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Oct. 5, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:43
October 5, 2005, Wednesday, Hour #3
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We're back.
I told you it wasn't going to be long, folks.
Time flies on this program when you're having fun.
And of course, this is the fastest three hours in media.
So if it's the fastest three hours, it's always going to be the fastest five or six minutes.
We're back.
I am Rush Limbaugh, America's anchorman, well known now, doctor of democracy, truth detector, commentator, play-by-play of the news, all combined in one harmless, lovable, really, really lovable little fuzzball.
Telephone number 800-282-2882 and the email address rush at EIBnet.com.
We've got this amazing audio coming up from the first grand jury that Ronnie Erling paneled that indicted Tom DeLay in just a second.
I want to take a stab one more time here at this philosophy that I have of the court because a lot of people continue to ask me both in the email, we've had some phone calls, what do you want this fight for?
Who needs a fight?
How's not going to accomplish anything?
What are you going to fight for?
And by the way, I'm grateful for all these questions because it gives me an opportunity to explain it again.
And I will take as long as I need to try to make myself clear.
It's one of the beauties of a radio talk show.
You have three hours to get it done.
You don't have to worry about getting it done in 22 minutes on television.
But look, let's go back to this guy.
The first call of the day, liberal from, where was he from?
He was from, yeah, Ben in Charleston, South Carolina.
He was a nice guy, but he said that looking to the Constitution for modern application of law is as silly as looking at the Bible.
Now, the Bible's not the Constitution, but ignore that for just a second.
Because his point is, and it's a lot of what Justice Breyer probably believes the same thing.
Constitution, as originally written, can't possibly answer all of our modern issues and problems.
And so that's what gives them the excuse to start searching for validation in foreign law or just to substitute their own personal policy preferences in their decisions and call that law.
And that's horrible, and that is tragic and it is dangerous.
Because the Constitution's purpose, and this is why I keep saying that we need remarkable, educated people that understand the culture of this court and where it is and how it's gotten here if we're seriously going to change it.
And just tallying votes, while great if they're the right votes, is not the point.
Because if we don't do something about this notion that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter on political and social matters in this country, we are going to be up a creek without a paddle.
That's not the purpose of the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court is not to decide all of these political issues, and yet that's what it's evolved to.
And people on both sides of the aisle eagerly await Supreme Court decisions because that's the final word.
That's where real victory or shattering defeat takes place.
And that's an abomination of the Constitution and of the court.
The purpose of the Constitution is not to answer all of our modern issues and problems.
It establishes certain principles and institutions through which society can and does make changes.
You can amend the Constitution.
You can elect people of Congress to pass laws that affect modern life.
And the states, they're supposed to have a major role in governance too.
They're supposed to have a great latitude to do the same thing.
Here's where we differ with the activists, the judicial activists.
We don't believe that nine lawyers on the Supreme Court have the authority to make changes for all of us.
Not in political matters and not in social matters.
Their function is to interpret the Constitution and the law, not make policy.
They're not elected.
They're appointed for life.
They're not accountable.
The Constitution says we the people, not we the judges.
The judges have appropriated we the people and say it's up to them.
Nine lawyers.
Nine lawyers in robes.
So the answer to the question, well, where does the debate come in?
Well, John Roberts, one of the things that was great about his confirmation hearing, and I played this bite earlier this week, and pardon me clearing my throat.
I've got some phlegm here today.
Folks don't understand why it's no big deal.
In 44 seconds, in an answer to Dick Turbin, John Roberts nuked Dick Durbin, Ted Kennedy, Patrick Leahy, all of the left's version of the purpose of the Constitution.
He nuked it in 44 seconds.
That's why you have the debate.
It's not just about, you don't want to just elect a president, do you?
You have campaigns.
That's where the ideological case is made.
That's where it's explained to the American people who you are, what you believe in, what you stand for, what you hope to achieve, what your agenda is.
Well, the court is out of control.
It is doing things it was never intended to do.
So we need nominees that are going to go up there and are going to say that to these people so the American people can hear it.
Let the Democrats go nuts.
We know that the Supreme Court's the last refuge for the left.
That's the only place liberalism can become enshrined in our culture because they can't win at the ballot box.
Well, if it can't win at the ballot box, it ought not be enshrined in the culture.
But it's being done so by virtue of activist judges.
So you have a confirmation hearing and you get a judge like Roberts who went up there and said, look at Senator Leahy.
The little guy's not always going to win with me.
If the Constitution says a big guy wins, a big guy wins.
Constitution's what matters.
Said that to Senator Durbin, not Leahy, and Durbin had no retort to it.
Roberts' 44-second answer was like showing Dracula the cross.
And those are the things that advance the movement, not just establish votes and so forth.
If we're going to look at the court as if our view of the court is, as conservatives, okay, the court is the final repository for decisions on political and social matters.
We're just going to make sure that we have the votes on that court so that we win.
That's not a win.
That still isn't changing the culture of the court.
That's not changing its role and structure.
What we need are five justices eventually who are going to say, this is none of our business.
We're not taking this case.
This is for the states to decide.
This is for the Congress to decide.
We're not taking this case.
And not only are we not taking the case, we're not going to go elsewhere outside the boundaries of this country, the borders of this country, to find an answer to it.
That's not the purpose of this court.
That's the objective.
That's where hopefully are heading.
Now, some people may be happy.
If we get a 5-4 majority, 5-4 conservative, then we'll have all these answers.
And yeah, we'll put a stop to liberalism, but we're not going to change the culture of the court, which means that eventually the libs will get their nominees on and it's going to swing back and forth.
There's an opportunity here to do much more, and that's all I've been trying to say.
And this is not a brief against Harriet Myers and her qualifications.
I just don't know what they are.
But I have no idea if she feels this way about it.
And if she does, if she would say so.
All right.
Quick timeout.
A little early here.
We come back.
Some of the latest updates on the Tom DeLay case.
Ronnie Earl has admitted that he had another grand jury that could not come up with an indictment.
Mort Kondracki had a great line last night, I think, on Britt Hume.
The grand jury that Ronnie Earle went to to get the money laundering indictment, the second indictment, had not even been seen.
It was their first day, hadn't been seated for five hours.
They couldn't possibly have been presented all the evidence in this case, and yet they indicted DeLay.
And Kondracki said, Well, you know, I guess it proves that this old cliché that a grand jury, a prosecutor, can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.
In this case, they indicted this as fast food.
This is not just a ham sandwich, this is fast food indictment, which I thought was a pretty good line.
But we've got some incredible audio from the jury foreman of the first grand jury that indicted delay that turned out to be a faulty indictment because the dates weren't even applicable and there was no law broken, blah, blah, blah.
All coming up right after this.
All right, this prosecutor down in Travis County, Texas.
Remember, all roads lead to Travis County, Ronnie Earle, says that new evidence obtained during the weekend prompted the money laundering charges that were brought against Tom DeLay this week.
Ronnie Earl said the grand jury that indicted DeLay last week on the last day of its term declined to indict on charges other than conspiracy to violate the election code.
So he went through a number of grand juries before this one.
This one said, no, we're not going to give you money laundering, only this only conspiracy, which is, you know, sweep the rug up and see if you got anything in the trash kind of indictment.
And then all of a sudden, new evidence popped up over the weekend.
He said in the statement, additional information that he would not detail came to him during the weekend, leading him to present the money laundering charges to a new grand jury on Monday.
DeLay's lawyer, Dick DeGuaron of Houston, dismissed the statement as spin.
He said, this is crazy.
I doubt he got any evidence of any kind other than we're going to bring this motion to dismiss.
And that's why he did this.
So today, on our Austin, Texas affiliate, Travis County, Texas, KLBJ, 590 a.m., the host, Mark Caesar, is interviewing William Gibson, who was the jury foreman on the first DeLay indictment case.
And we now know this jury would not indict for money laundering anything other than conspiracy.
Now, the funny thing about this interview is that the host, Mark Caesar, pretty much thinks it's over.
He's ready to close out the interview.
And then Gibson decides to launch in and say something else.
Gibson apparently finished with the interview, but then he says, wait, wait, those ads, the Texas Association of Businesses, remember those ads?
And then Gibson says this.
I just looked at that before I was ever on the grand jury.
They were telling people how to vote.
This was before I got on the grand jury.
It bid, hey, citizen of this town.
I looked at those things that fell today.
Those were telling people how to vote.
Now, which ads are these, Mr. Gibson?
Those are the ones that you referred to in a paper from the TAB that were put in your local paper.
All right.
Telling people how to vote.
Well, it says not to tell people to vote.
But the so-called freedom of speech, they were putting something in the paper for people to look at that let them make their decision.
Okay.
But looking at those ads, people with average intelligence could tell what they were there for.
All right.
Texas Association of Business Ads.
And then Gibson continued.
And all this came about way before I was on the grand jury.
These bailers were in your paper.
It was in the Austin paper, everybody else's paper that was fled to the market around here.
That those were way before everyone went on the grand jury.
My decision was based upon those, not based upon what might have happened in the grand jury room.
Oh, okay.
So your mind was made up after you learned about the ads.
Right, those ads way back was telling people how their so-called freedom of speech deal.
But I looked at it that day, they've just been telling people, don't vote for that person.
Don't vote for that person.
So they didn't have to persuade you and the grand jury with any evidence.
That was already public knowledge there.
And way back, based by its face note, that they stated their position, that I could state my position.
Hey, I don't like that.
Here's for free speech for jury foreman, folks.
Some of it was hard to understand.
Well, let me tell you, the only thing you needed to understand in this was, right, those ads way back then telling people how their freedom of speech, those ads way before I ever went in the grand jury, my decision was based on those ads, not based upon what might have happened in the grand jury room.
Did you hear him say that?
Well, that's all you need to say.
The foreman of the Ronnie Earl grand jury admits in a radio interview today that none of the evidence that Ronnie Earl presented had anything to do with his decision to agree to a conspiracy indictment against Tom DeLay.
It was all about these television ads that he thinks are illegal because they suggested voting for somebody, these Texas Association of Business Ads.
Now, what does this mean?
It means that the basis for the charges, folks, is in doubt.
The juror did not make a decision based on the evidence.
Look at how sleazy all of this is.
The original indictment based on a statute that wasn't even in existence.
The facts set forth in that indictment don't even allege that Delay violated the non-existent statute.
Now you've got a grand jury foreman saying that nothing that went on in the grand jury room helped make up his mind anyway because he walked into the room with his mind already made up.
So Earl impanels a jury at noon on Monday, which brings new charges five hours later.
How could that jury have possibly taken the time to review any evidence in that period of time?
And now, one of the original grand jurors says that none of the evidence mattered anyway.
I have a transcript, so I understood what the man said.
He was talking about these Texas Association for Business ads, and they were telling people how to vote, and he thought that was not right.
And he somehow linked delay to those ads.
He resented TV ads that were telling people to go vote for somebody.
Now, my instinctive reaction is to this, when's the last time I saw an ad that didn't tell me that?
But I'm getting confused with the timeline here on campaign finance reform and when you couldn't do what and say what.
But freedom of speech, my rear end.
There isn't any freedom of speech if you can't run an ad that says that.
The bottom line, thank you, McCain Feingold.
But I mean, Hell's Bell's here, folks.
This is a tantamount admission that this grand jury was nothing more than a rubber stamp and had the evidence that went on in there that was presented in there.
Who knows what evidence it was?
Nobody can tell us except, well, it's secret.
We can't know.
All we know is that the foreman of the grand jury wanted to let everybody know on the radio today down in Austin, Texas, that he didn't need any evidence.
His mind was made up before he even became a member of the grand jury because those TV ads and those newspaper ads.
And remember, this is the first indictment, which was baseless, and Ronnie Earl found out it was baseless, and he had to go get something else at noon on Monday because he indicted Delay on a statute that didn't even exist.
The question still remains, what do you do about out-of-control prosecutors like this?
To whom are they accountable?
They're accountable to the Bar Association.
And that can take years.
And then even if you want to go that route, the only hope you've got is some judge slaps them down somewhere along the way.
But that's unlikely.
Law enforcement doesn't work that way.
The presumption of Truth, innocence, and justice in the American way is always with the prosecutor.
You know, our bias in this country, the accused are always guilty.
Why?
And this is not a political bias.
I mean, all of us, we hear that somebody's charged with a crime.
We automatically assume they're guilty.
Why would they go to the trouble of making charges if they weren't guilty?
And when somebody's acquitted, we're always shocked and surprised.
Well, how can that be?
I thought they had them dead to rights.
These biases are very powerful.
Here's Marty in Springfield, Virginia.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Nice to have you with us.
Yeah, Rush, thanks.
Ditto's from our nation's capital here.
Hey, there's one aspect of this debate over the Supreme Court nomination that I don't think anyone's brought up yet, although someone as brilliant as you may have.
So if you've already mentioned this, I apologize.
What kind of message has Bush sent to federal judges at the circuit and district level?
I mean, if they see the president doesn't have the guts to nominate a justice with a track record of judicial restraint, it's going to have a chilling effect on them when they realize their career is shot if they establish themselves as solid conservatives.
That is an excellent point.
It has, I don't remember if I've mentioned it or not, but I have heard it.
And because the bottom line is what you're really orienting people that want the job are to go stealth.
Yeah.
Don't leave a paper trail.
Don't make yourself a target, and that's the way the president's going to choose you.
That's another thing.
It all fits into the fact that there are people out there who have taken the hits and they have stood fast and they're true believers and they have gone on record and they haven't been forced off the dime on their on their positions by the vicious attacks against them that the leftist activists had made, all these appellate judges and circuit judges.
And basically they're, I don't want to use, I guess they're not being rewarded for this.
Not to say they're being punished, but they're being passed over for people that are stealth and not targets.
And it does send not a helpful message.
Exactly.
I know you've mentioned in the past that the left is pushing for the, they were always pushing for outsiders in the Roberts nomination because they knew that we've made a lot of progress in getting the right people on the lower courts, but it's not going to do any good if you scare them away.
Now, that is something that I haven't heard said.
It might do a lot to explain.
And by the way, Dingy Harry has explained why he likes Harriet Myers, and his answer basically is, well, she's not an elitist, and I hate elitists, and she's a lawyer like I am, and she built herself up with a bootstrap just like I did.
You know, yada, yada, yada.
You have an excellent point.
Bush has done a great job of stocking the bench, if you will, for Supreme Court nominations, and the left doesn't want a Janice Rogers Brown or a Bill Pryor or a Michael Ludig.
They don't want these people.
They don't want an Edith Clement or a Priscilla Owen.
They don't want them.
And this is one way.
Go outside, Mr. President.
It's time we had people who aren't judges.
Right, right.
Thanks much, Marty.
We will be right back.
Stay with us.
You're listening to Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence in Podcasting Network.
And they hate that.
Greetings.
Welcome back.
A couple stories here about Oregon and a couple animal stories here for you, too, folks.
One of them is unbelievable.
Newly installed Chief Justice John Roberts today sharply questioned a lawyer arguing for preservation of Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law, noting the federal government's tough regulation of addictive drugs.
And we were talking about this earlier with an anesthesiologist or an anesthetist.
Yeah, well, yeah, no, DEA is really, really on doctors' cases.
The government's telling doctors what they can and can't prescribe now when it comes to pain medicine, even for terminally ill people.
And if they don't get enough, they're in agony.
And you say, well, if they're terminal, what difference does it make?
And so this is one, I'm bringing this up because this is one of the arguments that the death activists in Oregon are using.
Well, hey, we'd be happy to keep them alive in a blissful coma with starvation, which we all know now is a wonderful euphoric thing.
And so we can't prescribe them enough medicine here because the federal government's breathing down the necks of the doctors.
But the 50-year-old Chief Justice John Roberts, hearing his first major oral argument in his role, seems skeptical of the Oregon law.
And get this, the outcome of the case was as unclear after the argument as before.
Well, thank you, Gina Holland of AP.
That is a brilliant, brilliant addition to the story.
We had no more idea after oral arguments than before how they were going to decide.
Brilliant.
We never do.
Nobody ever knows for sure what the court's going to do after oral arguments.
What?
What does she think?
The blonde...
What?
Oh, come on.
Are you telling me that a journalist on television is already predicting a 5-4 decision in which direction?
5-4 decision for what?
Oh, oh, oh, oh, okay, okay.
So she doesn't know how.
It's just going to be 5-4.
She's going to be 5-4 for Oregon and a deaf activist or 5-4 against them.
She's just predicting 5-4, but not how the 5 is...
Okay, but...
I'll tell you, it's getting sillier and sillier.
We're not supposed to know, Gina Holland.
We're not supposed to know after oral arguments.
They haven't even voted yet.
The purpose of oral arguments is not so the press can find out what the court's going to do.
Folks, this is asinine.
We got judges who don't know what their job is up there.
We got press people covering the court.
Doesn't know how it works.
When it's right in front of them, another bit of news from Oregon.
A Portland woman's flight home from Reno was stopped short.
Well, she wasn't flying over Reno.
She was stopped short in Reno.
All because the message on the t-shirt she was wearing was offensive.
Lori Heasley claims it's a freedom of speech privilege, but airline officials say the message brings safety concerns.
Lori Heasley said there are bigger problems in the country.
I can't believe people can be so petty.
She boarded her flight Tuesday morning in L.A., headed for Portland, with a stopover in Reno.
When Southwest Airlines employees asked her to cover her shirt, her stopover became a stop off of her flight.
I was told that basically I had to cover my shirt, or I was told if I cover the shirt, I can basically stay on the plane.
So she covered the shirt, but during a nap, while passengers were boarding in Reno, the cover came off of the shirt.
I'd like to know how that happened.
And Southwest employees insisted, change the shirt or change flights.
I didn't feel that I should have to change my shirt because we live in the U.S. and it's freedom of speech.
And it was based on the, remember the movie, Meet the Fockers?
She took the O out and put a U in with pictures of Bush and members of his administration on the shirt.
Pictures of the Bush administration, a phrase based on the movie, Meet the Fuckers, but with one crucial vowel changed.
And Southwest says, you can't, they're going to infuriate people.
Cover the shirt.
Freedom of speech?
Yeah, like you can go running down the aisle of the airplane shouting whatever you want.
Well, I decided it's the word.
It's not that it has any to do with Bush.
It's not the word.
Wait a second, it's not political speech is permissible, but obscenity is not, and profanity is not.
You can't, not in not when people can't get away from it.
This is, you know, this airplane was not on HBO.
Southwest Airlines is Walmart.
You know, and you couldn't post, you couldn't put these t-shirts on sale in Walmart.
You know, Walmart wouldn't do it.
I can understand Southwest not wanting it.
It's their business.
They wouldn't be catering to these kinds of wackos and so forth.
Free speech, all free speech is the government can't tell you what you can't say, but a business can, as an employee or whatever, don't ever make that mistake of thinking that free speech, nobody can tell you what you can't say.
Get this from Miami.
Scientists in Florida are puzzling over a Burmese python.
That's a snake for those of you in Riolinda.
This Burmese python scarfed down a six-foot alligator.
This snake ate a six-foot alligator.
A problem, however, popped up.
The snake's stomach ruptured.
Scientists in Florida found the carcasses of the snake and the alligator in part of Florida's Everglades National Park.
Photos show the gator's hind legs and tail sticking out of the snake's ruptured stomach.
I got a small picture of it here in black.
You can see it.
The Miami Herald reported the scientists can't figure out how the snake got the crocodile, the alligator, down to the point that it can start eating it.
The snake's head is also missing.
Experts say the clash is interesting, but it also shows the exotic snakes are competing with gators to top the food chain in the Everglades.
Yeah, big competition out there.
The gators versus the snakes for top of the food chain.
Park biologist Skip Snow said he's documented 156 python captures in the last two years.
It also goes to show you that there isn't always room for dessert.
Here is Frank in Yuba City, California.
Welcome to the program.
Nice to have you with us.
Thank you, sir.
Dittos.
Thank you, sir.
I was watching Good Morning America this morning, and there was an individual there with Diane Sawyer who was explaining that there's quite a bit of criteria that has to be met before you can get this right-to-die prescription from a doctor, and that is that you have to make two oral requests of your doctor, one written.
You have to have it corroborated by two other doctors that you are going to die within six months.
And that also you have to have two doctors state that you are competent to make that request.
And I was just wondering if that's the kind of law that they've written, then what's the controversy about?
It seems like it's very, very well regulated.
It's very specific to certain individuals, and it can't be expanded to any other science.
Oh, wait a minute.
Certainly, once we get comfortable with that, we'll expand it.
That's the way these things work.
It's the way we are as a society.
It's called defining deviancy down.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, we're going to fight certain kinds of crimes.
We're going to fight illegal immigration until one day we figure we can't deal with it.
So we're just going to say, forget it.
Nobody does anything about it.
Keeps happening, but we've defined deviancy down.
In this case, once we become comfortable with, and by the way, I don't think it'd be too tough for somebody who wants to die to go get two doctors to sign off on it.
And by the way, How many doctors, how many people do you know who have been told you got three months, six months, who are alive a year or two later?
See, there's okay, this is not an exact science.
You're putting a lot of power, even though it may not sound like it, in the hands of the doctors.
So, you as a patient go in, yeah, Doc, oh man, I'm in bad shape.
I want that, I want that medicine, man.
I want to wipe myself up.
Okay, pal, I see your pain, and uh, I'll look at, yeah, you got six months.
Another doctor does the same thing.
Doctors are still making the decision.
Yep, six months, six months.
We concur.
Patient is of sound mental state and bamo.
Uh, the excitement over this, something just kind of gnaws at me.
We have deaf activists out there.
You know, I, there's a lot of things I understand in life, but I don't understand deaf activists.
I, I, well, in a political sense, I do, but just in a strictly human sense, uh, I don't.
I, folks, let me, I love the Hunter-Thompson method.
You go into your kitchen, you grab a shotgun, you aim, and the shotgun you can't miss.
You blow yourself up in the kitchen sink so you don't create a mess.
Then, Johnny Depp comes out to your house and blows your ashes into outer space via a cannon.
Back in a moment.
Okay, a couple other things I want to get to.
Walter Cronkite, you may have heard about this Friday night.
Larry King Live said Americans are too dumb to vote for the right candidates.
Cronkite said, We're an ignorant nation right now.
We're not really capable.
I don't think the majority of our people of making the decisions that have to be made at election time, particularly in the selection of their legislatures and their Congress and the presidency.
Of course, what else is there than a dog catcher?
Cronkite then added, I don't think we're bright enough to do the job that would preserve our democracy, our republic.
I think we're in serious danger.
This is so typically perfect.
Here's an elitist who thinks you people are a bunch of bumbling fools.
And to think this guy ever was once the most trusted man in America.
There's your left for you, folks.
That's who they are.
By the way, Howard Dean says that the Democrats are going to unveil their own version of a contract with America for 2006.
And the number one issue is going to be universal health care.
Fine.
They did it already and they got taken to the tank on it.
So good.
Let them try it again.
Holy guts, an old playbook.
Universal health care, universal health insurance, universal medical.
First five will be oriented about universal health care.
The last five will be, we're going to get out of war, out of Iraq, and we're going to disband the military except for meals on wheels.
And what else did he say?
Portability, portability of insurance.
That's going to be on there.
Ladies and gentlemen, this program continues to prosper.
We continue to add new sponsors.
I can announce to you faithfully and confidently that this year we will again, and it has never been otherwise, beat our annual projections.
And yet there is sad news.
U.S. News and World Report, undergoing yet another round of layoffs, has dropped one of its most prominent writers, chief political correspondent Roger Simon.
The magazine has given pink slips to at least 10 journalists, including congressional correspondent Terrence Samuel and two staffers on maternity leave.
They actually fired pregnant women.
The remaining editorial staff of about 160, far smaller than those of Time and Newsweek.
So pink slips, getting rid of big-time journalists, and they'll probably say, this is not going to affect our journalism.
We're not getting rid of any essential personnel.
In fact, School Bus Nagan, you know, they had to lay off 3,000 people in New Orleans because he can't find a lending institution to guarantee their payroll.
And I'm sure that's part of the problem, but there may not be 3,000 people who want to go to work.
There may not be 3,000 people who have moved back, is my point.
But do you know what he said?
He said, well, you know, these 3,000, it's not going to affect basic city services.
They were in non-essential administrative positions.
If they were non-essential, why were they there in the first place?
Hello, bureaucracy.
Hello, government unions.
How can this be?
Recent polling shows widespread support for a new Iraqi constitution to be voted on October 15th, even in the strongholds of Sunni Arab groups that are fighting to derail it.
3,625 Iraqis polled, 79% in favor of the draft constitution and 8% opposed.
The remainder didn't respond.
How can this be?
The news we get out of Iraq on television, well, I'm surprised Iraq's still there.
It's been falling apart.
The Iraqis are also telling us, Saudis, stay the hell out of our country, stay the hell out of our business.
We're not going to have some camel riding Bedouin telling us what to do.
That's what they said.
That's what some Iraqi minister said about the Saudis.
This is a major success story.
Yet we get reporting out of Iraq just like we got out of New Orleans.
And again, I have to remind you, Washington Post, five weeks after Hurricane Katrina laid waste to New Orleans.
Some local, state, and federal officials have come to believe that exaggerations of mayhem by officials and rumors repeated uncritically in a news media slowed the response to the disaster and tarnished the image of many of its victims.
This ain't giant C, I told you so.
I told you that the FEMA guy admitted it.
We're not armed.
We don't go in there.
If there's anarchy, rapes, and murders taking place, that's not what we're about.
We don't go in there.
We had people ready to get them out of the dome in the convention center.
Might we say the media kills?
Free speech.
Tell me I can't say it.
Jeb Bush needs kudos.
Jeb Bush said yesterday he now supports federal legislation allowing drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, including areas where he aggressively fought energy exploration just four years ago.
Congratulations, Governor Jeb Bush.
And this takes the cake.
President Bush's decision to make White House Counsel Harriet Myers his second Supreme Court nominee has upset Hispanic groups that had hoped to see the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.
Anne-Marie Tallman, the executive director of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said President Bush has again ignored highly qualified Latino judges, attorneys, and law professors who could serve the nation ably on the U.S. Supreme Court.
For crying out loud, this is absurd.
If Bill Clinton was the first black president, then Bush is the first Hispanic president.
Gonzalez, the first Hispanic attorney general.
He's all but ignored illegal immigration.
Of course, they never made these upset statements about Clinton when Clinton, first black president, never appointed powerful blacks to serious positions.
Well, it couldn't get Estrada past the Democrats.
Exactly right.
Miguel Estrada, I know.
But it still takes the cake.
I mean, of all the things to get up there, be this identity politics.
The idea that you're politics, the idea that you're worth as a city, the idea that anything about you comes from your skin color just silly.
And it just infuriates me.
And I have to take a quick timeout.
Back here in just a second.
Well, this golf prodigy, Michelle Wee, 15 years old, Hawaii, turned pro today.
She will immediately, in endorsements, get a $25 to $30 million without ever having entered a tournament.
Cool, if you can do it.
Folks, get this.
This is Federal Way, Washington.
Two high school boys swallowed a goldfish at a screwal assembly.
They were punished with a stern talking to.
Animal rights activists say it's not enough.
After learning about the stunt last month, PETA demanded a district-wide policy prohibiting the use of animals in school functions.
They said killing fish in the name of school spirit is unacceptable.
Goldfish.
These two kids, one of them made a bet, if I win the student council presidency, I'll eat six goldfish.
He did.
And the schools, we're not going to tolerate things like this.
These kids made a bad decision.
We use it as a teaching moment.
Crying out.
It's goldfish.
I'll tell you what, when you see the picture of this snake with the alligator sticking out of his gut, the only conclusion you can come to, folks, is we have to wipe out both species.
This is intolerable.
We'll see you tomorrow.
Adios.
Cheerio.
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