'BradCast 1/16/2019: (Guest: Slate's Mark Joseph Stern)
On today's show: Slate legal reporter MARK JOSEPH STERN explains several encouraging legal rulings from the courts, beginning with the damning opinion issued on Tuesday by a U.S. District Court judge finding Treasury Secretary Wilbur Ross repeatedly violated the law and lied about his reasons for adding a controversial question on citizenship to the 2020 U.S. Census. Stern also offers some surprisingly good news from SCOTUS today regarding a unanimous (!) opinion supporting the right of workers in certain circumstances to bypass costly mandatory arbitration clauses and file class action lawsuits against their employers for violating their rights. Next, we review Tuesday's confirmation hearing in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee for Donald Trump's Attorney General nominee William Barr. Barr, who successfully pushed for presidential pardons for top officials involved in the Iran-Contra scandal when he served as President George H.W. Bush's AG, on Tuesday promised independence from the White House, and that he would allow Robert Mueller's Special Counsel probe to be completed. However, he equivocated on a number of points related to the probe, such as whether he'd recuse himself from overseeing it if DoJ ethics officials advised as much, and whether he would release Mueller's report at all to the public. Stern also offers insight and response to a number of other troubling moments from the confirmation hearings, including a chilling moment when Barr equivocated on whether the Justice Department would "jail reporters for doing their jobs." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rescinded her invitation to Trump to give the annual State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress during the ongoing historic federal government shutdown. Vice President Mike Pence today repeated Trump's false claim that "we have defeated ISIS in Syria\u201d as justification for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops in the country, just hours after news became public of a deadly bombing that killed four Americans -- two U.S. troops and two civilians \u2013 in an attack claimed by ISIS...