I Found Out Charlie Kirk Died While I Was Recording This Second Amendment Episode on Duncan v Bonta
I began recording this episode with knowledge that Charlie Kirk had been seriously wounded at a college campus. During the recording of the episode, right in the middle thereabouts, I found out he died, and so what was to be just the next in a series on Duncan v. Bonta, a final episode on VanDyke's powerful dissent to that en banc 9th Circuit case in March of this past year became a reaction to his assassination.
So, therefore, this episode is in honor of Charlie Kirk.
This episode includes a reading from the 1925 edition of "Streams in the Desert", January 3rd.
In part D of VanDyke's Republican dissent in our series of dissents in the en banc resolution of Duncan v. Bonta (Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, 20 March 2025), we continue and finish covering his reductio ad absurdum form of argument.
This episode is part 4 of 4 of Judge VanDyke's epic dissent to that resolution which caught a lot of controversy because part of his dissent was a link to the following website : https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/media/23-55805/opinion , which, as you'll see, does not go to the Ninth Circuit federal government website but instead goes to YouTube, the Ninth Circuit's YouTube channel.
The link for the en banc opinion of the Court as well as the dissents covered here can be found here :
https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2025/03/20/23-55805.pdf
These materials, the text and the video linked within the text of Judge VanDyke's dissent are in the public domain and have no copyright restrictions upon them. I have done the best I could, given the technology, to make a fair use of them with a transformative reading for educational purposes only.
The controversy around the video includes not merely that Judge VanDyke, a Trump appointee to the Court, included video as a supplement embedded within his dissent, which he (and the Court) clearly consider to be official parts of his dissent, but what he filmed there in the federal courthouse in Reno, Nevada (probably, since that's where his chambers are according to the US Ninth Circuit's seniority website).
He filmed, in his chambers, wearing his black robe, with views on the video to the tune of hundreds of thousands, a tote bag with his own guns, his own handguns, real firearms. He mentioned that the firearms used for the video were rendered inoperable, unloaded, and safe for purposes of the educational part of the dissent. He claimed to be filling in missing background information useful for understanding the record before the court, not for supplementing the record per se with his, the Judge's, testimony -- something that would be not only unusual but inappropriate.
I'd love to hear what you think in the comments.
The Republican Professor is a pro-correctly-articulating-civil-liberties podcast.
Therefore, welcome Judge VanDyke .
The Republican Professor is produced and hosted by Dr. Lucas J. Mather, Ph.D.
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