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March 1, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:19
March 1, 2006, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Hi, we're back, folks, eagerly awaiting the opening, which is occurring now, of this hour's broadcast excellence and excursion into same.
I am El Rushball, your host for life.
Here on the one and only EIB network telephone number, if you'd like to be on the program 800-282-2882 and the email address, rush at EIBNet.com, a fascinating oral argument session at the Supreme Court.
Yesterday, the issue before the Supreme Court was campaign spending limits in Vermont.
Supreme Court displayed little appetite on Tuesday for making basic changes in its approach to campaign finance law under which the government may place limits on political contributions, but not on a candidate's spending.
Vermont's aggressive effort to drive much private money out of politics through a law that it enacted in 1997 that set tight limits on both contributions and expenditures appeared unlikely to withstand the court's scrutiny after an argument that included a low-key but withering cross-examination by the new Chief Justice John Roberts and Vermont's Attorney General William Sorell.
And it's S-O-R-R-E-L-L, so I'm assuming it's pronounced Sorel.
Might pronounce a Sorrel, who knows?
We'll pronounce it both ways to cover my bases.
The Chief Justice challenged the Attorney General's assertion that money was a corrupting influence on Vermont's political system.
Now, what's interesting to me about this is that that's the whole premise behind McCain Feingold, that money corrupts otherwise good, hardworking, decent, upstanding public servants.
If it weren't for the money, we wouldn't be corrupt.
And so that's the theory that these people in Vermont are using to try to take all private money out of campaigns, or as much as they can.
So here's this Attorney General making this argument, and John Roberts said, well, tell me, how many prosecutions for political corruption have you brought?
And the Attorney General of Vermont says, not any.
Chief Justice says, well, do you think corruption in Vermont's a serious problem?
Attorney General said, it is.
He noted polls that showed that most state residents thought corporations and wealthy individuals exerted an undue influence in the state.
The Chief Justice persisted, would you describe your state as clean or corrupt?
Sorell repeated, we've got a problem in Vermont, Mr. Chief Justice.
Roberts went further.
He says, if voters think somebody's been bought, I assume they act accordingly at the next election and throw the incumbent out.
Can I tell you what music to my ears that comment is?
He's basically saying, what the hell are you doing here?
The system will take care of this.
If you've got a problem in your state, if you've got corrupt politicians, if private corporations and wealthy people are corrupting your state, I assume everybody knows that the problem is as bad as you say it is, and so the voters will get rid of the corrupt scoundrels the next chance they have to go to the polls.
That's exactly right on this.
He also challenged a line from the Attorney General's 50-page brief, an assertion that donations from special interest groups often determine what positions candidates and officials take on issues.
The Chief Justice said, well, could you provide an example of such an issue?
Can you give me one example where donations from special interest groups have determined positions a candidate has taken?
And the Attorney General of Vermont could not provide one example.
Eventually conceded that influence would have been a better word than determine.
By the end of the argument, it appeared clear that Vermont's spending limits would fall and that its contribution limits, the lowest in the country, were hanging by a thread.
Among his allies on the court, and this is a man named Bop.
He was another one, can't forget his name right now, but he was arguing on the other side of the Attorney General.
Mr. Bopp said that the Vermont limits were too low to permit meaningful campaigns, amounting to an unprecedented restriction on speech.
And among his allies was Justice Kennedy.
Justice Kennedy said, let's assume that some members of the court simply accept the proposition that money buys access.
It's common sense conclusion.
I tend to think money does buy access, but what follows from that?
And he didn't wait for an answer.
Kennedy said, isn't the answer that voters can see what's going on and throw the incumbents out?
He's making the argument here, let people donate what they want, but let there be a public record of it so everybody knows who gave what.
And then track whatever influence you think has been determined or has been influenced and then act at the ballot box and get out of here.
Stop bugging us with this.
Now, they didn't say that because they agreed to take the case, but this is, I think, why they agreed to take the case, because this is silly.
And this, I don't know, this is not going to have any precedent sort of setting effect on McCain Feingold, but there are elements of McCain-Feingold going back to the Supreme Court, I believe.
This is going to be real interesting.
Scalia, the L.A. Times, also has a story on this, and they quote Scalia in talking to the Attorney General of Vermont.
And he said to him, you're not talking about money.
You're talking about speech.
You are constraining speech with this law in Vermont.
And that's very unusual in American democracy.
And he's exactly right.
All these spending limits, donation limits, are a limit on speech.
And McCain Feingold features it because you can only add or run TV ads certain times for certain people within certain proximities to elections.
So this is going to be when there's an element, I forget what it is, but there is a McCain Feingold that's going to get before the Supreme Court that they've agreed to rehear.
Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know if you followed my advice at the beginning of the program, went to the website, check out the morning update that we did yesterday for broadcast today.
We make these available in video podcast or video download for you at the website as we continue to be on the cutting edge of high-tech advancement in delivery systems for elements of this program.
But I have to share the story with you that comprised the update.
Oh, just flash news, ladies and gentlemen.
A federal judge on Wednesday ruled against a request by New Jersey to order an investigation into the UAE-based company's takeover of some U.S. port operations, including Port, New York.
So the federal judge has thrown the lawsuit out.
The U.S. District Judge Jose Lenares also said that the state will not be privy to documents the company gave to a federal committee reviewing the deal.
Lenares said the state needs to show an immediate need for those documents.
The $6.8 billion acquisition would allow Dubai Ports World to buy major commercial operations at ports in New York.
As you know, the state of New Jersey tried to sue to stop this from happening, and the judge threw it out.
You don't have any reason to see these documents.
There's been no harm here.
Okay.
There's this school, folks, in Eagleswood Township, New Jersey.
It's called Eagleswood Elementary School.
Now, for those of you who have forgotten or who never went, elementary school is like up to the sixth grade.
And they obviously left school recently with a lot of questions about Macbeth, but they're not studying Shakespeare.
Now, following a two-hour meeting, the Eagleswood Elementary School Board allowed 71-year-old Lily Macbeth to return to the classroom as a substitute teacher.
Now, when the school kids last saw Lily Macbeth, Ms. Macbeth, she was Mr. Macbeth, a retired sales executive, married over 30 years with three children.
Last year, Mr. Macbeth underwent gender reassignment surgery.
They used to call this sex change operation, just like they used to call window washers window washers, but they're now vision control coordinators.
This was gender reassignment surgery.
In layman's terms, it's the chopadictomy operation.
It's the exact opposite of the addedictomy procedure that is common in San Francisco among members of the election board there.
Anyway, after Mr. Macbeth became Ms. Macbeth, she wanted back in.
She wanted to substitute teach.
Some parents were a bit out of shape about this.
They argued that their kindergarten through sixth grade kids were too young to understand the concept of gender reassignment surgery.
One parent predicted chaos.
Others voiced concern that younger children will be confused by the appearance of Ms. Macbeth, who they say looks like, well, I saw a picture of her.
It looks like John Goodman dressed up as a maid.
But the problem is that while Mr. Macbeth looks like a woman now still has a deep voice with masculine features.
Now, Ms. Macbeth, though, had a lot of defenders here.
Three transgender people showed up.
Also, some former students who said that it was more important that Macbeth was a good teacher than which gender she happened to have reassigned or be assigned or landed in, however this stuff happens.
After the debate, the school board confirmed an earlier vote allowing Ms. Macbeth, 71-year-old Lily Macbeth, to substitute teach.
Afterward, Macbeth said, it was magnificent.
You saw democracy to vaccine.
So Walswell lives well, right?
Much ado about nothing.
So says Lady Macbeth.
Gender reassignment.
It's just getting sick out there.
Sick.
I have a question, ladies and gentlemen.
What is it with what is happening to the seasoned citizen population out there?
I mean, this transgender reassignment, whatever, at age 71?
We're talking Medicare here.
I hope to hell these procedures aren't covered, but you never know.
We don't know what's in this new Medicare plan Part B.
We were told it was prescriptions, but hell's bells.
Maybe gender reassignment surgery is in there.
Well, what is it with you 70-year-olds and so on?
I remember when my parents were 70 years old, they never thought about doing this.
They never thought about it when they were 10.
They never thought about it when they were 15.
Well, they never told me if they did.
I never saw any indications of it.
My grandparents didn't do anything like this.
There's another story here from New York, a phone repair worker who is in transition from male to female.
So he's getting the chop addictomy procedure.
But he's in the middle in the midst here of gender reassignment.
He said Tuesday, she said, male to female.
She was arrested three times by transit police in the last six months for using the women's restroom at Grand Central Terminal.
Now, is there something confusing about this surgery that you don't know which restroom is yours after you have a new gender assigned?
Helena Stone, 70, said an officer called her a freak, a weirdo, and the ugliest woman in the world and warned her, if I ever see you in the women's bathroom, I'm going to arrest you.
I said, that's the only bathroom I use, Stone said at a rally and news conference.
That's who I am.
MTA spokesman Tom Kelly said later that the charges against Stone would be dropped and that the matter had been resolved.
There is an investigation into how this took place, and we will take whatever steps necessary to avoid a similar situation in the future.
Stone's lawyer, Michael Silverman of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund.
They have everything in New York.
You've heard that.
And this proves it.
And I'll bet you they can still smoke, too.
He said, we're delighted to hear the offer.
We're delighted to hear about this, who joins Stone and about 20 transgender supporters across Grand Central on 42nd Street.
Stone said she had worked for Verizon and its predecessor for 37 years.
That's an interesting pop quiz.
What was Verizon's predecessor?
What did Verizon 9x?
Verizon?
Okay, good for you, Mr. Snerderly.
Anyway, she said she worked for Verizon and its predecessor for 37 years, been in transition from male to female.
Holy for 10 years.
Huh.
Ward.
In August of last year, she was assigned to repair the payphones at Grand Central, where she said she was harassed by the transit officers.
She started slowly and began to mount, the protest did.
She was arrested.
Silverman said he had filed complaints on her behalf of the MTA police with the City Commission on Human Rights, whose guidelines say that restrooms must be available to transgender people consistent with their gender identity or gender expression.
Okay.
You know what?
I'm not going to place the burden of following this on a caller.
So those of you on halt, just stay right there.
I just got to do two audio sound bites and then we'll get back to the phones, but I'm not going to put a caller on after that story.
There's no way a caller could compete with it.
I'm not even going to.
Instead, the job falls to School Bus Nagan, the mayor of New Orleans.
He was on the Today Show today.
And the perky, when Katie Couric asked School Bus Nagan, he said, looking back with the benefit of hindsight, what did you do wrong?
Well, you know, I've thought about this a lot.
I wish I had gotten the information from Max Mayfield so that I could have issued a mandatory evacuation earlier.
All right.
Now, that's just stunning.
Here is School Bus Nagan saying, I wish I'd have heard from Max Mayfield.
Mr. Mayor, I see Max Mayfield three or four times an hour for days leading up to a hurricane and its projected strike point.
Everybody knew where this was going.
He was asked about this today on CNN by Miles O'Brien.
Went out and got Max Mayfield on the air to respond to School Bus Nagan, and this is what Max said.
Well, I need to make clear that it's certainly not standard protocol for the director of the Hurricane Center to call individual mayors.
I've never done that before or initiated a call to a mayor.
I don't think anyone should expect the director of the Hurricane Center to call each local official and every local community up and down the coastline.
I think that we need to understand the process there, and people should not wait or expect a phone call from me.
That was above and beyond what we normally do.
Besides, Max is busy enough inspecting port deals.
School bus Nagan wants a phone call from Max.
Okay, now to the phones.
This is Isam in McLean, Virginia.
McLean, I'm sorry, and thanks for waiting.
Hey, no problem.
Hello?
Yes.
Yes.
How are you doing, Rush?
I'm fine.
Thank you.
Pleasure to speak with you.
I had a comment on this whole port thing.
Every morning I wake up and watch the news, and it almost seems like a debacle because they're not covering the real issue, which is security, which is not even an issue.
It's being polluted by the media and by party affiliations and attack the president.
I just don't quite understand it.
What is the main issue then?
You say security?
That's what's being reported as the main issue, isn't it?
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Well, what do you think the main issue?
I think you're on to something here.
Because this is a media drive-by shooting.
Yeah, absolutely.
There's no question.
They fired a loaded bunch of rounds into a big crowd here, and they're watching people scatter, Helter-Skelter.
They're creating a mess, and they're just going to be down the road creating another mess.
Well, we have to come here and clean this one up.
What do you think the big issue that's not being touched on is?
I think the big issue right now is that we are, you know, the outside world, the international world, has their views on us, and this certainly isn't going to help, especially when the company in question is an Arab-owned company.
And, you know, our ports were already owned by foreign companies, anyways.
So I'm not quite sure why we're focusing on something that's almost irrelevant.
And by doing that, we're hurting ourselves.
You think the security issue is irrelevant?
No, it's not.
No, I think it's definitely relevant, but I don't think that that's what should be driving this news story.
Well, it is because it's a political issue.
It's an election year.
But that's, you know, you've raised an interesting thought here, but made an interesting point anyway.
So I understand the security concerns by everybody that has them.
Other than the Democrats, because the Democrats, they're not.
I don't care what they say.
I don't care who they trot out to say it.
They'll never convince me that this is about security because they don't support any other measure to enhance our security, any real measure.
This is strictly a political opportunity for them.
But I'm going to explore this a little bit more when we come back.
Thanks for the call.
Don't go away, folks.
Okay, back to the phones.
People are patiently waiting to Washington.
This is Paul.
Thanks for your patience, sir.
Thanks for having me.
You bet.
This port deal, people are all complaining about terrorists getting undue access to our ports.
But my take on it is they already have the United Arab Emirates flies two direct flights from Dubai daily into JFK.
Yes.
So they already have a direct access in.
And that seems like a worse access to have because it only takes 14 hours and 40 minutes to fly in.
So if you have some intel on something, you know, it doesn't take a month to act on with a ship.
Right.
And they don't have to own the airport to do it.
That's right.
You don't have to land it.
Like, you know, Little Boy and Fat Man were both airbursts.
So you just have to fly over JFK and keep going a little bit farther.
And there it is.
Well, I do.
Again, now, folks, we're beginning to repeat ourselves only because we were on the cutting edge of this last week.
But he's just addressing the security concern.
If you're concerned about the United Arab Emirates and security, I mean, they're flying their own airline in here twice a day.
And, you know, it's just obvious.
That's why that previous call is resonating with me.
And I think that there is a larger issue here.
Not to say security is not important.
Obviously, in fact, I think this is going to help us.
All this attention is going to help focus more on the security at these ports, and that can only be good.
But there is a larger issue here, and I've addressed it.
I've addressed it.
And that is, is this consistent with our stated foreign policy?
Needing allies.
In fact, this next from Oldney, Maryland here, this is Margaret.
Margaret, welcome.
I think she's going to make a great point if I'm reading this right.
Go ahead.
Thank you, Rush.
I was just going to say that the Democrats are so worried about this deal and they want the extra 45 days of scrutiny.
How long is it?
Two weeks since Al Gore went over to Saudi Arabia and said that Bush was playing into al-Qaeda's hands because the worst thing we could do was cut off friendship and mutual understanding between Saudi Arabia, you could say, slash Arabs.
That is an excellent point.
No, that's an excellent point.
And he also said that we were rounding up Arabs and we were holding them without charges and without lawyers for indeterminate periods of time.
And he was ginning up all of this hate for his own country on the basis of the way we treat Arabs.
Now his own party is engaging in similar type activity, basically saying we can't trust these people.
This is too big a risk.
This is symptomatic of the Bush's problem, Bush administration's problem with lack of openness, too much secrecy going on.
So, yeah, that's a great, great, great point.
Now, we're focusing on the politics of this on the Democrat side, folks, and that's why.
That is an excellent.
Margaret, are you a subscriber to my website?
No, I'm not.
Do you use a computer?
I do.
Well, you need to be rewarded for coming up with this great idea.
I'm going to, will you hang on here at the end of the call?
Somebody will get on the phone with you and give you all the information necessary for you to become a complimentary member of the website Ditto Cam Access Podcast.
So I'll throw a subscription to the Limball Letter newsletter as well.
I thank you very much.
You're a very gracious host, and you certainly are the absolute best at doing what you do.
Well, thank you.
Thank you, Soma.
You're very kind to say that.
I appreciate it.
You're quite perceptive as well.
Yeah, you bet.
All right, Margaret.
Thanks so much.
Just reading the New York Times yesterday.
I know I'm sorry.
I caught myself.
Well, I had to read this.
I did not read the New York Times.
Somebody sent me this.
I really don't read the newspaper.
In fact, I still get it delivered to the House.
Yes, I do for guests.
I want to, you know, guests come over.
I want them to.
I run a hotel.
No, I wouldn't subject my cat to the New York Times in a litter box.
I wouldn't want the ink on the paper getting in my beautiful cat's feet.
No, I use state-of-the-art stuff in there.
At any rate, I don't want to start talking about litterboxes.
Everybody's trying to get me off track today, but I am staying focused.
Somebody sent me this story from the New York Times.
It's a piece by Kit Seely, Catherine Q. Seeley, about the contentiousness that is occurring now every day in the White House press briefing.
And she said, another White House briefing, another day of mutual mistrust.
She starts out by pointing out that Mike McCurry believes now that the biggest mistake he made was allowing cameras in there because now all these reporters end up showing off and acting and performing for the cameras.
And it gets in the way of the business being done in there.
But that's not the point of the story that I want to bring to your attention.
There is actually this, this one, two, three paragraphs.
And it's a quote from the article.
Renena Brooks, a clinical psychologist practicing in Washington, who said that she had counseled several White House correspondents, said the last few years had given rise to White House reporter syndrome, in which competitive high achievers feel restricted and controlled and become emotionally isolated from others who are not steeped in their same experiences.
She said the syndrome was evident in the Cheney case, which she described as an inconsequential event that produced an outsized feeding frenzy.
She said some reporters used the occasion to compensate for not having pressed harder before the Iraq war.
It's like any post-traumatic stress, she said, like when somebody dies and you think you could have saved them.
So I guess the White House press corps, the David Gregories of the world, are just still livid at themselves for being such patsies in reporting everything the administration said about weapons of mass destruction and all that in Iraq.
And they haven't gotten over being used.
They haven't gotten over being humiliated.
They've got post, they've got White House reporter syndrome.
And so they're just, they're acting out because they need to compensate for being fooled earlier.
She has counseled several White House correspondents.
White House reporter syndrome?
That's the New York Times from yesterday.
Now try this.
This is from the Associated Press.
Now, folks, there are days where I feel like I'm in a parallel universe and that we're all in a twilight zone here.
And I think Rod Serling is still writing the daily script.
One major factor separates HasScrule graduates who are ready for college from those who aren't ready for college, a new study shows, and that's how well students handle complex reading.
They needed a study for this.
The trouble is most states don't even have reading standards for high school grades, and not a single state defines the kind of complexity that high school reading should have.
If you're not asking for it, you're not going to get it, said Cynthia Schmeiser, senior vice president for research and development at ACT, the nonprofit company that did the study.
The ACT isolated reading complexity as a critical factor by analyzing the results of the 1.2 million Haskrule seniors in 2005 who took the well-known ACT college interest test, ACT.
Based on that test, only 51% of students showed that they were ready to handle the reading requirements of a typical first-year college course.
The literacy of today's Haskruel graduates has become an enormous concern for colleges and employers.
And again, what differentiates students who are ready for college from the rest is an inability to comprehend sophisticated texts that may have several layers of meaning.
That held true regardless of a student's gender, race, ethnicity, or family income.
The ACT has spelled out the elements of complex tests and hopes states will start adopting them.
With a headline, reading key to college success.
Now, this strikes people as news.
They did a study.
They did a study to determine this.
This is just common sense to me, but apparently it's big news to professional educators.
What does that tell you?
This is big news to professional educators.
How long have we been hearing high schoolers are graduating and can't even read their own diplomas?
We've been hearing it for years and years and years.
Now we've got a big study that confirms if you can't read well, you're not going to do well in college.
I don't know how many of the professional educators know how to do complex reading.
They can't do complex analysis of anything.
I mean, this is just with all the focus on reading, I think states are going to move in this direction.
The question is when and where the leadership will come from.
You want to know why, I mean, I'll tell you who's the educators are the last ones in to figure this out.
It's the parents that know all this.
That's why there's such a push for vouchers to help them change schools to go to private schools and so forth.
Anyway, a brief timeout here, my friends, the EIB Network and El Rushbo recharging for a minute with our obscene profit timeout.
We'll be back and continue right after this.
Well, bad news for Andre Agassi.
Andre Agassi just lost his second round match in the Dubai Open.
The Dubai Tennis Open.
And Agassiz out.
Americans just can't catch a break over there.
Well, actually, that's not true because Tiger won the Dubai Open in golf, but he got an appearance fee that was two and a half times what the winner of the tournament got.
I think they paid Tiger two and a half or three million just to go over there, and the winner gets like a million.
And Tiger won it anyway.
No, did he?
Yeah, he did win it.
That's right, exactly right.
All right.
Ladies and gentlemen, this next story, I'm back to the port deal here.
This is stunning.
And it's stunning because I have an AP story here.
Actually, it's almost like a commentary.
It's by somebody named Bruce Meyerson, but it's a real analysis.
And it's so damn close to accurate that it's stunning.
National security is a legitimate worry, but behind the dispute over whether to let the UAE operate terminals, U.S. ports, lurks the nagging discomfort Americans feel whenever the growing pains of free trade and globalization hit home.
Last year, it was a Chinese company's attempt to buy a big U.S. oil company.
Before that, there was outrage over U.S. companies outsourcing jobs to India and other lower-wage markets.
And for the better part of three decades, there's been dismay at just how open our borders are to the Japanese cars and other imports.
There was a time when our high-quality, lower-priced products were flooding other markets, generating fortunes in export revenue and a healthy dose of foreign resentment.
That often led to tariffs, trade barriers, and no shortage of angry protests from Washington.
Those days are long gone.
Imports of foreign goods exceeded exports of U.S. goods by a record $726 billion in 2005.
This imbalance prompts frequent calls by politicians and companies and unions to retaliate against China and other nations who, they say, view free trade as a one-way street or to subsidize those segments of the U.S. economy taking the biggest hit from the imports.
The head of the UAW, Ron Gedelfinger, has urged President Bush and Congress to recognize that the foreign auto firms who are gaining market share in the U.S. did not succeed while their countries let free markets run their course.
Japan, Germany, South Korea, and other countries actively intervene to support their industries.
Other critics say it's naive for the U.S. to be so open to imports from countries that don't return the favor.
No doubt the general U.S. devotion to free trade has been abused.
It may sound fair to respond with punitive tariffs and barriers, but that would be counterproductive and futile if one acknowledges the longer-term, less emotional reality that market forces tend to be irrepressible, whether it's in China, the United Arab Emirates, or the United States.
I cannot believe this is on the Associated Press.
I could have written this.
That is exactly right.
So is his terminology growing pains of free trade.
Despite the earnest desire to buy American, it's hard to find products that don't derive any benefit from globalization.
An impurity that brings smiles at the cash register would be sorely missed if the U.S. turned too tough on trade.
The near-term pain of trade deficits is the price for preaching capitalism to the world.
That's a profundity.
That's not merely high-minded symbolism.
That is material payback for this leadership by example.
The flood of outsourced jobs to India, China, and Eastern Europe is boosting wages in those markets.
As pay rises overseas, it becomes less economical for U.S. companies to find a labor bargain.
Already, outsourcers are looking beyond India, a process that's likely to ripple through the world economy for decades.
And with more disposable income on hand, consumers in developing markets come to demand products not made locally, including American goods.
We gripe that the Chinese are not buying our goods, but they are.
With all those dollars coming in, the Chinese government is one of the biggest customers for a unique American product.
It's called U.S. Treasury debt.
An estimated three-quarters of China's $800 billion in foreign currency holdings are in dollars, and treasuries account for most of it.
Likewise, hard U.S. assets remain an appealing place for foreign concerns to park their dollars, though often not without controversy.
Generally lost in the current debate is the reality that the American ports in question have already been under foreign control for some time.
Granted, the current owners based in Britain, an ally in the fight against terrorism, whereas Dubai Ports World is a company with secretive finances in a region politicians have linked with terrorism.
But the democracy the United States is attempting to cede in that part of the world is in no small way dependent on the spread of free markets and capitalism.
So the answer here may be to proceed cautiously, protecting national security, but also ensuring that the U.S. doesn't send the wrong message with a knee-jerk rejection of the ports deal.
Bruce Meyerson, national business columnist for the Associated Press.
I nearly had heart failure three or four times when I originally read that piece.
Serious analysis.
There wasn't one assault on Bush in this piece.
There wasn't one assault on America in this piece.
It's incredible.
Back in just a second.
Let's go to Chuck and Rudland, Vermont.
Hi, Chuck.
Welcome to the program.
We have about a minute here.
Thanks so much for taking my call.
I'm a long-time listener.
I just wanted to thank you for having that article about Sorrel and the Supreme Court on.
And I'm sure you're aware that big supporters of that are Feingold and McCain.
I imagine you know that.
And one of Sorrell's real close friends when this law was passed, guess who?
Our former great governor, Howard Dean.
Yeah, I didn't know if you knew that.
Yes, it was one of his close buddies, and I'm sure he was governor when that law was passed.
But I'd just sort of like to apologize for the rest of the country for Vermont, because Vermont is a great place, and all us people here are not like our representatives, like Senator Leakey and the rest of them.
Well, I know you're not all like them, but most are because they keep getting sent down there.
I know, and it's got to be us who feel sorry for you.
I mean, I know you love it there, but you live amongst them.
We're traveling, Rush.
I only live about 10 miles from our great jumping gym, you know, and I'm glad he's finally jumping out.
So are a lot of people.
I appreciate the calls, Chuck.
Thanks much.
Okay, folks, that's it.
Now, reminder: I'll not be here tomorrow.
I have to go out of town to make a rare speech.
But we will be back on Friday for Open Line Friday.
Roger Hedgecock will be hosting the program tomorrow.
Thank him in advance for doing that.
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