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July 20, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:10
July 20, 2005, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
All right, folks, let me cut to the chase.
I'm just gonna cut straight to the chase.
Here is all you have to know about the president's Supreme Court nomination.
I have a quote here from you from Dingy Harry, who's the Senate Democratic leader.
Isn't it interesting how the subject has changed from the White House administrative staff to the court today, isn't it?
It's interesting there's been no question here about a CIA operative being outed.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome.
It's the award-winning thrill packed, ever exciting increasingly popular Rush Limbaugh program, and we are here in the midst of continued growth on our uh on our uh radio program and the website as well, Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
I have the Ditto Cam on, and it'll be on for uh all three hours of the uh program today, barring some unforeseen circumstance, such circumstances yet to occur.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882, the email address rush at eIBNet.com.
Now, let me understand this.
We've we we went through three years of filibusters of appellate court nominees, and we we uh we had the the Democrats threatening to shut down the Senate.
Nothing else is gonna get done until this until the president started picking the right people for the appellate courts.
And we had a gang of 14 that got together and they came up with that deal, and it uh it eventuated in three of the president's nominees being confirmed uh with this deal that only uh extraordinary circumstances can uh can occur when uh to at least trigger a filibuster.
Uh so for for all this, I for I guess for three years of the of the Bush administration, the most important thing in the world was the court.
The most important thing in the world was court nominations, be they appellate court uh or now the Supreme Court nomination, and here is Harry Reid.
What is Harry Reed upset about?
Harry Reed is upset that Carl Rovid on the front page today.
And Harry Reid actually accused the White House of doing this to change the subject.
He wagged his finger at reporters and he said, Isn't it interesting?
There's been no question here about a CIA operative being outed.
Now, if Dingy Harry is gonna take the the the the day of President Bush's first Supreme Court nomination and use it to complain that Carl Rove is no longer on the front pages, I'm I'm just I'm just telling you folks that the it that that will give you all you need to know about this.
And I tell you what I sensed last night.
Uh and it's hard to predict these kinds of things, too.
Uh it it's it's uh it's just very difficult.
But the moment that there was a name, a confirmed name, when was it last night?
About 7, 7.30.
Um last night, uh, when there was a confirmed name, there was uh a change came over me.
And a I know a change came over the Democrats, and I know a realization hit them.
And basically the realization is this reality.
Reality set in last night.
The president of the United States is the president of the United States.
And the president of the United States won two elections, and the president of the United States gets to name nominees to the Supreme Court.
Senators, no matter how pompous, no matter how arrogant, are merely one out of a body of 100.
Some of them get on television all the time, but they only get one out of 100 votes.
And what the realization that swept over me last night was I predicted to you, and I think actually I did predict this.
I just forgot that I predict, I predict so much, and I'm almost always right that some time I can't remember all the predictions, but I do remember actually made this.
That when we get a Supreme Court nominee, whether confirmed or not, that's when reality's gonna set in that these guys on the Democratic Party realize that they have lost.
And not only have they lost, folks, if you look at the predictable responses from the usual suspects, Nahrol, People for the American Way, Ted Kennedy, they're saying they're saying about Roberts, everything they were saying during the day about Edith Clement.
But even if they hadn't been boxed in that way, and uh uh more on that as the program unfolds today.
What is also apparent to me is that their old playbook is now almost irrelevant.
The way that they're going to go after this guy is pretty much the same that they're going to go after or have gone after everybody else.
Don't for a minute be fooled by this notion that you're hearing from a lot of Democrats, and oh, this guy's smart.
Ooh, this guy's brilliant.
Ooh, this guy, whoa, just got president made a braid pick.
Ooh.
You don't know who these people are.
There'll be some last minute discovery going into the confirmation hearing.
Somebody will dig something out somewhere, make something up or whatever.
But it isn't going to work.
The American people don't fall anymore for the notion that a judge in the Supreme Court is going to roll back civil rights.
I mean, in other words, Ted Kennedy cannot say about this guy what he said about Bork.
He couldn't say what he said about Bork today and get away with it.
It doesn't work.
You know, they may try pubic care on a coke can again with this guy, but they're not going to be able to do that.
That was what they tried with Anita Hill.
But it isn't going to work.
The American people are now more sophisticated and more informed.
And the uh remember, this is the first Supreme Court nomination to occur within the 24-7 news cycle.
This is the first Supreme Court nomination to occur within the 24-7 news cycle.
That's how long it has been.
And uh as such, uh uh in that period of time, as we talk about constantly on the program here, you've become more sophisticated.
All the American people have to pay attention to these things.
You become more educated and informed.
Uh and if the liberals were able to win elections with this playbook, then they might have a chance here.
But they're losing elections with the playbook that they've been using for all these years.
And everything they do now is just predictable, and therefore it's a yawner.
They say the same things about every conservative, doesn't matter if he's a judicial nominee or an attorney general nominee or a cabinet member nominee or Secretary of Defense.
They all say the same thing.
They all call them extremists, they all say they're going to roll back civil rights, back alley abortion, whatever it is they're going to come up with, it's always the same thing about everybody.
And after a while, you can do it once or twice and get away with it, but unless you change it and come up with something new, um, you don't it just it's burned out.
And I think this is something that even they realize.
Uh, the groups themselves don't, but I'm I'm talking about some of the Democrats.
I sense a little bit of uh just on what I'm hearing said about about this uh gentleman, Mr. Roberts, I'm I'm sending some sensing some dispiritedness on the left.
I I really see uh uh uh palpable uh depression or fear that has uh befallen these people because I think, as I say, reality finally set in last night, because you have to understand the court is where they uh uh place their last hopes for survival.
They can lose presidential elections as long as they make sure the Supreme Court is filled with liberal activists institutionalizing liberalism and calling it law.
But when you have the president of the United States, George W. Bush, who once again, here we have this dumb frat boy barbecue jockey from Texas outsmarting all these people, outsmarting D.C. You know what was ironic last night?
What I was laughing myself silly, I was watching the media last night, they were frustrated before Robert's name was announced.
They were mad as hell that they couldn't find out who it was.
Nobody in the White House was leaking, except there were people in the White House who were trying to steer reporters off of the Clement story, same lingo that they used uh that Carl Rove used with Matt Cooper.
I'm gonna I'm gonna try to talk you off of that.
I'm gonna move you down the road, whatever Rove's phrase was, that was what's being used last night.
But the media, who's all upset about a leak of a CIA agent's name was just frustrated as they can be that there was no leak yesterday to tell them who the nominee really was.
The town was a and they were frustrated as they could be.
The media all you could see you could hear it in some of the pre uh announcement commentary and in the post-announcement analysis.
So it was just, it was rich.
It was it was now they're even talking about how good the guy looks.
Central casting looks.
He looks a lot like this senator from North Carolina, Burr.
If you get a if you get a picture of this guy from North Carolina, ran against Irks and Bowles and beat Irkson, almost a dead ringer.
Uh, but the um, you know, the the the left is uh, you know stop and think about this too.
The left is out there, you don't make fun of people the way they look, Limbaugh.
That's not fair.
That's not right.
People can't help that.
You don't make fun of circumstances of which they have no control.
I find it interesting that the left capitalized on Bork's strange beard.
They still make fun of John Bolton's weird mustache, and I can just hear Ernest Hollings out there looking at a picture of John Roberts saying, not enough weirdness going on out there.
I don't see enough weirdness in the nominee.
I don't know how I can make an objection based on the man's weirdness.
Translation doesn't look screwy enough for us to make fun of.
So anyway, I just have this and I'm not overconfident.
Don't no no, no, no, no, no.
Folks, do not misunderstand.
I fully expect these people to fire both barrels.
Uh it's just that at today.
Today they they know.
And they got fifty guy, they've got 45 votes in the in the Senate.
There's nothing they can do.
About the only thing I uh not the only, I don't want to say that, but I'll tell you what I think's gonna happen is based on leakey Leahy last night.
See, Lakey, leakey Leahy and Schumer uh went out there right after the president uh and and uh Judge Roberts had their coming out party in the White House.
And I just I'm sitting there, I'm laughing at these guys because you know they just take themselves so seriously, and you know they just want to be so important, and they looked so small.
It kind of like reminded me of how Jim Wright looked giving a response to President Reagan's State of the Union address.
Here you have these two lightweights out there telling the country, well, we must do this and we must do that, and we dunno he didn't answer questions fully, and I'm gonna bore in and so forth.
But Leahy said something uh key here.
Leahy said, Justice O'Connor gave us such a gift.
Meaning Justice O'Connor says she will serve.
She will serve until his uh till her replacement is confirmed.
And I think that the uh the thing that you can almost bank on, if you wanted to bet on it, I would I would say go ahead and bet on it.
Uh that their real strategy will be to delay and shut down and make sure that this nomination takes months and months and months and months uh to uh to occur.
That's what I uh got from Leahy.
And Leahy's also talking about how, you know, he's gonna go buck up to his farmhouse up there in Vermont, where he'll be able to shed the coat and tie, sit under his favorite apple tree in jeans and a t-shirt, and read all there is to read about Judge Roberts.
He says it's going to take him the whole month of August to do that.
Well, he's saying, hey, if I'm under my apple tree at my farmhouse up in Vermont in a blue jeans and a t-shirt, I can't be in Washington conducting hearings.
So delay will be the first order of business which will give them time to try to construct or find some piece of dirt on this guy because they'll find no substantive reason to oppose him.
A quick timeout, we'll be back and continue right after this.
Don't go away.
Already having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have Rush Limbaugh, the excellence in broadcasting network.
So there were Schumer and uh and Leakey Leahy, and they go out there, and of course, there was there was one reporter.
Did you see who the reporter was, Mr. Sturdly?
Was it male or female?
The female reporter, and almost hysterical, uh, say, are you saying that this he's not an extreme nominee?
Are you are you saying you don't have anything to say about him if he's an extreme nominee?
And and uh sh uh Lakey shut that down real fast.
Whoa, well, we gotta give us time here.
I gotta go up to my apple farm up there and sit under the apple tree in my jeans and t-shirt, and I gotta read about this guy.
We'll find something.
Be cool, media.
Be cool.
We'll find something that's extreme about this guy.
He is Catholic.
That'll be enough to get Schumer off of his rocker.
I mean, that's what Schumer didn't write about Bill Pryor.
When Schumer starts talking, he did it last night.
When Schumer starts talking about personal, deeply held personal beliefs, he's talking about religion, and I'm telling you folks, this works every time it's tried.
Every time Schumer or anybody starts talking about a nominee's deeply held personal views, he's talking about his religion.
It's code word, it's liberal code words like the New York Times has code in its in its uh Supreme Court writings.
They're there there the right editor's Linda Greenhouse.
And you have to read Linda Greenhouse in code because Linda Greenhouse writes for the rest of the media, uh, as does the New York Times.
It's not writing for you, it's not writing for the general public.
The New York Times is writing to advise the Democrats and advise the liberals.
And so you gotta know the code.
And basically what Linda Greenhouse was saying today is uh-oh, uh where maybe something, but it doesn't look good.
Uh so but you're gonna keep hearing that the guy is Catholic.
Uh and of course, that is that will make him an extremist uh with uh Chuck Schumer, some of the other now they'll never say this, but the way to call them on it is to say, Senator Schumer, you keep talking about the man's deeply held personal belief.
What the hell does it have to do with anything?
We're talking here about judicial temperament and judicial philosophy.
Did you also hear Schumer say last night, if you're watching this, that uh it's one thing to have a guy like this on the appellate court, but when you go to the Supreme Court, that's where you can make law.
Did you hear Schumer say that?
Well, he said it, and that's that's a dead giveaway as to how they view the place.
And I'll tell you what he's worried about when it comes to making law.
And when it comes to John Roberts, everybody's talking about how he's um uh anti-abortion and he's uh the the nayroll gang, they're all upset that now gang is all up, now gang's got to press out calling him anti-anti-female, because anti-female is not enough anymore, see.
Anti-woman is just not enough to kill a gang.
He's gotta be anti-anti-female.
And by the time they're finished, it'll be anti-anti-anti-anti.
He hates women.
He wants them in bondage, he wants them in shackles, he wants them barefoot in a case.
In fact, he wants them dead.
He doesn't like women even being alive.
That's how extreme they're gonna have to go.
That's my point here.
Their normal procedures just don't work.
But there is this concept here of stare diseases.
There's horizontal sterodesis and vertical stereo diseases.
Now, when you're an appellate court judge, whatever the Supreme Court says a law of the land is, you have to find.
You cannot uh disagree with the U.S. Supreme Court's final authority.
So, as an appellate judge, when you're deciding an abortion case, even if it's on the fringes of it, like parental consent or whatever, you have to be guided by what the Supreme Court has said.
Well, right now, Rofi weighed the law of the land.
But vertical stair diseases, uh-huh, or a horizontal stare disease.
When you get to the Supreme Court, can you as a judge change Supreme Court precedent?
Now, a lot of libs are out there saying, you can't do that.
Why the Supreme Court's a law of the land?
Why what they say is final.
If that were the case, we still have slavery because of Dred Scott.
Of course, the Supreme Court can reverse itself.
They did so in a sodomy case recently.
They've done so in a number of cases, just in the last three to four years.
They did so in Dred Scott.
They reversed themselves.
Um, they can reverse themselves on Roe, they can reverse themselves on portions of Roe.
Justice Scalia has wrote and has written over his career that uh it's apparent to him that the mansion, the big house of abortion law will have to be dismantled door jam by door jam, meaning piece by piece.
He doesn't think it's ever going to be taken care of in one fell swoop.
So you nibble at it around the edges, like, okay, you deal with parental consent, and then you make it tougher and tougher and tougher to actually have one, and you do this in stages, and then eventually you get to the point where you overturn it.
Well, Schumer is afraid of these these of this whole concept of making law, because to him, making law will be to overturn precedent.
But still, his very usage of that phrase, well, because when he gets to the Supreme Court, he's gonna be able to make law.
That tells you the problem, and that tells you how the liberals look at it.
That means as far as Chucky's concerned, he's gonna be making the wrong kind of law.
If you go up there and you make liberal law, if you go up there and make liberalism law, then you're making good law.
But if you don't do that, you're an extremist.
You want to hear something funny today, the uh on the on the uh Senate floor?
Just a portion of remarks made by Senator Kennedy after he got uh got back from uh oh, do you know why you know why uh Bush scheduled the uh uh show for nine o'clock last night?
The after happy hour, and so if Kennedy went on TV last night, how would he appear?
Here's what Senator Kennedy said on the floor of the Senate this morning.
I will not decide whether to support or oppose him based on any single issue.
What all Americans deserve to know is whether Judge Roberts respects the core values of the Constitution and falls within the conservative mainstream of America, along the lines of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
Did he really mean to say this?
Falls within The conservative mainstream of America, or is he saying that Justice O'Connor is the conservative mainstream of America?
Probably the latter.
But um uh so she th this this follows their their tune of yesterday.
Gotta be a gotta be an O'Connor.
You can't replace an O'Connor with somebody who's not an O'Connor.
You've got to replace him, you've got a swing vote with a swing vote.
And Bush didn't do that.
And I'm telling you they're flummox.
Bitch Bush didn't do anything, and they had all been consulted with, and he still was his own man.
We have Rudy Giuliani coming up after the break.
He knows Judge Roberts.
We'll talk to him for a minute after this.
Welcome back.
You are tuned to the nation's most listened to and most eagerly anticipated radio talk show, a program that meets and surpasses all audience expectations on a daily basis.
A happy to welcome to the program uh uh former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
Hi, Rudy, I'm glad you made some time for us today.
Hi, Rush, how are you?
Good.
You worked with uh with John Roberts, I think uh I did.
DOJ William French Smith era.
Can you what can you tell us about?
I work with him uh you know, I guess at the beginning of his career, right after he finished Kirking for Justice Rehnquist and came to work for Attorney General Smith, and then I work with him when he was in the Reagan White House, and I was a U.S. attorney and associate attorney general.
Uh I mean, this is a this is a terrific choice.
I mean, that he's he's uh superbly qualified.
He's got every qualification any of the successful justices of the of the Supreme Court have ever had.
I mean, he's a great law school record, law clerk on the second circuit, law clerk on the Supreme Court, argued before the Supreme Court numerous times.
Everyone who's been uh with him and watched him do that uh says that he's a he's just a a fabulous lawyer.
And he's uh he's a wonderful human being.
So the only opposition to him could possibly be not his qualifications.
He's he's uh as qualified as the best Supreme Court justices, sort of at the top level of qualification.
The only objection could be that somebody didn't like whatever they think is his his philosophy, and that I mean that really should be the president's choice.
I mean, the president's entitled to what is there court.
What is there in his philosophy, if anything, that you look at the right.
I can't imagine what you know m someone might say they think because President Bush appointed him, he's gonna be too conservative, or but I mean that's just an absurd.
Well, one of the things I think about nomination.
One of the things I read about him today was that he has he's very active, and I don't mean this in a phony sense, but he's very active in the Washington social circuit.
He's made a lot of friends on both sides of the aisle.
He doesn't have any enemies uh that anybody knows of.
Uh, well, he's per personally he's a very nice guy.
I mean, he's uh he's a very uh easygoing, nice guy.
So that would m make sense that he would have that he would have a lot of friends.
But he's also, if you've read his opinions, he uh he's a very strong lawyer.
He's a very strict he's a very strict constructionist of the Constitution.
He believes in that.
I would say that probably describes his ju judicial philosophy probably better than anything else.
And that's probably the reason why the president appointed him.
He's gonna be very, very careful and very, very clear about trying to stick as best you can to the uh intent of the Constitution.
We all get caught up in the uh in the buzz of potential nominees in the in the day before, like yesterday and the weeks leading up.
Did the uh did the choice when you heard about it yesterday surprise you?
No, not at all.
He's been one of the six to ten who have been in the list of who the president might select.
And I think he's an excellent choice because in many ways it makes confirmation easier.
Not only is he well-liked the way Nino Scalia was way back when President Reagan appointed him, But he's he's someone who um who hasn't been a judge for a very, very long period of time.
So you're not gonna get an awful lot of opinions that he's already come to that people can attack.
Well now, Senator Leahy says he's gonna spend the month of August under his apple tree on a farm up in Vermont reading reading reading all about Well, I think I think uh Rudy, the the the the based on what Leahy said last night, uh at least his strategy is gonna be try to delay this saying that uh that O'Connor gave him such a gift saying she'd hang on if uh her replacement wasn't there.
But i he it it obviously gonna not take Senator Leahy a month to read the writings of Judge.
No, he's only been on the court for a short period of time.
I've I've already read three or four of his opinions, and I think I could probably get them all done in about two or three days.
And I'm sure that somebody will be will be summarizing the opinions of Senator Lady also.
So I think he could get done with his opinions pretty quickly.
Well, um, let me ask a question about the you're a student of all this as as uh as many of us are and we we know that the uh the real contentious hearings began when uh President Reagan nominated uh Robert Bork.
Now Judge Roberts is fifty years old.
Apparently he's had uh an ambition to rise as high as he can uh in the uh in the judicial world the legal judicial world is possible that would be the U.S. Supreme Court he had to see what went on during the uh period of time when uh Bork was Borked what happened to Clarence Thomas is it uh is it reasonable to conclude that uh he has studied this and made sure that he's not going to give anybody a record or a paper trail or a personality care that that that they can attack
on that basis.
I mean clearly if it and I think it'd be very smart move if he has this degree of ambition.
Well I can't tell you that he does.
I know him well but I don't know him that well and I don't know that this has been sort of in his mind and in his heart from the very beginning.
I'm w it would be a good guess that it was.
I mean he w once your clerk on the Supreme Court I think probably a lot of young men and women who do that think well I'd love to be on this court too and he's had a careful career.
I mean he's a he's a he's he's he's been very very effective he's been very good it look he has a from everything I can tell a very quiet uh personal life very stable one.
I'm sure all of that's going to be examined.
I mean in the case of of uh Bork, the approach they took were his writings and in the case of Clarence Thomas they tried to attack him on his personal life.
So um and some of those things were a surprise that they were able to get such mileage out of those things.
Let me run this but I don't think there's anything like that with John Roberts.
Well, let me run this one by you.
You're going to look for it.
Of course.
And I think if you go back and look at some of the really inflamed hearings for some of Bush's judicial nominees on the appellate, like Bill Pryor, I think I've detected a code phrase from Senator Schumer.
And that is, and he used it again last night to describe Judge Roberts.
We're going to have to find out what his deeply held personal beliefs are.
I happen to believe, Rudy, and I'm not asking you to agree with this, but comment on it if you want.
believe that's code word for religion and I think that uh I I I think uh prior being a Catholic uh was a problem for Senator Schumer.
Not not because he doesn't like Catholic, it's just that religious people are more originalist uh and and and more true to the Constitution are more conservative and it's just another way of calling somebody a conservative without actually using label deeply held personal beliefs.
Well Judge Roberts is a is a Catholic what do you expect from from the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee as this goes forward.
I think they're gonna try to engage him in both his discussing his as as Senator as he put it, you know, Senator Schumer's deeply held personal views.
I think they're also going to try to get him and I've heard some of them saying it last night to opine on how he would decide on questions coming before him.
And I think it is and I'm sure he will stick to this but the the correct approach for him is that he should not give his opinion on how he would decide cases coming before him on the court.
I mean I think that's quite a kind uh kind of inappropriate anyway.
I mean the judge should leave person going on the Supreme Court should leave himself open as much as possible to listening to arguments, even changing his mind if he has to, I mean based on the facts kind of being different than he thought.
And I think he he can answer quite effectively that I'm just not going to give you an opinion about something that comes before me on the court because I d I have I have no idea how I'll decide that right now.
I've got to listen to the arguments.
I've got to talk to the other justices I've got to keep my mind open.
But I think they're gonna try very hard to get him into that you know they're gonna use his prior opinions.
The other thing they're gonna do they're gonna go back to the cases he argued when he was principal deputy solicitor general in the Bush administration where he argued many many times before the court.
Yeah but there he's got a client the U.S. government's his answer and it's the correct one.
The answer is I'm I'm a lawyer.
I've argued a lot of different cases if I have a client whether it was the government I argued for the government I argued before the Supreme Court.
I didn't uh it wasn't incumbent on me to have to agree with every position of my client.
I had to argue it effectively that's what you're trained to do in law school.
So I think that'll be his answer and it doesn't necessarily say what he's gonna decide as a judge.
And I think that's part of why President Bush selected him.
Because having not been a judge for a long time, you can't pin him down.
I mean, which is good.
I mean, it'll get him through.
Well, I'll tell you what you describe, uh, you know, not answering questions how he'll rule on future cases.
Bork tried it, didn't get away with it.
Clarence Thomas tried it, didn't get away with it.
But guess who did?
Ruth Bader Ginsburg got away with it.
What he ought to do is just say, I hope the Senate committee will allow me to invoke the Ginsburg rule here.
Correct.
Right.
And I think she got through in fifty or fifty-five days or Yeah, with a ninety-three to six vote or some such thing.
Well, he can't he got through unanimously for the for the uh you know, for the second highest court in the country, the the circuit court.
So I think I mean I i i these things consistently surprise us because they get worse and worse and worse, meaning the confirmation process.
But I think in terms of a wise choice from all points of view, the president couldn't have done any better.
Well, I appreciate your information on this.
I'm glad that uh you made some time for us.
Always a thrill to talk to you, sir.
Always good to talk to you too, Rush.
Take care.
Rudy, Rudy Giuliani in New York City, and we will be back right after this, folks.
Don't go away.
Ha.
Welcome back, folks.
Uh Rush Limboy here.
Uh America's anchor man, America's truth detector, the doctor of democracy.
All combined to one harmless, lovable little fuzzball.
The Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Here's the audio sound bite of Senator Leahy uh talking about sitting under the uh under the apple tree up there at his farmhouse in uh in Vermont.
He was on C-SPAN's Washington Journal this morning, and the host Peter Slyn said, uh Senator Leahy, what's your staff doing now with regard to this nomination, other than slitting their wrists?
Well, we're working very hard on it, of course, and uh bringing together all the things that he's that uh Judge Roberts has said.
So I said I'll bring a lot of those things to my uh farmhouse in Vermont during August.
Uh I'll be reading that.
The beauty of doing that, I won't have to be there in the student tie.
I can sit there in my jeans and a t-shirt uh under my favorite apple tree and read uh read the things there.
So um that's the summer vacation for Senator Leahy.
Tees t-shirt and jeans under the apple tree at the farmhouse in Vermont, trying to plot ways to destroy the life, the reputation, and career of Judge John Roberts.
Here from last night, Senator Schumer uh with his uh in his press conference here with Senator Leahy.
This is um uh this this is this is the bite where Schumer uh uh is fearful of the kind of law that Judge Roberts will be able to make.
I hope Judge Roberts, understanding how important this nomination is, particularly when replacing a swing vote on the court, will decide to answer questions about his views.
Now that he is nominated for a position where he can overturn precedent and make law, it is even more important that he fully answers a broad range of questions.
I hope for the sake of the country that Judge Roberts understands this and opens questions.
Sorry, and answers questions openly, honestly, and thoroughly.
Yeah, you're gonna give him the questions in an envelope before he shows up, and you hope he opens them honestly.
Uh so here we have this reference once again to the swing vote.
See, Chuck Schumer wants you to believe that the Supreme Court's made up of four conservatives and four liberals, and then a fifth swing vote who is actually a liberal, but we don't call him that.
And Justice O'Connor was the swing vote, always voting with the libs.
Or for a well, actually, she didn't always vote with the libs.
And in the last big case, the Kelo case, she uh she voted uh on the right side of that issue.
Uh but so there's no such thing as a swing vote.
This is that's simply analysts looking at the way the court operates.
But this whole notion that there's a swing vote and you gotta replace the swing vote with a swing vote, yeah, go ahead and replace your conservative with a conservative and make sure you replace liberal with a liberal when it comes to the swing vote.
Well, who let's go back through the history of the court and find all the swing votes on the court.
It's just it's it's absurd.
Uh but yet Senator Schumer is gonna attempt to make as many people as possible uh uh believe that grab cut seven uh as well.
This is Schumer uh comments just before the ones you just heard last night after the president nominated Judge Roberts.
The burden is on a nominee to the Supreme Court to prove that he is worthy, not on the Senate to prove that he is unworthy.
Ha!
I voted against Judge Roberts for the D.C. Court of Appeals because he didn't answer questions fully and openly when he appeared before the committee.
For instance, when I asked him a question that others have answered to identify three Supreme Court cases of which he was critical, he refused.
But now it's a whole new ball game.
For those of us who voted against him, for those of us who voted for him, and for Judge Roberts.
So you might have heard that he was approved by unanimous consent.
was.
There were, I think, two or three Democrats voted against him on the committee, but he got out of committee, but they didn't have the guts to vote against him on the floor because, here's why, you don't want the vote to look like 80-20.
You don't want the vote to look like 85-15.
95-5 is Oh, you can do that, but 85 to 20, uh or 85 to 15, uh 80 to 20, uh, not worth that.
So they didn't vote.
They just unanimous consent, and they sailed him on through to the court.
Uh so there was no actual floor vote.
They just agreed unanimous consent.
Sort of like the way the Senate did in the Shaivo case at first.
They didn't have the guts to go vote on it, so they just unanimous consent and then reserve their rights.
Oh, we never voted on this, and uh come back those who disagreed with what was happening to say so at that time.
Alice in Gurney, Illinois.
Hi, Alice, welcome to the EIB network.
Hello, Rush.
I'm so honored to be on.
After all these years, I listened to you on the great all conservative all the time Chicago Station, WLS.
Thank you.
And uh I am pro-life.
I very much want to see Roe v.
Wade revisited.
It's obsolete, actually.
I practice law for 20 years, over 20 years.
I was been out of the practice for over 20 years, so I give you some idea of how old I am.
But anyway, I've watched when President Reagan first appointed Sandra Day O'Connor.
Finally, this was considered to be the woman's spot.
Where, you know, um, I'm sure you're aware of the history of the court of there was the Jewish spot with Brandeis and Frankfurter and Fortis and Goldberg and then it skipped a little bit there.
I forget which president did that, and Clinton corrected that by supposedly corrected it by putting Ginsberg in.
But anyway, the woman's spot's going to disappear if we don't end.
We're the great majority.
We really are.
The females in this country, we're not with you guys.
I uh you know, I appreciate what you're saying.
I I understand there are people that look at things this way.
Uh I don't.
I you're you're looking at uh I I I see the court uh you know, ideally uh comprised of the best people.
And I'm not saying that there's not the best woman out there, but when you start looking at things like that first, well, we gotta have our we've got to have a we don't have a Hispanic seat yet, we've got to get one of those.
That means somebody's gonna lose a seat.
We already have a woman's seat up there with Justice Ginsburg, uh, maybe a little greedy demanding two.
Uh but it to me, this is just the balkanization of the country.
I mean, when are we gonna get our first Al-Qaeda judge?
When are they gonna get a Muslim judge?
You know, I mean, when what the w if we there are only nine seats.
And if we're gonna have every seat designated for a particular group in the country, I mean the blacks have a seat, Clarence Thomas, but they reject it because he's not black enough.
You know, he's uh he's dark enough, but he's not black enough.
Uh uh so I this is I I think this misses the uh the whole point.
Uh well, he doesn't hit a home run.
He's dark enough, but he's too conservative.
So he's not black enough.
I've heard him say it, Mr. Snergley.
You have to.
Don't sit that there and Snurley's acting like all hell's gonna descend on me.
Alice, I appreciate the phone call, but I think I think we're beyond that.
We ought to be anyway, is saying this seats somebody's and that seats somebody's, and this seats somebody else's.
I want a seat.
Give me one.
Back after this.
Stay with.
And don't forget, folks, in the midst of all of this, Harry Reed, the Senate Democratic leader is upset that Carl Rovin on the front page today.
He's out there chiding reporters for having Rove taken off of the uh of the front page.
We've got lots more here to go, and uh we'll get to it right after the top of the hour break here.
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