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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 L Rushbo in rare form today, having more fun.
Any human being or alien for that matter should be allowed to have.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882.
And the email address is rush at EIBNet.com.
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It'll be on for the remainder of the program at rushlimbaugh.com.
Now, before we get back to Mary Mapes and these sound bipes uh from Good Morning America today and her uh interview with Brian 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 more, about about uh this time yesterday, Senator Frist and Congressman Hastert sent out a letter uh demanding a bicameral investigation of the latest CIA leak that resulted in a story in the Washington Post last two Wednesday about these black sites, these so-called black prisons, these prisons that nobody knows about, where we're housing uh these Al Qaeda terrorists, or people that want to uh blow up Americans and kill them and so forth.
Uh yesterday uh the Senate was rocked when Trent Lott uh said that it possibly it's a Republican senator or a Republican Senate staffer who gave out this information uh to the Washington Post.
And Lott then said, well, what are we gonna have to keep investigating things around here?
I mean, people here talk to people.
We got we can't, we can't, we can't just start investigating this stuff.
Where is it, where's it, where's it gonna end?
Now I'm not gonna mention any names, but there are uh 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 I'm I'm gonna I'll tell you something.
We got Scooter Libby indicted, and we've Scooter Libby faces jail, and we've got these clowns in the Senate who try to say, hey, this is no big deal.
I mean, we talk to people, this happens, you can't just can't keep investigating things here.
Uh 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, let me tell you that's why I'm for it.
I don't care who this is.
I talked to you the uh not long ago about the problem that Bush has in going to war with the army he has in the Senate.
This 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 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, the 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 some some senator or some Senate staffer gets away with this 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 Plain, 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.
Uh, You know, you 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 it, 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.
Uh because it, you know, where do these things stop, senators talk to each other.
Uh 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 just be fit to be tied that one of their members is talking to the to the press about something like this 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 uh 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 it bothers me greatly.
And when I, you know, I was uh I was here late yesterday afternoon doing doing some things, and it wasn't, it 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-7.
So I got home, I got satellite radio in the car, uh, so I can listen to these TV networks, and I was uh I was I was I forget I was after 7 o'clock when I was listening to the situation room.
Now Wolf Blitzer.
This liberal round table they call a newscast every night, and they're talking all about Harry Reed 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, eh, I think it was a Republican staffer.
And I had not heard that all day, and I've just oh really.
And if it's not a Republican staffer, it's a Republican senator, and I want to know who, regardless.
We do, we have 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, this the most exclusive club in the world, uh playing games with all this stuff uh for whatever personal motivations.
There can't, 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 trying to stop it and uh and bottle it up.
Uh I I I hope, I hope that they stick to this and get to the bottom of it and find out who it is.
Uh 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.
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Zero mistakes so far.
Um, no, no, no, no.
People are right, you I can't believe that you 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 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 gonna 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 gonna benefit you?
Do you think a windfall profits tax is gonna lower the price at the pump?
All you're gonna be doing is sitting out there going, Well, man, I feel better because the oil company's having to pay higher taxes.
Price of the pump's gonna 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 gonna rub their bellies and go, Oh, I'm so full.
She said, Don't be a smart aleck.
Well, it wouldn't be a smart aleck.
I was using precise logic.
My 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 company, it's not gonna matter a whit, if anything, the price of the pump's gonna go up.
Because as we all know, corporations don't pay taxes.
At least not the full boat.
But anyway, so we dragged these law the these oil company execs up there, uh, just so these 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 uh it's just it is time to get to the bottom.
Hey, Denji Harry, Dinji Harry, why don't you go 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 maybe a Democrat for all I know.
All I know is what what Lott has been uh 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 gonna happen?
No way it will not happen.
Now back to uh back to Mary Mapes.
Gotta finish the sound bipes here.
She was on uh first interview since being fired.
She uh maintains that her 60 minutes two 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 um we have well, we played one soundbite, but we've got a total of uh baby little Bruce Babbitt talk there, four of them.
Here's uh here's the first.
Brian Ross says, uh 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 love that job, loved it wildly.
And suddenly there were pictures of me on the internet.
They were saying mean things about me, uh, 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.
And um What'd you tell him?
I didn't tell him much.
Okay.
Uh Brian Rostin 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 erring.
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 a little mini witch hunt uh within the corporation.
And at the heart of that was Mary Mapes.
Yes.
Yes, that's true.
It's true.
I know.
I 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, uh, Mike, get that little parody that we had done about uh her calling Joe Lockhart.
Um, 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'd been doing it her whole career.
This is 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 this is the this is the money bite, this is the PS.
They're songs.
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 uh saying uh now news about CBS News in the question.
And uh and then Ross says after after twelve days of defending him, CBS and Dan Rather later admitted they couldn't vouch for the authenticity of the documents, and that they should not have been used, and the story should not have aired.
Do you, Mary May, 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 No, I don't think that's the standard.
No, of course not.
Proving your story's 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 Isakoff?
Karan's being flushed down the toilet, down at Club Gidmo.
No evidence.
Prove it it didn't happen.
You go prove it.
I 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 Carrie'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 a god.
Rush Limbaldi, EIB network.
Nice to have you with us.
We have some audio sound bites on this uh on this leak business.
Uh let's go to audio soundbite number four.
Uh 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 that's actually a uh a more than excellent question because there is no question that interrogation carried out properly produces enormous amounts of intelligence, which prevent uh 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?
Uh well, how do you how do you get one without the other?
You see, this is what this 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 CI 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?
I 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 Ghrab.
They'll they're going to oppose everything.
They're going to oppose anything other than U.S. court system with these terrorists being granted rights that only U.S. citizens get under the Constitution.
So now we got ghost sites.
I guess they oppose that.
Let me answer the question for you, Miles.
Your question is the concern 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 Plame.
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 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 it's 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 got somebody back here in the uh 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.
I there's no question to me what's more important here, and that's this particular leak.
So now on the uh situation room with Wolf O'Blitzer.
Last night on CNN, he talked to Senator Pat Leakey Leahy.
Senator DePenz.
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 uh in uh Eastern Europe?
What I worry about uh 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 uh you want to do an investigation.
Sure, find out who who may have leaked this, but more importantly, find out why in heaven's name are we doing this?
Why uh 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 uh they'll love us.
Uh you know, I I uh I I just I I uh this is just amazing.
They don't they don't want to investigate themselves, folks.
They'll be glad to indict scooter Libya, 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 didn't happen in New Orleans what did happen.
Now they want to act like spectators.
We're gonna conduct investigation.
We're gonna find out what happened.
We're gonna find out who didn't do the joke.
We're gonna 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 got another leak.
Well, I'm not so concerned about the leak, I'm more concerned about the prison.
Uh last night on the news hour with Jim O'Lara.
Uh you got Kit Bond on there and and Durbin and uh and Margaret Warner is uh is the host, and this is unreal here because Durbin denies that he says Americans use torture like the Nazis and poll 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 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 always be able to train themselves to resist them.
Durbin says, Well, what's the alternative?
That we will say we're gonna use torture, countenance the use of torture, and then what happens when our soldiers are captured.
And Bond interrupts with this.
I think uh 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 uh our troops to the Nazis, the Soviets in their gulags or the mad regimes of Paul Pott.
And that is the kind of thing that's big discourse.
It's unfortunate that's going to be.
It's unfortunate that you're saying we're using torture.
I didn't think we do 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.
If 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, you know, in treatment of our 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 uh nevertheless, uh ladies and gentlemen, the uh 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 247 Dittoes.
Thank you, sir.
Um I think you can connect the dots on this leak, and uh they probably lead right back to John McCain, the media darling who likes to cozy up with all the uh mainstream media, and uh probably helped him gin up some support for this uh bill that he just got passed uh uh regarding the torture that we're supposedly doing.
We gotta be real careful here, throwing names out there.
Uh Lott said it's a Republican Senate staffer, others have said it's a senator.
Well, I I I am I I personally don't want to mention any names who it could be.
That's what the investigation's for.
I don't I don't know that it's Senator McCain.
Nobody knows who it is.
I understand that.
It's just it's it's it's going a little too far here to start throwing names out like this.
I mean, you know, you say uh and I know you're just responding to what I said because you're you're you're talking about how uh I think you're reacting to my point that somebody might have something personal to gain by doing this, uh like advancing an issue, and you glommed on to torture.
Uh and I can totally understand how you're making a connection, but let's let's not mention any names yet.
That's what the investigation's for.
Uh 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.
I mean, there could be a number of things.
But I uh does it does it uh I I gather then that you're not upset if this investigation would uh produce uh a Republican as the culprit.
It wouldn't hurt me a bit if it was McCain.
I think uh uh 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, uh in backdoor ways uh more times than you know we can count.
I understand your sentiments.
I really do.
I appreciate 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.
Uh uh and and uh and so on this program, uh all these people are gonna be uh innocent until proven guilty, unlike the way the Democrats acted with Rove and Libby, uh, who in their minds are still guilty of what they weren't charged with anyway.
Quick timeout, as uh we'll be back out.
So talk about the oil company uh execs being dragged up to Capitol Hill Today.
We got a couple funny uh audio sound.
Well, one uh audio soundbite, a couple of Democrat senators try to disrupt the thing uh 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 and let you hear that.
Hi, welcome back.
Nice to have you.
Here is uh Allen in Jacksonville.
You're next on the EIB network.
Welcome.
Hey, Russia, beautiful day in North Florida and Megadeth.
Thank you, sir.
I wanted to uh talk a little bit about this level leak issue and the uh 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 was 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 uh he was a staffer, I think that was his name.
Uh uh he was a sta No no no, that's the that Estrada was the uh uh was the judicial nominee.
They were trying to block.
Yeah, but but that what happened, well, you're right, you've got the story right.
Somehow, secret memos, the Democrat staffers had written for their Senate Democrat uh 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 gonna work with their group.
Somehow those memos appeared on the Republican computer system.
And the Democrats back, we we we can't put up with it.
We we've got to get to the bottom, but 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.
Uh and and we're here to call them on it.
But you know, this I I don't know what we can do other than just keep jawboning about it.
This investigation better not be stampeded or stonewalled.
Uh because I uh this is just it's it's too important.
You know, this isn't this is the nation's secrets that are that are being uh leaked here.
Uh and if it it's if it's 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. Snardley?
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Well, I don't uh Mr. Sturdley 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?
Um I I I 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.
Uh if if it be it depend it's it totally depends on who it is as to whether there are ramifications.
The Senate's gonna circle the wagons.
So I always tell you about these people, folks.
Well, these these the reason that these blue ribbon panels are assembled post-Catrina, 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.
Uh and there's no question, uh look, the Washington elites, no different than any other elite.
They'll they'll close ranks around themselves, because it could happen to any of them.
And and uh uh you know, if if 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 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 don't I don't I think there'd be an effort to circle the wagons.
That's why the investigation needs to go forth.
I mean, isn't it?
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, uh, offered a motion to have uh the committee vote on Whether the executives be put under oath.
And uh the 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 uh chairman Ted Stevens responded.
I shall not administer an oath today.
Mr. Chairman.
And uh we look forward to questions.
Senator Cantwell.
Mr. Chairman, uh, 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.
There will be no vote.
That's not in order at all.
It's not part of the rules that any any vote can be taken to administer an oath.
It's the decision of the s of the chairman, and I have made that decision.
Mr. Chairman, I move that we swear in.
I that 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 a this is an object lesson in how you do it.
Yay, Ted Stevens, back after this.
Let's go to Waldorf, Maryland next.
Sylvie, uh, 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 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 uh about Bloomberg winning than any other time in the city.
Well, Rush, everyone's talking about the whole referendum issue about Bush in New Jersey and Virginia, and New York City being a very liberal city, didn't vote for Bush uh the or for the president's Republican and all the people.
No, you're forgetting you're forgetting something.
Bloomberg has come out against Bush on just the right issues over the years.
Uh what's I mean, it's New York.
The white liberal one.
The poor Hispanic guy didn't have a chance.
Well, but for rare being a city higher population of Hispanic, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and African Americans for Ferrer.
I mean Bloomberg trumped Ferrer.
And that's a big big deal right there.
That's what I'm saying.
I mean, the bigger liberal one.
I mean, the It's not a story.
Uh the the the the the big story that they're trying to make of it is bigger margin than even Rudy's.
But Rudy was not as liberal as as as uh Michael Bloomberg is.
It all makes sense.
Well, I mean That's why I say this this this this is uh uh congratulate Mayor Bloomberg.
I mean don't misunderstand, but but it's not anything extraordinary what happened in New York.
I mean, he's still a Republican.
Well yeah, well's McCain.
I mean, we'll be back.
Stay with us.
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