{"podcast":{"title":"Consequential Actions Podcast","slug":"consequential-actions-podcast-7101158","podcast_index_feed_id":7101158,"rss_url":"https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/465374/s/4746.rss","website_url":"https://jeffkellick.substack.com/s/consequential-actions-podcast","image_url":"https://substackcdn.com/feed/podcast/465374/s/4746/89d62bf29b5f4bd7e0065e8d1dd33837.jpg","author":"Jeff Kellick","episode_count":110,"summary":"A discussion on the decisions that impact security, technology, and the economy.","last_synced_at":"2026-09-06T20:17:46.793969+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/consequential-actions-podcast-7101158"},"episode":{"title":"Dr. Thomas Laehn, LP Candidate for US Senate — On Locke, Eminent Domain, and Jury Nullification","slug":"dr-thomas-laehn-lp-candidate-for-us-senate-on-locke-eminent-domain-and-jury-nullification","published_at":"2026-08-19T21:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/consequential-actions-podcast-7101158/dr-thomas-laehn-lp-candidate-for-us-senate-on-locke-eminent-domain-and-jury-nullification","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/consequential-actions-podcast-7101158","url":"https://jeffkellick.substack.com/p/dr-thomas-laehn-lp-candidate-for","audio_url":"https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/211865478/69a2f2245e105fcac93dd4eac7851f9b.mp3","summary":"A Prosecutor Would Give Up Every Institution but One Dr. Thomas Laehn taught constitutional law and political philosophy to undergraduates before he ever charged anyone with a crime. He is now the County Attorney for Greene County, Iowa, the first Libertarian ever elected to partisan office in that state, and a candidate for the United States Senate seat Joni Ernst is leaving open. He is also, by his own description paradoxically, a proponent of jury nullification. This conversation closes Week 10 of Self-Evident: The Road to 1776. Sunday’s article and Saturday’s history took up Algernon Sidney and John Locke, the martyr and the philosopher. Tuesday carried the argument into the present, into what a government may do about what its citizens write and say. Thursday puts a living voice on all of it, and the voice belongs to a man who taught these texts for a living and now works inside the machinery those arguments built. Two threads run through the hour. The first is property. Laehn defends Locke’s state of nature not as history but as a model, built the way a scientist builds one, by stripping away everything that does not bear on the question being asked, and he gives Sir Robert Filmer his due along the way. The second is the question Saturday ended on and Tuesday could not close: when a government exceeds the power its people could have handed it, who decides, before force decides it? His answer is the amendment process, the ballot, and twelve people in a jury box. He says he would surrender every other institution of government before he surrendered the jury. Then the argument comes home. Iowa’s Utilities Commission vested a private company with the power of eminent domain along the route of a proposed carbon dioxide pipeline, and families along that route have refu…","meta_description":"A Prosecutor Would Give Up Every Institution but One Dr. Thomas Laehn taught constitutional law and political philosophy to undergraduates before he ever…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":4015,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/consequential-actions-podcast-7101158/episodes/dr-thomas-laehn-lp-candidate-for-us-senate-on-locke-eminent-domain-and-jury-nullification/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/consequential-actions-podcast-7101158/dr-thomas-laehn-lp-candidate-for-us-senate-on-locke-eminent-domain-and-jury-nullification.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}