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Aug. 9, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:32
August 9, 2005, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Well, this didn't take long.
It's an Associated Press story from yesterday, Pirot's personal life likely to be aired.
It's by our old buddy Jim Fitzgerald of the Associated Press.
Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back.
Great to have you.
The award-winning EIB network, Rush Lindbaugh program, and all that back at you.
Here we are firmly ensconced behind the golden EIB microphone.
Great to finally get back.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882.
The email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
I had a fun weekend.
I went up to Stanford, Connecticut on Saturday.
National Review Magazine's having their 50th anniversary in early October.
And Mr. Buckley asked me to narrate the one-hour video retrospective of National Review's history.
So I met him in a recording studio at Stanford on Saturday morning, spent a couple hours narrating the video, went back to his seaside estate.
Well, it's on the Long Island Sound for lunch.
Spent a very pleasant afternoon.
And then it was on to the rest of Connecticut.
It happened again.
I went to dinner with some friends Saturday night.
Lo and behold, I ran into some more people scared to death of Hillary.
You know, I'm going to stop going to this state every time I go to this state of Connecticut.
And these are Republicans.
These are conservatives.
These are huge fans, big, big, big regular listeners of the program.
And I just couldn't get away from it.
Hillary this, Hillary that.
I think Hillary's this.
You know, and I keep arguing here.
Look, gang, there's no reason to be fearful.
But what if she wins?
What if she wins?
Well, what if she does?
She may win.
I don't know, but there's no reason to go about this with any fear.
And I gave them all the things that I always tell you that, yeah, she may win the nomination, but she misses something.
She just, she's Nurse Ratchet.
I was trying to tell these people, she's Nurse Ratchet.
She's not likable.
She doesn't come across as friendly.
She doesn't have this it that you have to have as a as a politician these days on television.
She just seems cold.
She just, you know, a little, little stony.
And I'm, you know, people say, well, Rush, you're just being naive.
You should be.
I'm not naive.
I'm just, I'm not going to sit here and be afraid.
She's a human being for crying out loud.
She's not the smartest anything in the world, much less woman or lawyer.
But anyway, I just, I'm stunned when I go in there.
And it's not just Connecticut.
I mean, I was yesterday, I was out on Long Island and at Deepdale Country Club.
There was a golf tournament fundraiser for Sandler O'Neill, which was a company that lost 80 employees at 9-11.
And Mayor Giuliani was there, a number of people.
It's a fundraiser for the families of the employees who died at that firm.
Jimmy Dunn puts it on.
And even there, I run into people.
What about Hillary?
I think it's the whole Northeast.
I think the whole Northeast, I guess all they have is the New York Times and all they've got is the network news.
And they haven't yet gotten a signal of what's happening out there in Red State America.
So I patiently endure all this and I try to calm them and soothe them and give them the benefit of my wisdom and knowledge and opinions and analysis on all this.
And then I guess it was, what was it, Sunday that Pereira let it Perrault or yesterday morning, Monday morning that Janine Pirot announced that she was going to run.
And I just, I went, okay, how long is it going to take before we start hearing about her husband?
And lo and behold, here's the story.
Five years ago, on the first day of her husband's tax evasion trial, Janine Pirot heard prosecutors claim he had illegally deducted their luxury cars, the costs of fighting a paternity suit, even the custom-made pen for their pet pigs, Wilbur and Orville.
There's not any part of my life that's not in that indictment, Pirot complained as she strode out of federal court.
And of course, there are other stories other than this first one that the AP regaled everybody with, and all of them just kind of glance over the problems that Hillary has with her husband, I guess, because she's already endured them and triumphed over them.
But there's more to this race than meets the eye, folks, because if you look down the list of issues that Janine Perot or Pirot and Hillary Clinton hold, Hillary's not going to be able to take her to the woodshed on abortion because Janine Pirot is pro-choice.
Janine Pirrot is pro-gun control.
Janine Pirrot, when it comes to social issues, pretty moderate, some say liberal Republican, but when it comes to fiscal issues, she is for tax cuts.
She is opposed to big government.
She's tough on crime.
She's the Westchester County DA.
And this is something I just, I don't think this is going to be like the Lazio race.
Janine Pirot could storm over to Hillary's lecture in a debate.
And there need to be debates, lots of debates, because it will not take much to show that Hillary Clinton is not just head and shoulders above everybody that walks in.
Some people are even speculating that Hillary will get out of this race and won't even run for the Senate, won't even run for real.
Well, now here's the thinking on this.
The thinking is that all she's going to do is run for re-election and quit and run for the presidency.
And that would give Janine Pirot something to campaign with.
She's going to cost her money.
This race could cost her upwards of $35 or $40 million to run for re-election in New York.
There's also the fact that no senator has ever come from the Senate and gone straight to the White House and John F. Kennedy did it in 1960.
And some say, well, why would she, she's not hell-bent on setting that record ablaze and being the one to break that.
Her prize is the White House.
So why spend $40 million that she's going to raise, have to quit in two years, have to lie during the campaign about not quitting in two years when Janine Pirot will be out there saying, New York needs a senator full-time and I'm it.
You know Mrs. Clinton's going to quit in two years.
Now, the theory goes that if Janine Pirot, she's only got 30% in the polls right now because she didn't have the statewide name recognition that Hillary does.
Once the TV buys start, she can buy adtime up in upstate New York pretty cheaply.
And so she can spend a lot up there and get some name ID and recognition pretty fast.
If Hillary gets, what does Dick Morris say?
If Hillary gets down to the 12 to 15 point margin, she'll just quit while she's ahead and then spend the next two years touring the country, learning about America, preparing for her presidential run for 2008.
She's going to be doing that anyway.
I mean, if she wins her Senate seat in 2020, you're not going to see her in the Senate much.
She'll be in New Hampshire and Iowa and all these other places.
And she can't run the risk of losing, and she can't run the risk of losing or of winning closely.
So I don't know whether this is, I'm just sharing with you the conventional wisdom.
This is what the smart guys out there are saying.
We have some audio from Janine Pirrow.
She was on Fox and Friends today.
And she's, well, here's the question.
Edie Hill said, you got to go out there.
You're well known in southern New York State, Westchester County, the areas around the city.
How are you going to get your name known around the state?
I've been fighting for New Yorkers for 30 years.
I've been a fighter and an advocate for families and children and the elderly and making sure that the innocent are protected.
I'm from upstate, interestingly enough, and even though I live downstate right now, and I plan to get around the state, talk to people about the issues that affect them.
Hillary Clinton promised tens of thousands of jobs to upstate New Yorkers.
Where are those jobs?
Those jobs, and that promise has not been met.
She listened, and she promised, but there hasn't been delivery.
I'm going to talk about the issues that are important to New Yorkers, the economy, making sure that Social Security is there for our senior citizens when they get to their golden years, making sure that the war on terror is fought in a way where we have the tools that we need through the Patriot Act, the tools that we as prosecutors have to investigate organized crime.
We need at the very least those tools to make sure that we can investigate terrorism.
Now, this is a woman.
Did you hear that?
That's about 50 seconds, folks.
Not one stutter.
Not one and just bam, rattled it right off.
Does she sound confident to you?
Does she sound like she knows what she's talking about?
She sounds passionate to you.
She sounds committed.
She does to me.
Wouldn't want to get between these two.
I'll just tell you, wouldn't want to referee this.
And I'll make this prediction to you, too.
Somebody will advance as this campaign gets going.
Somebody is saying, let's leave our husbands out of this.
And Hillary will readily agree to that, knowing full well the mainstream press will leave her husband out of it, but not Janine Pirro's.
So don't be surprised if that deal happens.
Hey, Janine, Hillary, let's just leave our husbands out of this.
You know, we're both carrying some baggage here.
We're independent women.
We don't need to go down the dirt road, blah, blah, blah.
We'll see.
Wouldn't be surprised.
One more question: Brian Kilmead said, Janine, what do you say to people who say, you know what, she can't win this?
We've got to put someone up there.
And anyone who goes up there, this is a juggernaut you're going against.
She's number one in the presidential polls.
How are you going to beat her?
I have faced daunting challenges before when they said that women couldn't try murder cases, that women weren't strong enough to be county judges, and that we couldn't be district attorneys.
I have spent my life fighting the odds, and I'm in this.
And I know it's an uphill battle, and there are certainly races that I could have run that would have been a lot easier.
But I have a passion for this, and I fought for the people of New York.
I now want to take it to the next level.
And the next level is Hillary Clinton in the state of New York for the Senate seat that Hillary now holds.
A quick timeout.
We'll be back and continue right after this.
Don't go away.
Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have Rush Limbaugh here amidst billowing clouds of fragrant, aromatic first and second-hand smoke.
The one thing we haven't learned yet, folks, is whether or not the New York Times will conduct an investigation into whether or not Janine Pirro's children are adopted.
And if they are adopted, how they were adopted.
This is, of course, just part of the standard background check that Supreme Court, we are told by the New York Times, just part of our standard background check that the nominees must undergo.
Speaking of it, the American Spectator today says that it was opposition research generated by NARAL, this abortion rights gang.
Their opposition research distributed to Democratic operatives working against Judge John Roberts that spurred these operatives to encourage reporters in Washington to look into the Roberts adoption process.
So we have here, we got operation, Operation, or Opposition Research that was generated by a leftist special interest rag group talking to reporters who then urged other reporters to look into the adoption of John Roberts' two kids.
It seems like we've established a link here, even though we've always known it's existed.
You know, the rap is that all the conservative media responds to RNC faxed talking points or messages from Rove or whatever.
And we go out and we act in unison when in fact that does not happen.
The way it does happen is that somebody with a fax machine of the Democratic Party sends out talking points and the whole mainstream media echoes them and sounds identical.
Doesn't matter what mainstream media newscast or newspaper you read, you read or hear the same thing.
And now we learn that the opposition researchers at NARAL were able to get reporters of the New York Times looking into this abortion business via the, and that's what it is about, folks, make no mistake, via this adoption angle.
A Democratic lobbyist who is part of the Roberts fight, speaking on condition of anonymity to the American Spectator, said they, NAROL and other anti-Roberts groups, went into this with a laundry list of things and the idea that given what was at stake, nothing was out of bounds.
That's why you saw that ridiculous Roberts is gay thing spinning through the blogosphere and why you had serious reporters looking at the adoption issue.
Another Democratic operative said that NAROL officials hit on the adoption issue because some of these NAROL and really aggressive pro-choice groups see political motivations behind everything.
They see people who adopt children beyond the desire for children having an ideological predisposition against choice issues.
It isn't just about kids.
It's about politics.
The Democratic lobbyist says that the very fact that the adoption issue reached so far as the New York Times shows how desperate Roberts opponents have become.
There's a lot of Roberts writing, but there isn't anything much to hang our head on.
He's clean, and it's frustrating our ability to paint him anything other than what the White House put forward, a smart, sharp, and fair legal mind.
Can I take you back, folks, to the early 90s, late 80s, in fact, it might have been, the early days of this program.
And I made the point to you that one of the things that I didn't understand, although I do now, but one of the things I was having trouble comprehending about pro-choice groups back then was that they got mad when an abortion didn't happen.
They literally got mad.
I said, this ought to illustrate to you just what this issue is to them.
As many abortions as possible must happen.
I'm talking about the activists.
I'm talking about the leaders of these.
These are the original feminazis, folks, if you want me to go back in time and define the term for you.
Every abortion possible must happen.
Every abortion that can happen, that doesn't happen, is a setback for the cause.
And it became crystal clear to me one day when I had a story, my formerly nicotine-stained fingers, about a planned parenthood abortion center that was just down the street from an adoption center.
Some people from the adoption center parked themselves outside a Planned Parenthood office and try to talk the women going in there into coming down, having the baby and giving it up for adoption.
And the abortion people just went nuts.
They had a cow.
The Planned Parenthood people, the NAROL people, they just went nuts.
And I'm saying, what is wrong with this?
What's wrong with having the baby and putting it up for adoption if you don't want it?
Well, here we go.
This is exactly what this whole business with Judge Roberts is all about.
The fact that anything that could have happened to prevent an abortion did happen.
And if you've seen some of the NAROL ads and some of the issues they're having, what they do recently, they had a big powwow somewhere and they were making fun of abstinence or something.
I forget the title of it, but a lot of people on the left, a lot of Democrats, a lot of mainstream Democrats got a little frightened by it because it was too upfront.
It was too in your face.
was two, here's who we really are.
And so when you read here that some of these nayrall and really aggressive pro-choice groups see political motivations behind everything, they see people who adopt children as having an ideological predisposition against choice.
And whenever you see choice in this, just read abortion.
It isn't just about kids, it's about politics.
And so what they were hoping to do here was find out the record of his adoption or focus the attention on that with the intent being to illustrate the guy is virulently anti-choice.
This is a one-note Samba group.
It's a single issue group, but make no mistake.
The best way to sum them up is that any abortion that doesn't happen is a setback to their cause.
And that is so patently obvious in this.
This is pure paranoia.
I was also going around.
I mentioned this on Friday when we had Fred Thompson on Who's the Liaison.
Yeah, it was Screw Abstinence Rally, the Screw Abstinence Rally.
Now, most mainstream pro-choice groups, and NARAL is not one, but most of these mainstream groups at least give lip service to the notion that there are other viable options here and we just can't take away abortion.
But this NARAL bunch, I'm telling you, the more abortions that happen, the better, they think.
The more mainstream it becomes, the safer it is, the better it is for their cause and issue.
And it's just, it's amazing how the Democratic Party has just stuck like glue to these people and does their bidding.
It's tough for some people to understand just how this is so political and what does it tie into?
What other issue?
Is it about freedom?
What is it about?
And there's really no way to explain this rationally because NARAL is not rational.
And these zealous pro-abort groups are not rational.
They're just angry.
They are miserable and they are unhappy.
And they're desperately trying to find a way to be relevant, I suppose.
But regardless, it's not mainstream.
NAROL is not mainstream.
They don't represent anywhere near a majority or even a plurality of American thinking.
But they do have these activists on their side and activist journalists such as the New York Times because, you know, this court's what it's all about to them.
The court is their legislature.
The court is where laws are made.
The court is where laws are torn apart, ripped to shreds, and where they are created.
So we'll wait patiently, and we'll wait just to see if the New York Times does an investigation here into whether or not Janine Pirro's children were adopted so that they can make her out to be a hypocrite when she claims to also be pro-choice.
A quick time out.
We'll be back after this.
Oh, yes.
Screams of joy and shock and panic, depending on who's uttering them.
At the very mention of my name, Rush Schlimball, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, summer may slow down for everybody else, but not for us here at the EIB network.
David in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
Let's grab a couple phone calls.
I'm going to do something after that I seldom do.
Welcome, sir, to the program.
Rush, actually, ditto's.
I've been the listener since August of 88 from the lost moving truck days.
I'm as conservative as they get, but you're dead long on this.
It may have to do with politics as to why the Times is going after him, but it really has nothing to do with politics.
What you see here is you see upstanding affluent couple get perfect white babies when everybody else has to wait.
The reason the story is going to get buried and it's never going to go anywhere is because liberals do it too.
This is the dirty secret in our country that nobody talks about.
And it has nothing to do with his privacy, the privacy of the children, or the children's parents.
In fact, if what was going on was that he did something shady or he did something wrong.
I mean, Rush, look at it this way.
Does anybody who makes $250,000 a year give up their perfect white baby for adoption?
No, they don't.
It's poor girls.
It's girls who aren't, they don't have a lot of money.
And if by chance they're taken advantage of by people such as Judge Roberts in this situation, I mean, Judge Roberts could bury somebody like this if they ever came back.
That's why the records are immediately sealed.
I mean, that's why this is a story.
That's why it's going to get squashed.
Nobody's ever going to go after this.
It's not a story.
It's just a rumor.
Look at all it took here.
It is a rumor.
I did not even say, I have never once said it was fact.
I've said one of the things floating around out there is that the Times wanted to look into this because a bunch of people have been complaining that he was able to get a couple of pure white little babies from Latin America.
Here you come, David.
It's stunning to me that this kind of thinking exists out there.
And you have just indicted Judge Roberts, and you don't have the slightest bit of knowledge about his case.
You have just called this program and you have said almost with certitude, ontological certitude, that the reason his adoption files are sealed is because he went and put the screws to some poor kid, some poor mother down there.
And if she ever comes forward and announces how she had the screws put to her by Judge Roberts, it heel bury her.
So this, folks, it worked.
This is the kind of stuff floating around out there.
And this is the kind of stuff that if you say it to a New York Times reporter, they'll go, oh, really?
And they'll conduct and begin an investigation into it with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, just supposition, just presumption.
And now we know it's a dirty little secret.
Everybody does it.
Democrats, Republicans, everybody.
Nobody wants little babies of color.
All they want is little white babies.
And of course, $250,000 couples don't give up their little white babies for adoption.
It's only poor little people of color.
There's so much prejudice and bigotry in this comment.
I don't know where to start separating it.
But I appreciate your calling, David, and establishing.
This is a classic illustration of how this program works.
Put it out there.
And I know when you heard me say it last Friday, Rush, come on.
You know, that's just, you just, you can't.
There are people who believe it now.
There are people who believe it.
And obviously there are people out there who are trying to get other reporters interested in it.
And if Democrats and Republicans both do it, I want to see the Times look into a Democrat's adoption records on the same basis.
And I will bet you that it never happens from this day forward.
Steve in San Antonio, Texas.
Welcome, sir, to the program.
Great to have you with us.
Hello, Rush.
Yes, mega ditto's.
Thank you.
Listening to your comments on the Gene Perot case, and I think you might have a problem.
If Hillary doesn't run, I don't think the Republicans pick up the seat.
I could see the Republican base coming out for a beat Hillary campaign, but if Hillary drops the race, having the Republican base come out for a conservative base coming out for a liberal Republican, I think anywhere out of the middle Democrat, Liberal Democrat would be there.
You're going way ahead of me here.
I don't think that that's even a factor, whether Hillary wins or gets out, whether Perot can win or not.
I mean, that's for down the road.
I don't even know that Hillary is going to quit the race.
All I want to tell you is that Janine Pirot is a competent candidate.
Now, you want to talk about an intelligent woman, Janine Pirot is.
And Janine Pirot has been working in the trenches, as it were, for many, many years.
And I'm just telling you that she's going to be underestimated simply because the press and everybody thinks that Hillary is, well, who was it that said this the other day?
Oh, I saw Candy Crowley at CNN said that she's amazed whenever she goes out and talks to Democrats, Hillary Clinton's like a goddess.
Hillary Clinton is just a goddess.
Really, Can we've all known this for how many years?
And so because Hillary is a goddess, we know that's how Democrats look at her, Janine Pirot is going to be underestimated all over the place.
But I, you know, first two calls here, nothing but I started the day feeling really good, really up, really excited, really optimistic.
The first two calls are just, you can't, it won't happen.
This is screwed.
That's cheated.
That's fixed.
She can't win anything.
What's with you, people?
If Hillary quits, even Pirot won't win.
What kind of attitude is that?
Where does this come from?
Everybody wants to make news by being negative, not here on this program.
I said I was going to do something I seldom do, and I'm going to do it.
I seldom, because it happens too much.
It happens.
If I did it regularly, it would be all that I did.
And that is correct erroneous statements about me in the mainstream press.
But on, let's see, what was it, Friday night, two different newscasts.
I was mischaracterized and things that I have said about Judge Roberts and that Colorado ballot initiative were misreported by NBC and a couple of commentators.
Well, one commentator, Morton Kondracki, on the Fox News channel.
Let's go to NBC Nightly News first.
This is correspondent Pete Williams reporting on the Supreme Court nominee John Roberts.
And by the way, let me refresh you what this is about.
It's about the LA Times story that came out last week.
And it was that story that tried to drive a wedge between Republicans.
And I interpreted this as meaning that Democrats are having trouble coming up with something to really defeat this guy.
So they're going to try to drive a wedge between Republicans by putting it out there that this guy is a stealth supporter of gay rights.
And I addressed the story saying exactly what I just said to you now.
And I said, it's possible this is going to upset some people on the right.
I never said it upset me on that angle.
The thing that bothered me about it had nothing to do with gay rights.
It had nothing to do.
It had everything to do with the fact that the Supreme Court had overturned a duly passed ballot initiative by the people in Colorado.
And they had used the 14th Amendment saying that you can't do it.
That the Colorado Colorado people were unconstitutional.
And this was the first case that leads to the Supreme Court pretty much abolishing states' rights and the prerogative of the people in the states to do what they want because this case then gave us the Texas anti-the sodomy law that the Supreme Court struck down, by the way, using international law and guidelines to do so.
And I read to you a powerful dissent from Scalia.
And I read to you a quote from Justice Thomas saying that if this is the case, if the Supreme Court can simply say to the people of the individual states that you have no ability, no power whatsoever to act on your own within your own state without the U.S. Supreme Court coming in and telling you you can't do it because it's unconstitutional, then we're going to get to the point where there's no need for Congress to ever write any laws.
There will not be, which is going to take us into another news story today, and that is Chairman Specter's letter to Judge Roberts.
So just, this all has a little flow to it here, but I want you to first play, Mike, the soundbite from Pete Williams, NBC correspondent, on Friday night's NBC Nightly News.
A discovery from his past sent both liberal and conservative pressure groups scrambling for talking points.
In 1995, while working at a Washington law firm that did pro bono or donated work, Roberts spent about six hours helping gay rights lawyers prepare to argue an important discrimination case.
The Supreme Court later ruled their way a significant gay rights victory.
Discovering that Roberts helped out prompted conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh to predict big trouble.
There's no question that this, and the people on the right are going to, wait a minute, wait a minute, the guy's doing pro bono work and helping gay activists.
Right.
Now, it is, again, that's taken out of context.
The attempt here is to make it look like I'm leading the charge in this opposition.
I went on to say this is going to upset some people on the right.
There's no question that was the purpose of the story.
The purpose of the LA Times story was to drive a wedge because they have this predisposition that the Republican Party hates gays.
I said all of this on Friday and Thursday last week when I talked about this story, but this report makes it look like I'm the only one that was upset and I'm leading the charge as the leader of the conservative movement.
Now let's go to the Britt Hume show Friday on Fox, the roundtable.
The guests were Mort Kondracki of Roll Call, Jeff Birnbaum of the Washington Post, and they also had Bill Salmon from the Washington Times there.
Jim Engel was filling in.
He said, John Roberts, a lot of talk in town about Roberts' work pro bono on a case that involved gay discrimination offers a little different picture from the one that had been painted by his distractors as a sort of right-wing ideologue.
Mort, what do you make of this case?
Colorado voters passed a referendum that said that there should be no anti-discrimination laws passed to benefit gays.
And this was appealed to the Supreme Court and it was ultimately overturned.
And in the process, on a pro bono basis, while he was working for Hogan and Hartson and Washington law firm, Roberts assisted the people who were going to go before the court and help them fashion their arguments on it.
Now, it wasn't a major contribution, but it was a contribution.
And there are a number of other cases in which he looks to be tilting slightly mildly left in this pro bono work, which has caused some consternation among the right-wingers, although Rush Limbaugh in particular, although they're basically, the party line is, no, no, no, no, he's really a conservative.
And among the liberals, the line is, well, he may have done this, but no, no, no, we think he's a right-winger.
Truth is, nobody knows.
Now, what all this adds up to is that these guys all think i'm the leader of the conservative movement, that if I have a reaction, a negative reaction, and bamo, the conservative movement follows me and so forth, and that's understandable uh, that these people would think that uh, but it got it.
It would help, when talking about me, to put this in context.
Never once did I express problems with the Roberts nomination and never once did I say I was going to oppose him, and never once did I say this caused a red flag for me.
I said this is going to cause some people on the right some problems.
It turns out the problems were minor.
As it turns out, it didn't cause that big a problem.
As it turns out, I overestimated how bad the problem would be.
Now next up is Bill Salmon, who tries to put this in the proper context.
It was interesting.
The administration went and put Fred Thompson on rush Limbaugh today to assuage any of those concerns and explain this really wasn't any big deal.
He did a little pro bono work.
It doesn't tell us really anything.
Everybody did it uh, but it's interesting uh, it does have conservatives worried, not just on gay rights but environmental issues he represented, homeless people on pro bono work and also even a death penalty uh appellant um, and.
But oddly enough, I think it makes him more likely to be confirmed because it gives him some political cover among Democrats when it comes times to vote.
Thank you, Bill Salmon.
And putting it in perspective, what he says is going to upset some people on the right.
Uh, so I look I could.
I could spend practically an hour a day doing this, trying to correct references to me in the mainstream press, and I just it happens so much that it's not even worth it.
I don't want to give them the time of day.
I got other things to do here and I rely on you people who listen to this program to understand when you hear bs uh about me out there.
But this does take us and the specific point I made, which was not about gay rights but was about the Supreme Court's power in telling the states, no, you can't vote whatever you want out there because we say it's unconstitutional.
I want to next go to Arlon Specter's letter to judge Thomas.
If I didn't know better, I would think that Specter thinks that he has the right to nominate and single-handedly approve or disapprove of every person that's going to sit on the federal bench.
It it it's, it's incredibly uh, overbearing.
Uh, all these guys are, but this one, this one sort of interests me a little bit more than the others.
Back after this and we'll continue.
All right, I don't know what we have here.
Uh, it's almost like senator Specter admires senator Schumer and is attempting to imitate senator Schumer, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sounding too much like senator Schumer here in the first hit a hint of how he will steer the Supreme Court.
Confirmation hearings of judge Roberts.
Senator Specter, the Judiciary Committee chairman, said monday he would press the nominee for his views on specific cases involving the authority of Congress to pass broad social legislation, a power that Democrats fear will be rolled back by a more conservative court.
Well, why don't you throw in here the fact that Senator Specter appears to agree with the Democrats on this?
Because he's a Republican.
In a three-page letter to Judge Roberts, Senator Specter raised pointed questions about two recent court decisions invalidating legislation that Congress passed under its authority to regulate interstate commerce.
That power has for decades been used to produce expansive legislation, including environmental protection, civil rights laws, and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
And I can tell you right off the bat here, folks, that Congress has actually applied the interstate commerce clause to intrastate commerce.
That is commerce between a single state, commerce going on within one state.
That's not interstate commerce, but they've passed laws that says it is, or say it is.
And the Supreme Court says, whoa, not sure you can do that.
Now, I'm confused here, Senator Specter.
I thought since Marbury versus Madison, the Supreme Court's role was to pronounce the constitutionality of laws that people in Congress made.
Now, all of a sudden, out of the blue, there appears to be a concern by some senators that the court's getting arrogant, but only when it comes to dealing with matters of law written by Congress.
The hypocrisy and the juxtapositions here are hard to follow because on the one hand, when we invoke the Constitution and say the Congress has the role to set the jurisdiction of the courts, everybody says, you can't do that.
They start having a cow and say, you can't do that.
Why, you've got animus toward the judiciary.
You're inciting violence against judges.
And yet when Senator Specter writes a letter to Judge Roberts and say, hey, wait a minute, pal, what is this here about you telling us what we can and can't do?
You know, he gets a little upset about it.
And Judge Roberts has not said any of this.
I mean, this is just, these are Supreme Court decisions.
But let me take a break here.
I'll start this at the top of the next hour because I want to go through this in some continuity and mention specifically a couple cases that Specter cites and try to set it straight.
We'll do that in just a second.
Don't go away, folks.
Basically, folks, Senator Specter is offended.
He says that the Rehnquist Court has basically said with some of its rulings that Congress is incompetent and that he, Senator Specter, is determined to confirm new justices who respect the role of Congress, too.
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