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Oct. 5, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:48
October 5, 2005, Wednesday, Hour #2
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Okay, we're back and we've got the audio now from our affiliate in Austin, Texas, KLBJ, talking to a man named William Gibson, who was the foreman of the first delay indictment, the grand jury foreman.
All that is coming up.
Lots of other stuff too.
Telephone number 800-282-2882 and the email address rush at EIBnet.com.
And those of you on hold, please be patient and stay there.
I've not forgotten you about the little question I asked in the first hour about the Supreme Court taking the case today on oral arguments on assisted suicide in the state of Oregon.
But first, for those of you who disagree with the notion that we should not incorporate foreign law and customs into our constitutional rulings here, let me give you a couple of interesting stories from foreign countries, shall I say.
The first one is from the Netherlands.
Now, for those of you in Rio Linda, that's the Dutch, the people with the wooden shoes and the fingers in the dyke.
The Netherlands, the Netherlands, if you remember, they led the way in making same-sex marriages legal.
They were the forerunners there.
They were the pioneers, taking the arrows, so to speak.
They were the virgins in this idea of same-sex marriage.
And the idea, as you now know, has since spread to other nations, including Massachusetts.
So it should come as no surprise that the Netherlands is once again defining legal relationships, and they're defining them upwards.
Last week, Victor, 46, and Bianca, his 31-year-old wife, decided to get married to another woman, Mirjem.
The couple met Mirjam in an internet chat room.
Mirjam then left her husband and moved in with Victor and Bianca.
After Mirjam's divorce was final, these three, Victor, Bianca, and Mirjem, decided to get married, the three of them.
Now, the groom explained it this way.
He said, marriage between three persons is not possible in the Netherlands, but a civil union is.
So the three went to the notary in their marriage costumes and exchanged rings.
Victor says that the trio considers the union just an ordinary marriage.
He says, I love both Bianca and Mirjam, so I'm marrying both of them.
And they're marrying each other, and they're both marrying me.
Victor explains the dynamics that make the marriage work.
He said, there is no jealousy because Mirjam and Bianca are bisexual.
With two heterosexual women, Victor admits it'd be more problematic.
But since they're bisexual, this is not a problem.
Victor says he's a 100% heterosexual, but they do have limits.
You'll be happy to know that this troika has limits.
A fourth person would not be allowed into the marriage because the three take their marriage obligations very seriously and to be honest and open with each other and not philander.
So they're not going to go out there and make their marriage a quadruple.
They're going to stick with their troika.
So here we've gone from Heather has two mommies to Victor has two wives.
Two wives all the time.
24-7, this poor guy has got two wives.
You know, you could say that one man's nightmare is another man's dream, but what if Victor falls in love with his pet gerbil?
And what if Victor wants to marry the gerbil?
The Netherlands would probably, where is this going to stop?
And now, this is considered enlightenment, folks, by people on the left.
This is thinking outside the box.
Poor old Mirjam meets these people in the chat room and then divorces her husband.
Here's the second story, and this is from Denmark.
A disabled Danish man is fighting for the state to pay for him to have a prostitute visit him at home.
He is fighting for state-funded sex, another great international custom here that you never know.
There could be a Supreme Court justice that looked at this and said, oh, our founding fathers never interpreted this, but I'll bet if they had, they'd have dug it.
Torben Hansen, who has cerebral palsy, which severely affects his speech and mobility, believes that his local authority, meaning his government, should pay the extra charge he incurs when he hires a sex worker because his disability, what?
A sex worker.
That's prostitute.
This is enlightened language.
You must understand for sex worker because his disability means he can't go see them.
And they're considering this.
They are considering his case.
In Denmark, local authorities compensate the disabled for extra costs incurred because of their disability.
So Mr. Hansen told the BBC, look, I want them to cover the extra expenses for the prostitutes to get here because it's a lot more expensive getting them to come to my home rather than me going to a brothel.
It's a necessity for me.
I can't move very well.
It's impossible for me to get there.
In Denmark, prostitution and other forms of sex work are not illegal so long as it is not a woman's sole means of income.
Mr. Hansen started seeing a prostitute after attending a course at a social center where they teach you in Denmark how to interact and deal with sex workers.
There, he and other disabled people were taught that if they had needs, that they could do something about it.
I had a strong desire to have sex, and I think I gained the confidence around that time to get the call girls to come to me.
Since then, since then, I've had a lot of escort girls coming to see me, but I've also had girlfriends.
He had been with his last girlfriend for six months, but she died in 2003.
After that, he began arranging for visits to begin again.
He also said there had been much research into people in his situation and that it had shown that not being sexually fulfilled can lead to frustration and aggression.
Hair on your hands and a number of other things in the palms.
It's unfair to deny people with disabilities the right to a sex life, he said.
He said the reaction to his campaign had been very mixed.
Most of it's been positive, but I've read some very angry letters and comments in the papers.
A lot of politicians have been critical, especially women politicians, against prostitutions.
They're prostitutes.
Kristen Brosbol, a social democrat member of the Danish parliament's among those.
Kristen Brosbol.
Kristen Broseboll.
It's a Danish name, Mr. Sterdley, a social democrat member of the Danish parliament's among those who have argued against Mr. Hansen.
She said, we spend tax money on trying to prevent prostitution, and we have a clear policy that this is a social problem we want to solve.
But that doesn't carry any weight with Torben Hansen, who has cerebral palsy, but he still has his needs.
And he can't get to the cat houses and the brothels.
So he wants them to come to him, and he wants the state to pay for it.
So what would our founding fathers have thought of this?
Well, there's nothing in our Constitution about this, folks.
Well, there is, if you look, I mean, it is there.
This kind of thing, but you won't find the word prostitution or any of that, but you will find various other guides to give you an idea what our founding fathers thought of this.
But if our current Supreme Court justices had a case like this, and it's going to happen someday, look at where we're headed.
Some case like this comes before them, and uh, well, look at the Danish have been experimenting with this for years, and it's actually helped quite a few people, and that's what we're here to do: is help the disadvantaged and the infirm and the unhappy and the miserable and the incompetent and the incapable.
That's what our role here is, so forth.
So, yeah, I'm all for this fighting international or finding international law.
What other, what I just had a story.
What did I do with it?
I'll have to find some.
There's a little story in Minnesota Daily today.
It's a little website.
Apparently, 18,000 men commit suicide every yeah, here it is.
Here it is: the headline is: Feminism is alive while men are dead.
Where are the cries of protest for the 18,000 men who killed themselves over domestic disputes?
Why do men walk away broken in heart and broken financially, especially after laboring for years in college and in the workforce?
Where are the cries of protest for the 18,000 men who killed themselves this year?
That's what I was looking for over domestic disputes.
I'll tell you what, and these are people, you know, and this is this is an American, folks.
They got one wife, and 18,000 of them are wiping themselves out every year, and not in Oregon.
Imagine if they had two wives.
Back in a second, for those of you that don't know, I have a mistress in North Carolina, and she just sent me a note after I did the story about these two babes that married Victor in the Netherlands.
She says, Hey, stop dissing wives, bud.
Maybe it takes two wives to meet the demands of one blank-blank husband.
Well, that's admittedly funny, but I can trump it.
It takes six men to carry a man to his grave.
It takes one woman to put him there.
And now to the phones, Jim and Needham, Massachusetts.
Welcome to the program.
Listen, Rush, where's the stealth?
Where's the lack of debate?
Everybody knows what Harry Myers is as a born-again pro-life Christian fundamentalist.
He's probably the closest thing to Bush, like having Bush on the Supreme Court himself.
So there's nothing stealth.
There could be debate.
Oh, come on now, Jim.
Let's not go off the deep end here.
She is stealth in the sense that she has no written opinions that can be targeted.
Don't deny that.
Yeah, but everybody knows her back.
They know her background.
They could ask her questions about being pro-life, fundamentalist, born-again, Christian.
No, they're not going to have to do that.
That's what the White House is putting out.
The White House is letting it making sure everybody knows this woman's a born-again evangelical, pro-life.
I think that's what the White House thinks that it takes to purchase the support of the base.
Precisely.
So where's the stealth?
The stealth is that there's more than just Froe versus Wade that's going to come up before the court for crying out loud.
Right.
Look, but wait a minute.
I don't want to argue with it.
Jim, you and I are not on different sides here.
This is not arguable that she's stealth.
She is stealth in the sense that there is not a lot for the Democrats to shoot at other than this religion business.
And the White House knows full well that by the time Schumer and Dick Durbin and the rest of them get all ginned up on her evangelical Christian beliefs, that they're going to be fit to be tied.
They're going to come discombobulated and they're going to step in another bag of excrement that the White House put right out in front of them.
I know what that's what the strategy is.
Well, Rush, she's not stealth in other areas too.
For instance, she's been involved in the war on terror intimately since the very beginning, so she's not stealth on that either.
Really, when you really look at it, she's probably the most unstealthed candidate there is.
Now, Jim, you didn't know any of this until it was told you, and you don't know it yourself.
You're trusting other people who are telling you this and vouching for it to believe it.
It is stealth.
You don't know it.
You don't really know it.
You believe it because you believe what's been put out there.
That's fine.
I'm not arguing with you.
But in terms of somebody else who has obvious conservative credentials, ideological credentials, judicial credentials that have been written and published and so forth.
That's what I mean by she's stealth.
And also what I mean by stealth is that she's an invisible target.
And I'm talking for the Democrats.
I'm not saying she's a total unknown.
I'm saying that she's a small target on the Democrat radar.
That's what stealth means, or a non-target.
And the reason for that is it gives them less to shoot at and enhances her chances for confirmation.
And please, listen, don't, I've tried to be as explicit on this.
This is the third day in a row now.
I have no brief against this woman.
You do not have to sell her to me.
This is not, it is, it is not the point.
I'm not opposed to her because she's her.
I'm not opposed to her.
I have no brief against her.
They're just obviously better choices.
That's all it is to me.
But please, if you're born-again evangelical Christian, right-wing fundamentalist, whatever, don't get all offended here because she's, because I'll tell you what, the fact that this about her is being put out as fluently and loudly as it is means that all hell is going to break loose.
Because as far as the left is concerned, when it comes to confirmation, go back to Dianne Feinstein, there's only one thing that matters, and that's Roe versus Wade.
So this is a signal that she is pro-life.
It's not a signal, it's a statement that she's pro-life.
And that's all you need to know about her.
And that's enough for the left to lose it.
And as they lose it, we're going to get half of what I wanted in the fight anyway.
As they lose it, people are going to see who they are.
They can't help themselves.
So we're not on opposite sides here, Jim.
We're arguing semantics, I think.
Kathy in Weymouth, Massachusetts, you're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Raj.
Hi.
I'm calling about the right to die, which is what I guess they're working on today.
Death with dignity is what the death activists call themselves.
Death with dignity.
And there are death activists out.
I'm watching one on CNN right now.
Deaf activists.
I think the justices can look to the founders in the Declaration of Independence, which was liberty, life, and the pursuit of...
Oh, no, wait a minute.
No.
No.
It was life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
That's right.
And they didn't go alphabetically.
Well, no, wait, wait, well, hold it, though.
Let's not leave out the first part of that preamble.
The Declaration of Independence says that we are all endowed by our Creator.
Right there, you have half this country or a third of the country, the libs that don't like that already offshore, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.
Right.
Now, to give you an idea, constitutional scholars have been struggling for 200 years over what did they say unalienable for instead of inalienable.
I kid you not.
I remember my father sitting me down and trying to define for me unalienable as opposed to inalienable and how precisely chosen it was.
Unalien, you can't take them away.
But why not put liberty, life, and the pursuit of happiness?
They can't do that.
Theoretically, it would have been liberty first.
No, but life comes first without you can't.
You can't have liberty or the pursuit of happiness unless you're alive.
But what that says is that we are all endowed by our creator.
No government grants us the right to live.
No government grants us the right to have all these rights, our basic human essence.
The yearning to be free, that spirit in us that yearns to be free is endowed in our creation.
It's how we were made.
And nobody can take that away.
And the government and the Declaration of Independence saying the king of England can't take it away from us.
The king of England is not the source of our rights.
Our rights come from God, our creator, and life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.
So you're exactly right.
So if in that sense, and the Declaration is clearly one of the founding documents that they got the whole thing started.
So in asking yourself about this Oregon-assisted suicide law, okay, the people of Oregon voted twice for this by pretty good majorities.
But there are people saying, oh, you can't do that.
Then they go, wait a minute, we're the people of Oregon.
I thought you conservatives believe in states' rights.
I thought you believed in the rights of the people over the federal government.
Yeah, but that's not monolithic.
I mean, these issues go deeper than just states' rights versus federalism.
Because if we're able to ace out of the equation, if government, as we were founded, is not going to protect, stand for, defend the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, then who will?
Furthermore, after we wipe that out of the equation, then we're going to turn over the decision to the patient, i.e., victim, and his or her doctor.
Well, why do we want to corrupt the medical profession here?
If people want to kill themselves, there are ways of doing this: a six-pack and a hose and go sit in your car and wave Sayonara.
You can take a cruise ship on Lake George in New York.
There are any number of ways.
I'm sorry, but there are any number of ways that.
Yeah, well, I'm just saying that that was an incompetent situation up there.
But my point is, nobody is stopping anybody from killing themselves.
But when those who claim they want to die want to take other institutions of the country and kill them, the people, it's a toughy, folks.
It's a toughie because we all grow up thinking the majority rules in a democracy.
Well, we're not really a democracy.
We're a representative republic.
But in these state initiatives, that is pretty much close to pure democracy.
So they've said this is what we want out there.
Should the Supreme Court tell them they can't do this?
Is there a reason, a legal, constitutional reason for the Supreme Court to say no, you can't go that far?
A lot of people think the Constitution says they should do just that.
You're listening to Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence in Podcasting Network.
Hi, how are you?
Rush Limbaugh, America's anchorman and play-by-playman of the news, all combined as one harmless, lovable little fuzzball.
Great to be with you here on the EIB network.
Just check the email.
Hey, Rush, I just joined Rush 24-7, your website today.
So you have a mistress in North Carolina, huh?
Do you want one in Michigan?
Sign Stacey, formerly of Kansas City.
Go, Chiefs.
No, don't, no, no, no, Brian.
Don't start asking about pictures.
I've been through that.
It didn't work out.
Now, for those of you new to the program, this is one of the highlights of this program's history.
Way back, when was this Snerdley?
This is, well, this had to be, yeah, it was like, okay, so it had to be 88 or 89, 89.
I had this, I had this, this, in fact, that's right, it was Mario Snerdley, the call screener.
Okay, 1990, HR just started, and we had this call screener, Mario Snerdley.
He was the second of the Snerdley family to come to work for us.
And the guy just could not get a date.
So he came to me and said, look, I got an idea for her.
Why don't you require that if a woman is going to appear as a caller, we have to have a photo of her on file?
So I said, that sounds funny.
So we did it.
And we got photos.
We got photos.
But it didn't sit well with most women who thought it was discriminatory and all the usual cliches.
So we had to cancel.
I remember one night, my sister-in-law, my brother, a couple of us were in Bimmelman's bar, which is the Carlisle Hotel on Madison Avenue, New York, and it's a jazz bar, and it's pretty quiet in there.
She started yelling at me like I just, I mean, other patrons in the place, shh, shut up.
So I'm getting abuse even from the family over this.
You know, nobody can take a joke.
Anyway, the guy who called about Harriet Myers and she's not stealth because she's pro-life and she's evangelical.
Look, folks, the issue, first of all, isn't whether she's evangelical.
The issue is whether her religious beliefs will help her decide a case like Roe versus Wade.
I mean, that's what everybody is assuming.
I mean, nominees are asked repeatedly if they can put their personal views and faith aside as they rule.
And to a man and woman, they all say yes.
They have to say that.
We know that Anthony Kennedy was a very religious Catholic, and yet he's the justice who wrote the decision in Lawrence versus Texas, which found a federal constitutional right to same-sex sodomy in the 14th Amendment.
And it's not there.
But he found it, and in the process, overturned 19 state laws.
So Harriet Myers, evangelical, born again, good Christian.
Bush knows her for this reason.
He has ultimate faith in her.
All that I understand.
The assumption is that people are making is, okay, she's safe because that means she's pro-life.
Well, you're going to want the left is going to have a conniption fit over this, and she's going to have to say at the hearings that whatever her personal beliefs are will have no bearing on her ruling.
They're required to say this.
Even if they're lying, they're required to say it.
And as I said, there are a lot more issues than just Roe versus Wade on this court that have profound impact on the country, this foreign law business, Kilo, eminent domain.
This Oregon case is big.
I mean, constantly, the court is taking cases like this that ought not even be decided at the court.
This Oregon case is one thing that I think could be and should, but they take a lot of cases they have no business taking.
They ought to be decided, and Roe was one of them.
They ought to be decided in the legislatures of the states or at the Congress by the elected representatives of the people.
That's another thing.
The courts appropriated all this power to decide these political issues and call their decisions law.
This is problematic, and it's fundamental to get it straightened around.
It really is what these two elections have been about, if you want to know the truth.
It's what everybody's been working for for 20 or 30 years because this court's been out of control for even longer than that.
Greg in Clearwater, Florida, it's great to have you on the program.
Welcome.
Hi, Rush.
Pleasure speaking with you.
Thank you, sir.
I called in today to express my opinion on this doctor-assisted suicide.
I think that more dying patients are afraid of pain than they are afraid of death.
And I think it's really a cop-out by the medical community to, in essence, ignore their pain until they become depressed and suicidal.
And then instead of offering the difficult task of making them pain-free and allowing them to die in dignity, we offer them a lethal injection.
Well, two things.
As to your comment about the medical community ignoring people's pain until they become depressed, the medical community, more and more, is being put in jail for prescribing pain medicine.
Yes.
They are leery as they can be about this.
The DEA is all over this.
I'll give you an incredible story.
A guy is in jail in Florida 25 years.
He was found to have multiple pain prescriptions in his possession, pain pill prescriptions, and he was accused of violating a number of laws.
They convicted him because he refused to take a plea deal.
He's in jail, and you know, the feds in jail gave him a morphine pump.
His pain is so bad, he's in jail with a morphine pump.
And the morphine pump is enabling him.
There's a big story here in Florida a couple months ago.
This guy is unjustly in jail.
He's with a morphine pump.
If that had just been prescribed for him at the first, none of this would have ever happened.
So you may have a point, but there's fear in the medical community about prescribing pain pills because the DEA and a number of other authorities are clamping down on them, and they don't want the hassle.
And so the people in pain sometimes can't get it, and they don't want to live with it.
You're absolutely right.
The fear of pain is something, especially in a person of a certain age, that they don't want to deal with it.
Now, what did you say then about making pain-free a lethal injection?
What kind of lethal injection?
Well, Doctor, if doctor-assisted suicide is legalized, the burden is going to fall upon the anesthesiologist because we are the doctors who are most familiar with and most capable of administering anesthetics, which in essence is the most humane way to euthanize a person.
Right.
But you don't want that responsibility?
No.
No, I took a Hippocratic oath.
I pledged to never administer a lethal medication.
So what do you do?
If you had a patient today who came to you, just in dire straits, just worst you've ever seen, and just didn't want to live anymore, couldn't live with it, had something that was incurable, the pain was intolerable, what would you do?
Well, it takes, in essence, it takes a multi-modal approach.
You need to have a pain doctor.
You need to have a psychiatrist.
You can have a pain interventionalist.
You can offer them an interthecal morphine pump.
You can offer them all kinds of neurolytic blocks.
Okay, what if it's not related to pain, though?
Let's take that out of the court.
What if they just want to die?
What if they don't, for whatever reason, they just don't want to go on?
then I mean, suicidal patients should probably be evaluated by a psychiatrist to find out why they're suicidal and if there's some medical treatment.
Well, that might kill them right there, going to say the psychiatrist, which might be a way of accomplishing this.
Just kidding.
I'm just, folks, I'm in sort of a jocular mood here today.
I appreciate the call, Greg.
Thanks much.
Victoria in Portland.
Great to have an Oregonian on the phone about this.
Welcome to the program.
Thank you, Rush.
It's good to talk to you.
I'm a longtime listener for almost 20 years now, and I am a conservative Republican stay-at-home Jewish mom.
And I have to say, I voted with the Death With Dignity Act because it's death with dignity.
It's not doctor-assisted suicide.
It's death being able, you are going to die either way.
And if you get to choose how you die, putting yourself in a garage and basically filling yourself up with nitrogen with the chemicals that come out of the back of your car is a very ugly way to die.
It's also a huge problem with your family if you shoot yourself in the head in your house.
Those are not options.
Those are not dignified options.
And you can't just walk into your doctor's office and say, I'm tired of being sick.
I want you to kill me.
That's not the way it works.
There's a litmus test.
You have to be going to die and not curable and not treatable.
It's not just walking into your doctor's office and saying, I'm done living.
I'm tired of being sick.
It's a problem.
No, no, no, wait, Victoria, I understand that.
Excuse me, phlegm in the throat today for some reason.
I understand that.
I know that that's the starting point, but as I said at the beginning of the program, these programs like this are never the solution to problems.
They generally create new ones.
And so once we start with the premise that you've just articulated, which does indeed sound reasonable to most people, it's going to expand.
And who is it that is given the ultimate power to kill here?
It's the person who's sick, not the doctor.
You can call it death with dignity all you want, but somebody's got the power to do it.
And somebody has to fill out a form or have to pass some sort of test, say, yep, I'm hopeless.
I qualify for death with dignity.
The definition of who qualifies is going to change.
It's going to broaden because I think most of this is ultimately going to be based on who the living would like to get rid of to avoid the inconvenience of having to put up with them.
That's already happened in the case of abortion.
It's happening at the later years in life with people's parents and seasoned citizens.
And they come up with all these great sounding excuse.
Well, I wouldn't want to live this way.
Well, they've had a great life.
Well, they don't like being a burden to us.
Bam, let's call it death with dignity.
This is what they would have wanted, blah, And I think once that happens, then look at the Netherlands.
The Netherlands has just passed a law that gives doctors the right to terminate what they claim are terminally ill infants with the parents' consent.
I'm telling you, the death activism out there keeps building.
It keeps expanding.
It's like I said at the beginning of the program, I'm watching the media talking about this, and they are excited about it.
When the subject of death comes up, be it in disasters in New Orleans or deaths in war in Iraq or this, they just get jazzed and charged up.
But the minute you start talking about living and pro-life, they start acting like you're an antique, a dinosaur.
Oh, what a fuddy-duddy.
I mean, life, come on.
This is about enlightened death.
Well, no, and I understand.
And I understand this death culture, it just scares me.
For the country, not next year, five years, but down the road.
I think all of us have a responsibility to leave a culture in society as we found it and not distorted, not corrupted, and not depraved.
And if we start making these decisions based on personal selfishness without these far-reaching concerns, it just worries me.
Well, the personal selfishness is the person themselves.
Like you said, they can kill themselves any way they like.
This gives them a less painful option than going out and shooting yourself in the head.
This is a less painful option.
It's a less messy option.
It's not something you get to just do, and it's not something that just happens instantaneously the minute you walk in your doctor's door.
It's a long, drawn-out process.
And this isn't the Netherlands.
And I think using the argument of slippery slope to not enact something to help people have dignity while they're alive and dignity within their own death is.
Let me tell you something.
Let's not forget, let's not forget the famous Dr. Death, Jack Kvorkian, who was sounding just like the Death for Dignity death activists sound.
He was doing people a favor.
They were consulting him, and he was convincing them that their best option was to die.
And we found out later that Dr. Death was condemning people who ended up not being terminal because he had some obsession with death.
I can remember a speech he gave before the National Press Club describing what happens to you when you die.
It was like a Vincent Price movie.
I was watching some monster up there.
He was just obsessed and fascinated by the decaying of human flesh and the smell.
And he was trying to basically say how worthless we all are.
And you get zealots like this.
Once this becomes legal, it scares me.
And I'm not denying these tough questions, but you have the basic question here is direct democracy.
People of Oregon twice, pretty good margins have voted for this.
Here comes the Supreme Court, a branch of the federal government that's going to hear the case that may tell them they can't do this legally, just like medicinal marijuana and so forth.
So they're going to go to the Constitution and try to find basis for whatever they rule.
It will be fascinating to see what they say.
But if they find in favor of the people of Oregon, I'm just going to put out there right now, we're going to look long and hard to find where that exists in the Constitution.
You're going to have a much tougher time finding in the Constitution where the founders plotted the way our society would kill itself versus how our society would thrive and live and prosper.
So it'd be very interesting to me what this court finds.
I got to go, Victoria, because of time.
I'm glad you called.
Thanks much.
We'll be right back.
We have that fascinating Tom DeLay, jury foreman, grand jury foreman audio coming up in the first segment of the next hour.
Let me try this one more time.
This constitutional stuff, Supreme Court stuff is very important, folks.
I'm in sort of a flippant mood today.
I'm just feeling good.
You need those kinds of days.
But let me try to explain something.
We had this caller earlier that was comparing the Bible and the Constitution.
It said you can't go to the Constitution as originally written because it's not possible to answer all of our modern issues and problems and so forth.
That's not its purpose.
The Constitution's purpose is not to spell out behavioral attitudes, norms, and dictates for the people of this country.
Now, in constitutional cases, the first place you ought to go is the Constitution to see if the answer is there.
And nine times out of ten in a constitutional law case, it will be there.
But what the Constitution does is establish certain principles and institutions through which society can and does make changes.
You can amend the Constitution.
You can elect people to Congress to pass laws that affect modern life.
And the states, which are supposed to have a major role in governance, supposed to have great latitude to do the same.
Now, in cases of direct democracy, like Oregon and California, you throw a little monkey wrench in, but we can figure it out.
But the Constitution simply establishes and defines these principles and institutions where we make changes.
But it's hard, granted, but they intended that to be hard.
They didn't intend it to be easy to amend the Constitution.
What we didn't do, what we didn't agree to is having nine lawyers on the court with the authority to make these changes for all of us and then call what they want the law of the land.
That's not what the founders intended.
We didn't intend it.
It's what it's slowly become.
Yes, my friends, these are indeed the good times.
We got more of them.
Right around the corner here at the top of the hour, it'll happen in a jiffy.
Time flies faster on this program than anywhere else in the media.
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