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How Midnight Regulations Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from House Stuffworks dot Com? Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
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Speaker 1: I'm Josh Chuck's here. I am as always. How's it going?
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Speaker 1: You're the Andy Richter to your Conan O'Brien, as I
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Speaker 1: like to say, I look a little more like Andy Richter. Right,
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Speaker 1: there's no con in amongst No, no tall seven foot tall, blanky,
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Speaker 1: redheaded headed irishman. Yeah, pale man, it man, it's pale um. Yes.
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Speaker 1: But okay, so this is stuff you should know if
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Speaker 1: you couldn't tell by now. Um, and uh, we're gonna
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Speaker 1: talk about midnight regulation today, Chuck, what do you think?
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Speaker 1: I think that's a great, great topic. Okay, So Chuck,
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Speaker 1: let me paint a scene for you, right, Okay, anytime
0:46
Speaker 1: a president is is leaving the White House and a
0:49
Speaker 1: new one's coming in, there are transition teams set up
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Speaker 1: right right. Um, Basically, you have a bunch of people
0:56
Speaker 1: who have been doing their jobs, you know, directing federal agents.
1:00
Speaker 1: He's carrying out new policy, talking about new policy ideas, um,
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Speaker 1: and they basically need to pass this information onto the
1:07
Speaker 1: next administration, so that you know, there's a smooth transition
1:11
Speaker 1: of power. Ideal, ideally, this is what happened. They don't
1:15
Speaker 1: just put it in a folder called how to be
1:17
Speaker 1: the President and leave it on the tusk of No,
1:19
Speaker 1: that would be really really bad. Um. And uh, you know,
1:22
Speaker 1: some some transition teams are more successful in others. A
1:26
Speaker 1: president Bill Clinton had a terrible terrible time with it
1:30
Speaker 1: when he came into power. Um, when he was leaving, though,
1:33
Speaker 1: he gained a little more confidence. Uh when he left.
1:37
Speaker 1: George W. Bush, the second Bush, took over, and when
1:41
Speaker 1: his transition team showed up, they found, um surprisingly that
1:45
Speaker 1: most most of the keyboards in the in the White
1:48
Speaker 1: House offices, the letter W had been removed. I love that.
1:52
Speaker 1: I think that's h It really is hysterical, just just
1:55
Speaker 1: the thought of and not politically speaking, but just the
1:57
Speaker 1: thought of a president playing practical joke on on then yeah,
2:00
Speaker 1: and all of his aids and yeah, and there was
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Speaker 1: a whoopie cushion left in the chair of his office
2:04
Speaker 1: chair right yeah, kick me sign right. Um. So so
2:08
Speaker 1: that was awaiting President Bush when he took over. And um,
2:13
Speaker 1: there was a lot of other stuff awaiting him as
2:16
Speaker 1: well in the form of midnight regulations. Uh. Clinton actually
2:21
Speaker 1: published twenties six thousand pages of new regulations. Yep, that's
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Speaker 1: the number that we're waiting for his successor, and every
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Speaker 1: last one of them ran contrary to Bush's policies. So, um, well,
2:35
Speaker 1: before we get into that, how about what what are
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Speaker 1: midnight regulations? What's what's the definition? Uh well, I'm just
2:42
Speaker 1: going off my brain here. I don't have a definition
2:44
Speaker 1: to read, but it's basically, um legislation that a president
2:48
Speaker 1: leaving president will try and uh slip through in the
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Speaker 1: waning months of their of their tenure, during their midnight period,
2:56
Speaker 1: during their midnight period, which is from the time that
2:58
Speaker 1: the election is held November until they leave office, basically
3:03
Speaker 1: until the inauguration. And every every presidency has a midnight
3:07
Speaker 1: right there's there's the end of a presidency, and it's
3:09
Speaker 1: those last few months. Um. But some are way worse
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Speaker 1: than others. Usually the worst midnight periods, the worst transitions
3:18
Speaker 1: come when one party is losing control of the White
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Speaker 1: House to another party and they just they do everything
3:24
Speaker 1: they can to sabotage one another. So it's kind of roughs.
3:28
Speaker 1: It's so unfriendly and Uh, it's hostile. Yeah, it is.
3:32
Speaker 1: It's a little disheartening, yeah, but not surprisingly. And basically,
3:36
Speaker 1: you know, if you if you if you leave thousands
3:39
Speaker 1: of pages of new regulations, Um, basically, what you're doing
3:44
Speaker 1: is you're you're either extending your influence as president beyond
3:49
Speaker 1: the time that you leave the White House. Um, you
3:52
Speaker 1: could be doing it to hamstring your handicap the next
3:56
Speaker 1: in the next administration, basically tying their hands, especially when
4:00
Speaker 1: it's you know, when a Democrats taking over from a
4:02
Speaker 1: Republican or vice versa. You know, the views run so
4:05
Speaker 1: contrary supposedly that um, you know, you want to keep
4:10
Speaker 1: the policy making going, and when it's actually with a
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Speaker 1: midnight regulation, it's actually exceedingly difficult to um reverse We'll
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Speaker 1: get to that in a minute. Many times it's it's
4:22
Speaker 1: actually your legacy as a president has a lot to
4:26
Speaker 1: do with these midnight regulations. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of
4:29
Speaker 1: times it's the it represents the more radical fringes of
4:33
Speaker 1: a presidential agenda. Just amazing that the last two months
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Speaker 1: of an eight year tenure can have more of an
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Speaker 1: impact than the previous ye know, seven and uh, seven
4:41
Speaker 1: years and ten months. Yeah, and well, the weird thing
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Speaker 1: is it's it's you can sit there and watch midnight
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Speaker 1: regulation going on right um there there, But it's not
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Speaker 1: an openly acknowledged activity, okay. UM, So to prove that
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Speaker 1: it exists, some political scientists have actually, um done studies
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Speaker 1: on the Federal Register. The Federal Register is the complete
5:05
Speaker 1: comprehensive guide to federal regulation, and um they published actually
5:10
Speaker 1: they publish addendums to it every day. So UM, some
5:13
Speaker 1: p some political scientists went back and looked at when
5:18
Speaker 1: you know, the amount of pages published in the Federal
5:20
Speaker 1: Register per quarter, per quarter, um, and they found that
5:24
Speaker 1: in the midnight of a presidency, especially during um, the
5:28
Speaker 1: transition of power from one party to another, the pages
5:32
Speaker 1: the page volume increases like sevent So it's odd to
5:36
Speaker 1: think that you would have to go prove it, but
5:37
Speaker 1: you know, the president's like, well, I'm just going about
5:40
Speaker 1: my midnight regulation right now. It's it's it's such a
5:43
Speaker 1: cynical and sinister, democratically speaking tool, um, because the president
5:51
Speaker 1: is no longer accountable and so many people don't even
5:53
Speaker 1: realize what's going on, and uh, it's it's going on
5:57
Speaker 1: right now. I know you have a couple of things
6:00
Speaker 1: you wanted to mention, right, Yeah, I mean I've got
6:03
Speaker 1: a list. Uh, there's actually a great website called pro
6:07
Speaker 1: Publica dot org. That's p r O dash publica dot
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Speaker 1: org and you can get a full list there of
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Speaker 1: the Midnight regulations at President Bush is trying to get
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Speaker 1: through and UM not drawn judgment on any of them.
6:21
Speaker 1: It's up to you to decide. But that's a good
6:23
Speaker 1: website you can go to to actually read them and
6:26
Speaker 1: get a status on whether or not it's UM open
6:29
Speaker 1: for comment or close for comment or under review or
6:32
Speaker 1: approved or finalized or in effect. And we'll get to
6:35
Speaker 1: the comment part in a little bit too, right, Yeah, yeah,
6:39
Speaker 1: we well let's let's let's talk about how it works. Right. So, basically,
6:43
Speaker 1: the legislative branch identifies a problem UM and says, well,
6:48
Speaker 1: we we could create this agency to address that problem,
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Speaker 1: say the Environmental Protection Agency or the Securities and Exchange
6:57
Speaker 1: Commission or whatever, the FDA, it doesn't matter. All of
7:01
Speaker 1: those were created by congressional mandate, right, But it's up
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Speaker 1: to the executive branch, the president's side, to make sure
7:07
Speaker 1: that these these these mandates are being carried out. And
7:11
Speaker 1: how that's carried out is left pretty much of the
7:14
Speaker 1: discretion of the president. Congress can threaten to withhold funding
7:18
Speaker 1: or something like that. Um. They can also repeal laws.
7:21
Speaker 1: We'll get to that in a second too, But for
7:24
Speaker 1: the most part, the president issues regulations or the executive
7:28
Speaker 1: branch issues rules and regulations on how federal agency should act. Right. So,
7:34
Speaker 1: if you have a really pro business president, they're probably, um,
7:39
Speaker 1: not going to give the SEC a lot of power. Um.
7:43
Speaker 1: And if you have somebody who's very much pro consumer,
7:48
Speaker 1: the SEC will likely you know, look out for investors
7:51
Speaker 1: more through these regulations. Right. And it's it's a lot
7:54
Speaker 1: more than just investors. I mean, just about every aspect
7:58
Speaker 1: of our lives as Americans is impacted by these regulatory agencies,
8:05
Speaker 1: you know. I mean like the the the e p A,
8:07
Speaker 1: the you and I have to go get um admissions
8:10
Speaker 1: tests every year before we get a new tag. That's
8:13
Speaker 1: e p A. That's a federal you know regulation. Um.
8:17
Speaker 1: We can't run around, you know, shooting heroin between our toes.
8:21
Speaker 1: D A looks out for that kind of thing. Um.
8:25
Speaker 1: And then there's just a lot more like profanity on television.
8:28
Speaker 1: That's the uh f CC. So we're impacted in many,
8:33
Speaker 1: many ways. This isn't like just some high up hierarchy
8:37
Speaker 1: thing that's going on politically speaking, it's federal agencies are
8:41
Speaker 1: actually where the government and the public touch. Okay, that's
8:44
Speaker 1: good way to say it. Thanks, thanks a lot that
8:48
Speaker 1: so okay, So we're impacted by this, and a president's
8:51
Speaker 1: views will direct how much we're impacted. Okay. Um, So
8:56
Speaker 1: these new rules are created, Uh, the the Office of Information,
9:03
Speaker 1: Information and Regulatory Affairs, they review these things right exactly,
9:07
Speaker 1: especially if it's big money involved. Yeah, hundred million dollar
9:10
Speaker 1: impact or more on the economy annually. Right, that's when
9:14
Speaker 1: they get you know, special attention, right right. Um, So
9:17
Speaker 1: the the o I r A is supposed to look
9:20
Speaker 1: at these things, these new proposals, these proposed rules, and
9:24
Speaker 1: they're also supposed to well, they're supposed to look if
9:26
Speaker 1: to see if these things are cost with a cost
9:29
Speaker 1: benefit analysis. Um. They're supposed to look if the rules
9:33
Speaker 1: even needed, if there's any way to um, you know,
9:36
Speaker 1: use market forces to stimulate the change that these rules
9:40
Speaker 1: are meant to address, and any competing theories that may
9:43
Speaker 1: actually be better competing alternatives to the proposed rule. So
9:47
Speaker 1: you can imagine for each proposed new regulation. This is
9:50
Speaker 1: just supposed to take a lot of time. If the
9:53
Speaker 1: O I R A signs off on the thing, um uh,
9:56
Speaker 1: an announcement gets published, and they actually publish an anouncement
10:00
Speaker 1: in the Federal Register when they're first considering it. Then
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Speaker 1: they publish another announcement saying what the outcome was once
10:06
Speaker 1: they once the O I R A signs off on it,
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Speaker 1: and it's published in the Federal Register either thirty days
10:13
Speaker 1: for kind of smaller things, sixty days for big regulation,
10:17
Speaker 1: it becomes law. And that's sixty day time period is
10:21
Speaker 1: pretty important because what a president will do when they're
10:25
Speaker 1: leaving office. If they hit their deadlines and get these
10:27
Speaker 1: uh through quick enough, the sixty days is up before
10:30
Speaker 1: the next president comes in, and it makes it a
10:32
Speaker 1: lot harder to undo what they've done. Yeah. Yeah, Once
10:36
Speaker 1: it's become law, you the process to repeal it is
10:40
Speaker 1: pretty much the reverse of the process to have it
10:43
Speaker 1: become law. You have to provide studies. Um, you have
10:46
Speaker 1: to provide alternatives that the president doesn't just come in
10:50
Speaker 1: and wave his or her magic wand and say everything
10:55
Speaker 1: my predecessor just said is wrong and it's gone right. Good.
10:59
Speaker 1: Try but now and that's actually been a proposal to
11:01
Speaker 1: solve midnight regulation is to allow incoming presidents to repeal
11:06
Speaker 1: any law passed in the in the midnight period. Um.
11:10
Speaker 1: This is this is not necessarily the case. Um. This
11:14
Speaker 1: has never been entertained as far as I know. Seriously,
11:18
Speaker 1: there are some things you can do as an incoming president, right,
11:22
Speaker 1: um too to stop this regulation what you got so
11:27
Speaker 1: once it's uh, the the new administrations in, they have
11:31
Speaker 1: to show that why repealing it, um is a good idea,
11:35
Speaker 1: And a lot of times you have to provide an
11:37
Speaker 1: alternative form of legislation. And then um. Congress actually has
11:41
Speaker 1: a tool as well, called the Congressional Review Act. And
11:45
Speaker 1: this came about, which is ironic because the president that
11:49
Speaker 1: signed that bill into law was the most prolific midnight
11:53
Speaker 1: regulator of all time, Bill Clinton correct. Um, he had
11:57
Speaker 1: like twenty six thousand pages published in the regis. Second
12:00
Speaker 1: to him was Jimmy Carter, whose presidency the term was
12:05
Speaker 1: coined after, um because he he just took this old
12:09
Speaker 1: fashioned tool to a brand new level. Um. But yeah,
12:13
Speaker 1: Clinton signed the c r A in the law right right,
12:16
Speaker 1: which basically repeals new regulations, allows Congress to repeal these
12:22
Speaker 1: new regulations with the simple majority in the House and Senate,
12:25
Speaker 1: and it still requires the president's signature though, so so
12:29
Speaker 1: it only works sometimes. And the only time that it
12:31
Speaker 1: works is when the president and Congress are controlled by
12:37
Speaker 1: the same party, right, um, Because if you have a
12:40
Speaker 1: president who is coming in and Congress is of an
12:44
Speaker 1: opposite party, Congress isn't going to take up the c
12:47
Speaker 1: r A to repeal anything because they were with the
12:50
Speaker 1: old president, right right. And then if you have a
12:54
Speaker 1: president who's carrying on the same party from the old
12:57
Speaker 1: president and Congress is new and of the their party,
13:01
Speaker 1: they may take up, you know, moves to repeal anything,
13:04
Speaker 1: and the president is not going to sign off on it, right,
13:06
Speaker 1: And which explains partially why it hasn't been used that often. Um,
13:10
Speaker 1: even though in two thousand one that was the case,
13:12
Speaker 1: I think it was only used one time officially to
13:15
Speaker 1: repeal one of Billy Boys. Yeah, to repeal a regulations
13:20
Speaker 1: that would prevent repetitive workplace stress injuries. Interesting, yeah, um.
13:26
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that I thought was
13:28
Speaker 1: interesting when I was reading this was one of the reasons,
13:31
Speaker 1: because I thought, you know, why is it so easy
13:33
Speaker 1: to get these laws pushed through with the final you know,
13:36
Speaker 1: final minute. And that's exactly why. It's because this uh
13:39
Speaker 1: they're overloaded with um you know, like you said, twenty
13:42
Speaker 1: six thousand pages, but they're not given any extra staff
13:45
Speaker 1: or anything. And I think I read UH one stat
13:48
Speaker 1: on one of these environmental laws that the Bush is
13:51
Speaker 1: working with the e p A for UM. They did
13:54
Speaker 1: the average time and it was nine seconds for the
13:58
Speaker 1: amount of employees that he had in the amount of comments.
14:01
Speaker 1: Nine seconds to read one of these comments and respond
14:03
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, they went to two hundred thousand public
14:06
Speaker 1: comments on one new piece of regulation in four days.
14:09
Speaker 1: So that kind of answers your question why it's easy
14:12
Speaker 1: to get these things through. Yeah, because don't forget the
14:14
Speaker 1: o I r A is part of the Office of
14:16
Speaker 1: Management and Budget, which is a White House office. The
14:18
Speaker 1: federal agencies are directed by the president. UM, the the
14:22
Speaker 1: the group in charge of reviewing these proposals are directed
14:26
Speaker 1: by the President. It's basically the executive branch running the
14:28
Speaker 1: show on this new regulation. And you know that it
14:32
Speaker 1: is it's very easy to get pushed through, and like
14:34
Speaker 1: I said, it's very cynical use of power. And president
14:37
Speaker 1: is no longer accountable. Another proposal for any midnight regulation
14:40
Speaker 1: is not to allow the president to propose any more
14:43
Speaker 1: regulation during the midnight period, Like you can't make new
14:47
Speaker 1: laws anymore. Sorry, you've been you know, you've either served
14:50
Speaker 1: both your terms and somebody else has been selected, or
14:53
Speaker 1: you've been ousted because someone else has been selected. Either way,
14:56
Speaker 1: your presidency technically ended in November five. Yeah, I think
14:59
Speaker 1: that would be more effective because basically what you would
15:02
Speaker 1: do there is you would have a president who I
15:05
Speaker 1: think a lot of times administrations kind of hold these
15:07
Speaker 1: in their back pocket because they know why trying to
15:10
Speaker 1: introduce its law when it can be debated and when
15:13
Speaker 1: I can be impeached. Yeah, when I can be impeached,
15:16
Speaker 1: when I'll just kind of hang onto this and tell
15:17
Speaker 1: him on my way out and then just kind of
15:19
Speaker 1: sneak it through the back door busch. Actually, um, I
15:23
Speaker 1: heard it called the an eleven o'clock regulation flurry. Yeah,
15:29
Speaker 1: because he his chief of staff, Joshua Bolton, apparently sent
15:33
Speaker 1: a memo out to all agencies saying, if you want
15:35
Speaker 1: new stuff, uh, in prepared by June one, so we
15:39
Speaker 1: can have it passed by November one, which is well
15:43
Speaker 1: before the deadline. Well, I think they did that because UM,
15:47
Speaker 1: President Clinton famously did not get his through within the
15:51
Speaker 1: sixty day period. He waffled until the end, and he
15:54
Speaker 1: did well. He was busy with defending himself a lot
15:56
Speaker 1: of that time. That is not making excuses, but there
15:59
Speaker 1: was a lot going on in his final years. Let's
16:01
Speaker 1: just say that. Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely true. So yeah,
16:04
Speaker 1: he didn't get his end on time, and so President
16:06
Speaker 1: Bush is able to come in and get a lot
16:08
Speaker 1: of those turned back. Well he he Bush, like Clinton
16:12
Speaker 1: and Reagan, UH issued an executive order that says just
16:16
Speaker 1: anything that's under review right now that hasn't been published
16:19
Speaker 1: in the Federal Register, it's suspended. But you can't you
16:24
Speaker 1: can't just see that. You have to. You're fighting a
16:26
Speaker 1: political fight a lot of times. When Busch came in,
16:29
Speaker 1: one of the things that Clinton had left for him
16:31
Speaker 1: was UM a new regulation on acceptable arsenic levels in
16:35
Speaker 1: the water supply and UM just one that was just
16:40
Speaker 1: one of them. Yeah yeah, yeah, UM. But you know
16:43
Speaker 1: they would have an impact on business, and UM, as
16:47
Speaker 1: we all know, Bush is so pro business. You could
16:49
Speaker 1: also make an argument that he's anti consumer UM and
16:53
Speaker 1: he's just always kind of been on the side of business, right. Uh,
16:57
Speaker 1: he didn't like how it impacted things like mining, the
17:01
Speaker 1: mining industry, water. Um, the water boards who would have
17:06
Speaker 1: to you know, step up their their water purification, not waterboarding.
17:10
Speaker 1: Don't get confused that later. Um. So uh, he basically
17:15
Speaker 1: said this one in particular suspended, and I'm going to
17:18
Speaker 1: fight it to the death. And he spent a lot
17:20
Speaker 1: of political capital after he came in fighting this regulation
17:24
Speaker 1: that he ultimately had to bite and you know, except
17:28
Speaker 1: and he ended up eating eight percent of them. And
17:31
Speaker 1: I think he was on record saying that he that
17:34
Speaker 1: was a big mistake on his part, correct, because he
17:36
Speaker 1: became painted as a basically an anti environmentalist from the
17:40
Speaker 1: get go. But that's not necessarily to say that. Um,
17:44
Speaker 1: that wasn't a deserved reputation from what he's doing right now.
17:48
Speaker 1: Right most of and if you go to this pro
17:51
Speaker 1: public A site, most of the midnight regulations he's trying
17:54
Speaker 1: to get through have the letters E. P. A at
17:56
Speaker 1: the front of him. So, um, regardless of what side
18:00
Speaker 1: you're on, they are environmental issues, yes, yes, trying to
18:04
Speaker 1: stay fair and balanced here, I could read a few
18:07
Speaker 1: of them to you just by title. We won't get
18:08
Speaker 1: into the because it would take too long. But UM
18:10
Speaker 1: power plants be exempted from installing pollution controls. Uh. The
18:15
Speaker 1: e p A may ease restrictions for power plants near
18:17
Speaker 1: national parks. UM e p A may allow certain hazardous
18:21
Speaker 1: waste to be used as fuel. I read another one
18:24
Speaker 1: about rocket fuel being allowed in drinking water. Uh. Fisheries
18:28
Speaker 1: have been doing a lot of research on fisheries right
18:31
Speaker 1: now because I'm writing about fishing quotas and UM, there's
18:34
Speaker 1: a lot of work being done to basically allow to
18:37
Speaker 1: push the science out of it. As far as studying
18:41
Speaker 1: fish populations. Yeah, there won't be any independent scientific review
18:45
Speaker 1: right right. It's basically saying, deciding whether it has an
18:48
Speaker 1: environmental impact, Well, the fisheries are going to be deciding that.
18:51
Speaker 1: And I think we all know the fisheries are probably
18:53
Speaker 1: gonna say, hey, let's keep fishing. Well let's I read
18:57
Speaker 1: somebody who's part of a special interest fishing fishery group
19:01
Speaker 1: who's saying, no, no, that's not true. Well, we'll self regulate.
19:04
Speaker 1: But I think it's one of those things that's yet
19:06
Speaker 1: to be seen. Yeah, I'm a bit of a cynic
19:08
Speaker 1: when it comes to things like companies self regulating themselves. Yeah,
19:12
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of proof over the years to
19:13
Speaker 1: kind of you know, back that up. I got another
19:16
Speaker 1: one for you. Financial planners will no longer have to
19:20
Speaker 1: disclose any conflict of interest in the advice they give
19:23
Speaker 1: to anybody. It sounds like a good idea. Yeah, that's
19:26
Speaker 1: a good one. Um. And there's one called the right
19:29
Speaker 1: to conscience uh rule. Basically, it says that if you
19:34
Speaker 1: are a healthcare provider, you you can't not hire somebody
19:38
Speaker 1: if they would refuse to provide birth control, which basically
19:44
Speaker 1: then you know you have you have protection. It's the
19:48
Speaker 1: right to conscience is based on abortion, and a doctor
19:53
Speaker 1: can refuse to you can't force somebody to perform an abortion.
19:56
Speaker 1: In other words, they have a right to conscience. This
20:00
Speaker 1: so basically this extends that to contraception, which now kind
20:04
Speaker 1: of equates contraception with abortion, which has a lot of
20:08
Speaker 1: people a little nervous, right, And I think this I
20:12
Speaker 1: don't think it's the same one, but it's another one
20:13
Speaker 1: has to do with abortion. It's federally funded institutions can
20:17
Speaker 1: turn people down for an abortion, um, for moral and
20:20
Speaker 1: religious reasons. Yeah, I think that's part of the same
20:22
Speaker 1: one as pretty expansive. Yeah, yeah, so, um, there's a
20:26
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. We have a lot of a lot
20:28
Speaker 1: of big changes to look forward to. I also heard
20:30
Speaker 1: there's some oil drilling going on now in a polar
20:33
Speaker 1: bear habitat um. But uh, yeah, we'll look to see
20:37
Speaker 1: what Obama can do because you know, a lot of
20:39
Speaker 1: these things very much fly contrary to things he's publicly
20:43
Speaker 1: said he opposes. They they fly in the face of
20:46
Speaker 1: his views, but he may have a hard time doing
20:50
Speaker 1: it because Bush did it write it sounds like, yeah,
20:53
Speaker 1: I think regardless of what political spectrum, what side of
20:55
Speaker 1: the spectrum you fall on, it's just fascinating to look
20:58
Speaker 1: at the push in the poll of the transition, you know,
21:02
Speaker 1: between administrations. It's fascinating. It absolutely is. And also, if
21:05
Speaker 1: you think about it, what Bush did with the right
21:07
Speaker 1: to conscience thing, he basically just set Obama up for
21:11
Speaker 1: a a national fight about abortion right out of the gate.
21:15
Speaker 1: So it's gonna be really interesting to see how it's handled.
21:18
Speaker 1: Because he didn't have enough to worry about. Here's this too. Yeah,
21:21
Speaker 1: so midnight regulations there you have it. Yeah, and you
21:26
Speaker 1: know what time it is, right, it is time Josh
21:28
Speaker 1: for listener mail. Alright, so what do we have. I've
21:34
Speaker 1: got a few quick ones today. I've got a couple
21:35
Speaker 1: of corrections because we get stuff wrong people. You might
21:39
Speaker 1: not realize that this is largely unscripted. So we'll bring
21:43
Speaker 1: up something we didn't even know we were going to
21:44
Speaker 1: bring up, and sometimes we don't have the exact fact
21:46
Speaker 1: on that, so we count on the listener to point
21:49
Speaker 1: us in the right direction. Sometimes. Yeah, that's exactly what
21:52
Speaker 1: happens in this case. Darryl Kowowski of Denver send us
21:56
Speaker 1: a message about the O c D podcast, and he
22:00
Speaker 1: says he wants to make a correction on something about
22:02
Speaker 1: when I mentioned Chris Jackson the basketball player uh changed
22:07
Speaker 1: his name to uh Mammad Abdulla rauf In, and he
22:11
Speaker 1: actually had Taurette syndrome, not O c D. There's kind
22:14
Speaker 1: of a big difference. Uh, actually there's not really. Yeah,
22:18
Speaker 1: so I will school you like a school darrel in
22:21
Speaker 1: my email reply, or like Chris Jackson at school, both
22:23
Speaker 1: of us in basketball. Yeah, but actually I'm not bad. Alright,
22:26
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure Chris Jackson could. Yeah, well, if he's
22:29
Speaker 1: done tying his shoes, which was part of the problem.
22:32
Speaker 1: Tourette's and o c D actually are often misdiagnosed as
22:35
Speaker 1: one to the other because they have a lot of
22:37
Speaker 1: the same symptoms. So one of his deals was he
22:40
Speaker 1: spent so much time trying his shoes or to hit
22:42
Speaker 1: the perfect shot be where he left the court. So
22:45
Speaker 1: that was actually Turette's at work. But they're very similar
22:47
Speaker 1: in some minds. Hey, brief aside, have you ever seen
22:49
Speaker 1: the documentary Twitch and Shout. No, It's about Turette's and
22:53
Speaker 1: it is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen
22:56
Speaker 1: in my life. Add that to my cue. Yeah, I
22:59
Speaker 1: have another one. Um on guerrilla gardening. Someone wrote in
23:02
Speaker 1: from the Netherlands, our friends in Holland. Dave Inn says
23:07
Speaker 1: that Josh's comment on Bowery being a Dutch farm is wrong.
23:12
Speaker 1: Uh that was true in the old days, but that
23:14
Speaker 1: word is long gone basically in the Netherlands, and now
23:18
Speaker 1: the word for farm is uh pronounced. Gave me an
23:21
Speaker 1: English pronunciation. I think it is borderie, border eye or borderie,
23:27
Speaker 1: and that's what a farm is now in the Netherlands.
23:29
Speaker 1: I need to brush up on my Dutch. So we
23:30
Speaker 1: were wrong. Now I could I could really make my
23:32
Speaker 1: way in like, you know, sixteenth century, never the Netherlands.
23:36
Speaker 1: You well, apparently now they'd be like, what the hell
23:38
Speaker 1: are you talking about? Right, And I've got a final
23:40
Speaker 1: quick one from our fan, Devin Wallace wrote in Basically
23:43
Speaker 1: he was one of these guys that right, Simon says, hey,
23:45
Speaker 1: you say my name on the air, and I wrote
23:48
Speaker 1: him back and said, no, no, Devon, that's not how
23:50
Speaker 1: it works. You need to give me something. So I
23:52
Speaker 1: requested that Devon, right, a hi ku And if you
23:55
Speaker 1: did that, then we mentioned so here's the hiku mountains
23:59
Speaker 1: and verse. Red squirrels hiding in trees, huge rocks in
24:03
Speaker 1: the park. Beautiful And depending on whether you think squirrel
24:08
Speaker 1: is two syllables or one, I'm debating his well, I
24:13
Speaker 1: say one syllable, in which cases is not a hiku.
24:16
Speaker 1: Oh just roll would make it a hi k? Yeah,
24:20
Speaker 1: hi Q. We'll go with that. We'll go with that, right,
24:22
Speaker 1: So thanks Devin for the hiku. Now, well done, squirre roll,
24:25
Speaker 1: squirre roll. Well, if you want to learn more about
24:28
Speaker 1: squirrel rolls, um midnight regulations of course, and actually we
24:33
Speaker 1: have a great video on turettes on the site. You
24:37
Speaker 1: can find all that stuff at how stuff works dot com.
24:44
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
24:47
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot Com brought to you by
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Speaker 1: the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, Are you