Rush Limbaugh Program - June 27, 2005, Monday, Hour #3

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June 27, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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June 27, 2005, Monday, Hour #3

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	And good afternoon to you or good morning, depending on your time zone, thrill seekers, fun lovers, and music lovers all across the fruited plain.
	Time once again for yet another excursion into broadcast excellence, hosted by me, Rush Limbaugh.
	This is the program that meets and surpasses all audience expectations every day.
	No mean feat that.com t-shirts, four different t-shirts, a cup, coffee cup, jihad java, uh Club Gitmo Cap.
	Uh all there just for you to uh buy for yourself, share with friends or what have you.
	Uh you so many of these things have been bought, I can't wait till they start showing up out there.
	Uh in I'm just waiting for the day when I'm watching a news story, and there's somebody wearing a club gitmo t-shirt out.
	I know it's gonna happen.
	And it is can't wait till some mainstream press member sees one of these things and thinks how outrageous it is to be making fun and having fun with something so terribly, terribly serious as prisoners' rights, terrorist rights.
	Let's take a look at some of the other uh Supreme Court cases.
	By the way, the phone number, if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882.
	The Supreme Court today also rejected appeals from two journalists who have refused to testify before a grand jury about the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity.
	The journalists are Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine and Judith Miller of the New York Times.
	They asked the court to revisit an issue that it had last dealt with more than 30 years ago, and that's whether reporters can be jailed or fined for refusing to identify their sources.
	The uh justices intervention have been sought by 34 states and a whole bunch of news groups well as well, all arguing that confidentiality is important in news gathering.
	Uh of course, confidentiality of everybody except target.
	Uh we can have confidentiality of sources, we have confident we can lie and make up whatever we want about the target of anything.
	Uh that's just a personal aside.
	Uh, ladies and gentlemen, the uh uh important uh let's see, Associated Press, they filed a friend of the court brief, and they said important information will be lost to the public if journalists can't reliably promise anonymity to sources.
	Now, Matt Cooper of Time, Judith Miller of the New York Times filed the appeals.
	They face up to 18 months in jail for refusing to reveal sources as part of an investigation into who divulged the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame.
	Uh the ruling effectively ends the appeal by Cooper and Miller on free speech grounds, although Time magazine said in a statement that it would seek a new hearing in federal court on other grounds.
	Now, what's laughable about all of this is that Plame's name was first made public in 2003 by the columnist Robert Novak, who cited unidentified senior Bush administration officials for the information.
	The column appeared after Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, wrote a newspaper opinion piece criticizing the Bush administration's claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger.
	Disclosure of an undercover intelligence officer's identity can be a federal crime, and a government investigation is in its second year.
	No charges have been brought.
	The U.S. attorney in Chicago, Patrick Fitzgerald, the special counsel handling the probe, told the justice uh justices on the court that the only unfinished business is testimony from Cooper and Miller.
	Cooper reported on Plame while Miller gathered material for an article about the intelligence officer, but she never wrote a story.
	A federal judge held the reporters in contempt last fall and in appeals court Rejected their argument that the First Amendment shielded them from revealing their sources in the federal criminal proceeding.
	Every state but Wyoming recognizes reporters' rights to protect their confidential sources of information.
	Justices were told in a brief filed on behalf of 34 states.
	Now Fitzgerald said the U.S. attorney in his own filing that the federal government is different.
	Local jurisdictions don't have responsibility for investigating crimes implicating national security and reason and experience strongly counsel against adoption of an absolute reporter's privilege in the federal courts.
	So uh this the Stream Court said we're not going to hear this case, so it goes back to the trial court, uh, the federal judge that found them in contempt.
	And they do face uh 18 months.
	Now, I'm my memory's a little shaky on this, but I think Fitzgerald is I don't know if Fitzgerald has said it or stated the uh U.S. attorney, but uh seems to me that his investigation hasn't uh well I know there have been no charges so far, but something tells me I read that he doesn't expect to file any, that they're they haven't learned anything here.
	That's why he still wants to talk to these uh two reporters.
	So really the the the issue before these two reporters has nothing to do with the specifics of the case other than the uh U.S. attorney thinks they may have information that'll help him get to the bottom of it.
	Uh the what what's funny is that Novak knows Novak knows who it is.
	And in virtually it what's also funny about this is that the press, which is fighting for the right to maintain private sources and confidential sources, has been demanding all these months that Novak just tell everybody who it is.
	Uh his right, of course, to protect his sources uh vanished when other reporters were snared in this uh in this case.
	Now the uh the court uh case today that seems to interest Mr. Snerdley more than anything else.
	Distributors of popular software for sharing music and videos online can be sued if they encourage their users to illegally swap copyrighted works.
	This was a unanimous decision today.
	The case hands a partial victory to the entertainment industry in its campaign to shut down the file sharing systems that enabled hundreds of millions of consumers around the world to swap music, videos, and software programs.
	What the decision means is that movie and recording studios can pursue lawsuits against the file sharing providers, even though people use the programs to trade directly with each other outside the control of the software makers.
	So basically what you have uh you'll you'll have a uh a place you can go on the internet uh to download files, be it music or movies or whatever, but they are not been placed there by the provider.
	They've been placed there by other users.
	It's just sort of a central clearing house.
	And the case now says that the provider of the software making it uh or allowing these file transfers can now be sued on the basis that if they weren't in business, because the i the the reason for this, some of these files are so huge it would take you a week to download some of this stuff.
	And these software providers have come up with ways to make the file transfer process much faster.
	Now, one of the things that happens is you have, as I understand, I've never done it, but as I understand you have no security whatsoever.
	You're just wide open.
	Anybody has access to your computer while you're on these sites downloading things.
	Um there's no that the there's a trade-off for the speed that they give you, and that is that there's no security, you are just wide open.
	Anybody can have access to you at that point, download whatever they want to you.
	Uh uh as I understand it, and cut me some slack if that's not entirely correct, because I'm I have not I've not uh fact I did try when I saw that the last Star Wars movie was already up on one of these sites, um this is how little I know about it.
	I saw that the movie was up there, and that's at the time 16,000 people.
	It was uh it was calculated, had downloaded it.
	This was within the first day or two days of the movie's release.
	And they named the file the the soft uh software provider, the the file transfer outfit, and I I can't it was BitTorrent.
	It was BitTorrent, so I logged on to BitTorrent to try to figure out okay, okay, how if I wanted to get the Star Wars movie, how would I do it?
	Because I wanted to see how this is done.
	And folks, I couldn't, once I got there, uh the first thing I got was, okay, you got to do this and this and this and this and this, register here, register there.
	And then after you did that, you had to know what you're doing because there's no list of things, at least I couldn't find it.
	Okay, Star Wars movie here, click on this and it'll come to you.
	It's not that at all.
	You've got to find somebody that's got it, and then talk to them, and it it goes back and forth.
	That's why it's called peer-to-peer or P2P.
	Uh, But it's, you know, I'm fairly computer literate, but I couldn't figure this out.
	And I didn't I didn't spend a whole lot of time.
	And I had no intention of downloading the movie.
	I just wanted to find out how this is done because these are that that's a huge it's almost a three-hour movie.
	That would be a huge, huge file uh to download.
	And if people are sitting out there using modems um uh rather than a broadband connection, I I just wanted to see how this is done.
	And it must be a pretty closed community because I couldn't figure it out.
	Uh admittedly I didn't spend a whole lot of time trying, but regardless, it's the outfits like BitTorrent and others that now face the prospect of being sued.
	This hasn't been determined yet, just that the court said that the the original trial of one of these outfits can go ahead.
	And so the entertainment business has the right now to make its case uh and it could end up there.
	It hasn't yet uh but so technically the the like the BitTorrent people and there are many of them.
	I don't mean to focus on them it's the only name I can remember.
	They are technically not providing the so they're not the ones that have the software they don't have or the movies they don't have the copyrighted material.
	They're not the ones that are in possession of it.
	It is if you Mr Snurdly have the Star Wars movie and I don't know you but you've got it and I want it going to one of those places how I connect to you to get it going through their software.
	Since it's so foreign to me I couldn't and I couldn't figure out how to do it when my one brief visit there and I was unwilling to fill out all the information necessary to register there and and uh this kind of thing precisely because you know I just didn't think that's very secure.
	You know I if I could enter the i you know a fake name and so forth but you can't do that and even then they got your cookie.
	I mean they know who you are they can they can reach your computer somehow and once I found out or that that that uh your system is open while you're engaging in the actual file transfer.
	Whoa didn't didn't want any part of that.
	Some people don't care about it.
	Some people are totally anonymous it doesn't matter that nobody cares who they are things that Supreme Court does one other thing um oh yeah cable companies uh Supreme Court ruled today that cable companies may keep rival internet providers from using their lines a decision that'll limit competition and consumers' choices.
	This was a 6-3 decision the AP says it's a victory for the Bush administration which sought exclusive control to promote broadband investment from deep pocketed cable companies.
	Judges should defer to the expertise of the FCC, which concluded that limited access is best for the industry, the high court said in an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas.
	More than 19 million homes have cable broadband service.
	At issue is whether cable Internet access is a telecommunications service under federal law that makes it subject to strict FCC rules requiring companies to provide access to independent providers.
	The FCC said no.
	voting in March of 2002 to exempt cable companies from the strict rules to stir more investment.
	The agency reasoned that high speed internet over cable was just an information service making it different from phone companies.
	That was their distinction the stakes were high because cable companies have invested billions to set up broadband networks and they're now reaping the benefits last year they earned about 10 billion dollars in revenue from cable modem subscriptions which now represent its fastest growing segment faster growing than even signups for cable television service.
	It must be the case because I've had one ordered as a backup I have a T1 lens I wanted to get a cable modem as a backup and it's taken six weeks.
	Can't get these people to even respond.
	Pretty soon I'm gonna mention a name of the company it's it's ridiculous so they must be busy but on the surface to the casual observer this would seem to make sense cable companies have made the investment they've run the cable they've dug up the the ground they've run it all why should some competitor have access to their lines and it's different from the phone you know there is no phone company anymore.
	And I guess that's what some people are trying to do with the cable systems, making there's no cable company more anybody can just access any line they want and make some sort of a deal court said no today.
	Quick timeout we'll be back in just a second stay with people have been patiently waiting on the phones, and let's reward them as we turn to the uh EIB network.
	This is Chris in Marlborough, Massachusetts.
	I'm glad you waited and welcome, sir.
	Hi, Rush.
	I have a remark and a question.
	Yeah.
	I am no fool.
	And uh as a relatively young American, I believe that trust in God is intrinsic to our existence as a nation.
	And the freedom and prosperity that we enjoy is basically based in self-sacrificial love.
	And uh I I'm seeing here that lawmakers are basically eroding the foundation of faith that gave them the opportunity to become a lawmaker.
	And how do lawmakers, a generation or two, separated from me, expect me to be willing and even eager to risk my life if they continue to reject God as a part of our heritage.
	I mean, like faith in God is absolutely central to the vast majority of America's population.
	Well, now you uh you you're calling about the Supreme Court's uh Ten Commandments decisions today.
	Yes, I am.
	All right, it's interesting you called them lawmakers.
	Because that's that's exactly what some people think they have become.
	But I tell you, I I know what you mean.
	Let's think with a court in this case.
	Uh the uh the the these decisions are incoherent, and I will guarantee you that that and I haven't read uh all of the opinions in either case, so I can't guarantee, but I'd be very surprised if uh reasoning such as yours was used by anybody in uh in this decision.
	Uh I I think I think this is on the one side you've got the personal prop policy preferences of one side of the uh decision, and you've got other justices winning or losing side doing what they think is right under the Constitution.
	And that's that's the basic the basic problem.
	Now when you come to lawmakers, when you start talking about members of Congress uh and trying to take God out of everything public, I think you have a point uh even before you get to uh asking uh young people to defend the country.
	Because the the the the you can't deny, if you read the founding documents and learn about the founding fathers, you can't deny that uh the they felt blessed by God, felt the country was blessed by blessed by God and and read read all the George Washington read his first Thanksgiving proclamation.
	It was nothing more than a thank you to God.
	You you couldn't anymore read George Washington, the president today couldn't do what George Washington did in the Thanksgiving proclamation without some lawmaker raising holy hell about it, or some civil rights or civil liberties group raising holy hell about it as a violation of separation of church and state.
	Uh now, as as to the specific question you asked, how are lawmakers two generations removed from you going to ask you to defend the country?
	My fear is that we have more and more lawmakers who'll never ask you to do it, period, because they won't think it's worthwhile or necessary.
	Mm-hmm.
	Good point.
	So that's a whole nother argument.
	Uh but th there's a there's a there's certainly a culture war in the country, Chris, and it's between the secularists uh and the non secularists and and the non-secularist left is uh is hellbent on getting any reference to some moral authority outside aga just getting it getting it tossed out of any aspect of this country's governance.
	Mm-hmm.
	It's frustrating to me being a person who's pretty eccentric and involved in entertainment and other uh uh uh performance.
	People make the assumption based upon what they see in me that I'm very liberal-minded or whatever, but when they hear me uh talk and they find out that I'm not of that spirit, they're shocked.
	And um it's very uh it's very interesting.
	I one time had a dream, uh I woke up in a cold sweat.
	It was a nightmare.
	I had a dream that they were swearing me in as president of the United States.
	And um I don't know.
	I think about politics a lot.
	I listen to you and um many of the other people on this network all the time, and I just really appreciate what you're doing, and I I hope that God blesses you.
	Thank you, Chris, very much.
	God has.
	I mean, there is no I have no doubt about that.
	And I uh I appreciate your comments.
	I was last week, as you know, folks, I was a little guy golf vacation.
	And on Thursday at the end of a people were respectful during golf, nobody talked politics with me, but at lunch afterwards, a guy in my foresome said, Rush, pardon me, I've got to ask you.
	I've just have to ask you.
	And I said, go ahead, shoot.
	If you were president of the United States, what's the one thing?
	What's the one thing that you would do?
	I said, whoa, boy.
	I don't I couldn't narrow it down to one.
	So the things I told him that I would focus on were one, the Supreme Court and the American judiciary because what this country's tradition is is being usurped by it.
	We have we have a judiciary that is I mean the Constitution is meaningless.
	And these decisions today, some of them are evidence of that.
	Second thing I told him immigration, I'd close the borders without borders.
	You don't have a country.
	And the third thing I'd do is uh is just open oil exploration and get ourselves energy independent as quick and fast as I could.
	And this was in face, by the way, of the UNICAL uh potential sale to China.
	You heard about that, Mr. Stern?
	Oh.
	I'll tell you what, the Chinese will own the Gulf of Mexico when that happens.
	Making the most of every precious broadcast moment.
	Rush Limboy, your highly trained broadcast specialist here on the EIB network.
	Back to the phones to Colorado Springs.
	This is Jeff.
	You're up, sir.
	Hey, double ditto's from beautiful Colorado, Rush.
	Thank you, sir.
	Why the double ditto, second time caller?
	And I was listening to uh on the show earlier about the aggression that the senators were leveling against the sec death in a time of war, and as if to say hang hang on just a second for you liberals, uh and those of you in Rio London Palm Bay's the sec def as the Secretary of Defense.
	Oh that would be Donald Rome.
	So I just I want to make sure they know what you're talking about.
	Well, thank you, sir.
	I do appreciate the clarification.
	The um toward the sec def the uh the senator's aggression as if to say, hey, look, you know, Secretary of Defense, uh, the only way to get out of this is never to have gotten into it in the first place, and you're at fault.
	Um I wanted to say this is not the first time Quagmire has come into the lexicon.
	I I last talked to you in 1999, tried several times, only the second time to get through.
	Uh, and we mentioned the term Quagmire.
	It was for the Balkans Quagmire, which was a book written by Robert Kutchik in uh 1999.
	And you mentioned the Vietnam template earlier, and I wanted to ask you and get your thoughts on what happened to the Balkan template.
	It was President Clinton, and you mentioned the Gitmo t-shirts, the verding for a second.
	The Gitmo t-shirts, which I love, but they had t-shirts in the little commissary at Tuzla Air Base in Bosnia, which said this.
	Adding quotes, President Clinton, we'll be out of Bosnia in one year.
	Dot dot dot.
	I just didn't say which year.
	So now we're still there.
	We still have soldiers in harm's way, but have those same senators which have attacked the Secretary of Defense forgotten that it was their guy who got us in there, and that it is working in the Balkans and that it'll take time to work here, sir.
	Of course not.
	Uh you you make an excellent point.
	They're never gonna complain about a Democrat president.
	Well, take it back.
	Actually, no, I won't take it back.
	Uh Richard Nixon's blamed for Vietnam.
	It was John F. Kennedy and LBJ that really screwed it up.
	Uh I was gonna say that if the president's Bill Clinton, whatever he does will not be criticized, it doesn't matter.
	But I think it's all Democrats.
	The Democrats are okay with the use of the military, one of their own guys is doing it.
	Uh they're terribly upset when somebody else.
	I I've said this before.
	Uh, and I I many, many times, I'll say it again.
	I actively think that liberals uh seek the defeat of the militar of the military.
	I think they're happy.
	I think liberals get excited when the military doesn't work because they have a general pacifist view of everything.
	They think the use of the American military is always unjust, uncalled for, unwise, and unfair, uh, being that we're the only superpower.
	And any time we take it on a chin, I think they're happy because it allows them to say, see, this doesn't work.
	The military option doesn't work.
	It's not what we ought to be trying, it's not way ought to be.
	We need to use negotiation treaties, and they mean have dialogue and all this rot gut.
	Um but yeah, uh you you won't have any reference to the Balkan Quagmire.
	You won't have any reference to it at all because there's no political gain for Democrats in that.
	You've nailed it.
	This is pure politics that's happening here with Iraq uh and uh and the war on terror and nothing else.
	Tim in Sacramento, my adopted hometown.
	Welcome to the program, sir.
	Hey, mega dittoes, Rush.
	Thank you.
	Uh Listen, I'm an attorney at a conservative legal organization called the Pacific Legal Foundation, and I filed uh a couple briefs in the big eminent domain case, and I was very impressed this morning to hear how you got this case exactly right.
	This is not about states' rights.
	This is about massive corporate welfare programs to take property away from poor people and give them to Costco and IKEA and Home Depot and big powerful corporations.
	And it was blessed by the liberals on the court.
	And this is what happens any time private property rights are denigrated.
	Back in the 1930s, the court said they didn't really care much about property rights, and so because they wanted the government to take property away from rich people.
	And it was only a matter of time before rich people like these companies figured out how to use that power for their own benefit, and that's okay with the liberals.
	Yeah, you've well, I can't I can't add to it, other thank you for your uh your comments.
	The the the uh the thing that surprises me about this, though, is is how some people actually think this is a victory for states' rights and for local government rights because they're not fully uh uh aware of just what what happened here.
	But this is you know, you're what is let me ask you, since you're out in the West, what's the implic implication here for other private property rights when it comes to environmentalism, such as we all know the big cases the kangaroo rat down in Bakersfield and the guy losing his farm wetlands and this what what what's what all these Supreme Court cases have uh echoes.
	What's what's the echo going to be for people out west in the world?
	Well, well, I'll tell you, down in San Jose, they're uh they're condemning property to leave it as open space.
	They take they take away property and they just leave it for for the animals.
	And of course, not only does that mean that you can't build proper build on your property, but that means that the tax base for the remaining people in the city, their tax burden goes away up because now there's more untaxable property.
	And this is happening all over the country.
	In five years between 1998 and 2003, there were 10,000 reported cases across the nation of eminent domain being used to benefit private parties or threatened to be used again uh for the benefit of purely private parties for their own private profit.
	The Constitution says you can only take property for public use.
	Yes, but the private anything that benefits the public is a public use.
	Yeah, but the way the states are getting around it, it's very crafty.
	Well, they're not getting around it, but what they're saying and the way they're spinning it is that uh well, you you take a cost car or whatever.
	Take take anybody that that is a uh uh a major uh property developer, they're gonna be paying more property tax than these uh you know little small fry homeowners, such as in New London, Connecticut, and that's used to justify it.
	Well, the problem with that is that anybody's house can be more productive if it were turned into a Costco.
	And the the Constitution says public use.
	It does not say public benefit because the la everything can be can be somehow described as a public benefit if you take somebody's home and turn it into a public park, or if you take somebody's home and turn it into a Costco, or if you take somebody's home and just give it to a say a group of homeless people.
	Yeah, but I suppose that benefits the public, but that's not private property rights because it's not public use, which is what the Constitution specifically says.
	It's just the government choosing citizen A over citizen B, and that's not they're going to choose the most po politically influential group instead of poor people or people like Suzette Keelow, a nurse who's working three jobs to pay her housing payment there in New London, Connecticut, who's now being thrown out of her house to give to a convention center because that will improve the tax basis and allow the politicians to go spending more tax money.
	But the thing people have to understand about this is, in my view, anyway, is that you know we hear all this talk about Democrats and liberals being for the little guy, and this court, the liberals on this court found for government.
	They find and whenever it's government versus the guy, little guy or big guy, they're gonna find for government all the way around.
	They did in this case.
	It looks like they're finding for for citizen B, but actually what's going on, they're finding for themselves because they're gonna get more tax revenue out of the government.
	They're finding against private property rights because if this court said that government has no right to take property from one person and give it to another, why ninety percent of the government would be fired tomorrow.
	Because that's what government does all the time in every facet of its operations.
	It takes property from some people and gives it to others, and that's not what the Founding Fathers intended.
	They required that government abide by strict limitations, and those have eroded over the past seventy years.
	And so it's no wonder that that wealthy corporations figured out how to exploit government's power to take people's property for their own benefit.
	If I have the power to lobby government, I might do the same thing and take, say, the White House and make that my private residence and hold it to public benefit.
	Hang with me, Tim, because I have one more question for you.
	But first I must say I hope you liberals listen to this program, and I know you're there and you know who you are.
	I hope you're noting here two conservatives railing against big corporate interests.
	That's exactly the that doesn't that you just normally don't hear that.
	You normally don't associate normally it's the left you hear wailing and moaning against big corporate interests.
	Well rush the reason for that is because conservatives recognize that private property rights should be respected for everybody.
	The poor man should have his house respected and the rich man should have his house respected and the only way you can have a safe and free society is if you have a government that respects everybody's property rights equally and leaves them alone.
	Well but there's an added there's an added element to it and that is and that's the importance maybe even of more importance than the right to free speech of the right to own property in a free country without the right to own property even with the right of free speech you don't have a free country.
	Well you can't not when the government can come in and take whatever they want whenever they want it not pay you anything for it or very little for it and give it to somebody else or use it themselves you don't have a free country.
	You can't even have freedom of speech if you don't have private property rights because then the government can retaliate against you expressing your opinion by taking away your property.
	Private property rights are the most important of all rights because they are the ones that protect every other right now there was a ruling last week the first of these private property rig rulings involving a hotel in San Francisco.
	That's right San Remo Hotel I our foundation was also involved in that case and that case says that that now you have to go to state court first with with any kind of taking claim and of course you're going to lose because the state courts are made up of politicians who are appointed by the governor who is in favor of taking away your property to begin with.
	And then once you lose in state court you're out of luck you can't go to federal court because the federal court will say well you already had your case heard in state court.
	That's not what the system is designed to do.
	You're supposed to have a federal avenue whenever your private property rights are deprived.
	True but I need more information on the specifics of this well here's what I know.
	I know that you had a hotel and from what I was able to read in the story most of its rooms were not rented to vacationers and tourists as most hotels rent their rooms but rather they were being used for residents.
	For long term residents that's right and the hotels side they wanted to change the way it was do is b doing business they wanted to convert most of these rooms to traditional hotel use.
	And the city said no if you want to do that you have to pay this this extortionate fine to the city that they'll use for you know public welfare programs or something like that.
	They said you can't do it because we have to have so much guaranteed low-income housing in the city, right?
	That's right, exactly.
	They shifted the cost of the homeless problem onto this private hotel owner rather than taxing everybody equally to pay for the program, which is a blatant violation of private property rights.
	And the California Supreme Court, except for the great Justice Brown, who now is on the D.C. Circuit, upheld that and said that's perfectly all right.
	She called it thievery in her decision.
	Now plan of extortion, exactly.
	So essentially the Santa Rima Hotel in San Francisco was told, no, you can't.
	cannot use your property as you choose you've got to choose it use it as the city mandates or you're going to pay through the nose.
	And as Justice Brown pointed out what that means is that private property is really just a scheme that the government used to raise welfare to weigh raise money for its welfare programs.
	It used to be that that private property was yours and the government existed to protect it.
	But now private property is just it's like a a farmer who leaves a chicken in its coop and leaves it a few eggs so that it'll lay a few more eggs for his own benefit.
	That's what private property is like in America today because the government sees it as just a a clever mechanism of creating wealth that it can then go and redistribute.
	Now would you say that like a lot of people live in areas where there are tremendous uh town and city regulations not just zoning but how you know where you can build your house, how high it can be, what color it can be would you would you say that that is an example of encroaching loss of private property Oh yes many of these regulations deprive people of the value of their property.
	Sure they don't take the the full they don't take the actual title document but the government passes laws that deprive people of almost the entire value of their property.
	You know Pacific Legal Foundation did a case called Palazzolo some years ago where Mr Palazzolo bought some land in ro uh in Rhode Island and he was going to build some luxury condominiums on it and retire off that money and the state came along and passed a law saying you can build one house on that property and that's it.
	And the Supreme Court said well that's not a taking of this person's property.
	They took ninety nine percent of the value of his property, but because they didn't actually take the title D document, that's okay.
	And that's that's just a sham.
	It's just a shell game designed to protect government welfare programs at the expense of private property rights.
	Okay, so before before I let you go, what what can little people do?
	What can little guy do?
	What needs to be done is state constitutional reform.
	We need amendments in all of the state constitutions that prohibit the taking of private property for private use.
	Arizona and Washington already have these provisions.
	Other states need to get them.
	We need one here in California very badly that says private property shall not be taken for private use.
	See, this is what frustrates people, though.
	Uh Tim, I have to take the Constitution already says that.
	The U.S. Constitution already says it, but because we got some people in robes that aren't going to read it that way, we gotta we gotta do it all over again.
	Uh and some people just throw up their hands and say, well, it's never gonna happen to me, I don't care.
	Most people will say that's not gonna happen to me.
	It's I'm not uh I'm not gonna get involved.
	Got other things to do.
	Anyway, I appreciate the call.
	I gotta run.
	We'll be back and continue in just a second.
	Quickly to El Paso, Texas, as we go back to the phones.
	John, welcome.
	It's great to have you with us here on the EIB network.
	Hi, Rush.
	It's good to be here.
	Thank you.
	Uh I wanted to talk about uh BitTorrent.
	Yes.
	Uh BitTorrent is was originally designed as a uh uh way to distribute legitimate data.
	Uh its use as uh uh a medium for uh pirated information is uh not uh what it was meant for.
	Uh I did not I did not mean to imply that it was.
	I just read when I read that the star and I'm sorry if that's the implication people or the inference people drew, but I uh when I was reading some story about sixteen thousand copies of Star Wars already distributed, uh and it mentioned that BitTorrent was one of the sites you could go get it.
	I've never been to one of these things, have no idea how to use it, so I tried and I failed.
	I didn't know what it was when I got there.
	Right.
	I don't transfer large files back you know from one person to the other.
	Um so th but but I know there are many more of them, but they're still liable now according to this decision, right?
	Perhaps potentially.
	Not sure yet.
	Um really the Supreme Court decision says that uh anyone promoting um uh transfer of pirated content may be held liable.
	Uh BitTorrent um in itself does not.
	Um you've That's true.
	Everywhere I went at BitTorrent, I could not find one thing on what I was looking for.
	Well, BitTorrent was meant i it it what it is is it's a general purpose tool.
	It's a file transfer amplifier.
	It's less of a file sharing system than a file transfer protocol.
	Um what it does is it it's meant to amplify the ability of a server to distribute content.
	And the reason why it's so used so much for piracy is because there are plenty of people out there who are willing to run servers and do that.
	Uh you can download pirated content using Microsoft's Internet Explorer without the need of any P2P software.
	Um that doesn't mean that Microsoft should be held responsible for that.
	So you think the same would be applicable to BitTorrent and others.
	Absolutely.
	Well, if we can count if if what you say is accurate, and I have no reason to doubt it, if we if we had a judicial system we could count on, then you'd say the case is a slam dunk.
	But I'd be worried if I were you.
	And if I were BitTorrent, I would be worried because you just don't know how these people are going to rule these days, whether it's the Constitution or or the law or uh or common sense.
	And then add to it I probably shouldn't say this, but you know, my history is saying what I want to say.
	So you've got sixty and seventy-year-old people that are judges of, you know, who may still be using rotary rotary dial phones uh and VHF TV receivers trying to understand all that.
	Well, it's a factor.
	There's no question it's a factor.
	I gotta run out.
	Appreciate your call, John.
	Back here in just a second.
	Bill Gertz has a story in the Washington Times today.
	China's communist leaders view us as their main enemy, and they're working in Asia and around the world to undermine U.S. alliances as a former Chinese diplomat.
	Ergo, the Chinese attempt to purchase UNICAL, which would give them access to all the oil or the vast majority of it that uh that UNICEL pumps out of the Gulf of Mexico.
	So, this is something to watch.
	We'll talk about this more probably tomorrow and in coming days, but it's great to be back with you people.
	I just have to tell you that it's always great to be back here, the EIB Southern Command behind the golden EIB microphone.
	And I look forward eagerly to continuing tomorrow.
	Podcasts will be coming in about an hour or so.

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