GOV310 – In The News: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, June 22, 2016

In the news.

All right, welcome, I’m Professor Shop, and I’m Professor McDaniel. We welcome you to the another

installment of In the News for American and Texas Government. Today, we’re going to discuss four topics. The

first topic will be of the Senate’s vote on gun control, a file that will give an update on

the future of the Sanders campaign, followed by discussion of an idea

that’s been introduced in the House and the Senate. It looks like it’s moving forward. And that is the drafting

of women making women eligible for the draft. And finally, we’ll move to Texas where we’ll talk about Texas

and its suit against the federal government and regarding the location of Syrian refugees.

But first, to start off with the gun control vote, which happened in the Senate. And so in reaction to

the shootings in Orlando, there’s a great deal of pressure put on Congress to do something about

gun control. And there’s actually a 15 hour filibuster by members of the Democratic Party, led by

Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. We have a video we’ll pick which talks about the filibuster.

Over just the past five years, lawmakers have introduced more than 100 gun control

proposals in Congress. Not one of them has been passed into law. In fact,

very few of the proposals even made it to the House or Senate floor on Monday evening.

The Senate is slated to vote on four more. Democrats have proposed two, one

that would ban suspected terrorists from being able to purchase a gun and another that would

expand background checks. Those two proposals, plus two less restrictive measures offered

by Republicans, are all expected to fail. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,

Republican from Kentucky, scheduled the four votes after Democrats pressured Republicans to

take action on guns in the wake of the June 12th Orlando shooting that left 49 people

dead and 53 wounded. So as you see, this vote was put

forward. This was a vote that happened on Monday night. And this is again, after 15 hour filibuster just

to force the vote and are four measures put forward. The first one which

I’ll discuss was from Senator Chuck Grassley and Republican from Iowa.

And this failed in a 53 to 47 vote. And we’ll talk about that. Why, even though you receive

to increase funding for background checks and change the language, barring people with mental

health issues from buying a gun. Now, Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut, who led

the filibuster, his failed with 44 positive votes, 56 negative votes,

and he argued for expanding background checks to the sales of firearms at gun shows and on

the Internet. So this has been seen as a huge loophole. The fact that you do it through background checks for guns,

so the gun shows are over the Internet. Third, we have Senator Dianne Feinstein, which

hers failed. Forty seven. Fifty three. And we’re let the Justice Department ban gun sales

to anyone who is on the terrorist watch list. In the past five years. So this has been one

of the arguments that if you’re on the terrorist watch list, you can not purchase the gun. Again, there’s some pushback on this

specifically because it’s seen as violating due process. This isn’t you’re suspected of a crime.

You been convicted of a crime, but you’re being treated as a criminal. And finally, from our own

Texas Senator, John Cornyn, his failed 53 47 allow the government

to block gun sales for up to three days pending a court review. Furthermore,

the government would also have to show probable cause that the prospective gun buyer was involved in terrorist activities.

And so would you see coming out of these meetings? Look, if you’re seen as some type of terrorists, something like that

you see as a threat to the nation, you should not be able to buy guns, as many people said.

This is a issue of if you can’t fly a plane, why should we allow you to buy a gun

anyway? Swear by keeping guns away from terrorists while we’re focused on international terrorists. Also concerned about domestic

terrorists as well. Now, again, all four failed. And as you see on the cover from the New

York Daily News, again, a very strong response to this, saying the Senate votes in

favor of continued mass killings where you see this very strong negative reaction to what happened in the Senate.

But we want to talk about is why is that the case? Why is that you had to these proposals that

had the majority that have 50 percent plus one, but still failed. And one

things were important talking about here is whether the rules in the Senate was specific in regards to the filibuster and cloture.

Yes. So, look, there’s a couple of different issues that are going on here. And we’ll talk a little bit about the

politics. We get to more of our round robin phase of the discussion in the news, but

we didn’t want to set the parameters since this is a high profile example of Congress considering a piece

of legislation to deal with the public policy issue in the United States. In this case, gun control.

So a lot of the things we’ve been talking about in the modules, interest groups. So the National Rifle Association

versus victims rights groups versus more progressive leaning groups. They’re both kind

of arrayed on this issue with very, very different perspectives on. However, you know, they take

their fight to the Congress and in the Congress, you know, the House is what we call a majority

Korean institution. Basically, if you’ve got 50 plus one votes, you’re going to do pretty well.

The Senate in a lot of ways is not a majority Korean institution, and that may come as a surprise

to some of you haven’t really done any kind of detailed studies of the Congress. But when we say it’s not a majority Korean institution,

what we mean is that there are institutional arrangements within the Senate. They’re agreed upon arrangements. They’re

not in the Constitution. They’re simply kind of rules of order within the Senate that

guide how things happen. And one of those rules and this is where we’ll get into the some of the definitions

here. One of those rules is that if you gain the floor of the Senate. So go back

to your. You know, you’re black and white catalog and look up the old James Stewart movie. Mr.

Smith goes to Washington. By the way, you should watch it anyway. It’s a really great movie. But one of the things that you’ll see

in that movie is Jimmy Stewart as this, you know, freshman senator

who conducts this filibuster, a filibuster with an F, not a P-8s. That’s a sure

way to a D-minus on your test. Right. With an F filibuster, F

I L I B, USTR filibuster. What that means is that you gain control.

From the Senate floor and nobody can interrupt. Nobody can stop

your control. They cannot do anything until you relinquish control of the floor. Now, it’s

an institutional maneuver. You have to keep speaking or at least you know, you cannot be formally

interrupted. If you do, then you lose control and whoever gains the floor can sort of get

back on whatever order business they want. But a filibuster basically brings the Senate to a halt.

And it’s just an arrangement. It’s not a particularly American arrangement. You know, the word filibuster comes from legislative

processes and some other countries. But we’ve adopted it here. So you may be asking, well, how does this ever stop?

All right. Well, the only way to end the filibuster is through a vote of cloture. C

l o t u r e cloture. Now, how do you do a vote culture of what’s required?

You need 60 votes. So it’s one hundred senators. If you get 60 of them to vote

cloture, you end to filibuster. So when people talk about the Republicans and the Democrats

in the Senate and they talk about, well, the Republicans have a majority, but the Democrats can filibuster

and the Republicans who right now have what is a fifty four or fifty three things, but I think it’s 54

seats in the Senate. They’ve got enough for a majority, but they can’t shut down a filibuster.

They need some Democratic votes to do that. This is really important. Four years ago during Obamacare, when it was considered

by the Senate, the Republicans, you know, they didn’t have a majority. But when

Ted Kennedy died, the Republicans won that seat in a shocking upset in Massachusetts. They

had enough votes to prevent a vote of cloture, which meant they could filibuster Obamacare.

So that was a big deal. Right. So in this case, there are a bunch of proposals out of the for the Professor McDaniel

mentioned. There were a couple that had majority support, but they didn’t have enough to override

a filibuster to engage in a vote of cloture. So essentially, all of them ended up dying.

Nobody wanted to press it because they didn’t have the magic 60. And so they didn’t even try.

Now, by the way, a filibuster today is not what it used to be back in the old days. And you actually see

this in some of the classic movies I mentioned. You know, the person would speak and speak and speak.

But they had to keep speaking. They could not, you know, take a bathroom break. They had to keep going until

they physically wore down, at which point, you know, they would collapse and be carried off in

the Senate, would go on, do its business. Right. That’s not the way it is today. And actually, I’m very much opposed to that.

I think you’re going to have a silly institution like the filibuster. Sorry, but you got at

least make it a real, real, you know, kind of manly filibuster, right,

where you hold that floor until you drop dead. That’s a that’s sort of proving your point on principle. Nowadays,

they take bathroom breaks. You can actually do rotating filibusters if there’s agreement.

So one guy can get up and talk for a while, then a woman can come and take over. It’s lost all

of its, you know, kind of or it’s like Tag Russell. Yeah. It’s just not it’s not quite as interesting

as it used to be. Right. But again, why is it that the rules have changed? It’s by mutual agreement of Republicans

and Democrats in the Senate so they could end the filibuster as an institutional arrangement tomorrow if they

wanted to. But neither party wants to because they’re always afraid they’re gonna be in the majority and the minority

one day and they want to filibuster to be able to prevent legislation that they think is particularly onerous. Now,

I was, you know, kind of ragging on the filibuster there a few minutes ago. But if you wanted to defend it, you’d say,

well, it preserves the rights of minorities or a minority party, I should say. Right. So

the framers of the Constitution didn’t want tyranny of the majority. They didn’t want popular positions to be

able to just run roughshod over minority positions. And so, you know, the filibuster

is an institutional way to protect minorities, even though they don’t have a majority of public opinion from,

you know, just getting ramrodded. Right. So that’s kind of why it exists anyway. This was the latest example.

But what that means is a poor piece of gun control legislation or any other substantive piece of legislation

to get a bill out of the Senate. You basically need the support of 60 members, because if you’ve got

vote of cloture to shut them down. All right. So that’s kind of where we are on that. Now, with respect to gun

control itself, it’s still an interesting issue. You noticed this, Professor McCain, you mentioned

like the corn an amendment. John Cornyn, our own senator here from Texas. You know, he had a thing in there

that said you need a court order in order to establish that there was a

reason to deny you a three day, three day check. And if the court can’t produce

evidence that the person is actually engaged in terrorist activities, then

they go ahead and get the gun. Right. So that’s obviously a very you know, from the pro-gun side

of the aisle, Cornyn’s amendment is designed to protect those rights. Right. But then on the other hand, you know, you had the Connecticut

senator whose position was almost an outright closure of the loopholes.

Right. When it comes to gun shows and Internet sales. Right. So, by the way, the left and the right

are just talking past each other right now. And a lot of ways, I think some Republicans have figured

out that. In some ways, they’re on the wrong side of the gun control issue. Not maybe broadly,

but they are on the defense when it comes to some of these semi-automatic weapons and military style rifles

and things like that. You know, there’s significant majorities of opinion that we ought to close loopholes

and make those less available. Right. But it will also Lupi guys back just to touch base with some

of the broader points we’ve made in the course. This like First Amendment issues like some

of the search and seizure issues. This is a case in which we’re still trying to define the constitution.

Right. There is a constitutional right to bear arms into armed the militia. But

where does that end? I mean, everybody acknowledges there’s got to be some limits. There’s no guaranteed right

for an insane person, whether a citizen or not, to have access to a bazooka.

But short of that, where do we stop? Where do we draw the line? Do we have a right to automatic? What about semiautomatic?

What about certain kinds of rifles? You know, what sorts of accouterments on the rifle or the gun are allowed?

Are any of them allowed in the Second Amendment? Is that just something else? OK. So all of this stuff

we’re still figuring out, just like we know, there are limits on free speech. We know there are limits on guns,

but there’s not a lot of agreement on where to draw those lines. And it’ll probably change over time. Yeah. And it’s

again, it’s something that’s going back and forth. And one thing it’s also important to note about this, again, talking

about the way Congress operates is that even if you did have 60 votes coming out and it was

going to get out the Senate, it would still go to the House. Or maybe you thought it would just die. It would die in the house. So

just because I mean, it was started in the Senate, they were moved to the House. The House can make changes

and then maybe kill it there, make changes that the Senate hates and it’ll be killed there. So the

probability that’s getting through was slow to begin with. But in many ways it was a symbolic vote. And

that’s what people are arguing, is that when Senator Murphy was calling for his vote, he knew was going to get voted down.

But he wanted something on the record because as the video showed, many of these have not even gone

to a floor vote. And so for the most part, they’re killed in committee. They haven’t gone to a floor vote. So he was really trying to

force a floor vote. And I think in many ways to really say, OK, I’m drawing the line in the sand, who’s

with me, who’s against me? And in the middle of a campaign. This is something you could use to clearly stake

out. Here’s where I stand on the policies. Here’s what this other person stands on the policies. And I think on the Democratic

side, they wanted Republicans on record opposing certain kinds of gun control because they

think it’s gonna be difficult to defend that. You know, in the context of several mass shootings

in an election years, Professor McDaniel mentioned tangential to this is the Supreme Court refused

to listen to an appeal towards a Connecticut law which bans the amount of automatic weapons. So our response

to Sandy Hook, Connecticut, banned certain semiautomatic weapons. Citizens of the state sued arguments,

violated their Second Amendment rights. The Supreme Court basically, what with the lower courts, the sentence that we won’t hear

this and upheld that law by saying we will not hear this. And so when the Supreme Court says we want to hear this,

it basically means we don’t see any reason to change or there’s not enough reason for us to review this.

So the lower court’s ruling stands, which means that that Connecticut law still remains in effect.

All right. Now, I guess we want to now transition to the second topic, which is the continued candidacy

of Bernie Sanders, our favorite Vermont social Democrat. So we have a video kind of queuing up

where we stand with respect to feeling the Bern this week. We must continue our grassroots

effort to create the America that we know we can become.

And we must take that energy into the Democratic National Convention

on July 25th in Philadelphia, where we will have more than nineteen

hundred delegates. I recently had the opportunity

to meet with Secretary Clinton and discuss some of the very important issues

facing our country and the Democratic Party. It is no secret

that Secretary Clinton and I have strong disagreements on some very, very

important issues. It is also true that our views are quite close on others.

I look forward in the coming weeks to continued discussion between the two campaigns.

I also look forward to working with Secretary Clinton to transform the Democratic Party

so that it becomes a party of working people and young people and not

just wealthy campaign contributors. A party that has the guts

to take on Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry, the fossil fuel industry,

and the other powerful special interests that dominate so much of our

political and economic life. Well, there’s Bernie clarifying

why he continues to be an active candidate, despite the fact that Hillary Clinton

has clinched the Democratic nomination in terms of, as best we can tell, delegates

and even she’s actually got a majority of pledged delegates. And she also has an

outright majority when you call into account superdelegates. So people start to ask what why is the burns are

still involved in this race? And, you know, I think there are a lot of people who think that he actually

had more leverage when he was kind of effectively contesting primaries

than he does now. The Smart set in Washington, in New York are kind of the opinion that Bernie is less

relevant by the day and actually has less leverage now than he did a couple of weeks ago. So what does he want? I mean,

I get the sense the two things are going on. The first is that he doesn’t want to be the vise president. I don’t think that’s his gig.

And Hillary is not going to have Bernie as the vise president. He wants to have an impact

on the Democratic platform. That’s the the National Party’s statement of principles in

issue positions that they draft every four years at the national convention. That’s unquestionably true.

There’s also some sense and this is kind of, you know, it’s rumor and innuendo.

So I will feel free to dispense it to you. And that is that there are people close to Bernie, his

wife and his main adviser who believe that Hillary Clinton will be indicted. What

that means is that if Bernie suspend his campaign, he can continue to raise money. But he’s not an active

candidate right now at this point. He’s raised a ton of money. So I’m not quite sure what that would give him. But

if he suspends his campaign, he basically kind of cedes the field to Hillary Clinton. If he doesn’t suspend the campaign.

If he keeps it active, then I think the logic is he is the most logical candidate.

If Hillary Clinton, because of the e-mail and the server scandal, gets recommended

by the FBI to be indicted by the Justice Department, by the way, the FBI could recommend indicting

Hillary Clinton. The Justice Department could decline to do so. It’s very unclear with what the FBI is going

to do or whether they’ll do it before the election. If they were to recommend indictment, it’s completely unclear

that the Justice Department would take that seriously. But if the FBI did that, though, it would be a big

deal. There would be Democrats and others who would say that Hillary should step down. And I think

one of the reasons Bernie staying in the race is an active candidate is that it sets him apart from people like

Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren, who weren’t candidates as the logical

heir. Right. So that’s that’s my two cents worth. Again, a lot of this is me just spitballing from,

you know, hundred miles away. But I got nothing better to do. It’s like a hundred degrees outside. So

I’ll engage in rumor and innuendo. So any thoughts on. As I said, our favorite

senator from Vermont? Well, I mean, again, you have Maple sirup and you have burning

two of the greatest things the Romans ever given us. And again, nothing gets Vermont.

My first job talking at the University of Vermont. Was it really? Yes. The offer. Oh, God

let you to do. Well, I was kind of glad because I got the wakeup call and it said you’ll be greeted to

six to eight inches of snow. That’s not a greeting. That’s like saying the Klan will greet

you as you get off the plane. All right. So no one happy about that at all. But with that

being said, Bernie Sanders is really painting this as a social as a broader

social movement. And he’s saying that he’s got a care, the social movement into the Democratic Party.

And you see the same thing in the 60s where you saw this push in terms of to

change the Democratic Party while citizen Republican Party where conservatives have said, no, this this

is what I want the party to be in the future. The other thing that hurts, Bernie. Again, I’ve said over and over

again is that really he became a Democrat a year ago while he caucus with the Democrats working the Democrats as X identifying

as one. He didn’t. And so he’s trying to change a party that

he just became a member of. And so many people aren’t that happy about that. So it’s kind of getting a new roommate

who wants to change all the furniture is like a horse you just got here. And so that

that becomes problematic. But but also maybe seems problematic about this is

also about Bernie Sanders campaign. If you look at most of the rhetoric of Hillary Clinton, it’s more of let’s bring Wall

Street everybody together to make sure everybody’s voices are heard, whereas Bernie Sanders really silly, pitting an

us versus them argument. So he says young people, working class that we take

all wall. So we take on the pharmaceutical companies as if, you know, those are the enemies. And just as much as

we criticize it, just as Ted Cruz or Donald Trump for this language of saying there are only

certain Americans that are important, you see the same thing coming out of Bernie Sanders. And this may hurt him in the end,

whereas Hillary Clinton’s is more of a let’s bring everybody together. And the problem. Mean people argues that

her argument to bring everybody together means that Wall Street may continue winning more than it should. And the

people are forgotten that they’re symbolically where policywise Wall Street wins. It’s

not really clear, but it is very clear in his language is he’s staking out like, these are my people.

Those are your people, us versus them. And that’s kind of how he’s gone about in terms of the campaign

as well, saying, look. We’re the new progressive’s versus the old establishment, which has been bought

up by special interests. No, I think this is an important question. I mean, some of you may be asking why is Hillary Clinton

even concerned about Bernie Sanders? I mean, she’s got the nomination. Can’t she blow him off? It’s

a legitimate question. It’s not clear to me Bernie Sanders is going to be able to deliver.

The demography of the Democratic primary was essentially Bernie Sanders was dominating amongst white

voters, especially white voters, under 45 years of age. Right. That’s that’s sort of his crowd. Hillary

Clinton did really, really well with African-Americans, with older people of all races and

ethnicities. Right. And she did pretty well to Hispanics, too, although it varied a little bit how much, you know,

how big her advantage was, sort of location by location. Right. But do we really think that

Bernie can deliver younger voters? You know, those of you out there who are Sanders supporters.

If Sanders were to drop out tomorrow and say, I am endorsing, Hillary could go out and work for Hillary,

you know, support Hillary, would that mean a lot to you? You know, and and part of it is, is Professor Dean

said the rhetoric and the issue agenda. Are you all out there? Who are

Sanders supporters convinced that Hillary is really down for the revolution? A lot of people aren’t. I mean, you know,

she’s as many people have pointed out, she has been very close to Wall Street for a long time. Her

husband’s administration wasn’t all that hostile to Wall Street. Wall Street did pretty well by the Clintons. And the Clintons

are done pretty well by Wall Street. So, you know, there’s an ambivalence. So that’s why this dance is going on. Hillary

would really like that support. She’d like that enthusiasm. But tapping into it, still tough.

So Bernie’s trying to keep that card and play it for all it’s worth. Right. Yeah. I mean, it’s going

to enter see how this plays out moving into the convention. I clearly believe that he will be able to influence

the platform. But to what degree? He’ll be able to drastically change it. It isn’t really clear.

And platforms don’t necessarily mean mean very much either these days. You know, they used to mean a lot. Not so much anymore.

By the way, Democrats in Philadelphia, they’ll go second. All right. They’re the incumbent party,

so they go second, despite kind of tradition. I guess there’s a soda tax

in Philly. Just went into effect. So that’s going to hurt those Democrats. And Republicans are in Cleveland where presumably

both fat and happy with LeBron James highs and stuff like that going on right here

by trying to resurrect their burned jerseys. Now, the Knicks have got to move on to is

something that may have passed, but you may not have noticed. But the idea of women being in the draft

and and the Senate vote over the National Defense Authorization Act, which is a six hundred

two billion dollar defense spending for twenty 2017 fiscal year, there

was a clause added which required women to register for the draft. And this would only be for women who turn 18

after December 21st, 2017. So basically, if you turn 18 on January

about this is that Republicans were split on this. And even when they voted on it at the at the level, there are only

maybe 13 votes against it. And at the committee level, Republicans are split over

over this provision where there 4000 on the committee, seven and seven. So you have Senator

Ted Cruz, our own Senator, Ted Cruz from Texas, speaking out against it. But then you have Senator John

McCain speaking out in favor of it. Now, what’s important to note about this is that

this idea actually started in the house where somebody introduced it or the house’s version

of the spending bill, really as a way to basically poke fun at the idea

of making women register for the draft. This Duncan Hunter, right? Yes. So that’s my old representative

from San Diego way back in the day. So he put it because he said he’s a combat veteran. He’s against the idea

of women serving in combat. So he put it out there thinking, OK, there’s a force to talk about

drafting women and basic woo-suk. This will get rid of the conversation. What actually happened

is it snowballed in the other direction. People the more they talked about what all this is a good idea now eventually was stripped

from the House’s version of the appropriations bill, but it popped up on the Senate’s version of the bill.

Now, it’s also important to understand is that, again, talking about how things work through Congress

is that now it goes to the conference committee, which is a joint session, the members of the House and

members of the Senate, will they take a look at the bill, seeing what they like, what they don’t like, and then try to

change the bill so it fits both of them. And so it could be stripped at that moment. And then again, it’s

voted again by the House vote again by the Senate, and then it goes to the president. There is a good chance the president

may veto this appropriations bill because he’s not happy about certain provisions, specifically about not being able

to close Guantanamo, as well as demonstrating the present from closing down military bases

that really are not that important, that kind of support for us. And again, is to try to shrink the military’s budget.

Those are. So those are general. Those are general concerns about the appropriations bill. All right. Does Obama have

any objections to the way this is? This is women registering for the Selective Service.

Right. Which is what? You know, we all had to do back in the day, but now guys still register

for the Selective Service, the term out expanding that. So those are out there for. Outright now. Well, you’re past the deadline,

so you’re probably OK. But it’s not it’s registering for the draft. There’s not talking about a draft.

It’s just putting women in a pool. Right. But as Obama come out of saying anything, whether he’s pro or against the

women in the draft. And that’s that’s what I’ve really been looking into. There’s really nothing clear about that. And that’s I’ve been trying

to figure out where the president stood on this. Now, what’s also missing in this and even what Samantha Bee show

Full Frontal was in the appropriations bill was an attempt to change the way in which

the military courts deal with rape in the military. And they’re pushing for that. That also failed.

And so there are various aspects of this where people may want to strike down little bits of it. Again, this is where you see

a lot of action being put in with appropriations bills. And we’re giving this money. We’re giving this money and we

do ABC and D. So appropriations bills really painted the kind of small details, a

small clause put in there that if you’re not paying attention, we’ll come back, become extremely important a decade

later. Now, if you look at public opinion regarding drafting women, what we see is

it’s about 49 percent of the public supports having women open for the draft.

We see 61 percent of men support making women eligible for the draft and 38 percent

of women support this. Here’s a shocker. This is an interesting thing because with

the Equal Rights Amendment in the late 70s, early 80s, there was a fear that if you pass the Equal

Rights Amendment, that women would not be eligible for the draft. And you had some people were torn over

this. And again, I was doing a little bit of research on this to see where the feminist position was on this.

And some arguments were that pacifist feminists were opposed to this

because that would mean women would now be put into an axiom that they were that they were opposed to it because they’re

pacifist. It’s one of those very weird things. And again, we may also

be important to look at this. As you know, if we account for things such as support, the morality of war and things like

that, we may find that the gap between men and women disappear, that because women may

have lower support for the morality of warfare than men. But this may be what’s driving it. But this is

this is a much longer look. And you know, something I can work on as I try to work my

way to full professor. But but the key thing here is we do see the split within

the public. And also we see that, you know, there are a split between Republicans and Democrats, Democrats

a little bit more supportive of this than Republicans. But it is something that’s got to be talked about quite a bit. Again, as

we talk about the idea of gender equality, equal pay. There are some important things we need to think about in

terms of the place of men and women in the workforce. And what does that equality mean? Yeah, I mean,

it’s a real interesting question. I mean, the you know, one of the things is if you talk about women in the military,

it is a question of sort of combat versus non-combat or combat versus supporting role. And this as

far as I can tell, this is interesting, because this is not a it’s not a. You’re going to be drafted it simply registering for some

kind of perspective draft at some point the future. So, you know, the feminist position, I think is muddled

because they’re not quite sure what they think on this. And I mean, it’s reasonable that it would be. Right. I mean, on the

one hand, I think there’s a sense that women can do anything that men can do. And certainly the

performance of women in the Gulf and in Afghanistan and other places indicates that, you know, in a volunteer

setting, this has worked pretty well. You know, we moved to a draft setting. I think there are questions about it. I hadn’t thought

of the pacifist angle. I’m not quite sure how that’s more appropriate for men or women. I don’t quite

get that. And I’m not as interested in you doing research on that. So. But it is fascinating.

You know, this this comes up as Professor McCain-Clinton as part of a larger appropriations bill.

All right. So this is kind of stuff that gets stuck into the military appropriations bill all the time. Right.

You know, weapons systems and the Republicans have put in this, you know, part of the military appropriations

bill. The president can’t close Guantanamo. That’s that’s why he wants to veto this bill, irrespective

of the dollars allocated to certain things. It’s because it’s got sort of this what we call poison pills

that the president doesn’t want any part of. So but it’s a really interesting sort of public policy debate.

You know, I’ve been reading some stuff on World War Two right now. And one of the things that’s interesting, in contrast to what we’ve got here is

this question whether women should serve in the military has not been an issue in other places in the world for a long time. The Russians

had, you know, a complete draft. You know, in World War Two and, you know, hundreds

of thousands of women were killed even in support roles. And some women were not just in support roles or women in combat

roles. So it’s interesting. The United States is finally getting around to a real serious debate on this.

And there was an idea of drafting women in World War Two because they needed more nurses. Right.

I mean, again, what’s important to note is there’s been a drastic change in U.S. military were in late 2015.

President Obama basically stripped the idea of women not serving in combat roles

so women can serve in any role whatsoever. So we have women graduate from the Ranger school things.

So you’re now seeing women into combat roles and this is kind of pushing it forward. And wow.

Again, the person who introduced this was against the idea of women serving in combat roles. What do you thought would be

way to your thought provoking idea to get us to really talk about this? Actually backfired on them on that.

Do you want to whipsaw? Last topic here. Oh, yeah. So the last one we have today. Rate it back home to Texas,

as we always do. And again, this deals with surprise, surprise. Texas suing

the federal government. What I know, could Texas sue the federal government? You know, also,

this is dealing with the Syrian refugees. And so we have a Rookwood clip which describes the response.

Texas has lost its bid to keep Syrian refugees out. When a federal judge on Thursday

dismissed the state’s lawsuit over resettlement from the war torn Middle East country.

U.S. District Court Judge David Godby said the state failed to make a plausible

claim for relief in its lawsuit against the federal government and the International Rescue Committee,

a charity that aids refugees. Texas officials argue that they should be consulted

by the federal government before refugees are relocated there and that the state should be provided

with specific information about individual refugees. But the judge said that existing

U.S. law does not support the state’s petition. A ruling that was cheered by

the plaintiffs. So what’s going on is Texas is arguing that the way the federal grant

is going about the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the U.S. violates the Refugee

Act of 1980, which points out that the FELTER government should consult regularly with

the states for this. And so this is what’s prompting Texas, where Texas is using as support

for why the federal money should not be allowed just to automatically put the refugees in the state. And this has been

a really big issue. I think one of the big problems is people are not really sure what the screening

process is. I mean, you hear a lot during the campaign. There actually is a YouTube video from

the Department of Homeland Security which talks about the screening process. And it kind of goes into great detail

and actually points out that refugees from Syria actually go under a more stringent

screening process than others would be fingerprinted and their fingerprints go through a database basically

open. We’re going to see if they’re linked to terrorist. But there are still concerns about, you know, who’s coming over.

While we know for the most part it’s women and children. There are fears that other people are coming in

that may have hostile interest to the U.S. and especially after the attacks in Paris. That is really heightened,

the concerns that some of these refugees may actually have ill intent towards the United States. And

I think it can get lost in some of the rhetoric of the presidential campaign where, you know, Donald Trump says something about

banning Muslim immigration, at least temporarily, which is what the Donald said. I think Trump’s words

were until we figure out what the hell is going on. That was Trump’s position on this. The Texas

position here we want to emphasize involves a federalist argument or a federalism argument. And that is the role, proper

role of the state versus the federal government in setting policy. And on the one hand, it

makes sense that the federal government would have a greater say in determining these sorts of international questions

about the nature of international immigration. On the other hand, Texas is right in suggesting that,

you know, the governor and executive in Texas are charged with protecting the people of Texas,

just as the president is charged with protecting people, the United States. And if the federal government sort of relocates people

from Syria, is it unreasonable for the state of Texas to want to be more regularly

and substantively consulted on that process? You know so well,

we joke about it a lot in Texas does sue the federal government a lot. Most of these things aren’t really frivolous.

They involve important questions. And whether there were Democrats or Republicans in charge of the state of Texas, I

think there would still probably be an institutional divide between, you know, hey, we’re protecting the state’s

interests and the federal government is looking out only for, you know, sort of national interests and attempting to expand national

authority. So, you know, as for the immigration itself, I don’t really know how stringent these are.

And I think the objection that Professor McDaniel alluded to is that even going through fingerprint

or databases, how many people in Syria have records of any sort? And does it make

sense to limit immigration by gender, by age, by religion

or something like that? And while the way maybe it’s framed by some politicians is fairly contentious,

slash offensive to some people, this is still interesting questions. And,

you know, our answer to roll this class is to put these questions out there and talk about how they’re sort of,

you know, dealt with by the American public and the American government. So, you know, yet another case of federalism

to federalism, not a sexy topic, but underrated, kind of sneaky, relevant,

sneaky, relevant. It’s you know, federalism is extremely important.

And it’s one things where we talk about the enforcement of policy and where we see why you

see certain things not being passed. Federalism comes to place the reason why you have different drinking

loss from state to state. The fact that I can go in Illinois and California, I can walk into a CBS

Walgreens, the grocery store, I can pick up trash bags, some Cheetos and, you know, in

a fit of Hennessy and walk out perfectly fine. Whereas in Texas and you do and I do regularly

because, you know, you can take that edge off, whereas, you know, in Oklahoma,

you know, you can only buy a certain. In the grocery store, then if you want higher alcohol limit, you can buy at the liquor

store. And it’s not refrigerated. This is all about federalism. All parts of different things now should admit

that I know this much about liquor laws. You might be getting bad ideas about me, but research research

always research is always research. That’s right. That’s what I tell my wife. But that’s

all we have for today. And what it would do is thank you again for joining us this week. We’ll be back next

week to talk about more relevant issues. Have a good week. Stay cool.

The government 310 in the News podcast is hosted by doctors Daron Shaw and Eric mcdarby

and it’s produced by the Liberal Arts ITS Development Studio and the Department of Government and the College

of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.