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March 2, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:20
March 2, 2006, Thursday, Hour #2
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Thank you, and welcome back to the Rush Limbaugh program here at the EIB Network.
Roger Hedgecock filling in for Rush Today.
Rush back tomorrow.
Don't worry.
He'll be back tomorrow.
By the way, in the last hour, we were talking about Parsippany in New Jersey, where the high school there, teacher Joseph Kyle, is holding a week-long hearing before a, quote, international court of justice,
five other teachers, for President Bush to be tried for, quote, crimes against civilian populations, unquote, and, quote, inhumane treatment of prisoners, unquote, according to the Daily Record there in Morris, New Jersey.
In Morris County, this is Kevin in Parsippany, New Jersey, who apparently is one of the students involved.
Hi, Kevin.
Welcome.
Hi, how are you, Roger?
Good.
What's your take on this?
Well, I just wanted to talk a little bit about the article.
I read it this morning, and I thought it was misrepresenting us a little bit.
We don't really want to be confused with some of the other people who've tried George Bush for war crimes before.
There was actually one in New York City a few weeks ago.
It's usually a bunch of left-wing kooks out there just trying to convict them with no legitimate defense.
And we wanted to do it more fairly and look at it, in actuality, is George Bush a war criminal or not.
And I'm actually the lawyer for the defense, one of five.
And we are really working hard to give him a fair trial.
All the teachers are pretty much unbiased.
We have students on both sides working pretty hard.
And I know it sounds a little bit left-leaning, but in all likelihood, he's not going to be convicted of them.
And it will be, as far as we know, the first time one of these hearings would have come up with that conclusion.
It's just something that we wanted to do to look at as a class to really learn something out of it.
Well, and I think, by the way, that this is an advanced placement government class in, what, the 12th grade?
Yes.
And so it is an appropriate topic.
The teacher, Joseph Kyle, perhaps he does think Bush will be acquitted because he said he would like to keep the verdict, which you may know as early as today, possibly tomorrow, quiet.
Is that right?
Is he trying to seal the decision?
Well, we actually have no school today because of the snowstorm, which is why I was able to call in.
So it's going to be a little delayed.
Originally, we had planned to do it open for students to come and see because part of the AP government program at our school is in the beginning of the year we do an election for this year it was for the governor and the whole school participates in it.
The AP government kids are the candidates in that election.
I actually ended up winning it as the libertarian candidate, so I mean we're a pretty conservative leaning school when the majority of our kids went in that direction.
But over time we found we we've been planning this since September and we announced it a few weeks ago we found a lot of people were very upset.
It was like a visceral reaction that just questioning whether or not the things George Bush is doing is wrong, that upset a lot of people and we didn't really mind that it upset some teachers.
But when some students got a little upset we decided we'd keep it within our class and we'd keep the verdict sealed so that people could look at the debate as a kind of hearing, hearing both sides, hear the evidence, question A little bit and not really decide, you know, because obviously we can't become these people.
We can't claim to know everything they know.
But what we want to do is just have people question a bit because whether you're, you know, on the Republican side, the Democrat side, libertarian, you should be questioning your government a bit more than you are.
And I think whether or not Mr. Kyle is leaning either way, what he's really impressioned on us in the last few years is that you need to question your government no matter who it is.
He did this to Bill Clinton, and they actually convicted Bill Clinton.
So, I mean, it's not like he's just hating on Bush right now.
This is just we need to bring up this legitimate question if everything we're doing is the best way we're doing.
Well, I disagree with you, and I want to tell you why, Kevin.
I think that when you have the teacher indicating an international court of justice would be the appropriate kind of phrase to use to designate those judges, you have a very subtle, a very insidious, but a very, very effective way of undermining what he should be teaching you, which is the Constitution of the United States.
The only time a president of the United States can be tried is by Congress for high crimes and misdemeanors in the Constitution.
Suggesting to you and setting up a framework in which a president could be tried by a, quote, international court of justice, unquote, is pure propaganda designed, in my view, to support the opponents of this administration and the opponents of America around the world.
I would disagree with that because when we were setting up this trial, we realized that there might be a little bit of a backlash.
So I was involved in actually picking the charges, even though I'm on defense.
We started there, and so we only picked charges from the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which are signatories the United States is a signatory to, and it's ratified by the United States Senate, unlike other treaties, humanitarian treaties that have been passed.
So therefore, the President is obligated to follow these treaties because it's ratified by our country.
You've also, Kevin, probably studied the fact that no administration, Clinton, you know, Democrat or Republican, Clinton, Bush, otherwise, has recognized the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
We are not going to allow Americans to be tried by an international court that does not honor the due process guarantees of the United States Constitution, and that court does not.
So again, I would pose to you that the fundamental problem I have with this is that your teacher is getting you to assume that it's appropriate for a president of the United States to be tried by an international court, and I'm telling you, that is the propaganda I find offensive.
Well, I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility.
History is always determined by the winners.
And I mean, America always wins the wars because we have the strongest military.
So therefore, we're never going to be tried.
But that doesn't mean that some of the things we aren't doing couldn't be done better.
One of the issues that we're talking about.
No, no, but you're avoiding.
Kevin, I appreciate what you're saying, but you're avoiding my point.
You're avoiding my point.
We don't get the president not tried by the international court because we win the wars and we write the history.
We don't get the president tried by the international court because no American should be tried by a court with the kinds of penalties that would be involved without the due process guarantees of the United States Constitution.
And no president, Kevin, no president can be tried for other than, quote, high crimes and misdemeanors, unquote, as found in our U.S. Constitution.
So I have a threshold problem with the way your teacher has structured this, in effect, indoctrinating you in the idea that it is appropriate for any American to be tried by any international court.
I don't think that I think you're missing the point in that we're trying to ask that question.
And I would consider it a high crime if, in fact, our country was violating things we agreed to and, in fact, killing all these civilians indiscriminately.
However, our school is trying to look at it fairly, and I'm on the defense.
I'm saying that we didn't do these things.
Kevin, as soon as you said the phrase, killing all these civilians indiscriminately, I knew you were A, not being fair, B, not looking at both sides.
You have accepted as a premise a gross lie about George Bush.
I'm not saying I agree with that.
I'm saying that's what he's being accused by other people.
That isn't what you said.
But okay, let me go further into this.
If you had, for example, if your teacher had set up a committee of Congress that was looking at high crimes and misdemeanor and an impeachment resolution and debating that and called witnesses to that committee and done the same thing you're doing.
In other words, there would be the same discussion because we'll take all the charges from the left and we'll throw them up there because that's, of course, what the San Francisco supervisors and a lot of other people want to do.
But the point is, your teacher didn't do that.
He took the international court approach, which is unconstitutional and un-American.
I don't think it would be unconstitutional.
There's nothing in the Constitution that says we are exempt from international law.
To the contrary, the President is responsible for dealing with international law.
And I think if we're going to hold other countries accountable, we should try and keep ourselves accountable as well.
If we're trying to be the city on the hill that all these countries look to as the best democracy, the greatest democracy, the strongest country, why should we then say, you know what, we're going to do all that, but we're not going to listen to the rules we set out.
I think we need to lead by example, and I think we should be doing that.
And I think we are doing that, but we need to prove it in some sort of way.
I mean, obviously, this isn't going to be 100% legitimate.
Let me ask you a question, Kevin, because, again, I appreciate your coming on.
I appreciate your disclosing to us just how far the propagandizing has gone.
Let me just ask you this question.
Do you believe that the President of the United States should stand trial at the international court and, whether he's guilty or not, answer these charges?
No.
I don't think there's enough real basis for them that if there were a real basis, let's say we're talking about Franklin Roosevelt.
Let's say it's wartime and he's now rounded up all of the Japanese Americans and Japanese citizens and Japanese, anybody who looks Japanese on the West Coast and put them in concentration camps.
Should he have been tried at the international court?
Well, at the time, the international court wasn't in existence and the laws weren't in existence, so it never would have happened.
But it was put before the Supreme Court and they deemed it constitutional, so he pretty much didn't do anything wrong there.
Okay, nice answer.
You're going to be a lawyer?
No, everyone's been telling me that, but I really could never argue something I didn't believe.
Well, you're arguing pretty well here for things that are untenable, Kevin.
But let me just ask you this question.
How in the world do you get the assumption that these crimes have been committed?
List the charges for me as they are actually stated.
Well, there's actually quite a few.
It's about five pages out of the Geneva Convention.
I'm mostly working on depleted uranium and clustered munitions used overseas.
Wait, wait a minute.
Tell me that again, Slower.
One of the charges against him is that the use of depleted uranium and of clustered munitions is violating the Geneva Convention that prohibits indiscriminate attacks against civilians.
And there's been some reports in the past by some questionably reliable sources that depleted uranium causes cancer among the civilian population.
And they're arguing that it violates the Geneva Convention.
I'm looking at the charges now.
It's one second.
I'm going to try and get the exact wording.
Sorry.
All right, let's do this, Kevin.
Let me take a break.
I want to get the exact wording because what you're telling me is that the assumption of the charges, which now have to be refuted, is a fact that does not exist.
Well, I would say that one of the key pieces of our defense is that it's not a fact.
And there's a lot of worldwide reports that say it doesn't, although left-leaning people accuse, say that it does cause cancer.
And so one of the key pieces is whether it does or it doesn't we've been looking at.
So it's not exactly a fact.
It's pretty much a big question, Mark.
Kevin, the munitions you're talking about are in smart bombs that have been targeted to within three meters of a military target.
Yes.
Unintentional, unintentional civilian casualties have been inevitable.
It is a war.
I agree with that.
But these are the most targeted to military munitions ever devised by man.
Correct.
When we carpet-bombed Germany, Dresden, and the rest, and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians because we were trying to get at a military facility in and among those civilians and didn't have the capability of just hitting the military without killing civilians, we did it because we wanted to win the war against Nazis.
Correct.
But all that happened before the 1949 Geneva Convention.
So if it happens to be a test.
Yes, Kevin, do you mean that the Geneva Convention prevents us from winning wars in the future?
Let me just take a break.
I'm going to come back.
I want to hear the charges on the Rush Show.
I'm Roger Hedgecock.
Visibly calming down.
Back after this.
All right, we're back.
And in the 12th grade class there of advanced placement government class at Parsippany High School in New Jersey, President Bush is on trial for crimes against civilian populations, inhumane treatment of prisoners.
And I want to get to the exact wording of these charges before what the teacher, Joseph Kyle, has called the, quote, International Court of Justice, unquote.
Kevin is an attorney for the, in effect, for Bush for the defense against these charges and has called us from Parsippany, New Jersey.
No school today because of snow, but we're talking this subject.
Kevin, I appreciate your call.
Now, what are the charges again?
There's quite a few charges.
The most important one for the crimes against civilians is Article 51 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
Section 4, an indiscriminate attack is prohibited.
An indiscriminate attack is defined as something that would employ a method or means of combat, the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this protocol, and consequently, and such case are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.
And also those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective.
The liberals out there are trying to argue that depleted uranium, which is on our tank shells and our bunker-busting bombs and also the armor of our tanks, when it's hit, it's a fact that it incinerates and it self-sharpens itself, so there's a lot of dust put off.
And they say that this dust is a carcinogen not only to those hit by the weapon, but also those in the surrounding area, which would make it an indiscriminate attack against the civilians.
But there's not a lot of evidence behind that.
So that's one key question of the trial.
There's no evidence behind that.
And by the way, these weapons, again, are the most accurate and employed only against military targets.
Collateral civilian deaths have occurred, but they have definitely been collateral.
So I don't even see the application of that.
Now, these were drawn up, what, by the teacher?
No, they were not.
Where did they get the charges?
The charges were, that was probably the hardest part of the project was we began this in September, actually, after we decided to finish up with our election and move on to this trial.
And the key thing was where do we want to set it?
And we decided on the International Court of Justice.
That was the student's decision.
I was involved in that decision.
We picked that one because it was the most legitimate of the international courts we could find.
And we didn't think it was really going to work out to do it within an American system because the legalities of international law and American courts was confusing us a bit.
So we just went with the International Court of Justice.
The students did because it seemed like the easiest way to do it for us.
So that wasn't even his decision.
And by the way, did Kyle do when he did this before on Clinton?
You mentioned he tried Clinton and Clinton was found guilty.
Was it before an international court as well?
No, because that was an international crime.
I guess not.
Yeah.
So we did this because it's between different countries, and the easiest way to do that is in an international court.
All right, what are some of the other charges?
We also have the charges on torture that Article 31 from the 1949 Conventions, no physical or moral coercion shall be exercised against protected persons, in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties.
Who are protected?
And that applies to prisoners of war, which we also contend that most of these people detained are not prisoners of war.
Yeah, who are protected persons?
I think they're uniform type people.
Well, actually, one of the things I was dealing with yesterday when I was pretending to question Donald Rumsfeld was the definition of a prisoner of war.
And he testified that anyone without a uniform or without a specific chain of command or military basis is not a prisoner of war.
So thus, our argument would be that they're not protected by the Geneva Convention.
Sounds reasonable to me because that's true.
That's what it says.
So, I mean, it's an intellectual exercise, and we're showing both sides of the question.
All right.
No, and I appreciate that, Kevin.
And I think you guys are growing in this thing.
I would just like to register my objection to the fact that you would even assume that a President of the United States falls under the jurisdiction of any international court because he does not.
We have not signed the International Court to the Criminal Code.
The Senate has not passed that.
We have adopted the Geneva Conventions to guide our military, and in fact, in everything they do, they are guided by the Geneva Conventions.
There have been hundreds of illegal opinions from the Justice Department to guide Bush in this war.
And we have developed technologically the most targeted weapons that have ever been used by human beings in any war since daggers, which are pretty personal.
Yeah, yeah.
I would agree with all of that.
Collateral damage is slight on daggers.
Yeah, there's definitely no indiscriminate attacks with those.
But I would agree with all of you.
Well, until the Muslims got them and then assassins, that's where we got the word assassins.
They just started slicing people.
But anyway, Kevin, here's the deal.
I think you guys are on the right track to be talking about this.
But I want you to keep something else in mind in your closing statement.
Okay, I'm going to help you a little bit here because I am a recovering attorney.
When you get into your closing statement, you want to, number one, say that the International Court has no jurisdiction over the President of the United States in any way, shape, or form.
Number two, that the issue of Bush as a wartime president is different from the issue of a president in non-wartime.
Well, it is absolutely true.
There has been a declaration of war.
The president is the commander-in-chief.
Abraham Lincoln and every other war president has had to do what he had to do because the Constitution, as Rush likes to say, and it's true, is not a suicide pact.
We are not being constrained by rules that prevent us from winning.
So we're all libertarians, so I'm going to have to differ with you there.
Well, then you don't believe in the country.
You don't believe in the Constitution.
No, actually, I think we like the Constitution a little bit more.
I mean, everything we're about as libertarians is a limited government.
Then look under Article II.
Check out the war powers.
Check out what the President has to do.
Check out the fact that we are not in a situation in which the Constitution prevents us from defending ourselves against those who would murder us and our families.
Kevin, learned the right lesson.
What do I make of this from Associated Press?
Roger Hedgecock in for Rush here.
The dateline is Manama Bahrain, down there by the UAE, a now famous place in the Persian Gulf.
It says, for the people working at Bahrain's malls, the person covered head to toe in black veil, gloves, and glasses appeared to be a rich, doting Saudi mother, leaping from one aisle to the next to select children's shoes, clothes, and toys.
But why, says the article, it's Associated Press now, why would a woman wear a man's shoes?
Why the bodyguards?
Why did the person's fluid movements seem so familiar?
Radio Shack salesman Sharfuddin Qadir Mira said, quote, it was the way he moved that made me sure it was Michael Jackson.
He shops the way he dances, going from one place to the other at dizzying speed, unquote.
Michael Jackson in Bahrain, searching for children's shoes, clothes, and toys.
Hasn't changed his lifestyles in Santa Barbara, apparently.
I'm Roger Hitchcock in for Rush Limbaugh, 1-800-282-2882.
I got to tell you, in California, we have a different take on law enforcement.
We involve everyone.
Every citizen has the responsibility and duty to be involved in fighting crime.
Witness this from the LA Times.
Quote: It was a three-hour lap dance and a stripper with a nose for money that finally led to the counterfeiters' undoing.
15 people have been indicted.
An ongoing investigation, Secret Service agents discovered that Southern California street gangs teamed with a Mexican counterfeit ring and a drug cartel to bring phony $100 bills into the United States, $7.5 million worth since January.
The bills unloaded in L.A., Orange County, as well as gangs in Spokane, Washington, and New Orleans.
And one of these gang members went to a, well, a club.
And the, you know, they're not as dumb as they look, folks.
Dancer spotted the counterfeit across the room.
She wasn't going to be stuck with no counterfeit $100 bill, no matter how cute that gangster was.
Anyway, that's how we catch gangsters out here.
I don't know about where you are.
And then I've got to tell you something.
The Surgeon General.
Is this the Surgeon General now of South Carolina?
I think, I don't know.
Anyway, it says Columbia, South Carolina, AP.
Richard Carmona, in a lecture at the University of South Carolina, said that America's obesity epidemic will dwarf the threat of terrorism.
Obesity is the terror within.
For me, the terror within is bureaucrats who know no limit to outrageous and stupid things that they say in public.
No limit.
Not that there isn't a gullible public willing to lap it up.
This from the BBC News.
Only in a survey, only one, a telephone survey of a thousand random adults.
It must have been very random because only one in four could name anything from the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.
They couldn't even say free speech.
But more than one in two could name at least two members of the Simpsons.
To the phones on the rush show, here's Bob in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Hi, Bob.
Hey, Roger.
How are you doing?
Good.
Say, I want to get back to this teacher, geography teacher.
Yeah.
Clearly, he wasn't doing his job.
There's audio tape evidence of it.
And he should be fired for not doing his job.
I was fired from my job, not because I wasn't doing it, but because I embedded in some software comments.
I can't say the F word, but it rhymes with luck.
It said luck, Al-Qaeda, and anyone that supports them.
You put this in an email?
No, it was embedded in some software.
Okay, and it was on a school computer?
No.
It was on computer networks, but it was in the software comments, so nobody could really see it except for people that were working on the systems.
And those people didn't like it.
That would be correct.
And they got you fired.
That's right.
For saying something expletive deleted about the Al-Qaeda.
Exactly.
What was the name of this school district?
It wasn't a school.
It was a private company.
Well, private companies.
I'm not going to give you the name of the company.
Got it.
Okay.
All right.
Appreciate the call.
So there's a guy fired for saying something, well, not.
I think impolite about Al-Qaeda.
Fired.
If you say something impolite, and then some, about George Bush, you're lionized.
Are we ready to win any war with this attitude?
Doesn't seem like it to me, and it doesn't seem like it to our enemies either.
Matt in Philadelphia next.
Matt, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hey, I just want to say real quick that I really am kind of surprised that people are shocked about this because this is going on in every college classroom in the country.
I mean, I just graduated last fall or last spring, and this is I'm used to that.
I mean, I was a political science major, and all the political science professors talk like that.
But the funny thing was, is that it wasn't just confined to the political science department because I used to have lunch with a good friend of mine who was a physical therapy major, and he would come to me at lunch and say, did George Bush really do this?
Because my physical therapy teacher told me this or my math teacher told me that.
And I'm like, what are you talking about?
And then I was like, what are you talking about?
And they were like, yeah, that's what we were talking about today in class.
So I was thinking, what do they do at their staff meetings?
Come and say, you know, let's talk, let's do this today, let's do that today.
But it's just crazy.
I mean, this goes on regularly in just about all the departments.
I mean, they used to have a bulletin board on the second floor, and the professors there would post all this stuff about the war in Iraq and how many soldiers have died, this, that, and everything else.
And then there was a section where students could post, but anytime anyone put up there anything pro-Bush, it was gone in a matter of hours.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, listen, that's the diversity and tolerance crowd until you disagree with them.
And the funny thing is, I mean, it's not just here either, because I studied abroad in the fall.
And you didn't dare mention George Bush over there or any support for him, because if you did, you were ostracized.
I mean, I was in a basic news reporting class, just a class to take while I was abroad to do something fun.
And when she would give examples, she would say, President Bush of the United States did this.
But it was never anything positive.
It was always like, President Bush slips on Katrina.
You know, I was like, anyone can never give him a positive image anywhere.
But yeah, I just want to make the comment that I'm kind of surprised anyone's shocked about this because it goes on in just about every subject in every classroom in college.
Matt, thanks for the call.
It's true.
I didn't want to generalize beyond the specific examples, but everybody who knows anything about the education system and its unionized workforce knows what you are talking about.
And I appreciate the call.
1-800-282-2882.
I'm Roger Hedgecock filling in for Rush.
He'll be back tomorrow.
Let's take a call from Tom on a cell phone in Oregon.
Hi, Tom.
Hello.
Hi there.
Roger?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hey, I just wanted to make a comment on, I believe his name was Kevin, the high school student.
Yeah.
And I just was really impressed with him.
I think he was extremely articulate, had obviously done his homework and researched the subject.
And, you know, I really don't feel like you acknowledged his excellence, you know.
And I feel good about having kids like that in high school and doing the job that he's doing.
I have the feeling that if he went one-on-one with that idiot geography teacher, he'd eat his lunch.
No, I agree with that.
No, and I, Tom, I think he was obviously a very bright kid.
What I wanted to get out of the conversation, and he had a lot of time on this program, which if you listen to this program, you know, is pretty limited.
I mean, you're trying to get through a lot of topics here.
I did the bulk of a half an hour with him to make sure that he got his points out.
But it's important that he realize, however, the trap that he's been put into by the construct of his teacher, assuming right off the bat, without debate, that an international court is an appropriate venue to try the United States of America's president.
That's absolutely intolerable to me.
That's a threshold veto.
That's a threshold no-go as far as I'm concerned.
Well, I don't know if he's past the point of arguing procedural points, but maybe he can put that in his brief.
Well, yeah, he ought to be objecting to that because they have no business at the international court trying a president of the United States or anybody else from the United States.
Yeah, absolutely.
But I just wanted to make the comment that I think he was excellent.
He was a bright kid.
But it was typical of here's the smartest.
Let's assume he's the brightest kid.
Here's the smartest of the smart kids, the best of the best, the brightest, coming out and being led down this path where international law eclipses our Constitution.
Now, you know, this nation is not going to survive very long if our best and brightest are assuming our Constitution is eclipsed by an international court that can try our president during a war on these charges when the other side, the other side, the enemies of this country, are barbarians without mercy, slicing people's heads off.
You want to talk about torture?
You want to talk about death when Saddam Hussein was using bulldozers to create mass graves?
And that's somehow in the same category of discussion with whether or not somebody got spanked at Abu Ghrab?
Come on.
I'm Roger Hedgecock.
Fill it in for Rush.
Back after.
Virginia Postrell writing in the Forbes magazine about Project Runway, a hit series on the Bravo cable network in its second season, attracting more Wednesday night viewers than any other cable show.
Why do I bring this out?
Because Project Runway celebrates creativity and innovation.
And it talks about how to act in a competitive market economy.
Now, it's a little odd because the show is about fashion design.
That's why it's called Project Runway.
But, you know, some hard-headed business people might say that's not business.
Well, yes, it is.
It's big business.
And you've got Project Runway judges saying things like, the hem is a mess.
Your taste level wasn't there.
You've let us down this time.
The show has a young audience, 73% female median age of 33.
And that audience is absorbing attitudes that directly contradict the culture of entitlement, the culture of everything's good self-esteem.
It's all good.
You're all winners.
Everybody gets a trophy.
Not on the runway, and people are eating it up.
Here's Jim in Boston.
Jim, welcome to the program.
Oh, hi, Roger.
You know, to me, the issue isn't so much what the Denver geography teacher said.
The problem to me is the government monopoly on public schools.
And really, what this should be is a wake-up call for school vouchers.
And I know the teachers' unions are blocking this all the time.
But I'll tell you, the answer would be if we really had freedom of the schools, where parents could send the kids to school as they want with vouchers, then you wouldn't have this problem because the free marketplace would take care of it.
You know, that is such an absolute, absolute truth right now, and it's something that the mainstream press is just afraid to cover.
In Milwaukee and other places, Democrats are taking a huge hit because the new civil rights, the civil rights battle today, is the appalling, the appalling degeneration of public schools, particularly in inner cities, and the lack of response by Democrats who control those inner cities almost universally to doing anything about it.
With the exception of, let's look at Chicago, where the schools have been taken over, and I'm told that progress has been made in discipline, in return to basics, in kids that are actually graduating, the dropout rate dropping instead of going up.
Now, Antonio Villaragosa in Los Angeles, the new mayor, trying to take over the schools there, making speech after speech about the high dropout rate, how it's killing our kids, how it's ruining their future, how we need an education system that works.
This is a huge wake-up call to the Democratic Party because the Democrats, you know, the ones in charge, cannot, cannot turn their backs on the amount of money that's raised by teacher unions to make sure Democrats get re-elected.
So it is the new civil rights, and it's why Maryland is having such a competitive situation in terms of black Democrats, because in Milwaukee and other places in those inner cities, it is black parents who are saying, hey, this is not education.
This is nonsense.
This isn't working.
My kid's dropping out.
My kid's bored.
He's not challenged.
He's not educated.
He's going into gangs.
Gangs have taken over the schools.
What are you guys doing down there?
This is the new civil rights.
And it's the reason why guys and some of the candidates we've talked about, black Republicans, are making such headway in Maryland and Pennsylvania and in other places, because they are addressing the real issues and the new civil rights issue.
And Roger?
Good point, Jim.
Roger, it's the reason that teachers get away with it, because there's no competition.
No, there's no competition.
And if there was freedom where kids can use school vouchers, if the parents want to send their kids to an anti-American school like that, fine.
It's the idea that it's a public school supported with our tax money, and parents have no rights at all whatsoever.
Well, Jim, thanks for the call.
Absolutely correct.
It's something we've got to push.
And again, I would like to see the Republicans pushing it more.
Where's the leadership?
Where's the demand that the media take notice?
Where's the demand that we look at what the alternatives are?
All that we get in these articles, and when they do report issues like this Denver school teacher in his rant geography class for crying out loud, ranting about George Bush and his own version of Stalinism, where is the investigative reporting of how we can fix the problem, how we can do better, why the dropout rate.
I mean, if you had a failure rate at General Motors of almost 50 percent, if 50 percent of the cars turned out by General Motors are defective, then what in the world would be the response?
Democrats particularly would be jumping up and down on behalf of consumers, suing and going crazy.
You can't produce a product that's defective.
You can't produce a product that fails.
And yet, the public schools that own and control those Democratic office holders produce defective products every day.
Not everybody, not every school, but way, way too many of them.
All right, we're going to take a short break.
I'm Roger Hedgecock, in for Rush, right after this.
I mentioned General Motors, but American cars in general don't do very well in the latest consumer reports.
The top 10 in reliability scores, the top 10.
Mercury is number 8.
And I guess Mazda is owned by somebody, but the rest of them, it's Lexus, Honda, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Acura, etc.
So we're not doing too well in the American cars.
And what was I here nearly a month ago when I told you the story of the jobs bank in Detroit, where the big three, you know, Ford GM and Daimler Chrysler, are out paying workers 100% to not work in a jobs bank where nearly 15,000 auto workers continue to get full pay and benefits and they don't work.
Wages and benefits only almost topping $100,000 a year.
I told you the story almost a month ago.
It was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal yesterday.
Yesterday they acknowledged there's more to it than just nationalizing health care and relieving corporate America of that responsibility.
No, there's a little more to it.
Your union contracts are killing your industry, Ford, GM, Chrysler.
They're killing your industry.
So, again, a little bit of truth, a little bit of I told you so from your fill-in substitute professor.
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