No, frankly, Mr. Snerdley, I'm not in a good mood today.
I was a fine mood until I started reading the news, and this stuff just irritates the hell out of me.
That's Christmas time.
I would much rather be sitting here having fun on the radio.
This is not, it's not that this isn't fun, but I mean, it's just, I just can't tell you how frustrating it is to have to sit here and constantly, day in and day out, set the record straight.
The lying submissions all over the media and in the Democratic Party by our good friends, the liberals.
Welcome back, folks.
We're here on the one and only EIB network, El Rushball, and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Well, looky here.
I am holding in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers the text of a New York Times story from November 7th, 1982, 23 years ago.
May I read it to you?
It's by David Burnham.
A federal appeals court has ruled that the National Security Agency may lawfully intercept messages, may lawfully intercept messages between United States citizens and people overseas, even if there is no cause to believe the Americans are foreign agents, and then provide summaries of these messages to the FBI.
Because the National Security Agency is among the largest and most secretive intelligence agencies, and because millions of electronic messages enter and leave the U.S. each day, lawyers familiar with the intelligence agency consider this decision to mark a significant increase in the legal authority of the government to keep track of its citizens.
The October 21st decision, 1982, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit involves the government surveillance of a Michigan-born lawyer, Abdin Jabbara, who for many years has represented Arab American citizens and alien residents in court.
Some of his clients had been investigated by the FBI.
He sued the FBI and the NSA, and in 79, Federal District Judge Ralph Freeman ruled that the agency's acquisition of several of Mr. Jabara's overseas messages violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures.
Last month's decision reverses that ruling.
Think what you will of the ruling.
That is not the point here.
The point here is that the New York Times cannot get it straight, even itself.
On Friday, the New York Times reports that the NSA and the president are doing this illegally in violation of all kinds of statutes, secret spying.
The New York Times back in 1982 reported the Sixth Circuit appellate decision that legalized all this.
Now, which version of the New York Times are we to remember?
Or are we to believe?
This is not to comment on the law.
The law is the law.
The president is utilizing the law as it exists.
We can debate whether or not it was a right or wrong decision.
That's not the point here.
The point is, I found that, you know where I found this?
I have an RSS reader.
Real simple syndication.
Sends me things from the websites I visit so I don't have to go clicking around all these websites and go to RSS Reader.
You know what it is.
And I subscribe to Newsbusters, Brent Bozell's Bunch, the Media Research Center.
They have a website, RSS website called Newsbusters.
And I went and checked during the break, and lo and behold, it just got fed.
They went and looked it up, found it in 1982.
Not hard to do.
Of course, you can't trust Bozell.
He's a right-wing wacko.
No, I don't care right-wing wacko or not.
The New York Times says this, not Brent Bozell, not the Media Research Center, not newsbusters.org.
And that damn paper is the Bible for the mainstream legacy big, whatever you want to call them, media in this country.
But this is eerily similar.
You can go back to the New York Times and the Washington Post in 1998, and you can find all these quotes from Democrats about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, and yet the same people tell you Bush lied.
And when you talk to them, they really believe that there's a big difference between what Clinton said and what the Democrats are saying and what Bush said.
It's identical.
If you go read the quotes, it's identical.
Oh, so there's a big difference.
Yeah, the difference is that Clinton's a Democrat and Bush is a Republican.
That's the only difference.
This is this superiorist attitude they have that power is theirs by entitlement.
What, Mr. Snerdley?
What is the, well, it's sort of like that, the big battle over the imperial presidency.
The Democrats continually wage this when they are not in office.
When they are not in office, they always talk about the imperial president.
Richard Nixon, this is nothing more than Watergate Redux.
This is trying to recreate Watergate.
And to do this, you have to ignore the law.
You have to ignore history.
You have to ignore the past and pretend that it began on January of 2001.
Let's go a little further.
Dick Morris today in his New York Post column.
Anybody who wonders whether the Democratic Party in general and Senator Hillary Clinton in particular are really tough on terror or just posing for the cameras needs to look at the vote by the entire Democratic Senate delegation, excepting Ben Nelson, Nebraska, South Dakota's Tim Johnson, to prevent closure of their filibuster against the Patriot Act extension.
While the legislation President Bush proposed extends the entire act, certain key provisions are set to expire at the year's end.
The rest of the act is good till September 2007.
By voting to allow these provisions to lapse, the Democrats have shown a total disregard for national security.
And it is particularly galling that Senators Clinton and Chuck Schumer, whose New York constituents are in the terrorist bullseye, voted to let these vital protections expire.
How galling?
Well, one of the key provisions due to expire in two weeks is one that President Bill Clinton presented as the cornerstone of his response to the escalation of terrorism in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
The measure allows roving wiretaps so that the FBI can tap all phones a suspect uses rather than just one specific number.
Hillary's vote to let this provision expire is incredible.
No, it's not, Dick.
I know you think it is, but it's not.
She's relying on the fact that you nor anybody else will be able to look to the past and point out to the American people what Clinton did.
She's counting on the fact that nobody will figure on her being a hypocrite.
History is the present.
There is no history.
All that matters is that Bush is conducting an imperial presidency with one-party rule.
And there are some people in America who don't like it.
And because some people in America are unhappy about it, why?
Because some people don't like Christmas.
We've got to abolish it.
Because some people don't like the fact that they can't adopt.
We've got to change it because some people don't like it.
Because some people don't like, because some people don't like, because some people don't like, even though they're a relative few minority and they can't win what they want Democratically.
So blame an imperial Republican establishment for denying civil liberties and happiness and freedom to people.
Audio soundbite time.
Barbara Walters got some special tonight on TV, I guess, 2020 or some such show.
I don't know what he previewed it on Good Morning America today.
And it's stunning.
I have two soundbites here.
They played a segment from her upcoming special.
She traveled to a maximum security prison in Israel.
She interviewed failed suicide bombers being held in the prison.
She says to one failed suicide bomber, Jahad Gerar, quote, knowing that he was just a moment away from an eternity in paradise, Jahad pressed the detonator, but the bomb failed.
Did going to paradise play any part in your decision?
No, that was not the reason for the act itself.
It was the reason that I chose a martyrdom operation.
Because then you could go to paradise.
Yes.
Had you died, where would you be now?
I would be in paradise.
Is it true that there are virgins in paradise?
Yes, there are.
How many virgins are there?
There are a lot, but for a Shaheed, for a martyr, there are 72.
God created them just for the people who are in paradise.
Well, what a service here we have.
We're building a bond with suicide bombers.
So try to understand them, ladies and gentlemen.
Because, of course, understanding them will help us understand their grievances.
Because after all, they are people who disagree with us.
They are some people who don't agree, X.
And so we must accommodate them.
We must understand them.
We must learn what irritates them.
What makes them unhappy because they're in happiness is what breeds their behavior.
And we must change their behavior by making them happy.
Now, recently, Barbara Walters did a little interview for Ladies' Home Journal to talk about this piece.
And she said in the piece in the Lady's Home Journal, she found it amusing that these people believe the 72 virgins business.
Ladies' Home Journal had to run a little sidebar saying what she finds amusing is people who will blow themselves up and kill others in order to find paradise.
These are terrorists and she finds them amusing.
Ladies' Home Journal wanted to stipulate they didn't find it amusing.
Barbara Walters found it amusing.
If you take it just from what you hear, it is kind of silly, but understand who these people are, what they're doing.
There's nothing amusing about this in context.
So the next question from Barbara Walters, well, if they are virgins, does that mean that you are able to have sexual relations with them?
Oh, for sure.
Do Jews go to heaven?
No.
Where do Jews go when they die?
Oh, they go to hell, of course.
So only Muslims go to paradise.
Everyone else in the world goes to hell.
Yes?
That's a lot of people in hell.
Yes, many people.
You are sitting opposite me.
Would you like me to go to hell?
I am not a Muslim.
No, it's not that I want it.
It's what God wants.
You should follow Muhammad.
Or if I do not, then of course you're going to hell.
And she found herself amused by all of this.
So this is who we're dealing with.
This is a derivative, but these are the people blowing up Jews and Israelis by attaching suicide bombs to themselves.
Well, we must understand these people because they're not happy, and they are some people who don't like X.
So we must do what we can to forge a bond with these people.
We want to get their perspective on that.
We must get their perspective so that we can understand.
I understand their perspective, and that is that they're going to kill people that don't agree with them.
Unless they're stopped.
But that's, you know, they're weaker than we are.
It's not fair that we should stop them.
I'm what?
I'm denigrating.
I'm denigrating.
Oh, Mr. Snurdley has a point.
And please forgive me.
I have just denigrated a terrorist in the age of Abu Ghrab and Club Gipno.
at me see how easy it is to fall into this trap of thinking ill of good people who just want to have sex with by the way if they're only just from a male perspective if there are 72 virgins doesn't it seem to you that after maybe two terrorists they're not virgins anymore
After two terrorists martyr themselves, the virgins, maybe even after one, hell, I don't know, but certainly 72 fresh ones per martyr.
72, oh, 72 per martyr.
See, the level of understanding is increasing here by leaps and bounds.
And all you have to do, like I did, is just ask and speculate, and you'll find out.
These are not the people we've made them out to be.
We'll be back.
Stay there.
Let me specify what this Barbara Walters special about.
It's not totally about these jihadists.
It's about the afterlife.
She talks to religious experts.
Richard Gere and Maria Shriver, I think, are also experts on the program on the afterlife tonight with Barbara Walters.
What else?
Well, it's a black day for Democrats.
I can't decide here whether I want to go to the phones on him.
You people on hold, stick tight.
Get to you in just a second because I got two little stories here.
It's just, it's got to be a black day for Democrats.
First, this news, as the political battle intensifies over President Bush's efforts to spread democracy to Iraq and the Middle East, a human rights organization, Freedom House, has found that the past year brought significant improvements in personal and political rights across the Middle East region.
Reports of increased freedom emerged from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian territories.
And observers attributed the results to the Bush administration's efforts of supporting fledgling democracies worldwide.
The findings released yesterday as part of Freedom House's Freedom in the World 2006 report, a global survey of political rights and civil liberties, whoa!
Published annually by the organization since 1972.
The report evaluates countries based largely on criteria drawn from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and rates countries under the categories political rights and civil liberties on a scale of one to seven, with one indicating the greatest level of freedom this year.
Freedom in the World based its evaluations on events that took place between December 1, 2004 and November 30 of this year.
During that time, according to the study, the number of electoral democracies increased from 119 to 122.
That's the most in the report's 33-year history.
Bad day for the Democrats.
This is not news that they can use.
This is not good news.
They can't run on this news.
They can't point to it and say, see, we helped.
They can't point to it and said, we played a role.
They can't cite it and say, we believe in this, because they are trying to undercut the various policies that have brought this about.
And a lot of brown people are doing well out there, and they're not in America.
They are being, we're not talking about Americans.
This is foreign countries.
Absolutely right.
Black day for Democrats number two.
ABC News, Bush's approval ratings climb the recent elections in Iraq.
And this is bad news for Operation Doom and Gloom.
Operation Doom and Gloom is the Democrat and the media's psyops campaign.
And it suffers a setback every time we put truth to propaganda.
I love that Clinton's or Kerry's phrase, we must speak truth to power.
No, Senator, we must speak truth to propaganda.
It is truth to propaganda that is triumphing here.
At the core of the PSYOPS program of the left, Operation Doom and Gloom, Democrats and other assorted Bush haters, is the need to suppress Bush's poll numbers.
So what are they going to do with this ABC poll?
Not report it?
Find negative stories to hype?
Do a puff piece on Hillary?
What will they do?
Well, we already know what they're doing.
They are saying, well, it's not that good.
David Gergen was on some show last night.
Yeah, that poll looks pretty good.
But there's an AP Hypsos poll out there, and his number's only up 39%.
So we'll split the difference and say he's up four points.
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yahoo.
Cannot deal with the good news.
And the numbers on Iraq are profound, up from 47%, 65% since November the 2nd.
47 to 65%, 18 percentage points, you people.
It's up 18 percentage points since November the 2nd of what's gone on since November the 2nd.
A never-ending blanket coverage of Bush sucks.
Of Bush lied.
Bush lied about pre-war intelligence.
The war was unjust.
We have no business being there.
We are losing.
Our troops can't win.
Our troops are living hand to mouth.
They are worn out.
It's a lost cause.
That's been the message of the Democrats since November 2nd.
And in that time, Bush's approval numbers on Iraq, 47 to 65%.
Matt in Yakima, Washington.
Nice to have you on the program, sir.
Welcome.
Thank you, sir.
How are you?
Good.
Never better.
Let's see.
You've been detailing for the whole program about how this spy case against Bush is just ridiculous on its face.
And the Democrats are not stupid, so I figured there must be a real reason why they're doing it.
There's, you know, the thing like the book release from the guy who broke the story, and there's the Iraqi elections, Patriot Act renewal, Bush ratings going up.
All those were good reasons to release the story when they did.
But I think the real reason may be to inoculate the Clintons politically against the release of the Barrett report.
Go ahead.
I don't think there's any question about that as a partial reason.
The Barrett report, and we've talked about that on this program too, 10-year independent counsel investigation, originally begun to look into some screwy activities of Henry Cisneros.
It's apparently uncovered, not much is known, but at least there's some really, really crazy things the Clinton administration was using the IRS to do in abusing civil liberties and privacy and so forth.
And Carl Evans, one of the guys trying to cover this up and hold it to make sure it doesn't get released.
Now, I have no doubt that all this talk about Bush is designed, if this thing ever does get leaked, to make Clinton not look nearly as bad.
But that's not all of it.
That is certainly part of it, and you're right to point it out.
But do not think for a moment that this is not about destroying George W. Bush and the conservative Republican majority and getting themselves back in power.
It's not just to protect Bill Clinton.
A quick timeout.
We'll be back with much more in an El GIFO.
Well, looky here, ladies and gentlemen.
Jed Babin at the American Spectator blog.
Yesterday, Senator Rockefeller, co-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and probable source of many leaks of secret information, released a hand-scrawled letter that he had written to Vice President Cheney two years ago after being briefed on the NSA domestic intelligence effort.
Rockefeller, trying to score some political points, raised the letter as proof of his doubts about the program and that his hands were tied, unable to do anything about it.
And we commented on this in the first hour of the program today.
If you read the letter, Rockefeller pretty much admits he's incompetent and has no business being a senator on the intelligence committee.
I can't figure this out.
I don't know whether I support this or not.
I'm not a technician and I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if this works, blah, Well, the committee chairman, the intelligence committee chairman Pat Roberts, released this statement today, which blows Rockefeller out of the water.
Quote, I am puzzled by the release yesterday of a July 2003 letter from Senator Rockefeller to the vice president regarding the recently exposed intelligence collection program, which was authorized by the president shortly after 9-11.
In his letter and accompanying press statement, Senator Rockefeller asserts that he had lingering concerns about the program designed to protect the American people from another attack, but was prohibited from doing anything about it.
Quote, United States Senator has significant tools with which to wield power and influence over the executive branch.
Feigning helplessness is not one of those tools.
This is from Roberts.
That's a statement.
If Senator Rockefeller truly had the concerns that he claimed to have had in his two and a half-year-old letter, he would have pursued a number of options to have those concerns addressed.
One, first, he could have discussed his concerns with me or other members of Congress who had been briefed on the program, but he never asked me or the committee to take any action consistent with the concerns raised in his letter.
Second, he could have raised objections with the vice president during one of the many briefings we received.
I have no recollection of Senator Rockefeller objecting to the program at the many briefings he and I attended together.
In fact, it's my recollection that on many occasions, Senator Rockefeller expressed to the vice president his vocal support for the program.
His most recent expression of support was only two weeks ago.
And finally, he could have pursued any number of legislative remedies.
He chose to pursue none.
Senator Rockefeller could have taken any of these approaches to address his lingering concerns.
He did not.
He chose instead to write a letter to the VP and for two and a half years, keep a copy of the letter in the intelligence committee vault and say nothing to anyone.
For the nearly three years since Senator Rockefeller has served as vice chairman, I have heard no objection from him about this valuable program, and he is not prevented from talking to me about it.
Nor when it appears to be politically advantageous, Senator Rockefeller has chosen, or now when it appears to be, Senator Rockefeller has chosen to release his two and a half year old letter.
Forgive me if I find this to be inconsistent and a bit disingenuous.
Pat Roberts in his statement today, it is all blowing up on these people.
It's all blowing up.
It's nothing but a pack of lies.
It's nothing but smoke and mirrors.
Now, it's all blowing up with those of us who know the truth, but our good friends in the mainstream press will forever remain ignorant of this.
They will see Roberts' statement.
They will accuse Roberts of being in cahoots with the White House.
Probably Karl Rove set all this up or whatever flimsy little excuse that they will use.
The utter denial of reality, I think, is the thing that amazes me most about these people.
The utter ignorance and denial of reality and the creation of a false universe in which to live.
I couldn't do it.
I could not do what these people do.
Not with a conscience.
I couldn't be happy doing it.
I'd be looking over my shoulder every time.
When is the jig going to be up?
When are people going to find out this is all phony?
I would be asking myself.
They don't care because they have their willing accomplices in the mainstream press to cover for them.
And here's for you civil libertarians out there.
I have tragic news.
Another black day for liberals.
Belgium's lower house has passed a controversial bill, did so today, giving police extra powers to fight terrorism.
This to the dismay of human rights lawyers who see it as a violation of the right to privacy.
The Chamber of Deputies approved the bill by 80 votes to eight.
There were 37 abstentions.
It now needs to win Senate approval to pass into law.
What would it do?
It would allow police to raid suspects' homes at any time of the day or night and to carry out certain types of surveillance without permission from a court.
Police were previously restricted to conducting raids during the day and were forbidden to take photographs of suspects without permission.
It's a black day out there for our civil libertarians.
And of course, those few people who disagree with X, whatever X is.
And from theworldtribune.com, Syria has signed a pledge to store Iranian nuclear weapons and missiles.
The London-based Jane's Defense Weekly reported that Iran and Syria signed a strategic accord meant to protect either country from international pressure regarding their weapons programs.
The magazine, citing diplomatic sources, said Syria agreed to store Iranian materials and weapons should Tehran come under United Nations sanctions.
Iran also pledged to grant haven to any Syrian intelligence officer indicted by the UN or Lebanon.
Five Syrian officers have been questioned by the UN regarding the Hariri assassination.
Jane's said the sensitive chapter in the accord includes Syria's commitment to allow Iran to safely store weapons and sensitive equipment or even hazardous materials on Syrian soil should Iran need such help in a time of crisis.
World Tribune, but the actual source is Jane's Defense Weekly.
Now, I know the obvious question.
The obvious question.
If they can do this for Iran, could they perhaps, maybe have agreed to do the same thing with Saddam Hussein?
Could they possibly have hidden weapons of mass destruction from Iraq?
Jane's Defense Weekly.
What?
What a popcorn popper of a day here, folks.
We have literally, in this whole program, blown to smithereens the New York Times, the Washington Post, the mainstream media, and the Democratic Party.
Everything that they are doing and conducting, ostensibly under the guise of civil rights, is nothing but a pack of lies.
Here's John in Kennesaw, Georgia.
Nice to have you on the program, sir.
Welcome.
Hey, good afternoon, Rush.
It's kind of funny listening as the liberals complain about attacks on our civil liberties.
If you look at the list of things we were free to do 30 years ago, which are illegal today, it's primarily the work of liberal Democrats.
We got HOV lanes, seatbelt laws, bicycle helmet laws, restrictions on gun ownership, anti-smoking policies imposed on privately owned businesses, zero tolerance policies in the schools, attacks on homeschoolers, attacks on SUV ownership.
In 1994, the Clinton administration and a Democrat-controlled Congress made it a federal crime to offer an opinion on a public sidewalk if there happens to be an abortion clinic nearby.
It's not the far-right wing doing this.
Yes, exactly right.
And the list could be expanded.
But let me ask you this.
In almost everyone, not all of them, but almost every example you cited, smoking and businesses, HOV lanes, all these things.
Do you know what the precursor was?
Some people don't like it.
Some people disagree.
They're trying to restrict freedom of Christmas.
They're trying to make all these restrictions on national holidays and so forth.
The list would go on and on and on.
Because there's some people who are uncomfortable.
Because there's some people who don't like it.
There's some people who disagree.
Some people who X.
And the root of this thus is radical egalitarianism.
It is an effort to force a mandated equality on everybody that results in the concerns of the minority.
Because the left thinks that they are the people that concern the disadvantaged and the downtrodden and the unhappy and the miserable and so forth.
Don't forget giving your house away to developers.
I mean, if you happen to live in an area that your local community thinks they can get a bigger bang tax-wise out of a new owner, they can kick you off your property.
We haven't heard any Democrats condemn this.
I haven't.
That was your Supreme Court, quote-unquote, passing a law, as we had a caller say the other day, which is indicative of what people think the Supreme Court's become.
They pass laws.
Gotta go.
Quick timeout.
Great comments.
We'll be back in just a second.
And off we go back to the phones.
Louisville, Kentucky.
This is Greg.
Nice to have you on the program, sir.
Welcome.
Hi, Rush.
How are you?
Good.
I enjoy your show.
I like to agree with you and I like to disagree with you.
I think today I'll have to disagree with you a little bit.
I'm getting a double standard.
I can't figure out if you like government or you don't like government.
I know you had Roy Black last week talking about an abusive prosecutor.
We don't like the IRS.
We know the EPA can be very oppressive.
Then you had a long list a few minutes ago of the abuses of government.
I think we always have to be suspicious and untrusting of government.
And whenever government reaches out into our liberties, I think we have to be very on guard for that.
Governments use terrorism and war as an excuse.
So we have withholding because of World War II.
We didn't have withholding prior to that.
Every time there's a crisis or a war, government grows like a cancer.
Yep.
I'm one of the crusaders against government.
There's no question.
But you have to attach specific context to all this.
And in this case, we are at war, and we have an attack that has happened.
We have numerous attacks, 1993 and 9-11.
And we have ongoing statements from the enemy about what their intentions are.
We have videotapes that they submit, and on these videotapes, they suggest what they're asking their followers to do.
It'd be sheer idiocy to ignore this and not give it the special consideration it deserves, given all that we know.
But how far do we let the government go to, quote, protect us?
I mean, sure, the government has to do certain things, but don't we have to have some restraints, some limits on what...
Because government will grow as far as you'll let it grow.
I think we could agree on that.
Well, one of the problems that we have with this, and I totally agree with that, government will grow.
It's inexorable.
It's what they exist to do.
They're bureaucrats and they spend money.
It's like a cancer.
It is more.
More bureaucracy, and they need more money.
But the what was your having a metal block here on your what your what was your question?
What could we oh, the uh I think I'm trying to figure out if you like government or you don't because you seem to be on one hand you know praising the Bush, you know, kind of exceeding what they really were allowed to do or at least bending the rules a bit.
And on the other hand, we have a long list of things.
But no, they're not bending the rules.
That's the point.
They're not bending.
Everything they've done is authorized by precedent, by law.
There's nothing unlawful going on here in terms of what the Bush administration is doing.
What I was trying to remember, because I'm trying to think of so many things to say to you with a short amount of time left, we have an inherent built-in problem, and that is our openness and our freedom.
And this is why people say the Constitution is not a suicide pact.
Yeah, we do allow any number of people to come into the country.
We allow them to acculturate in their own cultures.
But if somebody wants to come in and destroy the United States as it exists, we don't have to sit around and let them.
We don't have to sit under the guise that they have rights to, under the guise that they may disagree with the way we do things.
If they don't like it, go somewhere else, set up their own way.
If they can't win an election to overthrow the way we do things, then shut up.
And if they're going to resort to violence to overthrow the way we do things when they can't win an election, then we're going to deal with them accordingly.
But we don't have to just tie our hands behind our back because of our openness and sit around and let ourselves be systematically murdered one by one, 3,000 by 3,000 or what have you.
It's a delicate balancing act.
Now, as far as you're questioning whether or not I'm being hypocritical when it comes to my circumstances, my circumstances are not quite the same.
I haven't been accused of anything.
I haven't been charged with anything.
They have admitted in court they have found no evidence of anything.
Now they want to violate my doctor-patient privilege to go see if they can find some.
Even though all along they said if they could get my medical records, that they would have evidence for X number of charges.
Well, apparently not, because they haven't charged and now they want to talk to the doctors.
It's been 26 months now, and there's no end in sight to it.
I haven't blown up anything.
I have not presented one problem to the community in which I live or the government that governs me or the country in which I live.
I've not presented one problem whatsoever.
I have not been wiretapped and intercepted plotting the overthrow of this or anything else illegal.
Well, I may have been wiretapped, but I have not been overheard while wiretapped plotting any such thing.
So there's no hypocrisy here.
I mean, this is something with no end in sight.
I mean, I'm not Jose Padilla here.
I was not apprehended in the act of committing a crime.
There was no intelligence on me that I was committing a crime.
There was just, you know, a bunch of wild accusations that everybody chose to believe because prosecutors say them and then everything's been based on that.
This is, to compare this to the things that are happening now with our war on terror, this to me is silly.
I mean, we cannot generalize in these kind of things.
This is context is crucial in dealing with what we face.
But the main point is that we don't have the obligation to sit around and let ourselves be killed simply because somebody doesn't agree with us, because somebody doesn't like us.
We don't have that obligation.
We don't have, it would be suicide to confer on these people who have stated their intentions the same constitutional rights that we have.
And I frankly am appalled that there are people who want to take up this notion that the constitutional rights of an Osama bin Laden or a Zawahiri or of a Ramzi bin al-Shib or whoever are important to us as a future as a country.
Because if we will not allow these people their freedom, we will eventually not allow ourselves their freedom.
This is the most ridiculous, cockamame, asinine, head-up and orifice thinking I have heard.
It is just silly.
We didn't hear this during World War II about the Nazis.
We didn't have people going over talking to Hitler trying to form a bond of understanding to see what we're maybe missing about the man.
Maybe he's not all that bad.
Maybe his grievances are real.
Maybe we should listen.
BS, we've got 9-11.
We're at war.
This is why I said the other day, I think it's going to take two or three more of these before people get it.
We live in the most prosperous country in the world.
We have more freedom than anybody else.
We can fight a war like this with 95% of our citizens not caring because 5% do.
And they've got the guts to go defend the country while the rest of us are out doing what we want to do as we pursue life, liberty, and happiness and whatever.
We've got so much prosperity and so much freedom that we've got so much time in our hands that we have intellectuals and pointy heads worrying about the constitutional rights of non-citizens who have sworn to blow us up.
Now, if you want to draw some comparison to my case with that, I welcome the attempt.
We'll be back after this.
Yes, to my views on government, folks, and bigness and smallness, I'm a constitutionalist.
The Constitution is my guide at all times.
I don't think Congress has the power to pass McCain fine gold.
I don't think the court has the power to rule in favor of stealing private property.
And I don't think Congress has the power to confiscate handguns and rifles from law-abiding citizens.
I just don't.
As for these investigations, this hypocrisy on my part is absurd.
Each one of these investigations has to be judged on its merits.
In my case, we have a prosecutor strolling into court saying, we have no evidence to prove any elements of a crime.
It's gone on for over two years.
I had a prosecutor who took my medical records and pharmacy records, splashed them all across television screens around the world.
To compare that with the lawful eavesdropping on al-Qaeda terrorists, it's what I mean.
We do not grant these people citizenship rights and constitutional rights.
And to fail to draw the distinction between is going to end up in our suicide if we let people get away with that.
And we are out of time.
We'll see you tomorrow in the middle of the week and be back then.