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Nov. 9, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:18
November 9, 2005, Wednesday, Hour #2
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And we're back.
We got broadcast excellence rolling right along here as El Rushbaugh in rare form today having more fun than a human being or alien for that matter should be allowed to have.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882.
And the email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
I just authorized the DittoCam to be turned on.
It's up and running.
It'll be on for the remainder of the program at rushlimbaugh.com.
Now, before we get back to Mary Mapes and these soundbipes from Good Morning America Today and her interview with Brian Ross, I want to talk about this latest CIA leak investigation because something's going on here, folks, and I don't like it.
As you know, yesterday, yesterday, about this time yesterday, Senator Frist and Congressman Hastert sent out a letter demanding a bicameral investigation of the latest CIA leak that resulted in a story in the Washington Post last Wednesday about these black sites, these so-called black prisons, these prisons that nobody knows about, where we're housing these al-Qaeda terrorists, the people that want to blow up Americans and kill them and so forth.
Yesterday, the Senate was rocked when Trent Lott said that possibly it's a Republican senator or a Republican Senate staffer who gave out this information to the Washington Post.
And Lott then said, what are you going to keep investigating things around here?
I mean, people here talk to people.
We can't just start investigating this stuff.
Where's it going to end?
Now, I'm not going to mention any names, but there are some places out there that are now speculating on who it might have been on the Republican side that leaked the story of these black prisons, these black sites to the Washington Post.
Now, you know, I'm going to tell you something.
We got Scooter Libby indicted, and Scooter Libby faces jail, and we've got these clowns in the Senate who are trying to say, hey, this is no big deal.
I mean, we talk to people.
This happens.
You just can't keep investigating things here.
As far as I'm concerned, I don't care who leaked it.
I don't care who talked to the Washington Post.
I don't care if it's a Republican senator.
I don't care if it's a Republican Senate staffer.
There is no reason that Congress should not get to the bottom of this.
But all of a sudden, because it might take out a few senators or a few staffers, oh, no, no, no, no.
We can't do that.
Well, that's why I'm for it.
I don't care who this is.
I talked to you not long ago about the problem that Bush has in going to war with the army he has in the Senate.
This business that we've got Republicans or a Republican or a staffer leaking this stuff to the Washington Post, there's a reason why it happened.
If it is a Republican, I know Dingy Harry is trying to focus attention on Cheney because Cheney was there on Tuesday and they were having some meetings.
But Lott says it's a Senate staffer.
Well, we don't know who it is, and that's why we need the investigation.
But I don't care if it is a Republican or if it's two Republicans.
You know, whoever's doing this is leaving the party for dead by letting the leadership announce this formal investigation and so forth and putting the onus on these people to go find their own people.
Well, if that's the case, then we got to do it.
And I'm not trying to be a National Honor Society contestant here or, you know, some occupy some moral high ground.
This is serious stuff.
Let's find out.
Scooter Libby is indicted, yet some senator or some Senate staffer gets away with a far more serious crime, which is worse.
Outing the name, which he's not even been charged with.
Outing the name of a not covert agent that was sitting at a desk, not doing anything, Valerie Playman, or outing the existence of these black sites to the Washington Post, thereby identifying the countries that they're you think you think it's tough enough to get countries to join us in the war on terror and be allied with us.
What about stories like this would totally blow that up?
Now, my guess, I have a sneaking suspicion that whoever leaked this obviously whoever leaked it did it for personal gain.
Somebody did it for personal gain, and I don't know what the personal gain is.
It could be personal gain to forge ties with the media, it could be to advance some agenda or idea that that person has.
You know, you may have somebody who's trying to make a claim on we shouldn't torture.
That's a big story going on right now.
We shouldn't torture, we shouldn't torture.
So, somebody leaks a story about we're torturing at these black sites.
The Washington Post run with, well, by golly, by gosh, find out who it is.
And especially if it's a Republican, find out who it is.
Especially if it's a Republican.
It's time to shake up that club because there's not an army in the Senate that the president can count on.
Trent Lott says he's against this investigation because where do these things stop?
Senators talk to each other.
They ought to be pushing the button to get to the bottom of this.
They ought to be outraged that this happened.
They ought to be fit to be tied that one of their members is talking to the press about something like this.
It is a serious, serious breach.
And I think these people think this is all a big game.
I think some of the inside the Beltway people, our side too, think this is all a big game.
It's all about gamesmanship and maneuvering and who can position themselves for what they want to accomplish or acquire in the future.
Meanwhile, we have young men and women putting their lives on the line in these sites in the war on terror in Iraq, in Afghanistan, while we've got perhaps senators and their staff leaking.
Something's out of whack here, folks, and it bothers me greatly.
And when I, you know, I was here late yesterday afternoon doing some things, and it wasn't, I was driving home.
I didn't have the TV on because I was occupied in some other things.
I left here about, oh, 6:30, quarter seven.
So I got home, I got satellite radio in the car so I could listen to these TV networks.
And I was, I was, I forget, I was after 7 o'clock and I was listening to the situation room.
Wolf Blitzer, this liberal roundtable, they call a newscast every night.
And they're talking all about Harry Reid demanding to get to the bottom of this.
It was probably Cheney.
We've got to find out who did this, so forth and so on.
And then they quote Lott as saying, hey, I think it was a Republican staffer.
And I had not heard that all day.
And I just, really.
And if it's not a Republican staffer, it's a Republican senator.
And I want to know who, regardless.
We have brave young men and women who have volunteered to join the armed forces.
They are in these prisons in these countries.
They are in theater in Afghanistan and Iraq and around the world.
And we've got all these little game players in the U.S. Senate, the most exclusive club in the world, playing games with all this stuff for whatever personal motivations.
There cannot be a national security interest.
There can't be some highbrow national security interest in whoever leaking this leaked it.
There's got to be something more fundamental that's more personal to whoever leaked it in terms of either settling a score or advancing their own career, doing whatever.
And whoever it is, it's time for this investigation to go forward.
And I think now people are trying to stop it and bottle it up.
I hope that they stick to this and get to the bottom of it and find out who it is.
And especially if it's a Republican, I want to know.
I want to know if it is a Republican or a Republican staffer in the Senate that leaked this story to the Post.
I want to know.
We'll be back after this.
Stay with us.
You're listening to Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence in Podcasting Network.
Hi, welcome back, folks.
Great to have you with us.
The EIB Network and El Rushbo executing assigned host duties flawlessly.
Zero mistakes so far.
No, People are, right, I can't believe that you're actually standing up for the government supporting secret sites.
I am in favor of winning the war on terror.
I am in favor of putting as many of those people in jail.
Now, what's going on in the United States Senate today?
What's going on in the United States Senate is all of these blowhards dragging these lawful oil company execs before the cameras to start making cheap little political points.
They don't have the desire at the same time to investigate whether one of their own members or staffers leaked the highest level security information, code black, covert operations.
Black ops are common.
They're all over the place.
And yet we're going to drag these oil company execs up there.
We know why.
It's because that's easy.
Oh, yeah, we can bring these guys up and pound them and accuse them of gouging and whatever we want.
And we make them explain to us how it is that they're gouging and running their business.
Like I've always said, if I were the oil company executives, I would call hearings.
I would call the U.S. Senate and U.S. Congress to my hearings, and I'd put them under oath.
I said, what are you doing trying to stop our business from growing?
Why all these regulations?
What do you got against us?
You want to put windfall profits taxes on us?
Fine.
We'll stop developing domestic oil.
We'll stop pumping it and we'll go around the world to get it to get around your tax, which is what they did last time.
Besides that, a windfall profits tax on the oil company.
How going to benefit you?
Do you think a windfall profits tax is going to lower the price at the pump?
All you're going to be doing is sitting out there going, well, man, I feel better because the oil company is having to pay higher taxes.
Price of the pump's going to stay the same.
It's like my mom used to make my mom so mad.
She said, finish your plate, eat everything on your plate.
There are kids starving in China.
Well, I heard this a number of years, but one night I got had it.
I said, okay, mom, you telling me if I eat everything on the plate, these starving kids in China are going to rub their bellies and go, oh, I'm so full.
She said, don't be a smart aleck.
Well, I wasn't being a smart aleck.
I was using precise logic.
Whether I ate everything or nothing wouldn't matter a whit to whether the Chinese were starving or not.
You put a windfall profits tax on the oil companies.
It's not going to matter a whit.
If anything, the price of the pumps are going to go up.
Because as we all know, corporations don't pay taxes.
At least not the full boat.
But anyway, so we drag these oil company execs up there just so these guys in the Senate can make some political points.
But when it comes to finding out who among them might have leaked details of a black covert operation to the media, these are the nation's secrets.
Somebody up there, according to Trent Lott, some Republican did it.
And it is time to get to the bottom.
Hey, Denji Harry, Denji Harry, why don't you go and invoke Rule 21 on this?
Instead of invoking Rule 21 on your silly fantasy that Bush lied about pre-war intelligence, why don't you invoke Rule 21 to get to the bottom of who in that Senate, and maybe a Democrat for all I know.
All I know is what Lott has been quoted as saying.
Invoke Rule 21 and shut the place down to get to the bottom of this.
Find out who it is in that body that's leaking our nation's secrets and find out why.
Of course, is it going to happen?
No way.
It will not happen.
Now, back to Mary Mapes.
Got to finish the sound pipes here.
She was on first interview since being fired.
She maintains that her 60 Minutes 2 story on the Bush National Guard service was true, that no one's proved the documents were not authentic.
She sat down with Brian Ross, investigative journalist at ABC News, and we had, well, we played one soundbite, but we've got a total of little Bruce Babbitt talk there, four of them.
Here's the first.
Brian Ross says, CBS fired Mary Mapes earlier this year.
She's not been heard from until now.
She's unrepentant and defiant, refusing to accept membership in the journalism hall of shame.
I loved that job, loved it wildly.
And suddenly there were pictures of me on the internet.
They were saying mean things about me, saying that I was an angry, man-hating, feminazi.
I had people driving by my house and taking pictures.
I had a little boy, seven years old.
What did you tell him?
I didn't tell him much.
Okay.
Brian Ross then says, Mary Mapes was the woman behind the scenes, the producer who researched, wrote, and put together Dan Rather's 60 Minutes report on President Bush's National Guard service, a report which Rather and CBS would later apologize for airing.
Friendships were destroyed.
Trust was abandoned.
And it was a very, very dark time.
It was a very dark time.
I mean, it was like having a little mini witch hunt within the corporation.
And at the heart of that was Mary Mapes.
Yes.
Yes, that's true.
I know.
I know.
They're all in denial.
They're all in denial.
She didn't do anything wrong.
She didn't violate any standards.
Story's still true.
She was a victim of a witch hunt.
Another bite here.
And by the way, Mike, get that little parody that we had done about her calling Joe Lockhart.
Because that's the one thing that she says that she regrets, but we don't have that audio, but I'm still going to use that.
Here's the next bite.
Ross says, this is nothing to do with bad journalism, Mary.
I don't think I committed bad journalism.
I really don't.
I don't think I've done a good job for 25 years, woke up on the morning of September 8th and decided to commit professional Harry Carey.
You've been doing it your whole career.
You just got caught.
You've been doing this kind of journalism.
Obviously, this is good journalism.
She's been doing it her whole career.
She just got caught at this.
That's what I mean about their monopolies over.
They don't get away with this stuff anymore.
And here's this, this is the money bite.
This is the PS des resistance.
Brian Ross says, and then the heart of the controversy were documents CBS said came from the files of President Bush's then National Guard commanding officer.
He plays the rather video saying now news about CBS News and the question.
And then Ross says, after 12 days of defending him, CBS and Dan Rather later admitted they couldn't vouch for the authenticity of the documents and they should not have been used and the story should not have aired.
Do you, Mary Mapes, still think the story was true?
The story?
Absolutely.
This seems remarkable to me that you would sit here now and say you still find that story to be up to your standards.
I'm perfectly willing to believe those documents are forgeries if there's proof that I haven't seen.
But isn't it the other way around?
Don't you have to prove they're authentic?
Well, I think that's what critics of the story would say.
I know more now than I did then.
And I think, I think they have not been proved to be false yet.
Have they proved to be authentic, though?
Isn't that really what journalists do?
No, I don't think that's the standard.
No, of course not.
Proving your story is true, proving the documents are authentic.
That's not the standard.
The critics have to prove that what we're putting on the air is not true.
She's just let a big cat out of the bag here.
This is standard operating procedure, if you ask me.
How about Michael Isikov?
Koran's being flushed down the toilet down at Club Guidmo.
No evidence.
There's one source.
Well, it's up to them to prove it didn't happen.
Prove it it didn't happen.
You go prove it in.
My story says it did.
She says, no, it's not up to me to authenticate these documents.
It's not up to me to make sure that they're genuine.
No, no, no, no.
It's up to the critics to prove that they're not, which the critics have done, by the way, and she still refuses to acknowledge that.
She said that one of her few regrets, folks, in handling the story, one of her few regrets was her phone call to a member of Kerry's presidential campaign staff prior to the broadcast.
Now, of course, the fact that ABC doesn't identify who it was in their own story, I find amusing.
It was Joe Lockhart, and he wasn't a member of Kerry's presidential campaign staff.
He was one of the top dogs.
And Mary Mapes called, what's his face, Lockhart, asking him to call Burkett.
She said, I wish to God I hadn't done it because I think it was so wildly misinterpreted.
She says she made the call only as a way to gain favor with her source who provided her with the documents.
This is probably how that all happened.
Talent on loan from God.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, nice to have you with us.
We have some audio soundbites on this leak business.
Let's go to audio soundbite number four.
This is from CNN's American Morning Today, Senator Jay Rockefeller being interviewed by the host there, Miles O'Brien, who says, is your concern that there was a leak, or should we be more concerned about the fact the CIA is running a network of these so-called black site prisons?
That's actually a more than excellent question because there is no question that interrogation, carried out properly, produces enormous amounts of intelligence, which prevent incidents from happening, or you learn things which you otherwise would not know.
And you can only learn that through interrogation.
Next question is, should you have, so to speak, ghost sites?
Well, how do you get one without the other?
You see, this is what, folks, this is what sends my little red flags up.
The question, is your concern that there was a leak, or should we be more concerned that the CIA is running these black sites?
Well, I don't think Rockefeller answered it.
He says, it's a good question.
No question, interrogation carried out properly produces enormous amounts of intelligence.
Next question, should you have, so to speak, ghost sites?
It doesn't matter where we have them.
The liberals are going to oppose them.
They're going to oppose Club Gitmo.
They're going to oppose Abu Ghraib.
They're going to oppose everything.
They're going to oppose anything other than the U.S. court system with these terrorists being granted rights that only U.S. citizens get under the Constitution.
So now we've got ghost sites.
I guess they oppose that.
Let me answer the question for you, Miles.
Your question is there concerned that there was a leak or should we be more concerned about the fact the CIA is running a network?
How can you ask that question?
You just stopped the media for six months trying to find out who leaked the name of Valerie Plam.
So obviously, you people in the press and on the left think that leaking is horrible.
But now all of a sudden, since the leak is about what the CIA is doing, maybe what Bush is doing.
Why, we've got to get to the bottom of these sites.
The answer to the question, Miles, is we've got to get to the bottom of the leak.
Somebody in the U.S. Senate, according to Trent Lott, leaked the nation's secrets to the Washington Post.
And this compromised these sites and is going to make it doubly difficult for us to come up with Allied nations to work with us.
Democrats are already making that tough enough as it is.
And we've got young men and women who have volunteered to join the armed forces putting their lives on the line.
And we've got somebody back here in the safe confines of the most private club in the world, the most exclusive, the U.S. Senate, having games and playing toys here with all these leaks and so forth.
There's no question to me what's more important here, and that's this particular leak.
So now on the Situation Room with Wolf Oblitzer last night on CNN, he talked to Senator Pat Leakey Leahy.
Senator Depends.
He said, do you have a quick reaction to this call for a leak investigation on this Washington Post story detailing these so-called black site prisons in Eastern Europe?
What I worry about with this administration, everybody wants to, on their side, wants to jump and say, oh my gosh, plug these leaks.
I would think it would be a lot better to say, what in heaven's name are we doing running secret prisons in the former Soviet Union?
I think if you want to do an investigation, sure, find out who may have leaked this, but more importantly, find out why in heaven's name are we doing this?
Why was the administration allowing this?
And how are we going to repair America's image with the rest of the world?
Well, simple, elect you guys.
The rest of the world can just run us over and they'll love us.
You know, I just, this is just amazing.
They don't want to investigate themselves, folks.
They'll be glad to indict Scooter Libby.
They'll be glad to, you know, they get to sit around.
It goes back to the same old thing.
Hurricane Katrina aftermath.
All these guys had authorized all the spending and all the money to make sure that it didn't happen in New Orleans.
What did happen?
Now they want to act like spectators.
We're going to conduct an investigation.
We're going to find out what happened.
We're going to find out who didn't do the job.
As though they had nothing to do with it.
So now we've got a genuine leak, and they stopped everything for the past six months to find out who leaked the name of a non-covert agent.
Now we've got another leak.
Well, I'm not so concerned about the leak.
I'm more concerned about the prison.
Last night on the news hour with Jim Olara, you got Kit Bond on there and Durbin and Margaret Warner is the host.
And this is unreal here because Durbin denies that he says Americans use torture like the Nazis and Pol Pot.
He's on tape saying it, but when confronted with his own words by Kit Bond, he denies it.
What happens is Margaret Warner says to Senator Durbin, what about Senator Bond's point, though, that if you make it absolutely clear what the rules are, and the Army field manual is, I believe, a public document, that in fact, al-Qaeda and other terrorists will be completely prepared for those particular procedures and will always be able to train themselves to resist them.
Durbin says, well, what's the alternative?
That we will say we're going to use torture, countenance the use of torture, and then what happens when our soldiers are captured?
And Bond interrupts with this.
I think we've got to be clear when senators like my colleague from Illinois say we use torture.
That is absolutely false.
Senator Durbin is the one who most recently compared our troops to the Nazis, the Soviets in their gulags, or the mad regimes of Paul Pot.
And that is the kind of thing that discovers the same thing.
Here it is.
It's unfortunate that you're saying we're using torture.
I did not.
I did not say that.
Well, we have the tape.
We have the audio tape, ladies and gentlemen.
We can go back and listen to what Senator Durbin just denied that he said June 9th, 2005, a portion of Senator Dick Durbin's remarks on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
I read this to you and didn't tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control.
You would most certainly believe this must have happened by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime, Paul Potter, others, that had no concern for human beings.
Sadly, that's not the case.
This was the action of Americans in treatment of their own prisoners.
Well, I don't know what to do about this.
And we've got Senator Durbin's own words.
He just on television last night denying that he said these things.
And he said, it's not true, Senator.
It's not true.
It's unfortunate that you're doing this.
And Bond said, it's unfortunate you're saying we're using torture.
So, nevertheless, ladies and gentlemen, the plot thickens with all of this.
Here's Ed in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Ed, nice to have you on the program, sir.
Welcome.
Rush, 24-7, Dittos.
Thank you, sir.
I think you can connect the dots on this leak, and they probably lead right back to John McCain, the media darling, who likes to cozy up with all the mainstream media and probably helped him gin up some support for this bill that he just got passed regarding the torture that we're supposedly doing.
We've got to be real careful here throwing names out there.
Lott said it's a Republican Senate staffer.
Others have said it's a senator.
But I personally don't want to mention any names who it could be.
That's what the investigation's for.
I don't know that Senator McCain, nobody knows who it is.
I understand that.
It's just it's going a little too far here to start throwing names out like this.
I mean, you know, you say, and I know you're just responding to what I said because you're talking about how I think you're reacting to my point that somebody might have something personal to gain by doing this, like advancing an issue, and you glommed on to torture.
And I can totally understand how you're making a connection, but let's not mention any names yet.
That's what the investigation's for.
And I understand that, but, you know, everybody wants to tiptoe around this stuff.
And as you said, the investigation has to go on and has to do with endangering the lives of our military and supposedly, you know, maybe possibly being done by somebody that was in the military.
Could be.
It could be a number of things.
But does it, I gather then that you're not upset if this investigation would produce a Republican as the culprit.
It wouldn't hurt me a bit if it was McCain.
I think Arizona has done us a big disservice by putting him back in office the number of times that they've done.
I mean, he's fought this administration, you know, in backdoor ways more times than we can count.
I understand your sentiments.
I really do.
I appreciate the call.
But let it be said, the official position of this program is we don't know who the leaker is.
All we know is what Trent Lott alleges, that it was a Republican staffer.
Others are saying it was a senator.
Harry Reid says it was Cheney.
And so on this program, all these people are going to be innocent until proven guilty, unlike the way the Democrats acted with Rove and Libby, who in their minds are still guilty of what they weren't charged with anyway.
Quick timeout, as we'll be back.
Talk about the oil company execs being dragged up to Capitol Hill today.
We got a couple funny audio soundbite.
Well, one audio soundbite, a couple of Democrat senators try to disrupt the thing and demand the oil execs be put under oath.
And Ted Stevens, who was running the committee, demonstrates how you run a committee as a Republican chairman.
We'll be back after this.
We'll let you hear that.
Hi, welcome back.
Nice to have you.
Here is Alan in Jacksonville.
You're next on the EIB Network.
Welcome.
Hey, Rush.
A beautiful day in North Florida and Megadethos.
Thank you, sir.
I wanted to talk a little bit about this all leak issue and the hypocrisy in the Democratic Party, particularly the Department of Redundancy Department there.
I remember distinctly how they raised a stink over some staffer having access to the computer system and leaking the memos from Ralph Nees and the others about blocking Supreme Court nominees.
That's a massive investigation and totally ignored the fact of what was in the memos.
That's exactly right.
That was Manuel Miranda who had to fall on the sword for that.
He was a staffer.
I think that was his name.
He was a staff.
No, no, no.
Estrada was the judicial nominee.
They were trying to block.
Yeah, but what happened, well, you're right, you've got the story right.
Somehow, secret memos, the Democrat staffers had written for their Senate Democrat members of the Judiciary Committee on how they were going to defeat all of these nominees, including Estrada.
He was Hispanic.
He's bad.
We can't let this happen.
How they're going to work with their group.
Somehow, those memos appeared on the Republican computer system.
And the Democrats backed, we can't put up with it.
We've got to get to the bottom.
We've got to find out how those memos ended up on the Republican side.
The subject of the memos and their tactics was not interesting to them at all.
Now, here we have a leak of these black sites, and they want to know about the black sites.
They're not at all concerned about how the information got to the newspaper.
So, look, the fact that these people are hypocrites is not news.
And we're here to call them on it.
But, you know, I don't know what we can do other than just keep jawboning about it.
This investigation better not be stampeded or stonewalled because it's too important.
This is the nation's secrets that are being leaked here.
And if it is a U.S. Senator or a member of his staff, then let's find out.
Let's just find out who it is.
What's the question, Mr. Snerdley?
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Well, Mr. Sterling just said, if they do the investigation, if it is a senator, will there be any repercussions beyond, what, a slap on the wrist or something like that?
Yeah, I don't know.
Leahy, when he was a member of the intelligence committee, leaked information of an upcoming attack on Libya.
And they threw him off the intelligence committee.
But as you know, he's still in the Senate.
It depends on who it is.
It depends on who it is.
It totally depends on who it is as to whether there are ramifications.
The Senate's going to circle the wagons.
So I always tell you about these people, folks.
The reason that these blue ribbon panels are assembled post-Katrina, post-whatever oil company execs being dragged up there is to circle the wagons to make sure these guys, members of the House and Senate, don't get the brunt of the blame for whatever it is that's gone wrong.
And there's no question.
Look, the Washington elite's no different than any other elite.
They'll close ranks around themselves because it could happen to any of them.
And if some senator goes out and does something stupid like Wilbur Mills did with that babe in the fountains of Washington, D.C., not much they can do with circle the wagons about that.
But if one of the senators acting in his normal role as a conversant member of the government with the press happens to release some information, I think there'd be an effort to circle the wagons.
That's why the investigation needs to go forth.
We didn't find out who it is and then let the chips fall as they may.
Now, speaking of the oil company execs, we've talked about that earlier today, but I want you to hear this because this is how every Republican Senate committee chairman should handle the Democrats.
At this hearing with the big oil execs, Senator Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat, offered a motion to have the committee vote on whether the executives be put under oath.
And Barbara Boxer was in there trying to protest all this, too, that the fact they weren't being put under oath.
This is how the Senate Commerce Chairman, Ted Stevens, responded.
I shall not administer an oath today.
Mr. Chairman.
And we look forward to questions.
Senator Cantwell.
Mr. Chairman, I did send you a letter co-signed by eight of my colleagues and asking that the witnesses be sworn in.
This rare joint hearing.
I did not yield to make a statement.
We're ready to go.
We have a statement process.
Mr. Chairman, I would like the committee to vote on whether we swear in.
There will be no vote.
That's not in order at all.
It's not part of the rules that any vote can be taken to administer an oath.
It's a decision of the chairman, and I have made that decision.
Mr. Chairman, I move that we swear in the witnesses.
And I rule that out of order.
I second the motion.
Thank you very much.
That's the last we're going to hear about that because it's out of order.
All right.
This is an object lesson in how you do it.
Yay, Ted Stevens, back after this.
Let's go to Waldorf, Maryland next.
Sylvie, you're next on the EIB network.
Great to have you with us.
Hi, Rush.
Hey, how about that big Bloomberg win in New York City?
Nobody talked about that.
You're cheering that, huh?
Oh, I am.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
Why should anybody talk about that?
There's nothing different about Bloomberg winning at any other time in the city.
Well, Rush, everyone's talking about the whole referendum issue about Bush and New Jersey and Virginia, and New York City being a very liberal city, didn't vote for Bush or for the president's Republican and all the ways.
No, you're forgetting something.
Bloomberg has come out against Bush on just the right issues over the years.
I mean, it's New York.
The white liberal won.
The poor Hispanic guy didn't have a chance.
Well, but being a city higher in a population of Hispanic, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and African Americans for Ferrer, Bloomberg trumped Ferrer, and that's a big, big deal right there.
That's what I'm saying.
I mean, the bigger liberal won.
It's not a story.
The big story that they're trying to make of it is it's a bigger margin than even Rudy's.
But Rudy was not as liberal as Michael Bloomberg is.
It all makes sense.
That's why I say this is congratulate Mayor Bloomberg.
I mean, don't misunderstand, but it's not anything extraordinary, what happened in New York.
I mean, he's still a Republican.
Well, so is McCain.
I mean, we'll be back.
Stay with us.
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