Constitutional Scholar Rob Natelson on Monday’s Talk Back

Rob Natelson, the Constitutional Fellow at the Independence Institute in Denver appeared on the KGVO Talk Back program to answer questions from listeners, as he does every month.

One caller asked about why the Supreme Court refused to hear the lawsuit out of Texas that Montana had joined over the November 2020 election. Natelson said the main issue in that case was bad timing by the state of Texas.

“Texas brought its case too late,” said Natelson. “It's a good example of how those people who were concerned about election integrity kind of botched the whole judicial strategy, that is the Trump team botched the whole judicial strategy. I think that's it. I think that's a shame, because I think there were really serious irregularities on the 2020 election, however much the media and others don't want us to talk about them.”

Another listener asked Natelson about how cities and businesses can keep the mask mandate even though Governor Gianforte ended the statewide mandate some time ago.

“Let me just say regarding the masked mandate, it's not a matter of federal or Constitutional law so long as it's being imposed at the state or local level,” he said. “So I'm not going to address it other than to say that businesses can impose their own rules and whether there's a state mask mandate or not. Municipalities can also if they have Home Rule power.

A listener questioned whether the Democratic Party has the authority to establish such sweeping changes despite only having a one vote majority in the U.S. Senate.

“The authoritarian platform of the Democratic Party today is where you've got a majority, the one of one pedal to the metal run over everybody and the devil take the hindmost,” he said. “That attitude alone I think ought to disqualify the leaders of the National Democratic Party from power in a democratic government.”

Natelson addressed the issue raised by some that the U.S. Constitution discriminates against women.

“It's been charged that the Constitution discriminates against women,” he said. “Well, actually, when you read the Constitution and when you read the how it was drafted, you can see it was drafted deliberately in a gender neutral way. Why? Well, because the New Jersey constitution was drafted that way, and women at the time voted in New Jersey, so amazingly, here you've got a Constitution that allows a woman to be elected president, even though many people in 1789 would have found that notion inconceivable.”

Natelson is the author of ‘The Original Constitution; What it Actually Said and Meant’ and he is now a weekly columnist with the Epoch Times online news site.