive freedoms. Their "Sex Ed for Social Change" campaign aims to influence societal norms and rights related to sexual health by integrating these lessons into school curriculums. Critics argue that this approach promotes a liberal agenda, extending beyond education to include broader social influences.The campaign has led to a significant rise in legislative actions with SIECUS at the helm of the Sex Education Policy Action Council (SEPAC), collaborating with various state entities to propagate comprehensive sex education policies. This coordinated effort seeks to increase the adoption of these policies at all levels of government and boost the number of policymakers supportive of comprehensive sex education.Despite the advocacy for educational and social change, there has been a notable backlash with a marked increase in parental rights bills and restrictive legislation concerning sexual and reproductive health education. This resistance highlights a growing divide over the role of education in shaping societal values and the rights of parents in overseeing their children's education. The battle lines are drawn as both sides mobilize to shape the future cultural landscape through the educational system.Support the showDONATE TODAY!www.ParentsRightsInEducation.com

We are joined by Australia's leading and most recognised Libertarian Political Commentators and Human Right's activists, along with the director of ‘Battleground Melbourne', Topher Field. For more than a decade, Topher has accumulated over 2 million video views, over 150,000 regular followers, 14 film awards and 2 Libertarian awards. He also authored the book, ‘Good People Break Bad Laws', which discusses when civil disobedience is necessary for good Governance. Topher is brilliant in this interview, as he delves deep into the psychology behind what makes certain types of political messages so effective. Topher also touches on his recent departure from the Aussie Wire and what he intends to do in the coming months. Topher is certainly one of the best thought leaders in Australian politics and his intelligence and insights are on full display during this interview. Follow or contact Topher Field at: https://www.topherfield.net https://goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com https://battlegroundmelbourne.com https://www.facebook.com/TopherField To enter the NREN Reckless Renewables PHOTO COMPETITION, visit: https://www.nren.com.au SHOW YOUR SUPPORT for the X-Candidates at ‘Buy Me A Coffee' – Donate or Sign up for our Membership https://www.buymeacoffee.com/xcandidates TO GET YOUR X-CANDIDATES Merchandise, head to: https://xcandidates.tshirts.net.au Hosted by: • Adam Zahra - One Nation candidate for Macarthur (Federal) and Campbelltown (NSW) https://www.facebook.com/adam.zahra.3 https://twitter.com/AdamZahra2023 https://www.instagram.com/zahra4campbelltown • Steven Tripp – Former candidate for Warringah https://www.facebook.com/RealStevenTripp https://twitter.com/RealStevenTripp https://spectator.com.au/author/steven-tripp Follow us on: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4GIXhHBogM1McL5EPGP3DT Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/ExCandidates Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/XCandidates Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theXCandidates Twitter: https://twitter.com/theXCandidates YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@XCandidates Gab: https://gab.com/XCandidates Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/XCandidates Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@ExCandidates Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ex-candidates/id1631685864 Please share and spread the word! #AusPol #nswpol #interview #podcast #politics #commentary #australia #independent #media #government #liberal #labor #nationals #steventripp #adamzahra #freedom #uap #united #australia #onenation #libertarian #covid #pandemic #topherfield #battlegroundmelbourne #civildisobedience #goodpeoplebreakbadlaws

All the way from the other side of the globe, our next guest Topher Field from Melbourne Australia speaks to us about morality and how you can't outsource your conscience, it has to come from inside and it is something you need to protect inside yourself and then act upon it when the time comes.He gives us a clear warning that this type of lockdown that he experienced and that we did to some degree here in America could be coming again. “Topher is on a mission to empower people,” and I hope you have time to listen to our discussion and that it inspires you to take action. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xl3QV28my60TopherField.net and @TopherField on Twitter/X.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/maine-source-of-truth-podcast--5501107/support.

Rick Ector is a Black firearms instructor and founder of Legally Armed in Detroit. FREE Training on Red Flag Law and Three Other Bad Laws Coming To Michigan

This show we were joined by Director (Battleground Melbourne) and Author (Good People Break Bad Laws) Topher Field, along with Adrian [redacted] for one of the BEST shows we've ever recorded. Topher is an award winning film director who made a big name during the lockdowns, by standing up against the Covid Regime in his home country of Australia, and we jumped into all that along with talk of Appalachia, overreach, and a lot of fun in between. http://www.patreon.com/getontaphttps://www.appalachianpodcast.orghttps://www.facebook.com/AppalachianPodcasthttps://twitter.com/GetOnTaphttps://www.instagram.com/theappalachianpodcast/https://beinglibertarian.comhttps://www.libertycon.com/https://www.topherfield.net/https://twitter.com/TopherFieldhttps://twitter.com/theaussiewirehttps://www.crawfordandpower.com/https://www.facebook.com/harwellgriceSupport the show

On the January 1st, 2024 episode of Liberal Dan Radio, I will be discussing the new laws that have gone into place across the nation. Some of these laws are good, some of them are bad, and some of them are silly. It is also public domain day!  If we have time, we will do some more reaction videos. Maybe some Josh B, maybe some Unraveling Toxic Masculinity, we will just have to wait and see! Live at 8PM Central on Liberal Dan Radio, Talk From The Left, That's Right.  Listening live? You can also watch on YouTube! You can comment on the show thread at liberaldan.com, on the Liberal Dan Radio Facebook page, and @liberaldanradio on Twitter. Also, heck out the Liberal Dan Radio Minicast. You can become a Liberal Dan Radio Patreon. If you don't feel like a subscription, you can also Buy Me A Cider. “Hypocrite of the Week” – Music: If I Had a Chicken – Kevin MacLeod

The post More bad laws continue to emerge from flawed state budget appeared first on NC Newsline.

On this week's Mean Age Daydream, Brian looks at the predictable outcome from terrible laws in Australia and Canada demanding social networks pay media outlets for posting news. Join Crowdhealth for a new, voluntary way to handle your healthcare, starting at $50 a month with promo code LIONS: https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/ Come see live comedy and a pod with Brian an Robbie “The Fire” Bernstein Sept 9th or 10th! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/robbiethefire-summer-porch-tour-comedy-showpodcast-hawthorne-la-tickets-668409760587?aff=oddtdtcreator Help support what we do and grow our show! https://www.patreon.com/Lionsofliberty OR support us on Locals! https://lionsofliberty.locals.com/ Subscribe to the BOHRing podcast! https://redcircle.com/shows/bohring Check out the Lions of Liberty Store, including our hot-off-the-press Big Pharma shirts. https://www.lionsofliberty.store Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's Mean Age Daydream, Brian looks at the predictable outcome from terrible laws in Australia and Canada demanding social networks pay media outlets for posting news. Join Crowdhealth for a new, voluntary way to handle your healthcare, starting at $50 a month with promo code LIONS: https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/ Come see live comedy and a pod with Brian an Robbie “The Fire” Bernstein Sept 9th or 10th! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/robbiethefire-summer-porch-tour-comedy-showpodcast-hawthorne-la-tickets-668409760587?aff=oddtdtcreator Help support what we do and grow our show! https://www.patreon.com/Lionsofliberty OR support us on Locals! https://lionsofliberty.locals.com/ Subscribe to the BOHRing podcast! https://redcircle.com/shows/bohring Check out the Lions of Liberty Store, including our hot-off-the-press Big Pharma shirts. https://www.lionsofliberty.store Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's Mean Age Daydream, Brian looks at the predictable outcome from terrible laws in Australia and Canada demanding social networks pay media outlets for posting news. Join Crowdhealth for a new, voluntary way to handle your healthcare, starting at $50 a month with promo code LIONS: https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/ Come see live comedy and a pod with Brian an Robbie “The Fire” Bernstein Sept 9th or 10th! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/robbiethefire-summer-porch-tour-comedy-showpodcast-hawthorne-la-tickets-668409760587?aff=oddtdtcreator Help support what we do and grow our show! https://www.patreon.com/Lionsofliberty OR support us on Locals! https://lionsofliberty.locals.com/ Subscribe to the BOHRing podcast! https://redcircle.com/shows/bohring Check out the Lions of Liberty Store, including our hot-off-the-press Big Pharma shirts. https://www.lionsofliberty.store Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is a commentary and does not contain any copyrighted material of the reference source. We strongly recommend accessing/buying the reference source at the same time. ■Reference Source https://www.ted.com/talks/shereen_el_feki_hiv_how_to_fight_an_epidemic_of_bad_laws ■Post on this topic (You can get FREE learning materials!) https://englist.me/168-academic-words-reference-from-shereen-el-feki-hiv-how-to-fight-an-epidemic-of-bad-laws-ted-talk/ ■Youtube Video https://youtu.be/NwZPQMq9P7U (All Words) https://youtu.be/OZr6-d6xclk (Advanced Words) https://youtu.be/YOy950euBNk (Quick Look) ■Top Page for Further Materials https://englist.me/ ■SNS (Please follow!)

Bryan Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University and the author of several books, including Open Borders - The Science and Ethics of Immigration, The Case Against Education and the Myth of the Rational Voter.Bryan is one of the most iconoclastic contemporary thinkers, and had a major influence on the themes of this podcast. His books explain much of the emergent incentives created by the political process that stymie economic growth.In this episode, we talk about his new book "Voters as Mad Scientists - Essays on Political Rationality" and use it as a starter to talk about a variety of topics:Bryan on how the alignment of "Chaotic Good" in the world of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fits his non-conformist style of thinking and practice of breaking bad or unethical laws, as long as you can get away with itWhy voters love to hate business and how the Stockholm Syndrome can help explain it: people like to ally with the powerful, even if they're rich, against rich people or business with less or no political power to hurt themThe politics of what sounds good vs. what is good - explained by social desirability bias, exposed by revealed preferences ("actions speak louder than words") and cemented into practice by status quo biasBryan admits that he's been wrong about cryptocurrency and Bitcoin: F. A. Hayek's idea of de-nationalizing banking has won the day against all oddsIf you're a regular listener to this podcast, you'll chuckle when Bryan compares how someone telling him about Bitcoin for the first time with someone telling him about starting a new country on an island (Prospera is not literally a country though).If starting a new jurisdiction with better laws sounds like a crazy but great idea to you, and your D&D alignment is Lawful-Neutral, Neutral-Good or Chaotic-Good, then come check it out and help us build it - the schedule for coming events is here.

This week we are joined by Dr Julian Buchanan, retired associate professor of criminology and addiction. He is now using his research and experiences to advocate for drug policy reform through the Harm Reduction Coalition Aotearoa.

Julian is originally from Liverpool, UK and is now enjoying a busy ‘retirement' in Waikenae beach.

You only have to look around the country right now to see the power state legislatures have over almost every part of our lives. While the 10th Amendment is a check on the power of the federal government, it gives state leadership an almost infinite amount of power, and in the wrong hands, this unchecked influence has been an absolute disaster for human rights, civil rights and democracy. For 40 years, while Republicans invested billions of dollars and focused energy into building and holding state governing majorities Democrats focused the majority of their attention and money on national races and, while it seemed like things were progressing around the country, individual states were actually putting the pieces in place for regressive laws that would take us back. This stops today. You wanna fight back? We do it at the state level and the States Project tells us how.  Guest social: www.statesproject.org Twitter: @StatesProjectUS Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/StatesProjectUS Instagram: @statesprojectus YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheStatesProject Please RATE and SUBSCRIBE so we can grow the show, open the dialogue, and inspire change moving forward!   All show links here!: https://linktr.ee/politicsgirl Thank you to today's sponsors! trymiracle.com/politicsgirl Code: PoliticsGirl https://genwhypod.com/

In the final episode before our summer break, we dive into a cheese-based conflict between Greece and Denmark and a homophobic Hungarian law that is finally being challenged by the EU in court. Plus, we ring up Una Hajdari, roaming reporter in the Western Balkans, to try to untangle why North Macedonia has had such a rough ride on its path to EU membership. And in a special pre-holiday edition of Isolation Inspiration, we've got a bumper crop of European summer reads and a chat with Gregory Warner from NPR's Rough Translation about work culture around the world. You can follow Una on Twitter here and Szabolcs Panyi, the Hungarian journalist Dominic mentioned, here. The Europeans' Summer 2022 Reading List is here and you can check out Rough Translation's new season, 'Work', at https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510324/rough-translation. Thanks for listening! We'll be back on September 15. If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at patreon.com/europeanspodcast (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by leaving us a review or giving us five stars on Spotify. 00:22 Welcome! 02:33 Good Week: Slovenia legalises gay marriage and adoption 08:25 Bad Week: The Uber Files 19:43 Interview: Janez Potočnik on Europe's food supplies 33:03 Isolation Inspiration: 'Techtopia' and 'Standing Up' 36:25 Happy Ending: Old bones in Spain Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina This podcast is part of the Are We Europe family. Find more like-minded European podcasts at areweeurope.com/audio-family. Twitter | Instagram | hello@europeanspodcast.com

politics & humor

California Is Being Destroyed - Unthinkably Bad Laws Proposed. Dr. Chris Martinson. Watch this video at- https://youtu.be/-64-MWcQe9M 32,076 views Peak Prosperity 465K subscribers Want to hear more? Access to Chris' private content and the wider Peak Prosperity community is as low as $7.50/month. Click here: https://peakprosperity.com/membership/ California is facing a rash of exceptionally dangerous and poor legislation that I literally cannot understand or abide. The only possible way to understand it compassionately is to see those elected officials proposing it as being swept up in Mass Psychosis. But compassion is not the same thing as condoning, let alone approving of, such recklessly indifferent ignorance.  In this video, I discuss the horrendous slate of California bills with Laura Sextro, CEO and COO of the Unity Project. (Fun fact: I am on the strategic advisory council for the Unity Project.) I heartily ask everyone to pitch in here. Write letters, make phone calls, and donate to the Unity Project. Why? Because even if you don't live in California, as goes California, so go other states. If California passes these laws, your state could well be next. This is a battle for the future and soul of our country, individual rights, parental rights, medical freedom and all the rest. We can turn back such obvious mass psychosis by standing up and saying, “No!”

On this very special episode of Woke AF Daily, Danielle is joined by three amazing guests - Family Equality CEO Stacey Stevenson, AFT Secretary Treasurer Fed Ingram, and Lambda Legal attorney Carl Charles. In their conversations, they discuss with Danielle the potential impacts and implications of Florida's "don't say gay" bill on students, teachers, and parents within Florida as well as on other states throughout the country. Support Woke AF Daily at Patreon.com/WokeAF to see the full video edition of today's show, and dozens more.

Today's pre-Thanksgiving episode offers our own crushingly morose tribute to the United States as we battle the phenomenon of prosecutors letting people loose to commit horrible crimes and elite opinion-wielders trashing the United States when this country provided them with bounties untold. Happy Turkey Day and give a listen.

Today’s pre-Thanksgiving episode offers our own crushingly morose tribute to the United States as we battle the phenomenon of prosecutors letting people loose to commit horrible crimes and elite opinion-wielders trashing the United States when this country provided them with bounties untold. Happy Turkey Day and give a listen.

Historian Ben Baumann talks about the various bad laws throughout history that should not have been made legal, from ancient history to today.

Tank and Tracy have returned to sort through the weeks bad laws, bad puns, bad cops, and bad politicians. Join our Patreon and hear Tank sing: Patreon.com/tandtlibertyfactory Bitcoin (BTC)  3FNiu1B5q25x8jhZzaPmMLbu9hVoJpyWVE Zcash (ZEC)  t1KqKcmKugzidsUoFvSc3hHP6xVDNsqExmq Horizen (ZEN)  znmAnp12wQm76PQf5KpQGHRoP3DqCMDPvLa

We discuss new laws signed by our governor and what they mean for Coloradans, Senator John Cooke joins us to share his thoughts on that and more.

Join Michael Borkey of SportsTalk Mississippi, a state-wide radio show, as he gives his unique take on the biggest sports stories in the Southeast and beyond. New episodes uploaded every weekday morning.

Ole Miss and MSU both are on the road this weekend, a bat flip that may cross the line, and a bad law in Georgia that Mississippi schools need to take advantage of

  Click the link to get it out on Gab TV! https://tv.gab.com/channel/crosspolitic/view/midweek-fix-bad-laws-hurt-good-602d8e99ecacb8ee7ed64a72

  Click the link to get it out on Gab TV! https://tv.gab.com/channel/crosspolitic/view/midweek-fix-bad-laws-hurt-good-602d8e99ecacb8ee7ed64a72

Join Martyn in this special episode for 'The Truth of It' as he looking into The 'change and suppression' bill becoming law in Victoria. Martyn dives deep into the bill and answers the question "Where do we go from here?"Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/2qxMNVW#TheTruthOfItSupport the show (https://www.acl.org.au/donate)

Are some laws created to cover the lack of peace when a society is riddled with guilt and shame? Mark Warren gives a spiritual perspective on abortion, LGBTQ issues, and the government.

Sex-worker pride day, Cardi B, Onlyfans, VIP, & ping-pong shows!

Thanks so much for listening to the Bob Harden Show, celebrating our ninth anniversary broadcasting on the internet! On Thursday's show, we get an update from Pastor Rick Stevens, Co-Founder of the Florida Citizens Alliance, about the Hope Scholarship available to all parents of children in Florida public schools, and we discuss their new web site, which serves as a resource for parents of school-aged children. We visit with the Director of Healthcare Studies at the Cato Institute, Michael Cannon, about the impact of President Trump's Executive Order declaring “most favored nation” status for the United States in the purchase of pharmaceutical drugs. We discuss the importance of patent protection and the “sunsetting” of a harmful patent law with the Founder and President of Less Government, Seton Motley. We also visit with the former Mayor of Naples, Mayor Bill Barnett. Please join us for tomorrow's show. We visit with Research Fellow for the Cato Institute William Yeatman, local author and travel, dining and entertainment columnist Sharon Kenny, author of “Getting the Most Bang for the Education Buck,” Brandon Wright, and the author of “The Devil at Our Doorstep,” Dave Bego. Please join us live at 7 a.m. on my website, or you can access the show anytime on podcast platforms (iTunes, TuneIn, Spotify, and Stitcher) or in “show archives” on my website, www.bobharden.com.

This is second part of Worker Struggles, centering on issues around women and paid work. Women working in the sex industry talk about their struggle to name sex work as work, meaning they can demand safer and fair working conditions. The episode also starts to unpack the idea of ‘reproductive labour’, a central idea in feminist thought, describing the usually unpaid care-giving and domestic work predominantly done by women, and whether this is considered work. True Currency: About Feminist Economics is a 6 part podcast by The Alternative School of Economics (artists Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck) who draw on their experiences as artists and mothers, and speak to academic researchers, policy experts, community leaders and activists, to explore financial inequality, feminism, intersectionality, labour exploitation, unpaid work, care, unionisation and reproductive labour. PRESENTED BY: Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck (The Alternative School of Economics) PRODUCED BY: Lucia Scazzocchio (Social Broadcasts) COMMISSIONED BY: Gasworks SUPPORTED BY: The Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Arts Council England. VOICES IN THIS EPISODE: Jade, sex worker & member of United Sex Workers Stacey Clare, stripper and member of United Sex Workers and East London Strippers Collective (ELSC) Shiri Shalmy, Organiser with Cooperation Town, Antiuniversity Now, United Sex Workers and the Women’s Strike Assembly. Full speaker biographies and project information available here: https://bit.ly/tc-episode3.

Alex and Mike drink Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout and discuss weird laws, then get side tracked self reflecting about relationships.

PJ uses the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act 2019 (POFMA) as a case study, to demonstrate how Singapore's People's Action Party government writes poorly worded laws that give themselves immense amounts of power, while misleading the Singaporean people by saying the laws will be used responsibly and for good purposes but then using the law chiefly to silence critics and suppress opposition. See the full video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWjPx48lRVM   N.B.: This video was filmed 31 January 2020. Error at 17:09 - The date is 5 February, not 5 January (the caption has the correct date). "Discretion": https://youtu.be/OhzA60_4_sI "1984" film clip is from https://youtu.be/cAKtpCo8fPE For more on "The Show with PJ Thum", please see https://newnaratif.com/theshowwithpjthum. New Naratif explains and explores the forces which shape Southeast Asia. Find out more about our movement at https://www.newnaratif.com/hello. Please join our movement at https://newnaratif.com/join - your fees support all our original, hard hitting, independent research and journalism.

A national leader in the fight against human trafficking says Florida is one of the state’s leading the way — but we still don’t know the full extent of the problem or a way to prevent it. Also, today on Sunrise: — The state wildlife commission is considering new rules for a handful of companies that offer elephant rides to the public. While the proposal doesn’t ban the practice, new regulations could put some of those companies out of business. — New laws passed in the 2019 Legislative Session are taking effect today. Make sure you don’t hurt a police dog, haze someone, text while driving through a school zone or try to buy a child-like sex doll. — Another new gun bill has been filed for the 2020 Session. This time, it’s to ban guns — including concealed carry — at childcare facilities in Florida. — A toothless Florida woman faces two charges of auto theft after her dentures were discovered inside a stolen Kia.

BAD LAWS Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. John 17:17

A Terrific Lesson on how bad laws are made by using abstract ideas. Such a great way to understand why the government insists on passing laws that cater to this idea. One of the most important lessons for Americans to understand.

Today, I talk about going against the norms. Social media is always criticizing the self proclaimed ‘bad bitch’ and dogging out sex workers. We as a nation need to fight for our liberty. We still not going half though. Fuck Alabama and abortion bans! I support all my women, trans women, binary women and everyone it’s all LOVE.

JimmyT and Sue Williams ask the big questions about the new strata minister ... like, who is he? Plus the best and worst of Australia's strata laws and what makes an ordinary pet a "support animal".

Tune in to hear the wonderful singer songwriter Sam Tier play live for this cheeky live session. With a fist full of stunning tracks, we're in for a treat. He will be playing live at Leaf Hall on the 30th March for BlackRock Music Promotions so catch this warm up session!! If you love new music too, then this weeks playlist will be music to your ears! We have new tracks form the likes of Dopamine, Matter Of Mind, BAD LAWS, Banshee UK, This Life, Ragmans Daughter, A Wild Frontier, The Young ARCADES, 26th Avenue, Gon von Zola, EDWARD SANSOM, Kian Russell, Deco & Phoebe Coco. The mix is an all house mix this week from DJ Parry and its one sweet mix. You can also check out more about the show via the website at www.ThePremiumBlendRadioShow.co.uk

This week is another variety show with a training tip about gun safety from Sgt. Bill Silvia, Mia Anstine's thoughts on the new, Draconian gun-control bills that have just passed the House of Representatives, and Pastor Bennett pontificates about Sin and the season of Lent which begins this week. Use these Links to Support Armed Lutheran Radio Armed Lutheran Radio is a listener-supported podcast. If you value the information and entertainment we provide, consider supporting the show by joining our membership site, or shopping at your favorite online stores using the links below. Join the Reformation Gun Club! Shop at Amazon. Shop at GunMagWarehouse. Shop ShootSteel.com Shop for everyday cigar deals at Cigar Page Get Regular Refills Coffee Subscriptions at the Dunkin' Donuts Shop! Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network Ballistic Minute with Sergeant Bill Sgt. Bill discusses the importance of safety in competitive shooting and how experienced shooters can take safety protocols for granted. Focus on safety at all times to avoid life-threatening mistakes. Mia's Motivations with Mia Anstine Mia is back from Washington DC where she joined pro-2A voices from around the country to speak out against the gun control bills which were being debated in the House of Representatives and which were later passed. Contact your Senators and tell them to oppose these un-Constitutional bills. You can read the text of HB 8, The Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019. Pastoral Pontifications Pastor Bennett responds to a New York Times article "Raising Children without the Concept of Sin" and how it relates to the coming season of Lent. Prayer of the Week O Lord, we implore You, mercifully hear our prayers, and, having set us free from the bonds of sin, defend us from all evil; for You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. Get in Touch Visit our Feedback Page and leave us a message! Please tell your friends about us, leave an iTunes review, and like us on Facebook Join our Facebook group, Fans of Armed Lutheran Radio Subscribe to us and follow us on Youtube Follow us on Twitter @armedlutheran And search for us on Instagram Check Out More at Our Website Our Closing Theme A rockin' rendition of A Mighty Fortress is Our God, performed just for Armed Lutheran Radio by Kenny Gates. Keep Shooting, Keep Praying, We'll Talk to you Next time!

We revisit Episode 1 with Shoshana Weissman of the R Street Institute on this special Halloween edition of the Urbane Cowboys.

All over the US and Canada as well as other nations, "Legalization" of cannabis is being discussed and laws are being passed. so far, most have been "Stepping Stones" to actually decriminalizing the plant and in the US, none trump the federal CSA when the gubment wishes to flex it's muscle, it does. Why do good people continue to break the law when it comes to this plant and why do organizations like The Human Solution international defend them?  I invite you to call in this week if you are a defendant facing cannabis charges whether or not you were following your state laws, if you are advocating for someone that fits this description or if you disagree and feel that "the law is the law" and the only way to be correct is to change the law.....    

Adam opens this week's episode of Reasonable Doubt talking about his upcoming Willy T. Ribbs documentary, including some surprising influences from Caitlyn Jenner and Bill Cosby. Then Mark calls back a topic from last week in which the guys briefly discussed the Supreme Court hearing the case of a cake "artist" who refused to sell his cakes to a gay customer due to his religious beliefs. After that, the guys continue another conversation from last week on why Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch met on a private plane last year during the election while Hilary was under investigation.

Should you be forced to allow residents to smoke medical marijuana in your properties?  Are you concerned about Rent Control Laws affecting your bottom line?  Who should pay the cost of getting rid of Bed Bugs?  Is it your responsibility to make sure your residents are registered to vote? Who is helping to shape the legislation that answers these questions? The Rental Property Owners Association ("RPOA") is, that's who. And today, we talk with Clay Powell, the Director of the RPOA, about a little understood, yet vital function of the RPOA, which is to work with local and state legislators to prevent laws that could make owning rental property more expensive and cumbersome for Landlords and Investors. Clay and I discuss recent successes in preventing mandated inspections for Lead Paint, requiring landlords to register their residents to vote, expensive requirements for new smoke detector technology, and many other issues that affect our bottom line. The RPOA is protecting your rights as a Landlord and Investor, whether you're a member or not.  You can help out by becoming a member: www.rpoaonline.org You can also contribute to the Political Action Committee ("PAC") by calling 616-454-3385 with your donation. Enjoy the show!

Financial Markets/Gold Bad Banks Bad Banking practices (Wells Fargo not the only bank) Deutsche Bank update Quarterly earnings Moody's warns DB dangerously close to Default Point Lawsuits Alternatives to cash bonuses Bad Democracy FBI reopening case on Hilary and her emails Bad misleading laws Open Enrolment today for Obamacare Assessing the Impact of the Dodd-Frank Act: Didn't accomplish the purpose: Grow the economy, increase business loans to small businesses 50%-200% cost increase for banks to facilitate the required reporting of Dodd Frank to the Fed. Hindered small banks causing big banks to become bigger as a result of buy outs. Financial Markets/Gold       Elections who get in office how would that affect gold and silver prices?    Give away fresh off the press two white papers 1.“The Coming Bail In” 2.”YOUR IRA HAVING PHYSICAL METALS AND TAKING POSSESSION WITH NO TAX LIABILITY 877-448-2646 or go to www.landmarkgold.com.

Jim Crow Laws, the Nuremberg Laws, Bill C-51, Sudanese apostasy and the common sundae. Plus news & pop culture. Part 2 of 2.

The Bloody Code, transportation to Australia, prohibition of nonbelievers to office, sexist laws, laws against homosexuality and blasphemy laws. Part 1 of 2.

Bad laws mean bad enforcement of those laws. If a politician passes a bad law that means that he is willing to potentially kill you for the enforcement of that law. I stated several bad laws that need to be repealed completely.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 134. [Update: Transcript is here, and appended below.] This is my appearance as a Guest panelist on This Week in Law, Episode 267 (July 18, 2014).  Brief description: “Are patent trolls losing ground? Dish Anywhere in the Aereo aftermath, FCC gets 1 million comments on U.S. net neutrality debate and more!" Once again, the hosts and the other guest were congenial to my radical anti-IP views, and the other guest, law professor Harry Surden, basically acknowledged that there is no clear empirical evidence in favor of the patent system. (BTW the title of the show stemmed from my use of the fancy SAT word eleemosynary—it's used in Louisiana law on occasion, which is how I know, but it is obscure, but a fun word, so I had to drop it in the conversation... Some of my previous posts related to some of the topics discussed: Net Neutrality Developments Against Net Neutrality A Libertarian Take on Net Neutrality Costs of the Patent System Revisited Yet Another Study Finds Patents Do Not Encourage Innovation Patent trolls as mafioso (and that's a compliment) My previous two appearances on TWiL were: KOL104 | This Week in Law 97: God Creates. We Patent. IP, Net Neutrality, etc (2011) and KOL103 | This Week in Law 133: Beyonce, Bad Laws, and Breastaurants (2011). Transcript THIS WEEK IN LAW 267 (TRANSCRIPT) Aug 11th 2014 This Week in Law Episode 267 - Jul 18 2014 Google, Dropbox, Canon and other c… Denise Howell: Next up on This Week in Law, Stefan Kinsella and Harry Surden join Evan Brown and me. We'll talk about the FCC getting the soppa treatment, piloting a Nautilus through SCOTUS' patent wonderland. We're going to have some other strange boats, too. And talk about the law's role regarding kids' cruelty on social media. Much more too on This Week in Law. Netcasts You Love, From People You Trust. This is TWiT! (TWiT logo) Bandwidth for This Week in Law is provided by CacheFly at CacheFly.com (CacheFly logo) Advertisement: This is TWiL, This Week in Law, with Denise Howell and Evan Brown, Episode 267 recorded July 18, 2014 Eleemosynary, My Dear Watson Denise: (bagandbaggage.com - @dhowell) Hi folks, I'm Denise Howell. And you're joining us for This Week in Law, thank you so much for joining us.  We are thrilled to have you and we hope you will be thrilled to be here. We have an awesome panel for you today. We haven't done too much on the Supreme Court's recent patent decisions and we're definitely going to get to that today, plus a whole bunch of other great stuff at the intersection of law and technology. And to help us understand it all, we've got Stephan Kinsella joining us once again here on the show. Hello Stephan. Stephan Kinsella: (stephankinsella.com - @nskinsella) Hello. Denise glad to be here. Denise: Great to have you back. What's going on with you these days? Stephan: Well, trying to stay out of the Houston see in the summer, but having a good summer and following all these patent cases and IP developments. It's interesting to watch, but so far everything is going very well. The good thing about being on your show, I save time I listen to it anyway, so I can save the podcast for a walk. Denise: That's wonderful; great, we could save you some time. And make room for somebody else in your podcast lineup. Also joining us a return visitor to TWiL is Harry Surden from University of Colorado law school at Boulder. Harry Surden: (harrysurden.com - @HarrySurden) Hey, Denise. How are you? Denise: I'm doing well, thank you so much for joining us. Great to have you back. Harry: It's really great to be back. Denise: So, tell us about Boulder in the summertime; make us all jealous. Harry: Boulder in the summer is outstanding. I mean, I can't say enough about it. There's millions of hikes just within the city's borders and it's beautiful. This has been a particularly mild summer.

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 134. This is my appearance as a Guest panelist on This Week in Law, Episode 267 (July 18, 2014).  Brief description: “Are patent trolls losing ground? Dish Anywhere in the Aereo aftermath, FCC gets 1 million comments on U.S. net neutrality debate and more!" Once again, the hosts and the other guest were congenial to my radical anti-IP views, and the other guest, law professor Harry Surden, basically acknowledged that there is no clear empirical evidence in favor of the patent system. (BTW the title of the show stemmed from my use of the fancy SAT word eleemosynary—it's used in Louisiana law on occasion, which is how I know, but it is obscure, but a fun word, so I had to drop it in the conversation... Some of my previous posts related to some of the topics discussed: Net Neutrality Developments Against Net Neutrality A Libertarian Take on Net Neutrality Costs of the Patent System Revisited Yet Another Study Finds Patents Do Not Encourage Innovation Patent trolls as mafioso (and that’s a compliment) My previous two appearances on TWiL were: KOL104 | This Week in Law 97: God Creates. We Patent. IP, Net Neutrality, etc (2011) and KOL103 | This Week in Law 133: Beyonce, Bad Laws, and Breastaurants (2011).

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 103. This is my appearance as a Guest panelist on This Week in Law, Episode 133 (Oct. 13, 2011), entitled "Beyonce, Bad Laws, and Breastaurants." The two hosts and fellow guest panelist were all lawyers. We had a wide-ranging two-hour discussion about a variety of legal and policy matters, including a number of IP problems covering patent, copyright, trademark, and even trade secret. We also discussed the Occupy Wall Street movement, Apple's use of IP to squelch clones and competition, copyright threats against Beyonce for her dance moves, and many others as indicated by the links on the episode's show notes. The video is below; it's also on the TWiL page for this episode; you can also subscribe to the audio or video podcast for this show; here's their FaceBook page. A few more backup links and points below about some of the issues discussed. At one point we got into a discussion of Obama's use of a signing statement to approve ACTA as an "executive agreement" (see ACTA, Executive Agreements, and the Bricker Amendment), I noted that under international law, violation by a host state of the citizen of another state gave rise to a right for the violated citizen's home state to use military force against the host state. I remarked that one danger of internationalizing intellectual property by means of executive agreements and treaties is that it could give western nations an excuse to military force against countries that allow piracy. However, this was a bit of an overstatement since, as I explain in International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner's Guide (see this excerpt), this type of "gunboat diplomacy" is ostensibly no longer permitted since the founding of the UN in 1945: "Today, some investors hailing from militarily and politically powerful States might favor the threat or use of force to obtain restitution or compensation for expropriated property. Such an option is no longer available, however, due to fundamental changes in international law and politics. In particular, the United Nations Charter has since 1945 prohibited the use of force to resolve disputes, except in the case of self-defence. Today, it is generally accepted that a State may not use force against another State in response to a taking of the property of one of its nationals." The quote I mentioned about the problem with making law by legislation is by James Carter, who wrote, in 1884, in opposing the attempt to codify New York's common law: At present, when any doubt arises in any particular case as to what the true rule of the unwritten [i.e., judge-found, common-law developed] law is, it is at once assumed that the rule most in accordance with justice and sound policy is the one which must be declared to be the law. The search is for that rule. The appeal is squarely made to the highest considerations of morality and justice. These are the rallying points of the struggle. The contention is ennobling and beneficial to the advocates, to the judges, to the parties, to the auditors, and so indirectly to the whole community. The decision then made records another step in the advance of human reason towards that perfection after which it forever aspires. But when the law is conceded to be written down in a statute, and the only question is what the statute means, a contention unspeakably inferior is substituted. The dispute is about words. The question of what is right or wrong, just or unjust, is irrelevant and out of place. The only question is what has been written. What a wretched exchange for the manly encounter upon the elevated plane of principle! I mentioned the tension between antitrust and patent/copyright law; more discussion of this issue can be found in endnote 1 here; We discussed the America Invents Act; I've since completed a detailed writeup about this: The American Invents Act and Patent Reform: The Good, the Meh, and the Ugly;

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 103. This is my appearance as a Guest panelist on This Week in Law, Episode 133 (Oct. 13, 2011), entitled "Beyonce, Bad Laws, and Breastaurants." The two hosts and fellow guest panelist were all lawyers. We had a wide-ranging two-hour discussion about a variety of legal and policy matters, including a number of IP problems covering patent, copyright, trademark, and even trade secret. We also discussed the Occupy Wall Street movement, Apple's use of IP to squelch clones and competition, copyright threats against Beyonce for her dance moves, and many others as indicated by the links on the episode's show notes. The video is below; it's also on the TWiL page for this episode; you can also subscribe to the audio or video podcast for this show; here's their FaceBook page. A few more backup links and points below about some of the issues discussed. At one point we got into a discussion of Obama's use of a signing statement to approve ACTA as an "executive agreement" (see ACTA, Executive Agreements, and the Bricker Amendment), I noted that under international law, violation by a host state of the citizen of another state gave rise to a right for the violated citizen's home state to use military force against the host state. I remarked that one danger of internationalizing intellectual property by means of executive agreements and treaties is that it could give western nations an excuse to military force against countries that allow piracy. However, this was a bit of an overstatement since, as I explain in International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide (see this excerpt), this type of "gunboat diplomacy" is ostensibly no longer permitted since the founding of the UN in 1945: "Today, some investors hailing from militarily and politically powerful States might favor the threat or use of force to obtain restitution or compensation for expropriated property. Such an option is no longer available, however, due to fundamental changes in international law and politics. In particular, the United Nations Charter has since 1945 prohibited the use of force to resolve disputes, except in the case of self-defence. Today, it is generally accepted that a State may not use force against another State in response to a taking of the property of one of its nationals." The quote I mentioned about the problem with making law by legislation is by James Carter, who wrote, in 1884, in opposing the attempt to codify New York's common law: At present, when any doubt arises in any particular case as to what the true rule of the unwritten [i.e., judge-found, common-law developed] law is, it is at once assumed that the rule most in accordance with justice and sound policy is the one which must be declared to be the law. The search is for that rule. The appeal is squarely made to the highest considerations of morality and justice. These are the rallying points of the struggle. The contention is ennobling and beneficial to the advocates, to the judges, to the parties, to the auditors, and so indirectly to the whole community. The decision then made records another step in the advance of human reason towards that perfection after which it forever aspires. But when the law is conceded to be written down in a statute, and the only question is what the statute means, a contention unspeakably inferior is substituted. The dispute is about words. The question of what is right or wrong, just or unjust, is irrelevant and out of place. The only question is what has been written. What a wretched exchange for the manly encounter upon the elevated plane of principle! I mentioned the tension between antitrust and patent/copyright law; more discussion of this issue can be found in endnote 1 here; We discussed the America Invents Act; I've since completed a detailed writeup about this: The American Invents Act and Patent Reform: The Good, the Meh, and the Ugly;

In This Episode: I expose Bad Laws: Laws that were passed to placate us and make us believe we are “tough on crime”, but in reality  do more harm than good and often are not worth the money it costs … Continue reading →

This episode was all done very last-minute. Forgive me for me scatter-brain.

SPECIAL: Drug Prohibition - A War Against Reality And ReasonBad Laws: Mandatory Minimum Sentencing For Drug OffencesBad Drugs Or Bad Habits? - Coren Vs Metz - And A Panel DiscussionDrug Prohibition: Good Or Bad? The Economist Won't Say - But They're Against ItLeft And Right: Disagreement Within The Cannabis CultureDrug Use: Escape From Reality? Or Escape From Unreality?This is a Canadian show but it is the same as US.

You can call me what you want, but when it all boils down, I'm 100%, LIBERTARIAN.