T. Rex, Russia Sanctions, Hegseth Impeachment, and the Reiner Case

In this interview, Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner discuss T. rex body temperature, U.S. sanctions targeting Russian energy revenues, Thomas Massie’s impeachment effort against Pete Hegseth, global fuel pressures, and the Nick Reiner murder case. They also examine insanity defenses, Lindsay Clancy’s mistrial, and California’s death-penalty moratorium.

Rick Rosner: I do have an addendum to the elements deal, that in addition to AI not knowing anything because you need to be conscious to know stuff, both us and AIs, when we rely on elements, those elements are constructed based on experience, accumulating data, but are not completely known to us in all their implications and dimensions. We can use the elements, but they are shortcuts around a lot of mystery.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: All right.

Rosner: You can talk about the electoral landscape if you want.

Jacobsen: No. News, news. This is an odd factoid. So, according to a study using fossilized T. rex teeth, researchers estimated that T. rex had a body temperature of approximately 97 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 36 degrees Celsius, consistent with a high and relatively stable body temperature. But an animal maintaining a high body temperature, they're saying, would require significant amounts of food to sustain its metabolism.

Rosner: What does that mean? So I'm looking at how much, so I'm asking how much did it weigh, and estimates are roughly 10,000 pounds or more, with large adults potentially reaching well above that. So you'd have to eat your ass off to keep that much mass going at around 97 degrees. So is that possible? I don't know. And that's based on T. rex's, what?

Jacobsen: I don't know either, necessarily. The biggest... Well, my take is, it shows how individual pieces of even physiological paleontology can provide us details about organismal life and commonality in unexpected ways. That's a big deal.

Rosner: So, I asked how much, like whales include the largest warm-blooded creatures on Earth, right? I don't know how much they weigh, but their core temperatures are broadly comparable to those of other mammals, although they vary by species. And you lose heat more readily to water than you do to air, but they are surrounded in blubber. So fricking, I don't know. I don't know if that's possible for a T. rex. I don't know.

Jacobsen: Well, the next topic is from Patricia Zengerle of Reuters, reporting September 16 that the U.S. House was due to vote on the Russia sanctions bill that was originally backed by the late Senator Lindsey Graham, now called the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 in honor of the South Carolina Republican. This is also potentially going to authorize Mr. Trump to impose stiff tariffs on China, India, and other countries in order to reduce their dependence on Russian oil and gas. It extends sanctions on Iran. So what are your thoughts on this move as a last honoring of Mr. Graham and then the geopolitical implications?

Rosner: Let's see. So I just asked AI if they're really going to pass it. The Senate has already passed it by a vote of 86 to 11. So that leaves it up to the House. The House is supposed to hold its vote on it today, and it is expected to pass. If they don't vote on it today, I don't know when it will get voted on because I think they are adjourning the House again while facing a potential impeachment vote on Pete Hegseth.

So let's look at oil implications. The primary oil-market implications of the legislation focus on squeezing Russia's energy revenue by forcing major shifts in global oil trade routes. AI calls it high friction for the shadow fleet, which are tankers that are transporting Russian oil in ways designed to evade sanctions.

This puts pressure on India and China since they're major buyers of Russian oil, which has often traded at a discount. The bill is structured to drain Russian revenue rather than completely remove Russian oil from the global market. What I care about is that the midterms are 48 days away. The price of diesel and the price of gas keep going up, which at this point, with just 48 days to go, I'm okay with because it increases the chances of Trump losing control of the House and Senate. So a little temporary pain to reduce Trump's power because he's fucked everything up isn't the worst thing. The worst thing would be another two-plus years of Republicans controlling the House and the Senate.

So I'm going to ask AI, how will this affect the price of U.S. gas and diesel? Analysts predict that this act could put sustained upward pressure on gasoline and diesel. So there are a lot of things that give Trump no way to wiggle out of high fuel prices going into the midterms.

Early voting starts in some states in less than a week. Diesel has been going up. It's up significantly since the January low. It's been going up like a nickel a day. The Fed just raised interest rates, which can put upward pressure on borrowing costs, while mortgage rates were already above 7 percent, which is fucking up homebuyers and the whole realty market. So just in terms of the implications for the election, I hope this thing passes.

Comments? I'm selfish in my focus.

Jacobsen: One Republican lawmaker, based on an article by the same author, Patricia Zengerle, on September 15, noted that Representative Thomas Massie had filed eight articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, including accusations of conducting hostilities against Iran without congressional authorization. The impeachment resolution, she reports, is unlikely to pass, but the Kentucky Republican could force a vote in the chamber. So these are interesting moves, even from within the Republican Party.

Rosner: As I said, Speaker Johnson is adjourning the House early as Massie's privileged resolution could force a vote because, even though the impeachment probably won't pass, this will get Republicans on the record supporting Hegseth, who's fricking terrible and might cost them some votes in the midterms. Massie's kind of a renegade Republican who is no longer beholden to Trump. His term in office ends in January because he's not seeking reelection after losing his Republican primary.

And he's been doing a lot of things thumbing his nose at Trump. But I agree with Massie that there have been a number of actions taken by presidents. Congress authorized military force following 9/11 with the 2001 AUMF, which provided the basis for operations in Afghanistan, and then passed a separate authorization for the use of force against Iraq in 2002. So that was about 24 or 25 years ago. Presidents have taken a lot of unilateral military action since then. Whether this action is impeachable is up to the judgment of a majority of the House.

But this is, in my view, the most incompetent war in recent history, with terrible consequences for the U.S. and much of the world. As badly as the U.S. is getting fucked on gas and diesel, there are countries even worse off than we are, like Bangladesh, which is heavily dependent on imported LNG and is experiencing a major energy crisis, with blackouts and factory disruptions. There are fuel-price protests in a number of countries around the world. I haven't seen a number, so when I say dozens, that's something that I pulled out of my ass. But I know that a number of countries are having protests.

So Trump's war and Hegseth's war is stupid and, in my view, has backfired entirely.

Jacobsen: Let's do the last one for today. So, an article by Steve Gorman and Lisa Richwine entitled “Prosecutors Rule Out Death Penalty for Son of Slain Filmmaker Rob Reiner.” That is a story that was a while ago, and now we're hearing about this. The Reiners were killed in December. Prosecutors had been considering whether to seek the death penalty in the murder case against Nick Reiner, who is accused of fatally stabbing his parents, Hollywood filmmaker Rob Reiner and photographer-producer Michele Singer Reiner, in their home in December 2025. Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman took into account the wishes of the slain couple's two surviving children, Jake Reiner, 35, and Romy Reiner, 28, as well as unspecified mitigating factors. Hochman told reporters, “We did speak with Nick Reiner's siblings. They made their views very clear.” He said the decision reflected prosecutors' judgment about the appropriate path in the case and did not diminish the severity of the alleged crimes.

Rosner: All right. So this has more general significance in that Nick Reiner has a documented history of mental health and substance-abuse problems. So the defense could raise issues concerning his mental state or criminal responsibility. That's different from diminished capacity, which is not simply the modern phrase for what was called not guilty by reason of insanity in the '70s.

And we've seen mental-state defenses play out in the mistrial of Lindsay Clancy, a woman who, with alleged postpartum psychosis, strangled her three children and then jumped from a window. She just had a long, brutal trial in which the jury deadlocked. Eleven jurors reportedly favored a verdict of not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, Massachusetts's formulation of the insanity defense, while one juror held out.

And this reflects, at least with regard to this defense, what I see as a more punitive landscape since the '70s. I remember as a kid back then that every legal show and every show about lawyers, and there were quite a few, would once a season have a story about a not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity defense. My impression is that it was a more prominent defense back then.

Now we are a meaner country and we want justice in terms of how it works. Like with Lindsay Clancy, either way, she's getting locked up. Also, she's locked up in her own body because she was paralyzed after jumping from the window. But either she's going to prison, or, if ultimately found not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, she could be committed to a psychiatric hospital. If a jury reportedly voted 11 to 1 in favor of that verdict, then a subsequent trial could go in that direction, too. But either way, she's not simply going to be roaming free.

Does it mean that eight, 12 years from now, she can be evaluated and potentially judged eligible for release? Okay, yeah. With Nick Reiner, he seems pretty seriously fucked up.

Will a mental-state defense work? I don't know. There are allegations concerning how the killings occurred, and those facts would be relevant to any such defense. He's less likely, in my view, to be found legally insane and avoid a prison term.

But I think it's smart to avoid the death penalty since, A, California hasn't executed anybody in frickin' decades. The last execution in California was in 2006, and Governor Gavin Newsom imposed a moratorium on executions in 2019. California still has people under death sentences, but executions are currently halted.

And it seems, for one thing, I'd say a lot of Californians are aware that wrongful convictions have occurred in capital cases. When you kill somebody, you can't unkill them. There have been death-row exonerations and cases that have raised serious questions about guilt, although claims that a large percentage of people actually executed are later exonerated aren't supported by the available evidence.

California has been staying away from that shit. If you avoid the possibility of the death penalty, you avoid a lot of the histrionics during the trial and, really, a lot of the politicization of the case. Lindsay Clancy's case got politicized, where the libs were accused of being pussies for thinking that she got the sads after birth and that we wanted to let her go with a psychiatric slap on the wrist. I would say that most people, liberal or conservative, didn't think about it that way.

And then conservatives can be characterized the opposite way, as mean pieces of shit who want to put this poor, suffering lady away for the rest of her life. If you take the death penalty out of this prosecution, you lower the temperature a little bit, which is already a pretty fucking high temperature and also tough for the family, since it's an intra-family murder case.

So I agree with not going for the death penalty.

Jacobsen: Thank you!

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is a blogger on Vocal with more than 200 publications on the platform. He is the Founder and Publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978–1–0692343; 978–1–0673505) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369–6885). He writes for International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN, 0018–7399; Online: ISSN, 2163–3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), Humanist Perspectives (ISSN: 1719–6337), A Further Inquiry (SubStack), Vocal, Medium, The Good Men Project, The New Enlightenment Project, The Washington Outsider, rabble.ca, and other media. His bibliography index can be found via the Jacobsen Bank at In-Sight Publishing, comprising more than 10,000 articles, interviews, and republications across more than 200 outlets. He has served in national and international leadership roles within humanist and media organizations, held several academic fellowships, and currently serves on several boards. He is a member in good standing in numerous media organizations, including the Canadian Association of Journalists, PEN Canada (CRA: 88916 2541 RR0001), Reporters Without Borders (SIREN: 343 684 221/SIRET: 343 684 221 00041/EIN: 20–0708028), and others.