Art Bell dissects the 1996 death of Admiral Mike Borda, questioning his .38-caliber chest wound amid Clinton-era scrutiny and a Newsweek investigation into his Vietnam citations. He debates the Freemen’s demands—legal rulings before surrender—to avoid Waco-like violence, weighing transparency against precedent-setting risks while offering his fax number for contact. Callers clash over their sovereignty claims, with some defending their rights as victims of systemic corruption (e.g., 18-year wrongful imprisonment in Arizona) and others dismissing them as lawbreakers exploiting threats. Bell rejects armed resistance, insisting legal disputes belong in courts, not standoffs, before abruptly ending with a copyrighted music request and chupacabra safari joke, leaving the Freemen’s fate unresolved. [Automatically generated summary]
From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, good morning, and welcome to Coast to Coast A.M. Live Talk Radio throughout the nighttime because this radio station cares enough for you to have live talk radio on.
Cop OD morning, everybody, from the Hawaiian Tahitian Islands, straight across flyover country to the Caribbean and the U.S. Virgin Islands, south into South America, north to the Pole and worldwide on the internet.
Added to the gigantic list of number one radio stations across the country.
Survey just in for Spokane, Washington.
And when you get it down, look at an hour-by-hour breakout of it.
I'd say we're probably averaging about 23 or 24, a 23 or 24 share in Spokane, number one.
Running away.
KGA Spokane, the latest number one surveyed point for Coast to Coast A.M. Absolutely amazing.
Amazing.
Anyway, the commander of the U.S. Navy, Chief of Naval Operations, appointed by President Clinton, Admiral Mike Borda, died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in Washington Thursday.
The officials who asked not to be identified said Borda died of a gunshot wound.
He had been rushed to D.C. General Hospital from his home at the Washington Navy Yard, where the shooting occurred in early afternoon after he went home at midday from the Pentagon.
A senior Navy official told reporters earlier that Borda 56 had been shot and that it was not immediately clear whether the gunshot was self-inflicted.
Tonight, they're saying it was.
Shot in the chest with a .38 caliber pistol.
That shooting apparently occurred on a bench outside his home.
A native of South Bend, Indiana, Borda took over as chief of naval operations in April of 94.
He was the first so-called Mustang to ever rise through the ranks from enlisted to become the U.S. Navy's top officer.
So an apparent suicide motive, possibly a Newsweek article that was about to come out.
Newsweek was investigating his Vietnam War citations, ones he wore on his uniform for years.
Why would a military man shoot himself in the chest?
Obviously, if you fire the bullet, you intend on truly committing suicide, right?
You have decided you're really going to do it or you have not fired the gun.
Don't fire the gun.
But shooting yourself in the chest is at best problematic in terms of getting the job done.
Obviously, if you hit the heart, it's going to work.
But it's not nearly so sure as shooting yourself in the head.
And of all people, a military man would know or should know.
So, you know, I'm not saying there's anything strange connected with this because I don't know that.
I just say it is, to me, a little strange that a military person would shoot themselves in the head.
I got this facts, which I am going to read to you, and we'll see what we see.
Dear Art, I would like to inform you of the latest news regarding the Freemen.
By the way, they did meet with the FBI today.
Middleman, state senator from Colorado, I trust this is from a credible source who always has documentation and not from the mainstream media.
The Freemen of Montana have done a very wise thing.
They've written a legal treatise regarding their situation.
Negotiators have handed it over to Janet Reno and the Justice Department.
Very simply, the Freemen have said, we want you to rule on the accuracy of each point of law in this treatise that we put together and tell us if it is right or wrong.
And if you will do that, whether it be right or wrong, we will come out and peacefully surrender.
They will not accept the Justice Department holding their document to the public in saying that it is all a bunch of garbage and false.
They insist the Justice Department open and honestly before the American public rule on each point of law as stated in their treatise document, citing court cases, etc., and make their findings public.
The Freemen are offering a peaceful solution.
If the Justice Department does not rule on these points of law and release it to the American people, then, Art, this will be a sign to the American people that this whole thing was arranged from the beginning to be another Waco and that they have murder in their hearts, referring, of course, to the feds.
If the Justice Department does go public and rule on each point of law before the American people and the Freemen don't keep their agreement to surrender, then the Freemen have no honor and we can no longer put any faith in them.
I do believe that the Freemen will keep their end of the bargain if the Justice Department follows through with what the Freemen are asking, which is only fair.
We all need to write call and fax our congressmen, senators, those in the Justice Department, etc., demanding that they bring this to a peaceful solution by releasing and ruling on each point in the Freeman document openly before the American people.
A peaceful solution has been offered.
It is now in the hands of the Justice Department.
Let us pray the Department will follow through so no blood will be shed.
Please make this known to your listeners.
Thank you.
All right, well, I have done so without knowing whether it is accurate information or not.
If anybody can verify or knock that down, I would be more than happy to give you airtime.
Now, with regard to whether it is a legitimate request or not, I don't know.
In other words, when you think about it a little bit, it is a demand.
It is something that they want done or that they demand to be done to do what they ought to do anyway, and that is come out peacefully and not shoot at federal officials.
So I'm not sure it is proper that the Justice Department do this.
And I'm not even sure that their word to come out can be trusted if they do, and I'm not even sure it's real.
But I thought it significant enough to read it to you.
It may be so.
Landmines.
Landmines kill 20,000 people a year, most of them civilian, not military.
Our president was under great pressure not to ban landmines.
So he didn't.
He limited instead one type of landmine, said eventually, sometime, there should be a worldwide ban on landmines.
But he decided he would not lead the way.
And I wonder exactly what kind of pressure our president came under not to ban the mines that he had in mind to ban.
Scientists, according to Reuters, are reporting the discovery of two new and very exciting dinosaur finds in Africa.
University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Serrano says he's found fossilized remains of a pair of flesh-eating predators from the Cretaceous period, which lasted from 140 million to 65 million years ago.
One is dubbed the shark-toothed reptile from the Sahara.
At 45 feet in length, it rivaled the Tryanosaurus Rex in size.
Its rigid teeth are similar to those of a shark.
The other is a 27-foot-long, fleet-footed carnivore called Deltadramus, or something like that.
Well, Bob Dole, the new Bob Dole, was in Chicago yesterday, threw away his tie.
It's the new look.
He gave a new speech, said Clinton is, quote, the rear guard of big government and the welfare state.
Dole said there is D.
Now he stands for less government, lower taxes, flatter taxes, flatter, more freedom, and a strong, proud America at home and abroad.
And then he declared himself to be no longer an insider by one day.
No longer an insider, huh?
Majority leader in the Senate for most of his adult life.
And one day he's out, and now he's not an insider anymore.
That much as I'd rather have Bob Dole than Bill Clinton, that is kind of a reach.
President Clinton vows to extend most favored nation trading status for China, says though he's equally committed to imposing sanctions to, quote, stop the piracy of American property, end quote.
So the president obviously intent on going forward with MFN for China, Bob Dole, also to go along with that.
The roosters had not yet crowed when the fierce barking of neighborhood dogs jolted Violeta, Colorado, from her sleep.
The dogs had some animal cornered, some kind of animal, at the rubbish pile behind Colorado's small concrete house in Zapatola, I believe, a farm village in the steamy oil country of southeastern Mexico.
When the canines growled, shuffled, and lunged early last Thursday, the besieged beast responded with a nerve-rattling hiss.
I said a hiss, unlike any animal noise she had ever heard.
It was a full hour, she says, before the beast escaped the dogs and returned to the country night.
Mexico is absolutely being consumed with news right now of this creature doing damage, attacking not just animals, but now people.
Who knows?
Somebody yesterday referring to my little spoof, you remember I said the only way you can know for sure, somebody said they heard sounds out in the forest.
I said, well, there's only one way to know for sure, and that is to dress a good-looking, well-endowed female in a low-cut something or another, and send her into the woods.
Anybody who's ever watched any monster movie knows full well that if there is a monster, it will consume any woman in a low-cut blouse who will immediately go either to the basement or into the woods, generally with a fog on the ground, and be consumed forthwith.
So somebody wrote to me after that and said, first of all, he didn't think that very many listeners regarded it as a spoof.
Your advice to obtain the aid of a female, give her a low-cut garment, send her into the woods some night to see if she would return the following morning.
Well, I found your comments, Art, to be disastrous.
I employed a female, supplied her with a very low-cut dress, directed her to go into the woods immediately.
She charged me with sexual harassment.
I found myself carted off to jail.
Upon hearing of my whereabouts, my wife divorced me.
My girlfriend wouldn't even speak to me anymore.
Then I lost my job since being in jail did not constitute an approved absence.
I cannot get a room in a hotel because I had reached the limit on my credit card in trying to get myself out of jail.
Therefore, I have no alternative but to blame the Federal Reserve System.
So I'm going to drive to Montana, join the Freeman in hopes of opening a checking account.
You know, I never know.
You've got to learn my humor.
I would assume that the majority of the audience knew that I was talking about or that I was sort of spoofing with the gal in the low-cut dress.
But it is true.
And anybody who's a horror picture fan knows that it is true, whether it's the basement or the woods or any other dark, unlit area, you could not have better bait for a monster of many kinds than a gal in a low-cut dress.
I mean, they are simply monster bait.
They might as well have it written right across their forehead.
Monster bait.
And on that note, we'll break here at the bottom of the hour.
You never know, I might go for a little truth or trash tonight or not, depending on where it goes.
We'll see how the mood strikes.
Because this is spontaneous unscreened talk radio.
We'll be right back.
unidentified
This is Premier Networks.
That was Art Bell hosting Coast TO Coast AM on this Somewhere In Time.
In Time.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast A.M. from May 16th, 1996.
By the way, on the Goatsucker, again, continuing with this story, Ramiro Santiago Laura, 34, who practiced veterinary medicine in an area near Z-A-P-O-T-A-L,
Zapatal or something like that, for eight years and in time, has examined quote hundreds of animals killed by predators, said this seems like a type of vampire.
So there you are, the beast.
Possibly a horde of them apparently has been moving fast and taking no prisoners.
At least 46 attacks have been re reported so far in 14 states across Mexico.
Four people have also been attacked.
As of now, West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
And I'm calling about the little thing about the freemen we were talking about concerning should they have the opportunity to let their, I guess, their feelings be known concerning.
Should they, if, you know, according to this facts, the question is, should they be able to demand the State Department give them rulings on law before they turn themselves in?
unidentified
Well, my opinion is under the circumstances, and based upon the history of the federal government and the way they've handled things in the last year or two, I think as a good gesture towards the average citizen and as a good faith gesture, I think it would be smart on their part politically,
and I think it would really show citizens of this country where the federal government's coming from.
I'm not totally against it necessarily, but if you go back to the Unibomber who demanded that his works be published, lest he kill again, or the Freemen who are demanding that the State Department rule on points of law or they're going to shoot it out with the feds, it worries me a little bit, and I think it should you too,
that people with guns and people who are willing to kill will, in a sense, get what they want.
I'm not sure that's a precedent we want to establish.
I think if we look at the larger scale of people with guns and getting what they want, I mean, governments on a global scale get what they want through guns.
And we, the people of the United States, all we want is a fair shake.
I mean, a lot of people really don't agree with what these people are doing up there, but the bottom line is they're doing something very smart right now, and they're giving the government an opportunity to take this and turn it into a good thing.
But you know that's not going to happen.
I doubt it very much.
But on the other hand, going back to the Unibomber, the Unibomber admitted to being the Unibomber.
And he admitted to basically saying, hey, I'm the man you're looking for.
These are my demands.
But he actually incriminated himself by saying, these are my demands.
I'm the man you're looking for.
I'm the guy who's been blowing people up and murdering people.
The people in Montana right now are standing for what they believe in.
Then I'm not sure that these men have a right to demand anything of the Justice Department prior to their giving up peacefully and facing a jury of their peers.
So, you know, look, what I'm saying is, I'm not certain that it shouldn't be done.
Maybe it should.
Maybe it should.
I'm willing to debate that with you.
I'm just saying that acceding to demands is inevitably going to lead to more demands by other groups who will see clearly that either killing, as in the case of the Unibomber, or the implied threat of it, unless your demands are met, works.
And if it works, then a lot of people are going to begin to do it.
In fact, it may well be that they are going by the response to the Unabomber's demands to be published, which he was, which arguably then led to his capture.
So the theory would be that in a large magnetic field, you might wish to use aluminum as a conductor, a non-affected conductor in a strong magnetic field.
But in any case, it's a five-page article on the Chupacabras, and there's some really, really great information in here that you might not have heard about.
One of them, the most interesting that I found, is it says that they took samples of its blood in Chianto Rico in Canovanos.
So that these young people can grow up, educated in the ways of knowledge of the best conspiracies, and we'll be able to talk, call, and talk to talk radio and be very informative when they call.
All right, thank you very much.
You know, in other words, the Federal Reserve.
That would be one course.
The Trilateral Commission.
The hidden hand of government.
The Kennedy assassination.
Two chapters.
There should be a course in conspiracy in America.
that way we can all be operating from the same page use of the rockies you're on the air Hey, Aaron, how you doing this morning?
First, I was wondering if there was any way at all that you could have someone compare the silicone fragments that were in arts parts to the sand at the crash scene.
I mean, there's going to be a lot of sympathy for the idea of, yes, let's get the Justice Department to rule on these ideas of the Freeman.
And I'm not totally convinced they shouldn't do it, but it's being forced to do it at the point of a gun, virtually at the point of a gun, because the clear implication is if they don't do it, it's going to be a violent ending.
A bunch of people are going to get killed.
It's kind of, in a lot of ways, like the Unabomber.
The only difference is the Unabomber had already proven that he would kill.
So, I don't know.
The law is the law.
Seems to me that they could get ruling on all this stuff when they go to court.
They're certainly going to go to court if they live.
And they would have a chance, I would presume, to bring this out.
I don't know.
I'm batting it around, and I just can't quite yet come to a conclusion about what is proper.
And I heard it on two different stations, and I tried to call you all last night, and I could not get through because I thought it was really breaking news.
But anyway, they are offering a peaceful solution, and I think that maybe our Justice Department ought to really go forth on this.
Obviously, they have some things they want public, some rulings that they want known to us.
And, gee, I mean, I don't like the guns and all, but I think everyone should be calling their congressman and, you know, everyone in the area that it's the right thing to do.
I think so.
I think it might be.
I really do.
I think we should urge, and everybody should call and demand that they come forward and bring this before the public.
But the idea of under pressure making concessions, look, if you wrote some hot checks, you, and they came to your home with an arrest warrant, And you said, back off, damn it, or I'm going to blow a hole through that door and you on the other side.
What do you think about the well, what I was going to ask you about is: do you think that these militias are as behind these Freemen as they let them to be?
We got militias all around here and everywhere else.
I think there are some fringe groups that are supporting the Freemen, but that by and large, most mainstream militias are hanging back, do not support, nor do they say they're going to come rushing in if something begins to occur.
However, if enough fringe groups were to become involved in a confrontation and it spread, then some of the mainstream militias would begin to move, and then you'd have to have a war.
Does that answer your question?
unidentified
Yeah, it does.
It would take quite a bit to get the bigger ones into it, I'd say.
I would agree with you, but you see, wars start very, very easily.
And if you've got some fringe-type folks who would rush to the aid of the militia with guns, and there began shooting between the FBI, BATF, maybe even military units, and fringe groups, enough of them, and a bunch of people began to get killed, then the thing would have spread because of, but way beyond, the Freeman.
Then you're running the risk of a war.
It's called a civil war.
Could it happen?
Yes.
Could that spark it?
Yes.
Should the State Department rule on their points of law?
I'm not sure.
unidentified
The trip back in time continues with Art Bell hosting Coast to Coast AM.
More Somewhere in Time coming up.
Works presents Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight, featuring Coast to Coast AM from May 16th, 1996.
Somebody sent me the actual FBI issuance of a warning, and I will protect this person's privacy, and they have asked that I do so because they would be easily identified.
But this is the purports to be, and I believe it to be, the actual regional broadcast to law enforcement agencies of exactly what some groups are thought to have in mind, targets of opportunity, that kind of thing.
There is a report that they have asked the Justice Department to rule on several points of law.
Now, this is not a, you know, it's not a sure thing.
I got it in a fact.
Somebody just called and said, yes, it's been airing elsewhere as well.
The Freemen have a law treatise, and they want the Justice Department to rule on it point by point and claim that if the Justice Department will do so, that no matter how they answer, they will come out.
And I've been sitting here not altogether sure about what's right.
In other words, should the Justice Department give in?
It's literally at the point of a gun because obviously if they don't come out, there's going to be a dynamic resolution to this standoff and people are going to be killed.
So they're in essence saying either do this or we're going to, you know, it's going to be a shootout.
So I'm not sure what's right.
I mean, the Unibomber got published.
These guys want their points of law tended to before they'll come out.
And all I can say is this.
If you were accused of, keyword accused of, writing a bad check, hot check, whatever, and a marshal came to your door with a warrant for arrest, would you think you would have the opportunity to have points of law ruled on by the Justice Department before you were taken into custody?
The answer to that clearly has to be no.
So whether or not we should do it for the Freeman, I'm not sure.
Art, if you will answer this, please.
If the only way you could eat was to get the chip in the right hand, the chip.
By the way, I was saying earlier, we're getting to the point in America now where I think there should be a class in our schoolrooms, conspiracy class, so that people might have their conspiracy IDs together.
So then when they graduate, they can call talk radio and they can talk intelligently and know how to properly bash the Fed, the Rockefellers, Bill Burgers.
They will know how to talk about JFK's assassination.
Knowing the multiple or single bouncing bullet theories, there would be no end.
The hidden hand behind the hidden hand, behind the hidden hand.
Perhaps they would be forced to memorize all the names of the people who are on the trilateral commission, that sort of thing.
Anyway, Art, please answer this.
If the only way you could eat was to get a chip in your right hand, would you get it and lose your soul, or refuse it and lose your life?
Ray asks this impertinent question.
Well, first of all, I don't know that I'd lose my soul if I had the chip.
Now, if I had a chip that I could just wave in front of the supermarket thing, and there would be my bill.
No cards, no numbers, nothing.
Just wave your hand in front of the little scanner.
So would I starve to death or take the chip in the right hand?
If you send the woman with a low-cut garment into the woods, this is for Lil Chupacabra, right?
She must be reminded to repeat constantly the phrase, who's there?
Is anyone there?
Last night, someone butchered the pronunciation of chupacabra in an interesting way.
I believe he called it chupacago.
Maybe these creatures work for UPS, he says.
Hi, Art.
Is it not interesting that Mexico experiences thousands of UFO sightings, then a few months later is inundated with strange new critters?
What did the one in the video look like?
Yes, I have a video.
The one in the video looked horrible.
Somebody sent me a video from Mexico of what purports to be a chupacabra, and it's got great big teeth.
It looks like it has been dead for a while, but clearly it is no animal that I know of.
Unfortunately, he did it on VHS on the six-hour speed.
What he was doing was recording my program.
The audio is my program, but the video is of a Mexican TV station.
And as part of the hours of coverage, they put on some coverage of what purports to be a chupacabra, and I've got it.
But it's in the six-hour mode.
You know, he's using long record mode.
So I've got this video, which I may try to convert to a photograph, a still, and then upload if you want to look at what purports to be a real chupacabra.
But then the other side of the coin is, if that would end it peacefully, Instead of a bunch of cops and FBI and BATF getting killed, along with a bunch of people inside getting killed, it's a weighty item to think about.
unidentified
Well, that it is.
And they should just wait a minute.
They have to come out eventually.
And so if they're going to be parking out there for a year, let them park out there for a year.
Do you think the example I gave earlier is if you wrote a hot check and a marshal came to your door to serve you and you said, get the hell out of here, I'm going to blast a hole in that door and through you too.
Would you be afforded the consideration of having somebody, the Justice Department, on your demand or somebody ruling on what you believe to be your points of law?
And right now, I'm not even saying the Freemen are right or wrong.
I'm simply considering whether the government should, you know, cede to their demands in this case.
First time caller line, you're on the air.
unidentified
Yes, I'm calling with a comment regarding the death.
I'm calling with a comment regarding the death of the Chief of Naval Operations.
Yes.
Yeah, I saw a news broadcast on one of the networks regarding that earlier today.
And one of the things they mentioned was that when he was being questioned by somebody from Newsweek regarding what certain of the medals that he was wearing had been for, was that he turned, supposedly he turned to one of his aides at that point and said, how should I handle this?
And I don't know what the aide said then, but then he said, reply, well, maybe I'll tell the truth.
Now, I don't know, I mean, obviously that doesn't necessarily prove there was any foul play going on, but I'm wondering.
I understand that somebody might find reason to take their own life.
What I don't understand is a military man who would shoot himself in the chest.
That really, really doesn't make sense to me.
I'm not saying that it wouldn't be done.
It certainly could be done easily enough.
But if you wanted to get the job done, if you were really intent on committing suicide, shooting yourself in the chest is really problematic, and you really might survive it.
And then so I just don't.
I just don't know why he would have done that.
That puzzles me.
And I would think it should puzzle and cause investigation as well, those who are looking into this.
I have a feeling that the first, the outside marks are the first strokes, and then maybe the fangs are withdrawn, and then the head is tilted, and then there's another stroke through the same two holes on the outside, and then the drinking of the blood takes place from the first two on the inside, and the second stroke, which produces the second set, is just a hold on.
Yeah, it's really interesting about the wind tonight.
I'm noticing, you know, the wind only blows, you know, I'm hearing you on a kind of a staticky station right now because you come in full force in about an hour.
But when you were talking about the surplus stuff, you know in the news, the wind blew so much that it moved that, you know, that's what the guy at the radio station told me.
Well, yeah, but look, we can, look, we've got to nail this down.
And the only way to do it is for you to have a wind meter so that you can listen to the topics, write down the topics, and write down the mile per hour reading on the wind.
I was wondering, you said, I believe you said either last night or the night before that, excuse me, the way to change this, anytime you want to tell the government what you think, is to go through the court or the law, right?
Now, I know you don't like this, but why did George Washington and all of our forefathers have the right to tell King George to go fly a kite when they were supposed to be obeying his rules?
In other words, is it time Americans took up guns, turned this government over, overthrow the government, and change things and take them, I don't know what you would consider back to their constitutional beginnings.
And I would interview the FBI as well, or the BATF, or any of the officers that are on watch out there, or anybody from justice, the Justice Department, or anybody else.
I guess I'm just asking, I asked her, why should they have more of a right than she would have or I would have to a forum to be heard or to have some point of law that I would like ruled on, ruled on before I give up and put my gun down and don't kill?
Why should they have more of a right?
Her answer was, basically, yes, it's time for an armed revolution.
That's why, because our constitutional rights are gone.
And she's correct.
I don't agree with her.
Eroded, yes.
Every time the government faces a greater threat, drugs, crime, juvenile crime, senseless murder, gang warfare, in order to do something about it, it's going to compress your rights under the Constitution or somebody's rights.
That's a true statement.
So, I don't think it's time to pick up guns and change our form of government because it is not our form of government that is the problem, and that's where everybody's going wrong.
It is us.
We are the problem.
And if our constitutional rights are evaporating and being compressed, we're the ones doing it.
Don't you get it?
A lot of people don't get it.
To a lot of people, it is them, the government, taking the rights from us.
Well, no, it isn't either.
No, damn it, it is not.
I'm not saying they might not take advantage and go farther than they ought in some cases, but basically, most of what's occurring is a response to what we are doing.
100,000 more police on the streets?
Why?
Well, because we've got a lot of indiscriminate crime going on out there.
That's why.
A war on drugs?
Why?
Because it's destroying America.
That's why.
Now, in fighting that war, certain liberties are taken.
Both meanings apply.
Certain liberties are taken.
And this will continue to be the case as we become greater in population, as we continue to centralize that population, as that population continues to misbehave and break the law, it will be tougher on everybody.
Look, I well understand we are heard there at the compound.
I understand the FBI and the BATF all.
Listen, we're all across Montana.
We hit Montana from a million different directions, believe me.
Now, if anybody can help, here is one thing that you could do.
You can fax me.
If you have an idea of how I can get hold of them, you can fax me.
I'll give my fax number on the air right now.
It is area code 702-727-8499.
Well, I try and think of another way to get this done.
That is one way.
If you have a phone number or if you have a contact, somebody you can put me in contact with them, sure, I'll publicize it.
I would like to hear what they think their points of law are.
I would like to hear whether, in fact, this is even true, that they want the State Department to rule on this or that.
I don't know.
I've got this from what seems to be a reliable facts source, but who knows?
So, yes, you know me.
I'm open to it.
Based on what I know so far, I don't at all agree with what these so-called Freemen have done, but I have an open mind and I have an open microphone, and I am, of course, willing to do anything I can to prevent or forestall violence.
And if getting their points on the air would do that, I'd be more than happy to air it, of course.
So I think an initial way to begin is by fax.
If you have a way of my contacting these folks or they want to contact me, I would presume they could call out on cellular or get a message out by ham radio or some other method and get somebody to fax me with a way to contact them.
And sure, I'll put them on the air.
You bet.
All right, back now to the lines and all of you.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Good morning.
unidentified
Hey, Art.
This is Walter on Albuquerque.
Hello.
Yeah, I've been trying to get through it to you.
I'm a first-time caller.
I just wanted to say, you know, I appreciate your show.
Thank you.
You know, with this Freeman and everybody else who says, well, our rights have been violated.
Well, you know, if you don't practice your responsibilities, you begin to lose your rights.
And if it was you, if it was me, we would be hauled off, and you know it.
And the only reason they're not being hauled off right now is because they have lots of guns and they are threatening to use them.
Not be taken alive, right?
No, sir, not going to submit to your corrupt judicial system.
We'll not be taken alive.
That is more or less what they're saying, right?
And I just don't think it's proper that we cave to those demands any more than the police or marshals would cave to such demands that I would make on a personal basis.
I think it's everybody's personal decision when the government has gone too far and it's time to take it back.
We were given the right to do that.
Thomas Jefferson wrote that, you know, when a government, I don't know the exact word, but when a government no longer represents the people, when it becomes a tyranny, we have the right to overthrow it.
And, of course, not everybody is going to agree at the same time when that point has been reached.
Well, if a lot of people felt that point had been reached, then I would think the militias, which consider themselves, I'm sure, the point guys in the watchfulness over the government would have been rushing in and they're not.
But my point was that if many such decisions had already been made, then surely the militias, which are the point guys in watchfulness, would be rushing to the assistance of these free men, so-called.
Yeah, I think they should, and I think they will be.
And as far as what gives them the right to have their say before they are brought to justice, I think if you look at it from their point of view, they're about to be railroaded.
Now, I don't believe they are.
You don't.
I think we both agree that they should be in jail, or at least be in court in front of a jury.
But from their point of view, they're about to get railroaded.
So they want to get to make public whatever it is they want to say before they are shelved, put away.
And I think that's what gives them the right to take their stand and have their say before they are put away.
That then other people, groups or individuals at the point of a gun or the threat of a bomb or whatever it is, will demand their various little demands before they are taken in front of a court for judgment.
You think that's okay, that that would begin to happen generally?
Well, it may or may not begin to happen generally.
If it does, obviously, or I think by course, the authorities, the law enforcement, are going to take each situation case by case.
And if the situation allows them to take the person into custody without giving them their say, that they're going to do that.
If they're in a situation like this, where it saves everybody a lot of trouble by letting them say what they want to say, then they'll let them have their say.
And if a bunch of athletes were taken hostage in Atlanta, and a group said, you will publish in papers throughout the United States our whatever it is, our agenda, or else we will kill these athletes.
But, I mean, I think the immediacy of the situation is different because in a true terrorist situation, the hostage situation, they've got innocent bystanders, you know, and they're threatening their lives.
In this situation, everybody in there, I think, is in there voluntarily, whether they be women or children or not.
I'm sure they've been given an opportunity to come out.
Well, I'm thinking this one over, and what I will try to do, I guess the only, you know, other than discussing this with you, as we are now doing, the only other thing that I could do would be to give them a hearing if they can find a way to contact me.
We are now the largest live talk show in America, period.
It would be inappropriate for them, and I would allow it.
So, again, let me give out my fax number, all right?
And if somebody can get through and get me in touch with these free men, I will air what they have to say.
And my fax number is Area Code 702-727-8499-702-727-8499.
And they can communicate with us by fax, internet, shortwave.
There are all kinds of possibilities, and I'm open to all of them.
I would like to see this end peacefully, but I am weighing against that wish, the rule of law, which, if it is to mean anything, in my opinion, must apply to all of us equally.
And it must be true that marshals, federal officials, and representatives of courts that have valid arrest warrants be allowed to serve those warrants without being shot, without having to give in to demands so as not to be shot.
Dear Art, knowing you've got your own cats, I think you'll find this story interesting.
Living here in Hawaii, most of us live in condos.
My family lives on the fifth floor.
For the past three months, a minor bird has been harassing our cat named Rascal.
Well, last evening, the bird was back and driving our cat crazy.
Rascal likes to sit up on the dresser that is against the window screen to get a nice breeze.
The bird kept diving down as if it was going to attack Rascal the cat.
Well, the bird landed on our lanai, or balcony, if you will, and was making a lot of noise just to drive our cat crazy.
That's when all hell broke loose.
My six-year-old son opened the sliding screen door to chase off the bird.
The cat saw her chance, ran to the lanai, and caught the bird.
Unfortunately, however, they were both over the lanai and fell five stories to the pavement below.
The bird, DOA, at the scene.
We wrapped the cat in a blanket, rushed her to the emergency vet clinic here in Honolulu.
They took x-rays, and the findings were a sprained left front paw.
I think the bird helped break the fall for Rascal.
She's home, resting, and has a bad limp.
I don't know about you, but a 50-foot fall onto concrete means this cat should not be here now.
P.S.
We are not going to change her name to Lucky.
Well, if she had 10, she's got 9 now.
That's what I would say about that.
We've been talking a lot about the Freeman, And I've got a fax which purports to suggest the Freemen have made the government an offer, and that is that their treatise, law treatise, be ruled on point by point.
And if the Justice Department is willing to do this, they are then willing to come out, and there will not be a bloody exchange.
I have no way of knowing if this is an accurate piece of information, but it has been aired elsewhere.
So my facts simply adds to that.
If it is true, I'm not sure what's right.
In other words, I'm not sure that our government should, under pressure, be forced to do something for these so-called Freemen that they would not do for the rest of us.
That is, give us some consideration or rulings or opinions of law prior to our making ourselves available under a lawful warrant for arrest.
What does common sense tell you about the situation in Montana?
Even though I believe what I believe, which makes a lot of people angry, which I don't care about, I really don't care about.
I'll have my opinion no matter what.
I still have an open show.
And I, again, say that I would be willing to have either the Freeman or a representative of the Freeman on the program to talk as a guest, to present their case.
I would be willing to do that.
I don't know that the FBI would allow it to be done, but I would allow, certainly I would allow the forum.
I know that we are heard widely by both sides in Montana.
So again, I say the offer is open, and I would allow a fair presentation to be made, as I do with all of my guests from the Freeman, and allow you all out there to be the judge.
I would definitely allow that.
Of course I would.
So there are a lot of people very angry at me for my position, my take on this.
That's too bad.
This is still a free, open forum, and despite my opinion, whether it's on this or anything else, I will allow a free and open discussion.
People will write to me and send me faxes and say, well, you just cut the people off that want to talk in defense of the Freeman.
No, I don't.
Not any faster or quicker than I do anybody else.
And how long you're on the air depends on how long the call or the subject matter that you're presenting appears to be productive.
It's as simple as that, and I treat everybody in that respect equally.
But with regard to the Freemen themselves, I would allow either a representative of or the Freemen themselves to make a significant presentation.
It is of public interest.
So naturally, if I'm allowed access, I would do that.
It's easy to confuse what you were told by your mother about what you did when you were little with your actual memories, your real memories.
And I can sift back through them now, but I can't fully delineate between what my mom told me about what I did and what I really have as my own memories.
There are some of my own memories I can clearly identify as that, but not all of them.
Have you ever tried reaching back to see how far back you could actually remember?
There are people who claim they have a remembrance of swimming about in the womb and kicking mom.
In other words, I listen to people busily being paranoid, cynical, anti-government, blaming everything on the government when the majority of the blame rests with the image in the mirror, actually.
In other words, the government may be a bit rascally and may do things it ought not do.
I'm not saying it doesn't.
But most of what it does, it does in response to what we're doing.
unidentified
Yeah, I agree.
I think it is up to us to better this world in whatever way we can.
Now, the challenges to our freedoms and the compression of our freedoms or many aspects of the Bill of Rights articles is mostly due to our own behavior.
At least when I stand back, that's the way I see it, as opposed to a simple tyrannical, power-grabbing government that wants to do things to us.
And not enough people are focusing on what's going on out here, and too many are focusing on sort of a paranoid us versus them.
They're trying to get us.
They're trying to make us slaves kind of mentality.
What I was wanting to mention was when you were talking about the potato chip earlier, in the Bible there are so many different versions of the Bible wrote.
unidentified
Are we sure that it's going to be written in potato chip, sir?
Well, not the potato chip, but the chip.
There are so many versions of the Bible that date back.
I was wondering the 666 that everyone's talking about, if it was going to be in English or in the original writings of the Bible when it was wrote back when it was mentioned.
Mike, isn't there a way that they could get someone up higher up, like someone they could trust, or maybe someone to interview them, like Barbara Walters or something like that, to open it up even more to let people understand their point of view a lot clearer than trusting the government.
Well, maybe we don't have a right to have the whole picture.
In other words, these guys have arrest warrants out, right?
Well, yeah.
If there was an arrest warrant out for you, do you think that before that would be served, you had a right to stand there with a threat of gunfire and say, look, I want to talk to the press, give me access to the press.
Well, there's nothing that says they're going to do that or have to do that, right?
It just astounds me that us as a nation can take care of other acts of aggression from other countries, Iran, Iraq, and all that, but we can't take care of something like this at home.
Those who are supporters certainly are in favor of that concession being made.
But I don't think you do it.
I don't think you can do it.
Now, whether or not a court would allow their points of law to be considered in a case, specifically the case that would come of what they're charged with, is questionable, and maybe that's why they're doing this.
They want rulings on, I'm sure, big things.
They want rulings on what the Federal Reserve is doing, I suppose.
They probably want rulings on whether they can do as the Fed does, or they believe the Fed does illegally.
They want rulings on whether their liens are proper and legal, all that sort of thing.
I can only guess at that.
I would like to interview somebody from that area, one of the freemen.
I would love to interview them and would be glad to give them the airtime if they can calculate a way to get to me.
Listen to this.
Dear Art, regarding the Freeman, Ultimately all determination of sovereignty is dependent on force of arms.
Now let's consider that line, okay?
Regarding the Freeman, ultimately all determination of sovereignty is dependent on force of arms.
Boy, is that wrong.
Whether a group of states that decide they do not belong to the union, a country called Afghanistan, decides to resist what they consider to be outside influence, or a group of people in the state of Montana called Freeman, their ability to establish themselves as sovereign must rest on their ability to defend themselves by force of arms.
I suppose that's the ultimate tool in defense of sovereignty.
However, the only thing that really ultimately maintains sovereignty is an idea, the idea, I think.
The idea.
What holds us together as a nation with what we do have, compressed as it may be, is the idea of America.
That's what I think.
And I think all the guns in the world don't hold something together that is not felt.
So to me, the force of sovereignty is the idea itself.
Ideas don't die.
People are killed.
They're shot.
They're hung.
Many things happen to people, but ideas survive them if the idea is a proper and correct one, as I believe the construction of our nation basically is not perfect, but the idea is strong and it survives.
When that idea, when that spark is gone, then the nation will go despite all the guns and all the bombs that anybody can gather together.
But anyway, as far as dealing with these people, fraud, there's no statute of limitations on fraud.
These people can be taken into custody at any time.
And with regard to their request for having their points of law being reviewed by the Justice Department, I think that in a court of law, there are provisions for administrative remedies like they're talking about.
And although I'm not familiar with the finer points of what they're trying to say, it is legal, and in fact, it's being done in a number of places around the country to establish what are called congressional survey common law townships.
Now, I don't know if that's what they're trying to do there, but there are areas where people are basically self-administering their own small government.
And after all, that's how this country was founded.
It started from the bottom up, you know, of, by, and for the people, you know.
And I just, I think that maybe the best way to save lives and resolve the matter is to let these people come into a courtroom peacefully and, you know, present their case.
And also, as far as the warrants that are being served on them, for example, many warrants will describe the place where the warrant is to be served as a premises.
But under law, in legal terms, a premises is a place where merchandise is bought or sold.
It would have to say that the warrant was being served on a house or a home or a farm or whatever it is for it to be valid.
Plus, under the Fourth and the Fifth Amendment, when a warrant is served, it also has to be accompanied by an oath and an affidavit swearing out the probable cause and the people to be taken and the places to be searched.
You know, if these criteria are met, then the warrant is invalid.
I am honestly sick and tired of listening to these extremist people calling in, defending the Montana Times.
You know something?
One of my heroes was a guy named William Tecumpshaw Sherman.
I don't know if you're familiar with that, but he was an individual in time of Civil War who understood the fact that when the government is threatened with violence, that you have to react violently.
Well, I think, you know, as far as if a person wants to carry signs and whatever and complain about the government, that's fine.
But when individuals start saying, you know, something we're going to take up, we're going to take up arms and we're going to start doing violent things against the government, I don't think there's any government that can stand that.
In China, you start doing something like that.
These guys in China, what would happen is that they'd all have a bullet in their head and their families would be charged for the price of the bullet.
And that's what some people who sit out here and say this country compare it to Adolf Hitler's Germany and say we're losing all our freedom.
They don't understand that there's not a country on this planet that would put up with that kind of crap for two months.
Well, don't get me wrong when I say this, but I honestly think that there are some societies that are apt, that people think of freedom as being the ultimate good.
And I think of, you know, certainly we don't want to be a totalitarian society.
And certainly, it comes to the Fourth Amendment, I back that.
But I honestly believe that there are some areas that when you allow too much quote-unquote freedom, that it hurts society rather than helping it.
And I think this is one particular area where a society needs to tighten up on that.
I think if we had done that in the 1840s and 1850s, there would not have been a civil war.
And I think we need to understand that when people start suggesting violence against the government, that that's when any type of government needs to lay down the law.
And I know a lot of people out there who will resent that, but that's the honest to goodness truth.
Well, they, the government, should be able to serve lawful warrants without being shot at.
Now, the question is whether you push it to a crisis point when you know what's going to happen.
You know, the bullets start flying, and God, it could get out of hand so fast.
The other hand, you can't really let it go very much longer.
As I've said, I'm very, very happy that I'm not making the decision about what has to be done here.
And this cannot be an easy call for anybody involved because these people have not yet committed a capital offense.
And so the use of lethal force under the circumstances is probably inappropriate.
So who's the guy who gets the volunteer to warrant in hand go toward the door?
Then you've got violence.
Then somebody takes a shot and then it begins.
Is that what you do?
Is that what you order if you're in charge?
Joe Schmo there, here's your warrant.
Go serve it, guy.
And if they shoot you, then, of course, the game is on.
Do you do that?
You order that guy in?
I don't know, but I don't think you cave into special demands before they will allow themselves to come under the law's auspices as you would have to or as I would have to.
I'm struggling with this a little bit, I know, but you cannot dismiss totally what Charles just said.
First time caller line, you're on the air.
No, you're not.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
unidentified
Hello, Art.
Hello.
Yes.
I've been trying to get through the last couple of days, and somebody else might have touched on this.
I was listening to another talk radio show in the middle of the night, and there was a gentleman on there that said he was either an attorney for the Freeman or wanted to be or something.
And he basically said that they had put together and met all the state requirements to become a town or township and basically had their own legal system and actually convened a grand jury and served subpoenas on some of the federal government people.
And of course, our federal government people tore up the subpoenas and didn't show up, so they lost by default.
I mean, it says set up your own little law within the law, land within the land, sovereignty within sovereignty, and say you are sovereign, and we are serving this on you because we think you did something wrong, and you owe us $5 million, and so we're going to start writing checks on that, even though you haven't put the $5 million in there, and that's cool.
unidentified
Well, let's say the town of Perump served a subpoena for someone to come down and they didn't show up, what would happen?
Despite the way I feel about the Freeman situation, I am going to allow a debate between two of you on the subject.
So here's what I want.
I want one person who would like to represent the Freemen and their cause and what they want.
And feel that the Justice Department should cede to their demands and allow a point-by-point examination and opinion of their treaties before they would come out or whatever other demands they might have before they would come out.
If you would like to defend the Freeman, call me now at Area Code 702-727-1222.
702-727-1222.
Only if you want to defend the Freeman.
On the other side of the coin, I would like somebody who would have the opinion that no special privilege should be accorded the Freeman, that there perhaps should be soon a dynamic entry, an end to this situation by force, if necessary.
And you may call me on any other line.
Everybody else right now should hang up because this is the one time that I do go through and screen my calls.
When I'm going to have a debate, I do that.
All right, we'll get to that in a moment.
Let us begin with somebody who would like to defend the Freeman.
Well, now, it is my opinion that the Freemen don't deserve any kind of special treatment just because they happen to have a skewed view of the way that American government should be run.
The fact is that they are in the United States and therefore should be held accountable to all statutes, all laws, everything that applies to being a citizen of the United States, excuse me, including everything that is stated in the Constitution of the United States.
Okay.
First off, do you have any evidence that they have a skewed view?
If a representative of the law of the United States comes knocking on their front door, telling them to peacefully lay down their arms and go with them, and they refuse to do so.
Okay, but now let me ask you this.
Do you know there's a case called Oshwander versus Tennessee Valley Authority?
Okay, also numerous other cases.
But in that case, it says that the United States has personal property.
In order to be a person, you have to either be a natural person, firm, individual, or corporation.
Okay, so the United States is essentially a corporation also.
That's another meaning of the term, United States.
In other words, the corporation that manages and runs the government and carries on business in the government's name.
Okay, now will you please tell me what this has to do with the- Well, you say that all these statutes apply to the United States that they have supposedly violated.
Which United States do they apply to, the corporate United States or the landmass known as the United States?
It has to do with anybody who is a person, a business entity or a personal entity, residing in the property which is inside the borders of the United States.
Did you know there's also numerous other cases that say that the citizen is not considered a person under these statutes?
That the sovereign, which is the people, we are the sovereignty, that the sovereign is not included within a statute unless he's specifically mentioned.
But these are points of law that they should have addressed.
And under administrative law, no person, which in that case is being invoked remedially, which is going to be construed liberally, no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process.
And due process is a hearing, an open and public hearing.
That's why these guys cannot be arrested without a hearing.
And we make all these assumptions.
We make the assumptions that they wrote bad checks.
Do we have any evidence of that?
I happen to know what they were doing, and they weren't writing bad checks.
were what they call warrants.
Okay, and why do you think people called these banks and said, hey, I've got this thing here and it's for a million dollars.
If they're in the right, if they are truly abiding by the law, if they are truly doing the right thing, then let them knock this stuff off.
Let them come out of this, I won't use the word compound, let them come out of their area, give themselves up to the law of the land, go to court and prove themselves right.
Just by the fact that they are refusing to talk to the FBI, to talk to ATF, to talk to every government agency that is there, it's admitting guilt.
It's the same thing as O.J. Simpson saying, oh, I'm innocent, but yet going down I-5 at 45 miles an hour with a fake beard and mustache with a 45 pointed to his head going, please don't, please don't arrest me.
If they're truly innocent, then let them come out and prove that they're innocent.
Okay, so I'm really glad you brought up OJ.
Do you think that the other probably hundreds of poor black and white people that do what OJ do every year would be acquitted or would have been found guilty?
unidentified
I think they probably would have been found guilty.
And there again, I will say, if they truly are innocent, if they haven't done a dang thing wrong, then let them come out, have their day in court.
Otherwise than that, you know, that dog don't hunt.
No, because I'll tell you why.
Our courts are a sham.
That's why they know what goes on in court.
The fact is that if you can throw mega bucks at the court system, you can maybe get your due process.
Okay?
But if you don't have mega bucks, you'll be slammed in jail just like Schweitzer is waiting in jail right now.
You will not have access to law, not have access to your families, not have access to decent counsel because the lawyers are all a bunch of whores that will do whatever the government tells them to do.
And they took an oath to that effect.
They took an oath to support the Constitution, but to defend the government.
I bet you didn't know about that one.
And that the courtroom is not a place where truth comes out.
I got a letter from a guy in Arizona the other day that is in prison for 18 years, and he tried to bring in the Constitution of Arizona, the Constitution of the United States, and the Declaration of Independence.
And they said, oh, those can't be brought into court.
They're excluded because they're hearsay.
You would have had to have been a signer of one of those documents to bring it in.
See, I think that's what the Freemen are a little bit afraid of, is the fact that they may be prosecuted on a law that is pursuant to one of those documents, and yet they would not be able to bring that document in to look for the original intent of that document because of the rules of evidence.
They'd be excluded.
And now they would have the cameras excluded so no one could see what these criminal judges are up to.
And I think this country is abysmally failing at protecting the liberties of its citizens.
The guilty guy, you're going to get another whack at him.
And we, the people, live in this country not for safety, but for liberty.
So we'll take our chances.
We should be well-armed to help protect ourselves and live in communities where people know who's decent to work with and who's not.
But the fact is today that we have a government that is harvesting its people, and it's very easy, I have seen, for prosecutors, corrupt cops like Fuhrman, and corrupt judges to get together and corrupt defenders, public defenders, to get together and railroad someone.
It's as easy as pie, especially when you've got somebody like the Freemen who have a message and who also have a multiple of hundreds of trillions of dollar commercial lien perfected against the Federal Reserve Bank to be railroaded and put away forever and everybody to think, oh, yeah, they were a bunch of bad guys.
It's one thing to believe in the right to bear arms.
It's one thing to believe against gun control.
But when you take such actions as to go to the extreme, you know, if these guys really were innocent, they wouldn't have been unwilling to talk to anybody.
They wouldn't have been so unwilling to make contact with representatives of the United States government for 54 days, now, would they?
No, they're not going to come out and go through these kangaroo courts.
If they wanted to leave, all they would have to do is walk out the front door.
And be thrown right into our crazy upside-down system with no due process.
Believe me, there's nothing that these guys are more expert at than denying people their due process through rules of procedure.
The fact is that the other guy I talked about in Arizona, they used the rules of procedure to directly assault what he felt was his due process, which was his constitutionally secured rights and the intention of the framers who secured those rights.
Sorry, but you obviously have either ⁇ you are either a cop or you're in the system somehow, but you have not had to deal with the business end of this system.
I think that that caller was making some assumptions on his own.
And to presume the other caller was a cop, that's kind of a reach.
To suggest, it seems to me the system is so broken that it generally does not convict people who should be convicted and set those free who should be set free is also in my view, and I may be also old-fashioned, but that is incorrect.
I think that the system generally functions properly and occasionally does not.
It's not a perfect system, but it's not bad either.
Art, you poo-pooed the comment about guns making and keeping freedom.
But could we have become a nation without them?
Could Israel be a nation without them?
Could Chechnya be free without them?
The answer to all of that is no, and I didn't poo-poo it.
I said they are the final tool.
But what makes us sovereign and makes us what we are is the idea of America.
It is the Constitution and the belief in the freedoms and the rights that were articulated by our founding fathers.
It's the idea.
The strength of an idea is stronger than a bullet.
And when the idea fades, then you've got nothing left to use but bullets.
That's what I was trying to convey.
unidentified
This is Premier Networks.
That was Art Bell hosting Coast to Coast AM on this Somewhere in Time.
What Keeps Us Together?00:02:52
unidentified
Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight, we train Coast to Coast AM from May 16th, 1996.
I really want to make something quite clear, and maybe there's something here I want to talk to you about.
I'm a big believer in gun rights.
I own guns.
I've always, all my life, owned guns.
But I don't think that guns are what keeps America together.
And we shouldn't confuse gun rights and the ownership of guns, the possession of guns, and begin to confuse it as the only thing that keeps us together as a nation.
Ventura County health officials have found evidence of, brace yourself, bubonic plague in wild rodents at a campground in the Los Padres National Forest.
The U.S. Forest Department has temporarily closed the Wheeler George Campground near Ojai so workers can combat the disease.
Plague is common among wild animals like chipmunks and squirrels.
The disease is transmitted to humans by bites from infected fleas.
Fleas, I said.
But it is curable when diagnosed early.
Symptoms include lethargy, nausea, muscle aches, high fever, swollen glands.
Health officials advise the public to avoid contact with chipmunks and squirrels, dead animals, and to protect pets with flea powder or collars.
They also warn owners to leave pets out of areas where plague has been detected.
I wanted to comment on your position on this issue and then raise a couple of counter-arguments.
Actually, I'm progressive, so I'm kind of left of your friend from San Diego named Charlie.
However, I do see the Freeman's position.
You are truly conservative to the extent that your entire approach to this is a total defense of the status quo, including a total defense of law enforcement, the judicial system.
At least you haven't presented any suggestions for improving it.
All right, before you get to that, you are correct.
I am defending the present system.
I'm not saying it is perfect, but nor would I say that I'm in a position to say how it would be improved.
I think juries are good, generally, not perfect.
But a trial by your peers, yeah, I like the system.
unidentified
Well, okay, I have two sets of comments.
The first set of comments relates to the judicial system.
Who controls legislation is the first question.
Realizing that 1% of the population controls 40% of the wealth, 10% controls 70% of the wealth, we know that almost all legislation in Congress and in the state legislatures are certainly not controlled by the majority of the people.
Your argument would carry more weight if there was a disproportionately large vote allotted to those with the resources you talked about, the top 1 or 10% or whatever.
But in fact, everybody has one vote.
unidentified
Except that money controls elections, and the people with the money have the greater opportunity to get their establishment candidates elected.
The second point is complexity of the law.
The law is so complex that a person with a high school education or even a college education cannot understand it.
The cost of legal assistance is beyond most people's ability to pay.
And the burden of the legal system with more and more people coming under the weight of more and more laws puts a great burden on prosecutors and the court system, which means they want quick results.
All right, but we have a system where if you cannot afford an attorney, one is in fact appointed for you.
unidentified
Well, then the question is, there's a procedural question raised by the previous caller that in practice, the public defender, the judge, and the prosecutor all work in concert to achieve a result, ignoring the interest of the individual accused of a crime.
But I want to go to the broader argument related to the Constitution, etc.
This country was the first country established by a group of men who represented the will of the people.
This generation has inherited the decisions made by our forefathers in the late 1700s.
Unfortunately, the premises that led those men to revolt against government have rearisen today.
The country has become skewed.
There is no redress when government makes an error.
The argument that government is now a corporation with enforcement agencies unaccountable for their actions, there are no ombudsmen in this country to represent the interests of the citizens.
So it is natural that there is a growing dissatisfaction with the role that government has in our lives.
And given the assumptions that led to the American Revolution, namely we have a list of grievances, the grievances aren't met, and therefore people can revolt when the government doesn't serve their interest.
We are moving more and more in a direction where government does not serve our interest.
We had a local election, and we had a grassroots candidate running.
What his politics were is irrelevant, but it's the procedural question.
He came very close to winning, but what happened in the election was the institutional established figures in both political parties, both Republicans and Democrats, in essence, marshal all their resources to defeat this candidate.
Yes.
The point being is that when you have a real representative from the grassroots representing the people, they can't get elected.
And that indicates to me, number one, that a grassroots candidate can still be part of the political process.
Then you said the Democrats and the Republicans, the mainstream parties, marshaled their resources to defeat him.
Well, if the so-called grassroot candidate, ideas are very powerful, and if he was able to present his idea in a way that captured the voters' imagination and support, all the television ads and all of the marshaled resources could not defeat him.
I believe that.
Number two, if his ideas were strong, then he would attract resources himself.
And people complain there is not but the Republican Party and the Democrat Party.
They complain about that.
But if there was an idea, these parties are only supported by ideas.
And I won't get bogged down in what those ideas are.
Most of you, I think, know the difference between a conservative and a liberal.
If there became a a new idea, a wonderful new ideology that eclipsed or took into consideration the main points of the liberals and the conservatives or in some way meshed them or the libertarians or whoever, if the idea became powerful enough, it would automatically attract support and money, as the two main parties do now.
And so you're complaining, really, when you think about it, you're complaining that these ideas are not powerful enough to attract that kind of money.
I've seen homeless people in preparation for the Republican convention in San Diego literally gunned down by police surrounding them because they have nothing else to do with them.
Now, that's a long leap from the police are getting together and shooting parties and randomly shooting down homeless people so they won't be around for the convention.
That's quite a reach, sir.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
unidentified
Hello, Art.
This is Joe.
I'm in Conroe, Texas.
Yes, sir.
And I was wondering if there was any chance you might could do us a favor.
So what my idea is, why don't you make a compilation, a tape or a CD or whatever you prefer, of all of your bumper music and then you could put it on the air and we could all play those songs all the way through.
I was listening to Charlie tonight, and on the one hand, I was gratified by some of the things he said because it kind of brought back the old Charlie.
He's been way too nice the last few times I've heard him.
And I thought something really bad might be wrong with him.
But he sort of sounded like his old self again tonight, and it seems fitting to me that he would admire someone like William Tecumseh Sherman, who being a Texan is not dear to my heart.